Tag: presentation

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My Presentation at the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis

For those who do not know, I am a PhD Candidate in Applied Economics at the University of Antwerp, so trying to understand the state of the art regarding Benefit-Cost Analysis is important to my research work. (I joined the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis last year.)

The Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis held their annual meeting in Washington, DC last week. There were some great presentations, (although I missed quite a few because of overlapping panels), but I did find James Scouras‘ presentation titled “Analytical Challenges Surrounding Analyses of Nuclear War”, very engaging.

I made a presentation on my PhD work Thursday afternoon, Session 3G, “Transportation on Waterways: Keeping Afloat using BCA”. Our Discussant, Joe Devlin, said the session should have been called “Big boats are fickle, fragile, and frustrated”.

My other panelists presented some very interesting work. Tim Skeel discussed how he proposed changing bridge closures in Seattle based on the value of time and normalized shipping activity. (The study examined how to change operations on a bridge built in 1910 for today’s traffic conditions.) He did a very through job on showing how these changes would benefit Seattle commuters, but the Coast Guard was not interested in changing their bridge hours. Tim was followed by Douglas Scheffler, U.S. Coast Guard, on estimating the safety benefits of deploying the Physical Oceanic Real Time System, PORTS. Doug’s presentation showed how to evaluate physical deployment of monitoring systems to assist the maritime community. Oftentimes, safety becomes “assumed away”, as how does one count for what may or may not happen.

My presentation and PhD largely centers around the question of managing investment risk in ports for large infrastructure projects. The topic has interested me for years, as evident by many of my presentations over the years. The discussion could be summed up by the slide, where the horizontal is the public sector space and the vertical is the private sector.

My presentation at the SBCA .Download

The outline:
Ports need different types of infrastructure investment
There are public and private sector actors involved in port projects
Port Capacity dictates a ports competitive advantage, so growth remains the perpetual goal
Sensitively in the forecast provides some risks to the infrastructure owner
The Port Prioritization Program in Louisiana
My Research Methodology (factor analysis and Monte Carlo Simulations)

After the presentations were finished, Joe Devlin and Henrik Andersson, chair, led a very engaged back and forth between the panelists and the audience. So, thanks to those people who attended the session and engaged in a great dialogue!

There was quite a lot of discussion on this chart from the European Union regarding Cost Benefit Analysis.

I am looking forward to submitting an update on this work next year (although presenting at the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis European Conference sounds interesting…)

So, over the next few months I will begin getting more into the data/analysis as I work on my PhD!

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International Trade Data, Organizing Data and Client Support

On December 19, I agreed to talk at the New Orleans Data Group. The previous speakers presented work that was largely for internal audiences, so I wanted to focus on something more applied. With my interest in trade, this seemed a good fit.

Globalization refers to interconnected economies, and in a connected world, this largely is tied to investment (such as Foreign Direct Investment), Services, and Goods. (Here is a good place to start if one wants information on U.S. global activity) So, the rest of the talk focused on trade in goods.

There are many reasons why post World War II trade growth blossomed, but the economy benefited from transportation and telecommunication innovations and regulatory changes. (A good discussion of some of this was referred to in Wired magazine’s article “The 20-Ton Packet”)

But trade represents the sum of many things. For example, here are two different industries, such as toys (left) and cut flowers (left). So, there are seasonal patterns to importing merchandise, as there is just as strong seasonal exports of grains and other products. As such, trade represents the sum of decisions between many companies, (a significant amount of trade is intracompany flows).

