Planning Toolkit Research Articles

Between structures and norms: assessing tax increment financing for the Dutch spatial planning toolkit

The aim of the paper is to assess the institutional (mis)fit of tax increment financing for the Dutch spatial planning financial toolkit. By applying an institutionally oriented assessment framework, we analyse the interconnectivity of Dutch municipal finance and spatial planning structures and practices. Empirical findings from the case study highlight several insights: 1) the application of tax increment financing (TIF) would be more constrained by socio-political than technical dimensions; 2) such an instrument may not achieve the policy goal of shifting financial risk away from local government given the corporatist characteristics of Dutch planning culture; and 3) despite apparent institutional space to consider alternative instruments, enduring norms tend to be resistant to change.

Advance-care planning quality improvement plan: A Cancer Care Ontario toolkit to support primary care teams to implement advance care plans in practice.

76 Background: In Ontario, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care’s (MOHLTC) uses Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs) to drive system improvement aimed at providing high value, high quality care for all. To support the introduction of QIPs into the primary care sector, Cancer Care Ontario has developed an Advance Care Planning (ACP) toolkit for practices that include ACP as part of their annual QIP. ACP is an ongoing and dynamic process that involves a capable individual reflecting on their current values and beliefs for their health care, communicating their personal wishes for future health care and identifying an individual who will make decisions on their behalf in the event that they are unable to provide informed consent. The process is iterative and wishes may change over time with changes in health status. Methods: The ACP QIP was developed based on the Plan, Do, Study, Act cycle of continuous quality improvement. The ACP QIP provides primary care practices with detailed instructions on how to implement, monitor and report on an ACP Quality Improvement initiative. Importantly, the ACP QIP provides guidance and practical tools for developing objectives, establishing targets, and identifying measures and baselines for performance. CCO is actively promoting the ACP QIP in an effort to encourage uptake and broad adoption across Ontario. Results: There is now evidence that with ACP there is a greater likelihood EOL wishes will be both known and followed resulting in improved EOL care. ACP is also associated with decreased distress among the family members. Conclusions: Creating an ACP QIP supports primary care’s focus on advancing quality patient care. Importantly, implementing the ACP QIP into primary care practices has the potential to improve EOL care and secondarily reduce health care costs ultimately working towards achieving the triple aim of “better care, better health, and lower costs”.

A fuzzy cognitive maps decision support system for renewables local planning

Abstract Initiatives as the Covenant of Mayors and the European Union (EU) binding targets of 20-20-20 are bringing Regional Planning of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) at the center of attention nowadays. This situation creates the need for simplified and straight forward decision support systems for local governance officers. This paper presents the design and implementation of a fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) decision support toolkit (DST) for local RES planning. DST provides the decision maker with an overall qualitative evaluation of the examined investment promptly with minimum effort. All the related parameters (legal/regulative/administrative, financial, technical, social and environmental) that affect the evaluation of RES investment in a local community are investigated. A tool based on fuzzy cognitive maps is designed and implemented on a web platform. The DST has been tested and validated successfully through application in real investments οn Crete Island and comparison to the evaluation results reached by a panel of experts.

Using volunteer-employed photography to inform tourism planning decisions: A study of St David's Peninsula, Wales

More effective tools are needed to empower stakeholder participation in tourism planning processes, and volunteer-employed photography (VEP) is a promising option. This paper discusses the use of VEP to inform tourism planning on St David's Peninsula in Wales. Locals and tourists were given cameras and photo diaries, and asked to use VEP to comment on what they do and do not appreciate about the area, existing planning problems and ways to avoid future planning problems. Through this case, the paper examines the appropriateness of VEP as a tool for assisting tourism planning. The major finding is that a richer, deeper and more valuable dataset can be generated through the participation of host communities and visitors using the VEP approach. As a means of visually representing participants' views, VEP can be a powerful data collection and analysis tool, making a significant addition to the tourism planning toolkit at the local level.

Community Health Collaboratives: Supporting Innovation in Public Policy, Care Delivery, and Coordination

Community Health Collaboratives: Supporting Innovation in Public Policy, Care Delivery, and Coordination

Opposites Attract: An Approach to Collaborative Supply Chain Management between Semiconductor and Automotive Companies

This article illustrates the differences between the semiconductor and the automotive industry and the subsequent challenges to their common supply chain. The weak points at the interfaces between the two supply chains will systematically be identified and assessed. Based on this analysis, a toolkit for collaborative supply chain planning and execution between the automotive and the semiconductor industry is presented. A fit/gap analysis assesses the measures and their potential to solve the supply chain challenges in a systematic manner. The model is built upon existing supply chain management frameworks and defines a set of specific optimization measures for the problem at hand. These are designed to ensure a better alignment of planning and control processes between the automotive and the semiconductor industry.

