Multiobjective genetic algorithm to allocate budgetary resources for condition assessment of water and sewer networks1This paper is one of a selection of papers in this Special Issue on Construction Engineering and Management.

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (9) ◽  
pp. 978-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Atef ◽  
Hesham Osman ◽  
Osama Moselhi
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Condition Assessment ◽  
Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Condition State ◽  
Partially Observable ◽  
Computational Platform

This paper presents a framework for optimizing condition assessment policies by balancing the revealed value of information with the cost of obtaining such information. The computational platform is based on augmenting the asset condition state with an expected level of accuracy. Inaccuracies due to condition assessment reliability are evaluated using the partially observable Markov decision process. The single objective genetic algorithm is used to select the most cost-effective assets to assess considering information inaccuracy under a fixed budget. The model is extended using multiobjective genetic algorithms and fuzzy set theory to include minimizing the risk exposure based on asset consequence of failure. This methodology takes into consideration direct and indirect costs of sudden infrastructure failure and reduced level of service costs. A case study is presented using the City of Hamilton, Canada, water network to demonstrate the capabilities of the model.

Cost Effectiveness of Whole Exome Sequencing for Children with Developmental Delay in a Developing Country: A Study from Jordan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira Masri ◽  
Hanan Hamamy
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Exome Sequencing ◽  
Developmental Delay ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Whole Exome Sequencing ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Whole Exome ◽  
The Cost

AbstractThis retrospective study was aiming to determine the cost effectiveness of whole exome sequencing (WES) in the diagnosis of children with developmental delay in a developing country. In this study of 40 patients, the average cost of traditional investigations and indirect costs related to rehabilitation and medications per child were USD847 and 6,585 per year, respectively. With a current cost for WES of approximately USD1,200, we concluded that performing WES could be cost effective, even in countries with limited resources, as it provides the option for genetic counseling in affected families with an ultimate reduction of overall financial burden to both parents and health care system.

Costs of schizophrenia

1997 ◽  
Vol 171 (6) ◽  
pp. 509-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Treatment Options ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Effective Community ◽  
Indirect Impacts ◽  
Aggregate Burden ◽  
The Cost ◽  
New Evidence

BackgroundSchizophrenia is a common and burdensome illness, with implications not only for the health service but for a host of other care agencies – public and private – as well as for patients, families and the wider society.MethodThe paper reviews available UK evidence on the cost of schizophrenia (broadly defined) and on the cost-effectiveness of treatment options and alternative care arrangements. New evidence potentially alters our view of the costs of this illness.ResultsAggregating the identifiable direct and indirect costs of schizophrenia for England suggests an annual cost of £2.6 billion, but even this sum omits some indirect impacts which cannot currently be costed. Just over half the identified total is accounted for by the direct costs falling to the NHS, local authorities, charities and the criminal justice system. In helping to tackle this cost burden, there is now a body of evidence on cost-effective community care arrangements, antipsychotic drugs and psychological interventions.ConclusionsAlthough the costs of schizophrenia are considerable, there are treatments and care arrangements which can reduce this aggregate burden while maintaining or improving effectiveness.

scholarly journals A Framework for Sequential Planning in Multi-Agent Settings

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 49-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Gmytrasiewicz ◽  
P. Doshi
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Value Functions ◽  
Value Iteration ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Partially Observable ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Do So

This paper extends the framework of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to multi-agent settings by incorporating the notion of agent models into the state space. Agents maintain beliefs over physical states of the environment and over models of other agents, and they use Bayesian updates to maintain their beliefs over time. The solutions map belief states to actions. Models of other agents may include their belief states and are related to agent types considered in games of incomplete information. We express the agents' autonomy by postulating that their models are not directly manipulable or observable by other agents. We show that important properties of POMDPs, such as convergence of value iteration, the rate of convergence, and piece-wise linearity and convexity of the value functions carry over to our framework. Our approach complements a more traditional approach to interactive settings which uses Nash equilibria as a solution paradigm. We seek to avoid some of the drawbacks of equilibria which may be non-unique and do not capture off-equilibrium behaviors. We do so at the cost of having to represent, process and continuously revise models of other agents. Since the agent's beliefs may be arbitrarily nested, the optimal solutions to decision making problems are only asymptotically computable. However, approximate belief updates and approximately optimal plans are computable. We illustrate our framework using a simple application domain, and we show examples of belief updates and value functions.

scholarly journals Cache-Enabled Data Rate Maximization for Solar-Powered UAV Communication Systems

