title: Reinforcement learning for optimisation of a cascade river system

authors: Waddington, Nicolaas

subjects: hydropower

abstract: Getting the most out of renewable power stations has financial benefits and the environmental benefits of displacing electricity generation from fossil fuels. This thesis considers how to reduce losses in the Waikato Hydro Scheme that are due to inefficient operation while ensuring no operating constraints are breached. The hydroelectric dams are currently centrally run by a human "hydro controller" who makes decisions on how much generation to assign to each station at any given time. The hydro controller ensures no operating constraints are breached, but it may be possible to improve the running efficiency of the hydro stations. Currently, hydro controllers only have basic tools to assist them when deciding which action to take. The aim of this thesis is to create live recommendations to help them make decisions. To this end, historical data is used to train a model using reinforcement learning that can be used to provide such live recommendations on how much generation to assign to each station. The Waikato River hydro control problem is formulated as a Markov decision process and several variations on the Monte Carlo control algorithm for reinforcement learning are proposed and compared empirically. The Waikato River hydro control problem has a large action space with billions of distinct ways to assign generation to stations. The K-medoids algorithm is used to cluster actions so that 
 learning becomes practical. Furthermore, once a model has been learned, a hill-climbing approach is used to improve the quality of the selected actions. Combining these techniques gave better running efficiency than historical human performance in 18% of scenarios without breaching any operating constraints. 34% of scenarios did breach constraints so possible improvements to address this are also discussed.

text: Reinforcement learning for optimisation of a cascade river system Getting the most out of renewable power stations has financial benefits and the environmental benefits of displacing electricity generation from fossil fuels. This thesis considers how to reduce losses in the Waikato Hydro Scheme that are due to inefficient operation while ensuring no operating constraints are breached. The hydroelectric dams are currently centrally run by a human "hydro controller" who makes decisions on how much generation to assign to each station at any given time. The hydro controller ensures no operating constraints are breached, but it may be possible to improve the running efficiency of the hydro stations. Currently, hydro controllers only have basic tools to assist them when deciding which action to take. The aim of this thesis is to create live recommendations to help them make decisions. To this end, historical data is used to train a model using reinforcement learning that can be used to provide such live recommendations on how much generation to assign to each station. The Waikato River hydro control problem is formulated as a Markov decision process and several variations on the Monte Carlo control algorithm for reinforcement learning are proposed and compared empirically. The Waikato River hydro control problem has a large action space with billions of distinct ways to assign generation to stations. The K-medoids algorithm is used to cluster actions so that 
 learning becomes practical. Furthermore, once a model has been learned, a hill-climbing approach is used to improve the quality of the selected actions. Combining these techniques gave better running efficiency than historical human performance in 18% of scenarios without breaching any operating constraints. 34% of scenarios did breach constraints so possible improvements to address this are also discussed.

year: 2025

title: The shifting sands of transparency: Sustainability reporting in New Zealand

authors: Yaeghoobi, Ehsan

abstract: By 2013, nearly 95% of the 250 largest companies in the world, and 71% of the top 100 companies across the Asia Pacific region used sustainability reporting as a tool to inform and manage the impacts of their activities on society, the environment, and the economy. There are now over 400 sustainability reporting instruments being used in 64 countries, 80% of which are introduced by governments. However, by the end of 2013, only 17% of the top 100 companies in New Zealand were providing a corporate responsibility report and, by the end of 2017, this number had not grown much. This is particularly significant when sustainability reports are widely viewed as a proxy for corporate transparency.
This thesis examines the ways in which some of the largest companies in New Zealand perceive and react to stakeholders’ expectations for non-financial disclosure, and the factors that may have caused the current lack of sustainability reporting in this country. It also looks critically into the relative power of shareholders and other stakeholders to influence the publication of sustainability reports. The thesis draws on a theoretical framework that combines Mitchel, Agle, and Wood’s (1997) Salience Model with Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) concept of liquid modernity, to explain how different stakeholders have different impacts on target companies, and why that differentiation tends to run counter to theoretical, market based expectations. 
Twenty-eight interviews, including those with key representatives of 21 public companies (reporting and non-reporting), and seven sustainability professionals, were the primary sources of data. Secondary data was gathered from the participating corporate reports, reporting frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), government regulations in New Zealand, and formal organisational documents, policies, and regulations. This study applies thematic analysis to identify the most important themes to emerge from the interview transcripts and other documents.
The results of the study demonstrate how leading corporations in New Zealand perceive different stakeholder groups and their expectations, and how that perception affects the way they publish corporate reports. While some companies view the lack of stakeholders’ expectation as a barrier for non-financial reporting, the findings of this study suggest that there may have been little to no communication between these organisations and their stakeholders in practice, and that, therefore, company perceptions may have little substance.

