Decision Analysis for Utilizing Hazardous Waste Site Assessments in Real Estate Acquisition

When a buyer needs to purchase commercial or industrial property, the decision of what real estate to purchase should be based on an assessment of the total costs of acquisition. In addition to the direct purchase cost, other possible costs include hazardous waste site assessment studies and clean up costs if the purchased site proves to be contaminated. This paper presents a decision analysis model for determining when and which type of hazardous waste assessment tests should be conducted and how the test output affects the choice of site. The model assumes there are two types of hazardous waste assessment, an historical use review (phase 1 test)and soil and water sampling (phase 2 test). Model inputs include the cost, sensitivity and specificity for each type of test, a site's purchase price, and a priori probability of contamination, along with the clean-up cost for a contaminated site. The analysis uses the results of a data survey of 17 environmental engineering firms in setting values on the model input requirements. The paper also reports on sensitivity analysis with the model for the purpose of providing decision-makers with explicit protocols for test utilization.     

Community structures in world perspective: Decline and transfiguration

Despite the relatively uniform images evoked by the word “community,” in the past several centuries the community structures within which persons live have been anything but stable. The penetration of industrialization, bureaucratization and urbanization into all areas of the world has resulted in the inexorable erosion not only of traditional values, but also of all older forms of traditional andGemeinschaft community structures. From the ruins of the past, however, entirely new community formations and ideologies have emerged. It is not entirely unexpected that these newer formations and ideologies are based on both mummified images of past traditions and on entirely new values and institutions provided by industrial civilization. We argue that the destruction of communities defined by past traditions and the emergence of new formations constitute a fundamental transformation in communal and community relationships.