But we don’t see “TRADE”, we see transportation. Have you ever wondered what was in the truck? The picture on the right was trucks stopped in Louisiana because of a flood in 2016, but most trucks in the Southeast are moving cargo that is intrastate or internal to the Southeast. Trade, as a share of total trade, is actually only 17% of the total traffic activity. However, in Louisiana, as a very strong maritime trade, maritime trade represents a significant industry when compared to other states. (ITTS Working Paper 1 – “International Maritime Trade Benefits the Nation’s Economy“)

There are different pieces of information tied to an international shipment, such as the cargo’s origin and destination, its port of entry, and destination, duties, etc. What is not represented in the chart below is information about the shipper and receiver, the value of the cargo, who is paying for what activity (and is bearing the transportation risks) and other details. The data regarding international trade could thus represent a transaction (generated in respond to an event) or metadata, such as regarding the cargo itself, that is independent of its location and movement. (When conducting trade research, one has to remember U.S. Government disclosure rules do influence how much information can be released.)

Cargo is more likely to move via truck or air for time-sensitive shipments; on the other hand, water tends to handle large, less time-sensitive shipments with lower per unit costs. People make this trade-off. The more expensive the product, the more likely it is that air or trucking will be the
mode selected. Depending on the shipment size, people are more likely to use water, rail or pipeline for similar cargoes. As a result, people’s mode selection is based upon the value, timing, and size of the cargo.

So, there are many things related to trade. The researcher would need to know the details about season patterns, mode, etc., when organizing the data and/or query.

What was delivered…

As part of an ongoing research work, I put several databases into Tableau for the Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies member states. The effort was to develop workbooks with international trade data and other sources of information that may be of use to local planners and economists.
The video about how to engage the dashboards is here.

Working Paper 21 – “Executive Briefing Book”  (June 2018)

The following table represents the metadata regarding the data released for the states. (There are other sources of trade data not included in this study.)

The above graphic shows some metadata about the data sets I integrated into Tableau for the ITTS member states.

In reviewing the project, I talked about the need for the client to understands how to access the data and the data elements are included, so they can duplicate/review the work. I also discussed how to organize the data into Tableau, including challenges I faced regarding one to many joins and matching geography.

If you are interested in more discussions on trade data, I did a presentation at the University of Southern Mississippi regarding trade brochures developed for the ITTS member states (there are some other trade reports posted at http://www.ittsresearch.org/state-reports.html).

The real takeaway from all this…trade data is complicated, especially if one forgets the metadata, for surely the devil is in the details.

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Defining Mississippi’s Transportation System

On Tuesday, October 30, I had the privilege of attending/presenting at the 2018 Mississippi Transportation Institute Conference.  There were many great speakers, including a thoughtful Tim Flick, who spoke on leadership, and the energetic Janie Waters, who discussed change while leading everyone in the Hokie Pokie.  With so many quality presentations, I was honored to have been invited to speak, much less during lunch.  After being introduced by Northern District Commissioner Mike Taggert (in my opinion, a great asset for the State of Mississippi), I presented the following presentation.  ( my presentation: lambert-MTI 2018)

Defined transportation as a benefit:

  • to passengers and users,
  • to support the economy through freight movements,
  • to other sectors in the Mississippi economy.

Often, these benefits are not linked to the role that the transportation system serves an integral part of the state’s commitment to its citizens. The average citizen benefits from a robust highway system, as transportation makes our modern life accessible, but the system does have a direct cost, such as through taxes, or indirect costs, such as closed bridges, vehicle damage, etc., to the citizens of Mississippi.

Here are some of the references I used in preparing my remarks:

Southern Legislative Conference Comparative Data Reports on Transportation 2018 Report
Mississippi Department of Transportation Statewide Transportation Plan Mississippi Department of Transportation Fiscal Year 2017 materials
Mississippi Department of Transportation Freight Plan

1987 was the last concerted effort in Mississippi for a comprehensive statewide highway network program, which was the same year I graduated from Louisiana State University.  Since that was also the last year the State raised the gas tax, I am paying the State of Mississippi the same per gallon of gas from when I drove across the state after my graduation in 1987 as I did this week when I purchased gas to drive to the conference.

The problem is not one of identifying projects, but in securing funding for these projects,  While the state has recently taken steps to address this need, it took shutting down bridges to get some attention on this issue.  Maybe the citizens of Mississippi just need to eat more Domino’s Pizzas to fix the state’s potholes!