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Multi-Source National Forest Inventory : Methods and Applications
The book describes in detail the full MS-NFI process, and the input data used – including field data, satellite images, and digital map data, as well as coarse-scale variation of forest variables. It also presents comprehensive information on the types of outputs which can be derived, including maps and statistics, describing, for example, stock volumes and development, dominant tree species, age-class distribution, and large and small-scale variation. The book will provide an invaluable resource for those involved in forest inventory, including government departments and bodies involved in forest policy, management and monitoring, forest managers, and researchers and graduate students interested in forest inventory, modelling and analysis. It will find an additional market among those interested in Earth observation, ecology and broader areas of environmental and natural resource management.
Inventory Control
The strategic importance of efficient Supply Chain Management is today fully recognized by top management. The total investment in inventories is enormous, and the control of capital tied up in raw material, work-in-progress, and finished goods offers an important potential for improvement. At the same time, advances in information technology have drastically changed the possibilities to apply improved inventory control techniques. Furthermore, the recent progress in research has resulted in new and more general methods that can reduce the supply chain costs substantially.
Inventory and Supply Chain Management with Forecast Updates
Inventory and Supply Chain Management with Forecast Updates is concerned with the problems of inventory and supply chain decision making with information updating over time. The models considered include inventory decisions with multiple sources and delivery modes, supply-contract design and evaluation, contracts with exercise price, volume-flexible contracts allowing for spot-market purchase decisions, and competitive supply chains. Real problems are formulated into tractable mathematical models, which allow for an analysis of various approaches, and provide insights for better supply chain management. The book provides a unified treatment of these models, presents a critique of the existing results, and points out potential research directions. Attention is focused on solutions – that is, inventory decisions prior and subsequent to information updates and the impact of the quality of information on these decisions.
Industrial competitiveness : Cost reduction
The objectives of industrial management are: - Implementation of the policy adopted by the owners or the board of directors - Optimum return on investment - Efficient utilization of Men, Machine and Money. In other words, industry must make profit. Manufacturing represents only one aspect of the activities of industrial management. Present-day manufacturing methodology does not consider making profit as their primary objective. The manufacturing process requires the knowledge of many disciplines, such as design, process planning, costing, marketing, sales, customer relations, costing, purchasing, bookkeeping, inventory control, material handling, shipping, and so on.
Hidden Markov Models in Finance
A number of methodologies have been employed to provide decision making solutions to a whole assortment of financial problems in today's globalized markets. Hidden Markov Models in Finance by Mamon and Elliott will be the first systematic application of these methods to some special kinds of financial problems; namely, pricing options and variance swaps, valuation of life insurance policies, interest rate theory, credit risk modeling, risk management, analysis of future demand and inventory level, testing foreign exchange rate hypothesis, and early warning systems for currency crises.
Fuzzy probabilities : New approach and applications
In probability and statistics we often have to estimate probabilities and parameters in probability distributions using a random sample. Instead of using a point estimate calculated from the data we propose using fuzzy numbers which are constructed from a set of confidence intervals. In probability calculations we apply constrained fuzzy arithmetic because probabilities must add to one. Fuzzy random variables have fuzzy distributions. A fuzzy normal random variable has the normal distribution with fuzzy number mean and variance. Applications are to queuing theory, Markov chains, inventory control, decision theory and reliability theory.
Forest Mensuration
Van Laar and Akça’s popular text book, Forest Mensuration, was first published in 1997. Like that first edition, this modern update is based on extensive research, teaching and practical experience in both Europe, and the tropics and subtropics. However, it has also been extensively revised, and now includes chapters on remote sensing and the application of aerial photographs and satellite imagery. As with its predecessor, this book assumes no advanced knowledge of statistical methods, and combines practical techniques with important historical and disciplinary context. The result is a strong balance between a handbook on traditional mensuration methods, and a valuable reference on the many recent research and inventory-related innovations which have emerged in recent years.
