Guodong
Sun, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Governance: An integrated
study of China's air pollution management
Committee: Keith Florig - co-chair (EPP), Hadi Dowlatabadi
- co-chair (EPP), Granger Morgan (EPP/ECE/Heinz), Cliff
Davidson (CEE/EPP), and Allen Blackman (RFF)
This
dissertation advances understanding of local air pollution
management in China through both descriptive and prescriptive
analyses. A series of interviews with local officials
in five mid-size industrial cities has provided new data
on the forces that drive the implementation of air pollution
control policies at the local level, and how these forces
have evolved as China continues its transition to a market
economy. Models of the costs and benefits of several key
air pollution programs in the case-study cities provide
a measure of China's willingness-to-pay to avoid air pollution
damages. Finally, an analysis of alternative policy instruments
for managing particulate matter explores the potential
benefits of controlling human exposure rather than ambient
concentration. These analyses are conducted in an integrated
framework incorporating energy and environmental engineering,
economics, public health and political theory. Four main
conclusions are drawn.
First,
the reward structure within China's top-down bureaucratic
system motivates local officials to devote most of their
effort and resources to fulfilling targets set by upper-levels
of government in a way that can best serve their bureaucratic
goals.
Second,
Chinese cities began to implement particulate matter control
programs at per capita GDP levels of ~80 U.S. dollars.
This very low threshold for environmental action is related
to the considerable authority wielded by the central government
in the 1970s and 80s.
Third,
China's early adoption of particulate matter control programs
is partly related to the availability of highly effective
measures with low implementation cost. The cost-effectiveness
of these programs ranges from $2 to $400 per life-year
extended, which is much less costly than industrialized
economy norms.
Finally,
exposure modeling shows that residential heating, cooking
and environmental tobacco smoking are the most
Sun
- continued on pg. 7
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Jayatirtha
Asundi, Issues in Software Development: Outsourcing, Architecture
Design and Organization
Committee: V.S. Arunachalam - chair (EPP/MSE/Robotics),
Benôit Morel (EPP), Ashish Arora (Heinz), and Rick Kazman
(SEI)
The
Indian software industry is studied and software-outsourcing
mechanisms are examined. The export oriented Indian software
industry complements U.S. industry by performing most of
the low-end software development. The abundance of cheap
manpower has driven the extraordinary growth of the Indian
software industry in the past decade and is critical for
its continued growth. There is evidence of firms ascending
the value chain in software services. Studying ISO certification,
the thesis finds that firms that get certified benefit by
being more visible to their market. This translates to faster
growth and ability to take on large and important projects.
Software
architects lack well developed tools to reason about the
economics of architectural design options they face. The
thesis develops the Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM)
to provide a structured approach to reason about the benefits,
costs and uncertainty of software architectural options.
The CBAM utilizes a decision analysis and optimization framework
to help software architects choose a few alternatives to
be implemented, from a large set of alternatives. The CBAM
also applies probability and portfolio theory to incorporate
the underlying uncertainty as well as the dependence between
changes. This method has been applied to a real-world project
and was found to be useful in its application.
The
success of open-source software (OSS) projects has led to
an interest in the adoption of its methodologies. In the
study of the Apache OSS project, traditional and OSS development
from a software engineering perspective are compared. Using
information from distribution list archives, the thesis
finds that the Apache project has a structure similar to
successful commercial projects, has a process that is well-defined
and the majority of the contributions, like any commercial
project, are made by a small number of developers.
Asundi
- continued on pg. 9
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Sonia Yeh, Integrated
Assessment and Uncertainty Analysis of Air Pollution Emission
Control and Health Impacts
Committee: Mitchell Small - (CEE/EPP), Benôit Morel (EPP),
Spyros Pandis (ChemE/EPP), Hadi Dowlatabadi (Univ .of British
Columbia), and Luis Cifuentes (P. Universidad Catholica de
Chile)
The
new National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for particulate
matter (PM) will require further reductions in PM concentrations
and additional expenditures for proposed emission controls
for most U.S. cities. The potential costs of emission control
programs and the principle benefits of such action, as measured
by reduced health effects, are predicted to be significant
but highly uncertain. This thesis develops and applies a
methodology for quantifying the health benefits and cost
of potential reductions in ambient PM and the contributions
of uncertainties to the integrated assessment.
Stochastic
distributions and extreme value theory provide an important
tool for analyzing air quality data in the context of public
policy and regulatory assessment. The violations of air
quality standards and the frequency of air pollution episodes
can be predicted and used for comparisons with the new-revised
probability based standards. The statistical distributions
and the associated uncertainties of predicted PM concentrations
of selected control strategies are predicted by a precursor
regression model developed in this study. The methods are
illustrated for Los Angeles (LA) County. Total personal
exposure to particulate matter originated from ambient sources
is taken into account to re-examine the human health effects
derived in existing PM epidemiological studies where only
ambient measurements of PM concentrations were used.
A
decision-making framework is developed to translate emission
reductions into local fine particle concentrations and estimate
the
Yeh
- continued on pg. 8
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