Table of Contents

Abstract Creative Raffles The Science of Setting Attendance Numbers Incorporating Creativity Balance Planning and Artistic Inspiration for Tabletop Events Golfing Event Tip Profitable Galas Prep Work Takes Guess Work Out of Event Success Connecting With Patrons Engage People in Your Nonprofit's Life During Events Annual Events Recognize, Respect the Life Cycle of an Annual Event Partnership Opportunity Captaining a Table Offers Partnership Opportunity at Gala Help Outsiders Fit In Promotion Tips For Annual Events Ten Ways to Improve Your Special Event Website Calculate Event Costs Transition From Old to New Centerpieces Send Message Accept Bids for Centerpieces Policies and Procedures Land Mines to Avoid When Serving Alcohol Volunteer Involvement Offering Options Helps Attract, Retain Fundraising Volunteers Securing Sponsors Need Sponsors? Market Your Entire Year's Events in Advance Gender‐specific Events Chicks With Sticks Caters to Female Golfers Auction Rule of Thumb Tree‐themed Events Can Be Enjoyed Year‐round Museum Fundraiser Features Multimedia and Interactive Art Ticket Sales Quality, Variety Are Key to Patron Packages' Success Venue Selection Holding Your Event Onsite Offers Advantages Post‐event Actions Questions to Consider After Your Event Enlisting Can‐do Leaders Hospital Foundation Board Member Spearheads Event Tips on Choosing a Theme Workshop Exercise: People See What They Want to See Display the American Flag Properly in a Parade Picture This Decor Idea Conflict Resolution Analyze How You Give Instructions Reunion Planning MIT Volunteers Utilize Reunion Planning Toolkit Reunion Planning Toolkit Steps Event Vendors One Rental Company or Multiple?

Constructing a modern cytology laboratory: A toolkit for planning and design

Introduction:Constructing or renovating a laboratory can be both challenging and rewarding. UAB Cytology (UAB CY) recently undertook a project to relocate from a building constructed in 1928 to new space. UAB CY is part of an academic center that provides service to a large set of patients, support training of one cytotechnology program and one cytopathology fellowship training program and involve actively in research and scholarly activity. Our objectives were to provide a safe, aesthetically pleasing space and gain efficiencies through lean processes.Methods:The phases of any laboratory design project are Planning, Schematic Design (SD), Design Development (DD), Construction Documents (CD) and Construction. Lab personnel are most critical in the Planning phase. During this time stakeholders, relationships, budget, square footage and equipment were identified. Equipment lists, including what would be relocated, purchased new and projected for future growth ensure that utilities were matched to expected need. A chemical inventory was prepared and adequate storage space was planned. Regulatory and safety requirements were discussed. Tours and high level process flow diagrams helped architects and engineers understand the laboratory daily work. Future needs were addressed through a questionnaire which identified potential areas of growth and technological change. Throughout the project, decisions were driven by data from the planning phase. During the SD phase, objective information from the first phase was used by architects and planners to create a general floor plan. This was the basis of a series of meetings to brainstorm and suggest modifications. DD brings more detail to the plans with engineering, casework, equipment specifics, finishes. Design changes should be completed at this phase. The next phase, CD took the project from the lab purview into purely technical mode. Construction documents were used by the contractor for the bidding process and ultimately the Construction phase.Results:The project fitted out a total of 9,000 square feet; 4,000 laboratory and 5,000 office/support. Lab space includes areas for Prep, CT screening, sign out and Imaging. Adjacent space houses faculty offices and conferencing facilities. Transportation time was reduced (waste removal) by a Pneumatic Tube System, specimen drop window to Prep Lab and a pass thru window to the screening area. Open screening and prep areas allow visual management control. Efficiencies were gained by ergonomically placing CT Manual and Imaging microscopes and computers in close proximity, also facilitating a paperless workflow for additional savings. Logistically, closer proximity to Surgical Pathology maximized the natural synergies between the areas.Conclusions:Lab construction should be a systematic process based on sound principles for safety, high quality testing, and finance. Our detailed planning and design process can be a model for others undertaking similar projects

Explaining Impossible High-Level Robot Behaviors

A key challenge in robotics is the generation of controllers for autonomous, high-level robot behaviors comprising nontrivial sequences of actions, including reactive and repeated tasks. When constructing controllers to fulfill such tasks, it is often not known a priori whether the intended behavior is even feasible; plans are modified on the fly to deal with failures that occur during execution, often still without guaranteeing correct behavior. Recently, formal methods have emerged as a powerful tool to automatically generate autonomous robot controllers that guarantee desired behaviors expressed by a class of temporal logic specifications. However, when the specification cannot be fulfilled, these approaches do not provide the user with a source of failure, making the troubleshooting of specifications an unstructured and time-consuming process. This paper describes an algorithm to automatically analyze an unsynthesizable specification in order to identify causes of failure. It also introduces an interactive game to explore possible causes of unsynthesizability, in which the user attempts to fulfill the robot specification against an adversarial environment. The proposed algorithm and game are implemented as features within the LTLMoP toolkit for robot mission planning.

