1. Maritime trade evolutions and port city developments in Asia. 1. Introduction. 2. Evolution of Asia's maritime trade. 3. Asia port developments in the 1990s and beyond. 4. Factors of port competitiveness and development. 5. Lessons to be learnt. 6. Conclusions. 7. References -- 2. Recent development of maritime logistics. 1. Development trends on global container shipping. 2. Liner shipping. 3. Ports. 4. Conclusions. 5. References -- 3. Scenario analysis for Hong Kong port development under changing business environment. 1. Introduction. 2. Literature review. 3. Changing business environment for HKP. 4. A MIP model. 5. Experimental design. 6. Results, analysis and findings. 7. Conclusions and future work. 8. References -- 4. Models for port competitive analysis in Asia-Pacific region. 1. Introduction. 2. Literature review. 3. Port benchmarking models. 4. Conclusion and discussion. 5. References -- 5. Is port throughput a port output? 1. Introduction. 2. Port production function. 3. Port operating options. 4. Port resource function. 5. Container port output. 6. Port interchange service measures. 7. Conclusion. 8. References -- 6. A framework for modelling and benchmarking maritime clusters : an application to the maritime cluster of Piraeus. 1. Introduction. 2. Conceptual definition : cluster theory and maritime clusters. 3. The concept of maritime clusters. 4. Spatial paradigm : the greater area of Piraeus. 5. Methods for evaluating and benchmarking maritime clusters. 6. Computational methods for simulation and life-cycle management of maritime clusters. 7. Conclusions. 8. References
Discrete event systems (DES) have become pervasive in our daily lives. Examples include (but are not restricted to) manufacturing and supply chains, transportation, healthcare, call centers, and financial engineering. However, due to their complexities that often involve millions or even billions of events with many variables and constraints, modeling these stochastic simulations has long been a hard nut to crack. The advance in available computer technology, especially of cluster and cloud computing, has paved the way for the realization of a number of stochastic simulation optimization for complex discrete event systems. This book will introduce two important techniques initially proposed and developed by Professor Y C Ho and his team; namely perturbation analysis and ordinal optimization for stochastic simulation optimization, and present the state-of-the-art technology, and their future research directions.
This timely book discusses the recent developments in maritime logistics, an important specialized area for the global economy. It includes issues such as the recent economic crisis, port competition and development, and provides insights and trends relating to these issues. Consisting of renowned researchers worldwide, the primary objective of the book identifies some of the new problems and challenges faced and innovative solutions to address these problems.
With the advance of new computing technology, simulation is becoming very popular for designing large, complex and stochastic engineering systems, since closed-form analytical solutions generally do not exist for such problems. However, the added flexibility of simulation often creates models that are computationally intractable. Moreover, to obtain a sound statistical estimate at a specified level of confidence, a large number of simulation runs (or replications) is usually required for each design alternative. If the number of design alternatives is large, the total simulation cost can be very expensive. Stochastic Simulation Optimization addresses the pertinent efficiency issue via smart allocation of computing resource in the simulation experiments for optimization, and aims to provide academic researchers and industrial practitioners with a comprehensive coverage of OCBA approach for stochastic simulation optimization. Starting with an intuitive explanation of computing budget allocation and a discussion of its impact on optimization performance, a series of OCBA approaches developed for various problems are then presented, from the selection of the best design to optimization with multiple objectives. Finally, this book discusses the potential extension of OCBA notion to different applications such as data envelopment analysis, experiments of design and rare-event simulation.
The introduction of elections to district advisory bodies during the early 1980s was expected to improve the public delivery of services. However, as time passed, electoral politics led to party politics, elite fragmentation and political struggles. Politicization and hyper-politicization in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has brought about a fluctuating pattern between administrative recentralization, the Tsang administration’s attempts at decentralization, and the post-2019 administrative recentralization. The purpose of this book is to study the intertwining relationship between district administration and electoral politics. It also examines the political transformation of District Councils after the promulgation of the National Security Law in late June 2020. Written by experts in the field, this book is a good reference source for readers interested in district elections, politics, and administration in Hong Kong.
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