This article presents a new heuristic for generalized assignment problems with a very large number of jobs. The heuristic applies a probabilistic acceptance of a move, based on a percentile threshold, using information from recent moves. This percentile search heuristic (PSH) is compared to tabu...

A rapid increase in demand and severe droughts in recent years has increased the pressure on water supplies throughout most parts of Australia. This has resulted in the need for tools to allocate limited water across users in different regions, and explore scenarios so as to achieve economic,...

Current residential price tariff structures in Australia, which are predominately based on a flat daily supply charge combined with a per kWh electricity charge, create a distortion to the electricity consumption pattern, leading to larger afternoon and evening peak demands across the networks....

As government and industry plan to reduce energy consumption in building stock, there is a need to forecast the uptake of retrofit packages across building stock over time. To address this challenge a diffusion model was set up and applied to office building stock across New South Wales (NSW) in...

This paper explores alternative techniques for the selection of conservation contracts under competitive tendering programs. Under these programs, purchasing decisions are often based on the benefits score and cost for proposed projects. The optimisation problem is to maximise the aggregate...