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1961
Author(s):  
Pham Duy Thanh ◽  
Tran Nhut Khai Hoan ◽  
Hoang Thi Huong Giang ◽  
Insoo Koo
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Flight Period ◽  
Content Caching ◽  
Rate Maximization ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
Local Station ◽  
Solar Powered ◽  
Partially Observable

Currently, deploying fixed terrestrial infrastructures is not cost-effective in temporary circumstances, such as natural disasters, hotspots, and so on. Thus, we consider a system of caching-based UAV-assisted communications between multiple ground users (GUs) and a local station (LS). Specifically, a UAV is exploited to cache data from the LS and then serve GUs’ requests to handle the issue of unavailable or damaged links from the LS to the GUs. The UAV can harvest solar energy for its operation. We investigate joint cache scheduling and power allocation schemes by using the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique to maximize the long-term downlink rate. Two scenarios for the network are taken into account. In the first, the harvested energy distribution of the GUs is assumed to be known, and we propose a partially observable Markov decision process framework such that the UAV can allocate optimal transmission power for each GU based on proper content caching over each flight period. In the second scenario where the UAV does not know the environment’s dynamics in advance, an actor-critic-based scheme is proposed to achieve a solution by learning with a dynamic environment. Afterwards, the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods, compared to baseline approaches.

Cost-effectiveness of Misoprostol in Sweden

1992 ◽  
Vol 8 (02) ◽  
pp. 234-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bengt Jönsson ◽  
Ulf Haglund
Keyword(s):  
Abdominal Pain ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Care Hospital ◽  
Osteoarthritis Patient ◽  
High Age ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Minor Extent

AbstractBased on an American multicenter study, an economic evaluation of prophylactic misoprostol was undertaken in Sweden. The study included 420 patients with osteoarthritis and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-associated abdominal pain, but no gastric ulcer at inclusion. The frequency of ulcer development with and without prophylactic misoprostol was assessed at 21.7% and 5.6%, respectively, for a 3-month period. All costs for drugs, ambulatory care, hospital care, loss of production, as well as other factors such as dosage and compliance, were transferred to Swedish conditions. It was concluded that in patients with osteoarthritis and NSAID-induced abdominal pain, prophylaxis with misoprostol is cost-effective in Sweden, which is similar to what is found for other countries. A prerequisite for this result is a frequency of ulcer development of 15%. A patient compliance to prophylactic treatment of more than 60% is also presupposed (79% was observed in the above study). Due to the high age of the osteoarthritis patient population, the cost-effectiveness is influenced to only a minor extent by whether indirect costs are included in the calculation.

scholarly journals The Reflection of the application TD-ABC approach on profits persistence Applied study in the General State of Hydraulic Industries Factory of Plastic*

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (116) ◽  
pp. 226-261
Author(s):  
Sabiha Barzan Alubaidy
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Method ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Activity Based Costing ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Applied Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact

The interest of many companies has become dealing with the tools and methods that reduce the costs as one of the most important factors of successful companies, and became the subject of the attention of many economic units because of the impact on the profits of company, and since the nineties of the last century the researchers and writers gave great attention to this subject, especially in light of the large competition and rapid developments in cost management techniques, as well as the wide and significant change in production methods that have been directed towards achieving customer satisfaction, all this and more driven by economic units in all sectors whether it is service or productivity to find methods that would reduce the costs and thereby increase the profits. As well as achieving a market share compared to economic units operating in the same sector. This study seeks to apply the method of reducing the manufacturing factory overhead costs through the use of time-driven activity-based costing. The aim of the research is to use this technique and to determine the effect of this method in measuring the profit persistence of the company. The traditional method used in the company the research sample to determine the indirect costs and the extent of its impact on the measurement of the profit persistence, the definition of the concepts and characteristics of the method of cost-based activity and the cost method based on time-driven activity and justifications applied to companies, so, the research problem was that the traditional method used by the company the research sample in determining manufacturing factory overhead costs is not fair and objective as it builds the actual basis for determining manufacturing factory overhead costs at the level of the factory as a whole. Consequently, it does not represent cost-effective information that reflects the cost-effectiveness of the plant in the sample of the research and in a manner that affects the profitability of the company the research sample and thus in measuring the profit persistence.

