Business Commons^™

Weir River Estuary: Land Protection Plan, Chantal Lefebvre, Michelle Portman

Urban Harbors Institute Publications

If economic growth were the only measure of a community’s health and vitality, then the communities of Cohasset, Hingham, and Hull are fairing well. But this economic success is generally accompanied by changes in the physical landscape that can be unsettling for residents, especially when it means more development and expansion at the expense of culturally and socially important open space areas such as parks, woods, and marshes. The rapid pace and fragmented nature of such sprawling development gives communities little opportunity to come to terms with the long-term impacts, which in turn can lead to a sense of powerlessness …

Technical Note: Comparative Static Analysis Of Information Value In A Canonical Decision Problem, Jeffrey Keisler

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

To gain insight into the behavior of the value of information, this paper identifies specific rules for a canonical decision problem: the two-act linear loss decision with normal prior probability distributions. Conditions are derived for which the expected value of perfect information increases when mean and standard deviation are both linear functions of an exogenous variable. A variety of richer decision problems can be adapted to the problem, so that the general results obtained here can be immediately applied to understand drivers of information value.

South Shore Vessel Pumpout Evaluation & Outreach Plan, Final Report, Dan Hellin, Chantal Lefebvre, Michelle Portman, Samantha Woods

Urban Harbors Institute Publications

During the course of this study, 413 boaters, seven pumpout facility operators and a number of state and municipal officials either were interviewed or completed questionnaires focused on the boat sewage pumpout facilities along the South Shore of Massachusetts.

The aims of the boater survey were to:

• collect data on how boaters disposed of their sewage waste;
• learn how well informed boaters were regarding the location of sewage pumpouts;
• determine if boaters were able to find operational pumpout facilities when they needed them;
• learn what common problems had been experienced when using pumpouts;
• determine if there were adequate facilities to …