scholarly journals Climate-Smart Agriculture in the Northeast of Brazil: An Integrated Assessment of the Aquaponics Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maíra Finizola e Silva ◽  
Steven Van Passel
Keyword(s):  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Arid Regions ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The Social ◽  
Smart Agriculture ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Positive Results ◽  
Semi Arid

The purpose of this study is to determine if aquaponic systems can reduce food insecurity in the semi-arid regions of Brazil and generate income for the beneficiaries. Aquaponics is a potentially sustainable way to produce food based on gardening, hydroponics and aquaculture. A case study, based on a project called Aquaponova, was developed. The aquaponic systems currently used in the project are non-commercial and designed for households with limited resources. The data based on six existing systems within this project were used to compare the costs and the benefits. The cost–benefit analysis covers four scenarios and three financing options. The results show that aquaponic systems have a large potential and can reduce food insecurity in semi-arid regions while generating income for the beneficiaries. Even if the system only produces 40% of the total estimated production, the system will still be feasible. However, the low opportunity cost of labour is an essential factor for obtaining these positive results. Moreover, the social benefits, such as a community spirit and the health benefits of the system, should not be underestimated.

scholarly journals The ALARP Principle in the Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Acceptability of Investment Risk

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Nesticò ◽  
Shuquan He ◽  
Gianluigi De Mare ◽  
Renato Benintendi ◽  
Gabriella Maselli
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Economic Evaluations ◽  
Investment Risk ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Mitigation Design ◽  
The Cost

The process of allocating financial resources is extremely complex—both because the selection of investments depends on multiple, and interrelated, variables, and constraints that limit the eligibility domain of the solutions, and because the feasibility of projects is influenced by risk factors. In this sense, it is essential to develop economic evaluations on a probabilistic basis. Nevertheless, for the civil engineering sector, the literature emphasizes the centrality of risk management, in order to establish interventions for risk mitigation. On the other hand, few methodologies are available to systematically compare ante and post mitigation design risk, along with the verification of the economic convenience of these actions. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how these limits can be at least partially overcome by integrating, in the traditional Cost-Benefit Analysis schemes, the As Low as Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) logic. According to it, the risk is tolerable only if it is impossible to reduce it further or if the costs to mitigate it are disproportionate to the benefits obtainable. The research outlines the phases of an innovative protocol for managing investment risks. On the basis of a case study dealing with a project for the recovery and transformation of an ancient medieval village into a widespread-hotel, the novelty of the model consists of the characterization of acceptability and tolerability thresholds of the investment risk, as well as its ability to guarantee the triangular balance between risks, costs and benefits deriving from mitigation options.

The Role of Science

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Saint-Paul
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Population Distribution ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Social Planner ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Gains And Losses ◽  
Social Engineer

This chapter describes the social sciences. Unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences are inevitably statistical. When documenting human behavior, for example, they can at most claim that a trait is present in a certain fraction of the population. However, the social engineer of the paternalistic state must take into account that the “science of happiness” that is being implemented does not apply uniformly to all individuals. A policy that benefits some by preventing mistakes or removing their biases harms those who are immune to these issues. This difficulty, however, entirely disappears as long as the state is utilitarian or, more generally, pursues any objective that aggregates welfare between individuals, for the statistics are the only thing the utilitarian needs to know. Once the population distribution of the relevant effects and mechanisms is known, the social planner can safely use it to balance gains and losses across incarnations and perform the cost-benefit analysis of its policies.