An evaluation of the Land and Environment Planning Toolkit for advancing soil and nutrient management on sheep and beef farms

The Land and Environment Planning (LEP) Toolkit recently re-launched by Beef + Lamb NZ is a package developed to assist the sector with resource and business planning. The toolkit includes workbooks and guidelines and consists of an introductory level (Level 1) through to more advanced Levels 2 and 3, each providing a stepby- step guide to assist farmers with on-farm business and environment planning. To date the evaluation of the toolkit has been very limited. Using a case study farm and interactive workshops, the usefulness of each of the three levels of the toolkit for tackling current and future drivers that will shape soil and nutrient management in hill country were determined. Each level was analysed against three drivers: freedom to operate, nutrient use efficiency and ability to demonstrate sustainability using a framework developed as part of the study. The findings from this research support the use of the LEP Toolkit in a stepwise approach. The introductory (1a and 1b) levels of the toolkit proved useful in raising awareness, but offered little assistance in developing tailored solutions. Level 2 and 3 proved more useful in advancing soil and nutrient management by breaking the farm down into land management units on the basis of the underlying physical resources. Level 3 with the inclusion of detailed resource information allows for a comprehensive analysis of the farm across all three drivers for both business planning and if required for reporting. Keywords: Soil and nutrient management tools, sheep and beef, sustainability

Growing a Regional Planning and Response Toolkit

The Texas Coastal Oil Spill Planning and Response Toolkit (the Toolkit) was first introduced to the spill response community in 1999 on CDROM. Updated annually since that time, the Toolkit is now in its 12th edition and its contents now span Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. With 2,000 DVDs distributed annually, the Toolkit has become the most widely used vehicle for disseminating Area Contingency Plans (ACPs), Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) maps and almost 1,500 other spill planning and response documents in the USCG District 8 region. Navigating this extensive collection of PDF documents is managed by hyperlinks from a Master Page document which subdivides the contents into seven major categories: ACPs; ESI maps; Regional Response Team VI documents; Incident Command System (ICS) documents; software applications; internet links and additional documents. The “Additional Documents” category contains national and international response plans, oiled wildlife guidelines, as well as a wide variety of NOAA job aids, manuals and other useful reference materials. The Toolkit can be used for both planning and response activities. As a contingency plan or drill development resource, the Toolkit provides a convenient source of maps and detailed geographic response plans for use as the basis for scenario and plan development. Scenarios and plans developed from the Toolkit materials can be checked against the ACPs for compliance. During a spill event, the Toolkit also provides resources for: ICS spill management, setting protection priorities, reviewing Incident Action Plans for ACP compliance, guidance in executing pre-approval plans, and reviewing procedures for aerial reconnaissance (to name a few). Besides the obvious benefit of having these planning and response support resources in one convenient package, the Toolkit provides an additional benefit to the regional response community: a rallying point. The annual production of the Toolkit has created a schedule and framework around which state, Federal and private entities organize the annual updates to their ACPs through their Area Committees. This poster describes the Toolkit's growth over time, the manner in which it is used, the production workflow, the content selection philosophy and its impact on the spill response community.

Expanding the Scope and Impact of Collaborative Planning

Problem: As planners grow increasingly confident that they have settled on the right concepts and methods to conduct stakeholder-based collaboration, they are not considering what can be achieved through other collaborative approaches. Purpose: We aimed to explore how creating a network of place- and stakeholder-based collaboratives using communities of practice could strengthen individual collaboratives and achieve network synergies. Methods: Using a case study approach, we draw out lessons for collaborative planning from our research on the U.S. Fire Learning Network (FLN), a collaborative initiative to restore ecosystems that depend on fire. We analyzed data from over 140 interviews, hundreds of documents including restoration plans, newsletters, meeting summaries, maps, and various other reports, and observations at more than a dozen regional and national meetings. Results and conclusions: We conclude that the FLN nurtures expertise in ecological fire restoration and collaborative planning by linking multi-stakeholder collaboratives to regional communities of practice. Moreover, this linkage creates and sustains a network of collaboratives that amplify the potential for fundamental change in the culture and practice of fire management. Takeaway for practice: A community of practice is an effective approach to collaboration in situations where the purpose is to expand expertise rather than to resolve conflict and reach consensus. Moreover, a community of practice can link stakeholder-based collaboratives to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Realizing this potential requires questioning the universality of some of the core principles of stakeholder-based collaborative planning and diversifying the collaborative planning toolkit. Research support: This research was supported by the Northern Research Station of the U. S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy.

