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A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity. Natural monopolies were recognized as potential sources of market failure as early as the 19th century; John Stuart Mill advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good.
A megacity is a very large city, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. Precise definitions vary: the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in its 2018 "World Urbanization Prospects" report counted urban agglomerations having over 10 million inhabitants. A University of Bonn report held that they are "usually defined as metropolitan areas with a total population of 10 million or more people". Others list cities satisfying criteria of either 5 or 8 million and also have a population density of 2,000 per square kilometre. The terms conurbation, metropolis, and metroplex are also applied to the latter.
Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics.
Economies of scope are "efficiencies formed by variety, not volume". In economics, "economies" is synonymous with cost savings and "scope" is synonymous with broadening production/services through diversified products. For example, a gas station that sells gasoline can sell soda, milk, baked goods, etc. through their customer service representatives and thus gasoline companies achieve economies of scope.
Economies of agglomeration or agglomeration effects are cost savings arising from urban agglomeration, a major topic of urban economics. One aspect of agglomeration is that firms are often located near to each other. This concept relates to the idea of economies of scale and network effects.
In economics, marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented by one unit; that is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good. Intuitively, marginal cost at each level of production includes the cost of any additional inputs required to produce the next unit. At each level of production and time period being considered, marginal costs include all costs that vary with the level of production, whereas other costs that do not vary with production are fixed and thus have no marginal cost. For example, the marginal cost of producing an automobile will generally include the costs of labor and parts needed for the additional automobile but not the fixed costs of the factory that have already been incurred. In practice, marginal analysis is segregated into short and long-run cases, so that, over the long run, all costs become marginal. Where there are economies of scale, prices set at marginal cost will fail to cover total costs, thus requiring a subsidy. Marginal cost pricing is not a matter of merely lowering the general level of prices with the aid of a subsidy; with or without subsidy it calls for a drastic restructuring of pricing practices, with opportunities for very substantial improvements in efficiency at critical points.
In economics, average cost or unit cost is equal to total cost (TC) divided by the number of units of a good produced :
Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Trigeneration or combined cooling, heat and power (CCHP) refers to the simultaneous generation of electricity and useful heating and cooling from the combustion of a fuel or a solar heat collector. The terms cogeneration and trigeneration can also be applied to the power systems simultaneously generating electricity, heat, and industrial chemicals.
Shared services is the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group, where that service had previously been found, in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key here is the idea of 'sharing' within an organization or group. This sharing needs to fundamentally include shared accountability of results by the unit from where the work is migrated to the provider. The provider, on the other hand, needs to ensure that the agreed results are delivered based on defined measures.
Micro combined heat and power, micro-CHP, µCHP or mCHP is an extension of the idea of cogeneration to the single/multi family home or small office building in the range of up to 50 kW. Usual technologies for the production of heat and power in one common process are e.g. internal combustion engines, micro gas turbines, stirling engines or fuel cells.
The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) is a source of statistical bias that can significantly impact the results of statistical hypothesis tests. MAUP affects results when point-based measures of spatial phenomena are aggregated into districts, for example, population density or illness rates. The resulting summary values are influenced by both the shape and scale of the aggregation unit.
Reuse is the action or practice of using an item, whether for its original purpose or to fulfil a different function. It should be distinguished from recycling, which is the breaking down of used items to make raw materials for the manufacture of new products. Reuse – by taking, but not reprocessing, previously used items – helps save time, money, energy and resources. In broader economic terms, it can make quality products available to people and organizations with limited means, while generating jobs and business activity that contribute to the economy.
Renewable heat is an application of renewable energy and it refers to the renewable generation of heat, rather than electrical power. Renewable heat technologies include renewable biofuels, solar heating, geothermal heating, heat pumps and heat exchangers to recover lost heat. Significant attention is also applied to insulation.
A vacuum sewer or pneumatic sewer system is a method of transporting sewage from its source to a sewage treatment plant. It maintains a partial vacuum, with an air pressure below atmospheric pressure inside the pipe network and vacuum station collection vessel. Valves open and reseal automatically when the system is used, so differential pressure can be maintained without expending much energy pumping. A single central vacuum station can collect the wastewater of several thousand individual homes, depending on terrain and the local situation.
Simplified sewerage, also called small-bore sewerage, is a sewer system that collects all household wastewater in small-diameter pipes laid at fairly flat gradients. Simplified sewers are laid in the front yard or under the pavement (sidewalk) or - if feasible - inside the back yard, rather than in the centre of the road as with conventional sewerage. It is suitable for existing unplanned low-income areas, as well as new housing estates with a regular layout. It allows for a more flexible design. With simplified sewerage it is crucial to have management arrangements in place to remove blockages, which are more frequent than with conventional sewers. It has been estimated that simplified sewerage reduces investment costs by up to 50% compared to conventional sewerage.
Chilled water is a commodity often used to cool a building's air and equipment, especially in situations where many individual rooms must be controlled separately, such as a hotel. The chilled water can be supplied by a vendor, such as a public utility or created at the location of the building that will use it, which has been the norm.
The socially optimal firm size is the size for a company in a given industry at a given time which results in the lowest production costs per unit of output.
Sustainable urbanism is both the study of cities and the practices to build them (urbanism), that focuses on promoting their long term viability by reducing consumption, waste and harmful impacts on people and place while enhancing the overall well-being of both people and place. Well-being includes the physical, ecological, economic, social, health and equity factors, among others, that comprise cities and their populations. In the context of contemporary urbanism, the term cities refers to several scales of human settlements from towns to cities, metropolises and mega-city regions that includes their peripheries / suburbs / exurbs. Sustainability is a key component to professional practice in urban planning and urban design along with its related disciplines landscape architecture, architecture, and civil and environmental engineering. Green urbanism and ecological urbanism are other common terms that are similar to sustainable urbanism, however they can be construed as focusing more on the natural environment and ecosystems and less on economic and social aspects. Also related to sustainable urbanism are the practices of land development called Sustainable development, which is the process of physically constructing sustainable buildings, as well as the practices of urban planning called smart growth or growth management, which denote the processes of planning, designing, and building urban settlements that are more sustainable than if they were not planned according to sustainability criteria and principles.
Sensor-based sorting, is an umbrella term for all applications where particles are singularly detected by a sensor technique and rejected by an amplified mechanical, hydraulic or pneumatic process. The technique is generally applied in the three industries mining, recycling and food processing and used in the particle size range between 0.5 and 300 mm. Since sensor-based sorting is a single particle separation technology, the throughput is proportional to the average particle size and weight fed onto the machine.
References
- ↑ "Meaning of Economies of Density". www.encyclo.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-06-15.
- ↑ Jeffrey Lin (2012). "Geography, History, Economies of Density, and the Location of Cities".
- ↑ Eggimann S., Truffer, B., Maurer, M. (2016). "Economies of density for on-site waste water treatment". Water Research. 101: 476–489. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2016.06.011.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