Environmental costs and their impact on the net present value of a hydro-electric project in Kerala, India

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Santhakumar ◽  
Achin Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Net Present Value ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Environmental Costs ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Net Benefit ◽  
Pulp Industry ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cost

This paper presents the operational procedures involved in incorporating the environmental costs in the cost–benefit analysis of a hydro-electric project. The proposed project, if implemented, would result in the loss of 2,800 hectares of tropical forests and dislocation of two settlements of about 200 families who are currently dependent on the forests for their livelihood. The forests are mainly used for extracting reed – a material used both by traditional artisans and the paper-pulp industry. The potential environmental costs and benefits of the project are identified and approximate estimates of some of these costs are made for items such as carbon sequestration, bio-diversity, and so on, based on similar estimates made elsewhere. These estimated environmental costs are incorporated into the analysis, and the hypothetical estimate of the non-use value, which would make the project's net benefit zero, is estimated under different discount rates. The analysis brings into sharp focus some crucial factors that have a direct bearing on the social trade-off involved in the project choice.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Cost of Failure Risk: A Case Study of the Kang-Wei-Kou Stream Diversion Project

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (20) ◽  
pp. 2881
Author(s):  
Chung-Yuan Liang ◽  
Yuan-Heng Wang ◽  
Gene Jiing-Yun You ◽  
Po-Chun Chen ◽  
Emilie Lo
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Type I ◽  
Original Design ◽  
The Monte Carlo Method ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
The Cost

For water resource engineering projects, some potential risks that are unclear and difficult to investigate are the most crucial problem for engineers. This study presents a unique case of unknown risks, the Kang-Wei-Kou (KWK) Diversion project, which collapsed due to an unexpected hydraulic jump resulting from uneven regional rainfall. We used HEC-RAS incorporating Monte Carlo simulations for analyzing the potential risks to the original design of the KWK Diversion, concerning boundary conditions. An extreme value type I distribution was selected as the form of probability density function (PDF) to upstream discharge, whereas a normal distribution was selected as the form of PDF to downstream water depth, as boundary conditions. Applying the Monte Carlo method, the analysis revealed that the probability of failure was 7.5%, which was non-negligible and should have been considered in the design plan. This case study indicates that overlooking downstream conditions can lead a major facility to fail, and a stochastic analysis could be a way to find out potential risks. We also applied the cost–benefit analysis to review whether the design plans were appropriately estimated with careful risk based consideration.

scholarly journals Cost–benefit analysis of a staff recreation centre project: build or lease? – A Case Study

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Monica Singhania
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Employee Morale ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Community Centre

This case study aims at comprehensively assessing a decision by XYZ Ltd (name withheld due to confidentiality), New Delhi, on whether to build or to lease a recreation centre for its rank-and-file employees. Based on a cost–benefit analysis, we concluded that the centre should be built since the company would recover its investment within 11 years. Apart from the financial considerations, the recreation centre could be considered a long-term investment in employee morale, as it would lead to a better quality of life for the staff and their families, and is likely to enhance their sense of belonging and improve productivity. To date, what little space there is available for hosting family functions is reserved for the use of the officers, and only officers and their families are invited to most company functions. Thus, the other employees feel neglected by the management. Hiring a community centre external to the organisation for a function would involve spending a lot of money as the company is located in a prime real estate area where the cost of land and rentals is huge, and sometimes even availability is an issue. Most of the staff cannot afford such places and are generally under a lot of stress whenever they have a family function. This, in turn, tends to affect their productivity. 

Evaluation of Non-marginal Projects

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gollier
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Welfare Function ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Investment Project ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Cash Flows ◽  
The Social ◽  
Macroeconomic Effects ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Future Cash Flows

This chapter shows that the cost-benefit analysis can be used only if the actions under scrutiny are marginal, that is, if implementing them has no macroeconomic effects. Otherwise, one needs to go back to the basics of public economics to evaluate these actions. The chapter examines the error that one makes by following the classical discounting approach when evaluating non-marginal projects. The evaluation of non-marginal projects must be done by measuring their impact on the social welfare function. A non-marginal investment project with positive future cash flows will have an impact on welfare that is smaller than when estimated by using the standard discounting method.

scholarly journals Chemical or Natural? Including LCA in Social CBA to Compare Remediation Alternatives for a Dry-Cleaning Facility

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lies Huysegoms ◽  
Sandra Rousseau ◽  
Valérie Cappuyns
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Biological Degradation ◽  
Dry Cleaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Natural Remediation ◽  
Local Residents