Forest Inventory : Methodology and Applications
This book has been developed as a forest inventory textbook for students and can also serve as a handbook for practical foresters. The book is divided into four sections. The first section deals mostly with sampling issues. First, we present the basic sampling designs at a fairly non-technical mathematical level. In addition, we present some more advanced sampling issues often needed in forest inventory. Those include for instance problems with systematic sampling, and methods for sampling vegetation or rare populations. Forest inventory also includes issues that are unique to forestry, like problems in measuring sample plots in the field, or utilising sample tree measurements. These issues include highly sophisticated methodology, but we try to present these also such that forestry students can grasp the ideas behind them. Each method is presented with examples. For foresters who need more details, references are given to more advanced scientific papers and books in the fields of statistics and biometrics.
Forest Diversity and Management
Natural forests with thousands of years of ecological continuity are unrivalled as the treasure store of terrestrial biodiversity on Earth. And while there is currently no fully comprehensive inventory of the biota associated with any given forest, it is reasonable to assume that in conserving natural forests we can conserve the myriads of unnamed bacteria, fungi, insects, mites and nematodes that forests support. Drawing on diverse research from biodiversity experts around the world, this collection of papers reflects the diversity of forest types and forest issues that concern forest scientists globally. Forest types considered vary from savannah and tropical rainforests to the ancient oak forests of Poland; issues explored include the effects of logging, management practices, forest dynamics and climate change on forest structure and biodiversity.
Forecasting with Exponential Smoothing : The State Space Approach
Exponential smoothing methods have been around since the 1950s, and are the most popular forecasting methods used in business and industry. Recently, exponential smoothing has been revolutionized with the introduction of a complete modeling framework incorporating innovations state space models, likelihood calculation, prediction intervals and procedures for model selection. In this book, all of the important results for this framework are brought together in a coherent manner with consistent notation. In addition, many new results and extensions are introduced and several application areas are examined in detail.
Field Measurements for Forest Carbon Monitoring : A Landscape-Scale Approach
This volume is a comprehensive guide to the methods and techniques employed in forest carbon inventory and monitoring. Since forest carbon research is interdisciplinary, it is unlikely that any one investigator will possess expertise in all of the types of measurements needed to conduct forest carbon research at scales larger than a forest stand. Techniques used to characterize standing stocks of carbon in a forest, measure key carbon fluxes, and collect related data (such as forest canopy nitrogen concentrations and meteorological measurements) that are required to drive process models, develop predictive relationships, and link to remote sensing data are described in detail. In addition to the measurement methods, the chapters include background information, necessary calculations, and equipment requirements.
Environmental Role of Wetlands in Headwaters
Internationally, the wetlands of headwater and upland regions provide many valuable environmental services. This book moves towards a more comprehensive inventory of the benefits and costs of headwater wetlands. It evaluates the research that tries to understand the tolerances, exchanges, checks and balances within headwater landscapes and the downstream impacts of changes in wetlands. It employs case studies and reviews from 21 nations spanning Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. It explores the new policy frameworks, changes in land husbandry, new systems for community education, participatory processes and technological interventions required for the effective management of headwater wetlands and the full integration of wetlands (including newly constructed wetlands) into environmental management and planning. In the past, most research dealt with wetlands as isolated features, this book examines wetlands in their watershed management context.
Enabling things to talk : Designing IoT solutions with the IoT architectural reference model
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging network superstructure that will connect physical resources and actual users. It will support an ecosystem of smart applications and services bringing hyper-connectivity to our society by using augmented and rich interfaces. Whereas in the beginning IoT referred to the advent of barcodes and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which helped to automate inventory, tracking and basic identification, today IoT is characterized by a dynamic trend toward connecting smart sensors, objects, devices, data and applications. The next step will be “cognitive IoT,” facilitating object and data re-use across application domains and leveraging hyper-connectivity, interoperability solutions and semantically enriched information distribution.
Dynamic Inventory Management in Reverse Logistics
The integration of product recovery into regular production processes enables new opportunities for cost savings. In case of a dynamic planning situation, for instance when dealing with seasonality or the product life cycle, new motives for keeping stock arise.
