Search results for "benchmarking"

Benchmarking the port services: a customer oriented proposal

2004

In recent years, ports have experienced a period of significant growth and development along with intense inter‐port rivalry as a consequence of intermodality and hinterland development. It is therefore vital that port management bodies define and implement suitable strategies. This paper aims to adapt the benchmarking technique to the sphere of ports. Compares the activity of a port with that of its competitors, which is considered to be excellent. This is a strategic approach where consideration of the needs of the client, shipping lines and export‐import companies is the axis of the benchmarking process.

Exploring museum marketing performance: a case study from Italy

2010

The public funding of museums should be linked to performance results in order to reward institutions that are more efficient. Performance measurement tools rely heavily on figures based on visitors numbers and tickets sold. In this paper an indicator is proposed, called PMMP (Performance of Museum as a Marketing Product) consisting of 4 dimensions derived from the four P’s of marketing. The tool is applied to two art and archaeology museums, one private and one public used as case studies in this exploratory phase. Publicly managed facilities could be proving inefficient in performing high levels of marketing performance, thus reducing visitors numbers. The subsequent revenues decrease mak…

Getting Docking into Shape Using Negative Image-Based Rescoring

2019

The failure of default scoring functions to ensure virtual screening enrichment is a persistent problem for the molecular docking algorithms used in the structure-based drug discovery. To remedy this problem, elaborate rescoring and post-processing schemes have been developed with a varying degree of success, specificity, and cost. The negative imagebased rescoring (R-NiB) has been shown to improve the flexible docking performance markedly with a variety of drug targets.The yield improvement is achieved by comparing the alternative docking poses against the negative image of the target protein’s ligand-binding cavity. In other words, the shape and electrostatics of the binding pocket is dir…

Benchmarking Spain's Biotechnology: a comparative perspective

2010

Economic and Technical Efficiency of Drinking Water Systems: An Empirical Approach for Spain

2009

The objective of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of drinking water systems. Efficient performance, both in technical and economic terms guarantee minimum water losses in the network and reduced tariffs for the users. An analytical benchmarking methodology based on non-radial measures considering water losses as undesirable output gives us an efficiency indicator for each input used in the water supply process. These indicators, obtained by means of mathematical programming techniques, are used to rank suppliers' activity. The relation between the efficiency in the activity of the companies and the establishment of different tariffs is also analyzed. An empirical application is carry…

Assessment of building energy modelling studies to meet the requirements of the new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive

2020

Abstract The cost optimal method (COM) as applied in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) uses “non-calibrated deterministic reference buildings (RBs)”. Such RBs are defined with single envelope and equipment parameter values, for which calibration with actual building stock energy performance (EP) is not undertaken. Thus, it is not possible to visualise the effect of uncertainties or diversity in the input parameters on cost-optimal level benchmarks and to verify the choice of RBs. The paper proposes an update to the COM via use of “Probabilistic Bayesian calibrated RBs” to handle uncertainties and produce more realistic cost optimal levels to support policy makers in devis…

A Survey of Methods to Interpolate, Distribute and Extra- polate Time Series

2010

This survey provides an overview with a broad coverage of the literature on methods for temporal disaggregation and benchmarking. Dozens of methods, procedures and algorithms have been proposed in the statistical and economic literature to solve the problem of transforming a low-frequency series into a high-frequency one. This paper classifies and reviews the procedures, provides interesting discussion on the history of the methodological development in this literature and permits to identify the assets and drawbacks of each method, to comprehend the current state of art on the subject and to identify the topics in need of further development. It would be useful for readers who are interest…

Fuzzy ServPerf model combined with ELECTRE III to comparatively evaluate service quality of international airports in Sicily

2015

In this paper a new approach was proposed so as to comparatively evaluate the quality of service alternatives. In particular, a fuzzy extension of the ServPerf service conceptual model was considered to estimate quality scores of fundamental service criteria, whereas the non-compensative multi-criteria decision-making ELECTRE III method was employed to point out the quality ranking of service alternatives on the basis of which the comparative service quality analysis was performed. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an empirical study concerning service quality evaluation of the three international airports in Sicily (Italy) was conducted with detailed proposals fo…

Evolving e-government benchmarking to better cover technology development and emerging societal needs

2012

Many international e-government benchmarks seek to measure progress towards various versions of a digital society, and in this endeavor include a component of e-government. But because comparable international e-government data are scarce, most reports rely on the United Nations E-Government Development Index, specifically its Online Service Index as a benchmark. However, this assessment only captures national level initiatives at a broad level and does not link evaluation to outcomes and impacts, i.e. e-government performance relative to investment.This paper briefly reviews the current UN framework and assesses how it can evolve to meet new demands, such as calls to better connect investm…

Accounting for service quality to customers in the efficiency of water companies: evidence from England and Wales

2015

This paper investigates the role of service quality to customers in the efficiency assessment of water companies in England and Wales. To achieve this, data envelopment analysis techniques are employed to compute the technical efficiency of the water companies following two approaches: (i) traditional assessment based on quantity variables (without the inclusion of service quality variables) and (ii) alternative assessment considering quantity and service quality variables as undesirable outputs. The analysis covers 22 water and sewerage companies and water only companies providing drinking water services. The results indicate that the traditional efficiency assessment reveals a high level …