The choice between remediation alternatives for contaminated sites is complicated by different elements, e.g., the occurrence of multiple contaminants, the extent of the contamination, or the urban location, complicate the choice between remediation alternatives. This paper addresses this challenging choice by analyzing a case study of an extensive soil and groundwater contamination by a dry-cleaning company. For remediating this site, two alternatives were proposed. The first remediation alternative combines several techniques with in-situ chemical oxidization being the most important one. Due to the potential negative impact of this alternative on local residents a second remediation alternative was drawn up, in which the focus lies on the use of stimulated biological degradation. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed on both alternatives and showed that the second alternative had a lower environmental impact. The inclusion of monetized LCA results in the calculation of a social Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) provided a more extensive view of the secondary environmental costs and benefits of the remediation alternatives. The results of the social CBA allow to conclude that both alternatives are not socially desirable, the chemical alternative however is socially less disadvantageous than the more natural remediation alternative.

scholarly journals Road Supply in Central London: Addition of an Ignored Social Cost

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omid M. Rouhani ◽  
Christopher R. Knittel ◽  
Debbie Niemeier
Keyword(s):  
Social Cost ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Cost Curve ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
Land Rents ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Congestion Charging

Studies examining the social cost of driving usually ignore the opportunity cost of having roads in place: the associated land rents. Especially for geographic regions where land is valuable, including the rent costs may even lead governments to close some roads. By using the London congestion charging zone case, a more general long-run social cost curve is calculated with the addition of the rents. Based on the optimal road usage concept, this study found that including the rents in the cost/benefit analysis significantly affects the results and can increase the social cost by up to 200% and decrease the optimal road usage by 40%.

Measuring Social Welfare

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Impacts ◽  
The Difference

The social welfare function (SWF) framework is a powerful tool for evaluating governmental policies in light of human well-being. The framework originates in theoretical welfare economics and is widely used in contemporary economic scholarship, although not (yet) in governmental practice. This book is intended to provide an accessible, yet reasonably rigorous overview of the SWF approach. The framework has three components: an interpersonally comparable measure of well-being, which functions to translate outcomes into lists (“vectors”) of well-being numbers, one for each person in the population; a rule (the SWF) for ranking well-being vectors, such as the utilitarian SWF (which simply adds up well-being numbers), a continuous-prioritarian SWF (which gives greater weight to the worse off), or some other; and a procedure for ranking policies, understood as probability distributions across outcomes. Each component of the SWF framework is reviewed in detail; in doing so, the book engages both the economic literature on SWFs and philosophical scholarship regarding individual well-being, ethics, and distributive justice. The book also clarifies the difference between the SWF approach and cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which uses money rather than an interpersonally well-being measure as the scale for quantifying policy impacts. The book includes a detailed case study of risk regulation—illustrating how the SWF framework can be used in practice and how it contrasts with CBA. The book is written to be accessible to readers without much mathematical training, but is backed up by an extensive mathematical appendix.

Estimating the Social Cost of Using Agricultural Land in the Punjab

1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-314
Author(s):  
Shahrukh Rafi Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social Cost ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sugar Mills ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cost

Pakistan, like any developing country, must regularly divert some of the scarce agricultural land to an alternative use—to another crop, to a site for a reservoir or a plant for processing agriculture's output, or to industrial, com¬mercial or housing purposes. This paper is an exercise in estimating he social cost of releasing agricultural land in the Punjab for use in another activity. It will, hopefully, serve as a model for planners and policy-makers who are con¬fronted with specific projects requiring cost-benefit analysis. For example, Pakistan's Fifth Five-Year Plan calls for construction of numerous sugar mills, sites for which will require an estimated 100 acres of agricultural land per mill. The-cost of using this land for sugar refining may be expressed in terms of the net value of the agricultural output foregone. Similarly, if cane cultivation > is extended to provide input for the refineries, its cost must be evaluated by the value of the crops which are foregone.

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