Development and evaluation of a production planning, scheduling and control re-design Toolkit

Effective production planning, scheduling and control (PSC) is critical to any manufacturing business competing through responsive order fulfilment. With the current drive for businesses and supply chains to be responsive, a large scale empirical study was conducted with four cross-sector industrial partners to investigate the reality of PSC practice and to establish ways to improve it. From this in-depth analysis, design rules were established and used to develop a Toolkit to assist businesses in re-designing their PSC organisation and practice. This article describes the research and Toolkit development. It also evaluates the Toolkit and makes recommendations for future research.

Pennsylvania Pandemic Planning Toolkit for Schools

Pennsylvania Pandemic Planning Toolkit for Schools

Evaluation and Development of Potentially Better Practices to Improve the Discharge Process in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Our goal was to identify potentially better practices that create a successful discharge planning process that spans the entire newborn intensive care stay to the next level of care by embedding the discharge planning into all aspects of patient care and communication. Potentially better practices were developed through recommendations from a content expert and a literature review. Internal benchmarking, self-assessment tools, monthly conference calls, the Neonatal Intensive Care Quality Improvement Collaborative 2002 listserv, parent feedback, and semiannual conferences were used to finalize recommendations and implement practices. Potentially better practices included (1) create an easy-to-use/easy-to-access discharge planning tool kit, (2) restructure written and oral communication tools and processes to reflect plans for the day, the stay, and the way to discharge, (3) maximize the impact and use of caregiver educational tools, and update materials and delivery systems for caregiver education, (4) use continuous quality improvement tools and processes to ensure parent/caregiver and staff satisfaction, and (5) analyze and enhance transfers into and interactions with the community. The potentially better practices are recommendations that are designed to integrate organizational, clinical, and operational processes to ensure optimal discharge planning from admission through follow-up in the community.

Participatory planning in river catchments, an innovative toolkit tested in Southern Africa and North West England

The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) offers an unparalleled opportunity for improving river basin management. Active participation is essential for its delivery. "End-of-pipe" solutions will not deliver the improvements needed to achieve its ambitious goals. This research tested DesignWays, a toolkit for participatory planning, as a mechanism for maximizing the long-term social and environmental benefits of such stakeholder and community participation. It examined the emerging role of "planning for sustainability" in the context of river catchments. Sustainable management of water requires integration, and recognition of interconnections between systems at different levels of scale. This is an endeavour in which systems thinking provides useful tools. The development of DesignWays was a conscious attempt to embed 'new paradigm' living systems metaphors into a practical planning tool. This paper begins with a description of DesignWays and its development in Southern Africa. An outline of the context of the action research in North-West England is followed by a description of the stages of the process, with highlights of the outcomes. This research had two major outcomes: a contribution to theory through an in-depth exploration of the theoretical basis of participatory, ecologically informed design; and a contribution to practice through investigating DesignWays' potential to meet key challenges of the WFD. This research points to the importance of understanding participatory planning as a societal process, aiming to make the process engaging and meaningful. It has pointed to the need to see participatory planning and education for sustainability as an integrated process. It demonstrated the benefits of an iterative process in which planning at the landscape level of scale informs, and is informed by, work at the site level. It has shown that an approach consistent with a living systems paradigm can contribute to the development of more integrated, ecologically sound plans.

Beyond alternative officing: Infrastructure on‐demand

Over the last ten years interest in and implementation of different forms of alternative officing (AO) have increased dramatically. AO has, in fact, become simply another tool in the real estate and FM space planning and design toolkit. This paper briefly describes different types of AO, and then suggests that AO, which has primarily responded to corporate drives to reduce costs, should broaden its focus to explore alternative ways of constructing and procuring space in response to a different organisational change: namely, to be able to occupy space on‐demand. The article describes the concept of a lean portfolio that helps organisations manage uncertainty better through infrastructure on‐demand; and proposes a research agenda for systematically examining different alternative workplace strategies (AWS).

Evaluating heat rate modifications with the EPRI Plant Modification Operating Savings (PMOS) model

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) developed the Plant Modification Operating Savings Model (PMOS) to overcome the shortcomings of conventional planning tools in capturing the value of small-scale plant modifications. PMOS focuses on a single plant and, using readily available cost and performance data, determines the value of a modification at that plant to the system. PMOS provides decision-makers with accurate results to help select the projects with highest value to the system. It is a powerful, yet easy-to-use, computer model that is a useful addition to the utility planning toolkit. This paper discusses the PMOS use to evaluate plant heat rate modifications and describes the model's methodology and applications.