Assessment of Organ Acquisition Costs for an Australian Public Health System

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Gregory T Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health System ◽  
Acquisition Cost ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Acquisition Costs ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Organ Acquisition

Available data on the cost of organ acquisition in Australia's socialized public health systems are minimal. The purpose of this study was to determine the cost for organ acquisition by a state transplant service, and to provide (1) an assessment of acquisition costs within one Australian public health system, (2) a baseline for future cost assessments, and (3) an indication of cost-effectiveness in international terms. Between July and December 1993, 51 kidneys, 21 livers, and 15 hearts were provided for transplantation in the system. Data collected during this period were used to calculate the acquisition cost for each transplanted organ. Direct and indirect costs were included in the calculations. The distribution of costs incurred for organ acquisition were direct, 67%; indirect, 14%; and organ-specific, 19%. Of the total direct costs, aircraft charter accounted for 75%, or 50% of the total acquisition costs. The provision of an organ by a donor coordination service accounted for 20% of the total costs, or a mean of A$783 (US$563) per organ. This study provides a baseline for organ acquisition cost in the Australian healthcare system. The geographic and demographic nature of Australia imposes the largest single cost factor (ie, air charter), which highlights the need for alternative retrieval and transport systems of organs wherever possible. The acquisition costs reported in this study indicate that the system is cost-effective in international terms.

scholarly journals The cost-effectiveness of B-type natriuretic peptide-guided care in compared to standard clinical assessment in outpatients with heart failure in Tehran, Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aziz Rezapour ◽  
Andrew J. Palmer ◽  
Vahid Alipour ◽  
Marjan Hajahmadi ◽  
Abdosaleh Jafari
Keyword(s):  
Heart Failure ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Natriuretic Peptide ◽  
Clinical Assessment ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Lifetime Horizon ◽  
Reduced Ejection Fraction ◽  
Life Years ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Background B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is commonly used as a diagnostic method for patients with heart failure. This study was designed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of BNP compared to standard clinical assessment in outpatients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) in Tehran, Iran. Methods This study was a cost-effectiveness analysis carried on 400 HFrEF outpatients > 45 years who were admitted to Rasoul Akram General Hospital of Tehran, Iran. A Markov model with a lifetime horizon was developed to evaluate economic and clinical outcomes for BNP and standard clinical assessment. Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), direct, and indirect costs collected from the patients. Results The results of this study indicated that mean QALYs and cost were estimated to be 2.18 QALYs and $1835 for BNP and 2.07 and $2376 for standard clinical assessment, respectively. In terms of reducing costs and increasing QALYs, BNP was dominant compared to standard clinical assessment. Also, BNP had an 85% probability of being cost-effective versus standard clinical assessment if the willingness to pay threshold is higher than $20,800/QALY gained. Conclusion Based on the results of the present study, measuring BNP levels represents good value for money, decreasing costs and increasing QALYs compared to standard clinical assessment. It is suggested that the costs of the BNP test be covered by insurance in Iran. The result of the current study has important implications for policymakers in developing clinical guidelines for the diagnosis of heart failure.

scholarly journals The Cost-Effectiveness of B-type Natriuretic Peptide-Guided Care in Compared to Standard Clinical Assessment in Outpatients With Heart Failure in Tehran, Iran

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aziz Rezapour ◽  
Andrew J Palmer ◽  
Vahid Alipour ◽  
Marjan Hajahmadi ◽  
Abdosaleh Jafari
Keyword(s):  
Heart Failure ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Natriuretic Peptide ◽  
Clinical Assessment ◽  
Indirect Costs ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Lifetime Horizon ◽  
Reduced Ejection Fraction ◽  
Life Years ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Background: B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is commonly used as a diagnostic method for patients with heart failure. This study was designed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of BNP compared to standard clinical assessment in outpatients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) in Tehran, Iran. Methods: This study was a cost-effectiveness analysis carried on 400 HFrEF outpatients > 45 years who were admitted to Rasoul Akram General Hospital of Tehran, Iran. A Markov model with a lifetime horizon was developed to evaluate economic and clinical outcomes for BNP and standard clinical assessment. Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), direct, and indirect costs collected from the patients. Results: The results of this study indicated that mean QALYs and cost were estimated to be 2.28 QALYs and $1835 for BNP and 1.9 and $2376 for standard clinical assessment, respectively. In terms of reducing costs and increasing QALYs, BNP was dominant compared to standard clinical assessment. Also, BNP had a 90% probability of being cost-effective versus standard clinical assessment if the willingness to pay threshold is higher than $20800/QALY gained.Conclusion:Based on the results of the present study, measuring BNP levels represents good value for money, decreasing costs and increasing QALYs compared to standard clinical assessment. It is suggested that the costs of the BNP test be covered by insurance in Iran. The result of the current study has important implications for policymakers in developing clinical guidelines for the diagnosis of heart failure.

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