Design and Analysis of Simulation Experiments
This is an advanced expository book on statistical methods for the Design and Analysis of Simulation Experiments (DASE). Though the book focuses on DASE for discrete-event simulation (such as queuing and inventory simulations), it also discusses DASE for deterministic simulation (such as engineering and physics simulations). The text presents both classic and modern statistical designs. Classic designs (e.g., fractional factorials) assume only a few factors with a few values per factor. The resulting input/output data of the simulation experiment are analyzed through low-order polynomials, which are linear regression (meta)models. Modern designs allow many more factors, possible with many values per factor. These designs include group screening (e.g., Sequential Bifurcation, SB) and space filling designs (e.g., Latin Hypercube Sampling, LHS). The data resulting from these modern designs may be analyzed through low-order polynomials for group screening and various metamodel types (e.g., Kriging) for LHS.
Computer Applications in Sustainable Forest Management : Including Perspectives on Collaboration and Integration
Computer Applications in Sustainable Forest Management presents state-of-the-art computer applications in a variety of specialty areas of forestry, including inventory, remote sensing, information management, modelling and visualization, biometrics, forest and harvest planning, bioeconomics and marketing, and decision science for management. This book emphasizes integration, or collaborative use, of computer technologies across different disciplines through interdisciplinary research and development in North America, China, and Europe. It also offers important new insights on how to continue advancing computational technologies in forest management to better achieve the basic goal of sustainable forest management. Case studies demonstrate integration of, or collaboration among, multiple computer applications for sustainable forest management.
Column Generation
Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).
Mathematical Formulas for Economists
This collection of formulas constitutes a compendium of mathematics for eco nomics and business. It contains the most important formulas, statements and algorithms in this significant subfield of modern mathematics and addresses primarily students of economics or business at universities, colleges and trade schools. But people dealing with practical or applied problems will also find this collection to be an efiicient and easy-to-use work of reference. First the book treats mathematical symbols and constants, sets and state ments, number systems and their arithmetic as well as fundamentals of com binatorics. The chapter on sequences and series is followed by mathematics of finance, the representation of functions of one and several independent vari ables, their differential and integral calculus and by differential and difference equations. In each case special emphasis is placed on applications and models in economics. The chapter on linear algebra deals with matrices, vectors, determinants and systems of linear equations. This is followed by the representation of struc tures and algorithms of linear programming. Finally, the reader finds formu las on descriptive statistics (data analysis, ratios, inventory and time series analysis), on probability theory (events, probabilities, random variables and distributions) and on inductive statistics (point and interval estimates, tests). Some important tables complete the work.
Markov Chains : Models, Algorithms and Applications
Markov chains are a particularly powerful and widely used tool for analyzing a variety of stochastic (probabilistic) systems over time. This monograph will present a series of Markov models, starting from the basic models and then building up to higher-order models. Included in the higher-order discussions are multivariate models, higher-order multivariate models, and higher-order hidden models. In each case, the focus is on the important kinds of applications that can be made with the class of models being considered in the current chapter. Special attention is given to numerical algorithms that can efficiently solve the models. Therefore, Markov Chains: Models, Algorithms and Applications outlines recent developments of Markov chain models for modeling queueing sequences, Internet, re-manufacturing systems, reverse logistics, inventory systems, bio-informatics, DNA sequences, genetic networks, data mining, and many other practical systems.
Logistics Systems Analysis
It has two new sections, a new appendix, and more than half a dozen new figures. A few references have also been added, Much of the new material is based on work , The financial support of the National Science Foundation and the Volvo Foundations Center of Excellence for the Future of Urban Transportation at U. C. Berkeley is also acknowledged. The new appendix presents the logic behind the traveling salesman and vehicle routing results used in Sec. 4. 2 to describe the transportation ope- tion; Chapter 4 is more self-contained as a result. New section 5. 6 int- duces and evaluates a general method that automatically translates the c- tinuum approximation recipes of Chapters 4 and 5 into discrete system designs. This closes a gap in previous editions. Other additions include an explanation of how to develop system designs that can efficiently acc- modate real-time control strategies to manage uncertainty (new section 4. 6. 3), and extensions of the many-to-many design ideas of Chap. 6
