EDUCE Overview Copyright 2009 Nikolas S. Boyd.
All rights reserved.

Quantity Description

Intent

Describe a measurement, its context, and its source, and the instrumentation needed to collect such measurements.

Motivation

Business intelligence supports business decisions. Business intelligence offers governors and managers the information they need to guide and move a business in the directions established by its business policies. Business intelligence measures and quantifies those qualities of concern to a business, especially relative to business products, activities, and value(s).

Applicability

Use quantity description when

Considerations

Having discovered an important business quality concern, some questions naturally arise:

Some measurements are derived from other, more basic measurements. Where such derivation occurs, we want to know the formula used and the basic measures that produce the (usually more complex) derived measure. Consider the following from a sample quantity card (shown below).

building drum storage capacity = ( drum storage limit - drum count ) per hazard type

A building's storage capacity is derived from three other terms: a storage limit, a drum count, and a hazard type. Each of these in turn has a source. Thus, summary measures (like storage capacity) are derived from other measures.

Considerations (Instrumentation)

Some basic measurements come from a source instrument: some (sometimes physical) means of sensing, collecting, and recording a measurement. However, the source of a measurement may sometimes be a person, or a source of governance, such as a regulation, a license, etc.

Instrument design and deployment are beyond the scope of this consideration. However, here are some basic observations:

In addition:

Consequences

It's also best to establish a baseline and some goal(s) with respect to further improvement. Sometimes, it's useful to establish a limit, i.e. the point of diminishing returns. This is usually achieved when the cost of further improvement nears or exceeds the cost of measurement. But, the cost of measurement may be a "cost of doing business". Measurement may be a hard requirement, as when imposed by an external regulatory agency.

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Storage Depot Vulnerability

vulnerability proximity, drum counts
vulnerable depot = vulnerable storage building pair
vulnerable buildings = neighboring pair of full storage buildings
neighboring buildings = building walls within 5 meters proximity
full storage building = (drum storage capacity = 0) per hazard type
building drum storage capacity = (drum storage limit - drum count) per hazard type
building drum storage limit from: building drum storage license
building drum count from: building drum inventory
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

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