text: The shifting sands of transparency: Sustainability reporting in New Zealand By 2013, nearly 95% of the 250 largest companies in the world, and 71% of the top 100 companies across the Asia Pacific region used sustainability reporting as a tool to inform and manage the impacts of their activities on society, the environment, and the economy. There are now over 400 sustainability reporting instruments being used in 64 countries, 80% of which are introduced by governments. However, by the end of 2013, only 17% of the top 100 companies in New Zealand were providing a corporate responsibility report and, by the end of 2017, this number had not grown much. This is particularly significant when sustainability reports are widely viewed as a proxy for corporate transparency.
This thesis examines the ways in which some of the largest companies in New Zealand perceive and react to stakeholders’ expectations for non-financial disclosure, and the factors that may have caused the current lack of sustainability reporting in this country. It also looks critically into the relative power of shareholders and other stakeholders to influence the publication of sustainability reports. The thesis draws on a theoretical framework that combines Mitchel, Agle, and Wood’s (1997) Salience Model with Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) concept of liquid modernity, to explain how different stakeholders have different impacts on target companies, and why that differentiation tends to run counter to theoretical, market based expectations. 
Twenty-eight interviews, including those with key representatives of 21 public companies (reporting and non-reporting), and seven sustainability professionals, were the primary sources of data. Secondary data was gathered from the participating corporate reports, reporting frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), government regulations in New Zealand, and formal organisational documents, policies, and regulations. This study applies thematic analysis to identify the most important themes to emerge from the interview transcripts and other documents.
The results of the study demonstrate how leading corporations in New Zealand perceive different stakeholder groups and their expectations, and how that perception affects the way they publish corporate reports. While some companies view the lack of stakeholders’ expectation as a barrier for non-financial reporting, the findings of this study suggest that there may have been little to no communication between these organisations and their stakeholders in practice, and that, therefore, company perceptions may have little substance.

year: 2018

title: Donna Awatere’s Māori Sovereignty: Reflections on White Supremacy and the Racialization of Crime Control and Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Dawson, Brian

abstract: Donna Awatere’s examination of whiteness within the Aotearoa New Zealand context, specifically white cultural imperialism, has largely been ignored in academic scholarship. For her, white culture, and its articulation through governance and policy, is the starting point and lens to understanding and addressing historical and contemporary Māori dispossession and ensuing strategies of racialized surveillance, control, and containment. In this essay, we argue that Awatere’s attention to past forms of genocide – mapping them to emerging forms of state confinement of Māori, which engender genocidal characteristics, and problematizing “whiteness” – situates the book Māori Sovereignty as an important text in the field of criminal justice, especially that which manifests in settler-colonial contexts.

text: Donna Awatere’s Māori Sovereignty: Reflections on White Supremacy and the Racialization of Crime Control and Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand Donna Awatere’s examination of whiteness within the Aotearoa New Zealand context, specifically white cultural imperialism, has largely been ignored in academic scholarship. For her, white culture, and its articulation through governance and policy, is the starting point and lens to understanding and addressing historical and contemporary Māori dispossession and ensuing strategies of racialized surveillance, control, and containment. In this essay, we argue that Awatere’s attention to past forms of genocide – mapping them to emerging forms of state confinement of Māori, which engender genocidal characteristics, and problematizing “whiteness” – situates the book Māori Sovereignty as an important text in the field of criminal justice, especially that which manifests in settler-colonial contexts.

year: 2023-07-27