Letter from the Editor

Abstract

I would like to begin by thanking Sarah Ryan for her dedicated service to The Engineering Economist journal. Sarah stepped down as Editor-in-Chief on December 31, 2020 after serving in this role for four years. The American Society for Engineering Education and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and our profession owe her a great debt of gratitude for her hard work, dedicated service, and professionalism with which she managed the journal. As I transition into my new role as Editor-in-Chief of The Engineering Economist journal, I will strive to uphold the high standards set by Sarah and TEE’s past editors. Specifically, I will strive to enhance the visibility and prestige of the journal by increasing the publication of special issues related to contemporary topics in capital investment analysis, expanding the multidisciplinary focus, and facilitating real-world case study dissemination. The journal seeks submissions in a number of areas, including, but not limited to: capital investment analysis, financial risk management, cost estimation and accounting, cost of capital, design economics, economic decision analysis, engineering economy education, research and development, and the analysis of public policy when it is relevant to the economic investment decisions made by engineers and technology managers. This issue contains four articles, two articles that contribute new methods for evaluating economic risk and two articles that present new approaches for assessing economic value in the energy sector. I would like to thank all reviewers who contributed to the peer-review process as well as Associate Editors Min, Bursic, Ryan, and Enke for their contributions to this issue. The issue begins with an article entitled “Pricing Real Options based on Linear Loss Functions and Conditional Value at Risk” by Kim and Park. This work expands real option analysis out of the realm of pure financial option pricing techniques by developing an alternative real option valuation based on the loss function approach. The authors present a method to determine an appropriate amount of real option premium to pay for a given level of risk tolerance and present a comprehensive example to demonstrate the computational procedures as well as economic interpretations on the outcomes. In “Socioeconomic Feasibility of Green Roofs and Walls in Public Buildings: The Case Study of Primary Schools in Portuga” by Almeida, Teot onio, Silva, and Cruz. Green infrastructure has been applied in urban areas to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization and promote the efficient use of resources. This article presents a methodology for assessing the economic value of installing green roofs and walls in public buildings, particularly primary schools. The authors apply their methodology to ten alternative green roofs/walls scenarios in two primary schools in Lisbon, Portugal. Their sensitivity analysis shows that the installation cost, aesthetic improvement and increased sound insulation have a significant impact on the results. The next article “Multi-Objective Optimization and Cost-Based Output Pricing of a Standalone Hybrid Energy System Integrated with Desalination” by Luo, Liu, and Liu presents an multi-objective optimization approach to obtain the optimal design parameters of a hybrid energy system integrated with desalination. Their work finds cooling demand has the strongest coupling characteristic, whereas the electrical demand has the weakest,