Search results for: paper assessment

Authors: Melisa Yazdan Panahi

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Since, today in most countries around the world much attention is paid to planning the smallest unit in the city i.e. the residential neighborhoods to achieve sustainable urban development goals, a variety of assessment tools have been developed to assess and monitor the sustainability of new developments. One of the most reliable and widely used assessment tools is LEED-ND rating system. This paper whit the aim of assessing sustainability level of Roshdieh neighborhood in Tabriz, has introduced this rating system and applied it in the study area. The results indicate that Roshdieh has the potential of achieving the standards of sustainable neighborhoods, but the present situation is far from the ideal point.

Keywords: LEED-ND, sustainable neighborhood, new developments, Tabriz

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Authors: Marinella Majorano, Rachele Ferrari, Tamara Bastianello

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The recent technological advance allows for applying innovative and multimedia screen-based assessment tools to test children's language and early literacy skills, monitor their growth over the preschool years, and test their readiness for primary school. Several are the advantages that a computer-based assessment tool offers with respect to paper-based tools. Firstly, computer-based tools which provide the use of games, videos, and audio may be more motivating and engaging for children, especially for those with language difficulties. Secondly, computer-based assessments are generally less time-consuming than traditional paper-based assessments: this makes them less demanding for children and provides clinicians and researchers, but also teachers, with the opportunity to test children multiple times over the same school year and, thus, to monitor their language growth more systematically. Finally, while paper-based tools require offline coding, computer-based tools sometimes allow obtaining automatically calculated scores, thus producing less subjective evaluations of the assessed skills and provide immediate feedback. Nonetheless, using computer-based assessment tools to test meta-phonological and language skills in children is not yet common practice in Italy. The present contribution aims to estimate the internal consistency of a computer-based assessment (i.e., the Simo-syl assessment). Sixty-three Italian pre-schoolers aged between 4;10 and 5;9 years were tested at the beginning of the last year of the preschool through paper-based standardised tools in their lexical (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), morpho-syntactical (Grammar Repetition Test for Children), meta-phonological (Meta-Phonological skills Evaluation test), and phono-articulatory skills (non-word repetition). The same children were tested through Simo-syl assessment on their phonological and meta-phonological skills (e.g., recognise syllables and vowels and read syllables and words). The internal consistency of the computer-based tool was acceptable (Cronbach's alpha = .799). Children's scores obtained in the paper-based assessment and scores obtained in each task of the computer-based assessment were correlated. Significant and positive correlations emerged between all the tasks of the computer-based assessment and the scores obtained in the CMF (r = .287 - .311, p < .05) and in the correct sentences in the RCGB (r = .360 - .481, p < .01); non-word repetition standardised test significantly correlates with the reading tasks only (r = .329 - .350, p < .05). Further tasks should be included in the current version of Simo-syl to have a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach when assessing children. However, such a tool represents a good chance for the teachers to early identifying language-related problems even in the school environment.

Keywords: assessment, computer-based, early identification, language-related skills

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Authors: Lenka Jesonkova, Frantisek Bozek

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Trihalogenmethanes (THMs) are disinfection byproducts with non-carcinogenic and genotoxic effects. The contamination of 6 sites close to the water treatment plant has been monitored in second largest city of the Czech Republic. Health risk assessment including both non-carcinogenic and genotoxic risk for long term exposition was realized using the critical concentrations. Concentrations of trihalogenmethanes met national standards in all samples. Risk assessment proved that health risks from trihalogenmethanes are acceptable on each site.

Keywords: drinking water, health risk assessment, trihalogenmethanes, water pollution

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Authors: Aldona Kluczek

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In recent years, manufacturing processes have interacted with sustainability issues realized in the cost-effective ways that minimalize energy, decrease negative impacts on the environment and are safe for society. However, the attention has been on separate sustainability assessment methods considering energy and material flow, energy consumption, and emission release or process control. In this paper, the energy-led sustainability assessment approach combining the methods: energy Life Cycle Assessment to assess environmental impact, Life Cycle Cost to analyze costs, and Social Life Cycle Assessment through ‘energy LCA-based value stream map’, is used to assess the energy sustainability of the hardwood lumber manufacturing process in terms of technologies. The approach integrating environmental, economic and social issues can be visualized in the considered energy-efficient technologies on the map of an energy LCA-related (input and output) inventory data. It will enable the identification of efficient technology of a given process to be reached, through the effective analysis of energy flow. It is also indicated that interventions in the considered technology should focus on environmental, economic improvements to achieve energy sustainability. The results have indicated that the most intense energy losses are caused by a cogeneration technology. The environmental impact analysis shows that a substantial reduction by 34% can be achieved with the improvement of it. From the LCC point of view, the result seems to be cost-effective, when done at that plant where the improvement is used. By demonstrating the social dimension, every component of the energy of plant labor use in the life-cycle process of the lumber production has positive energy benefits. The energy required to install the energy-efficient technology amounts to 30.32 kJ compared to others components of the energy of plant labor and it has the highest value in terms of energy-related social indicators. The paper depicts an example of hardwood lumber production in order to prove the applicability of a sustainability assessment method.

Keywords: energy efficiency, energy life cycle assessment, life cycle cost, social life cycle analysis, manufacturing process, sustainability assessment

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Authors: Sandhya Rao Mehta

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As ChatGpt and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) forms are becoming part of our regular academic world, the consequences are being gradually discussed. The extent to which an essay written by a student is itself of any value if it has been downloaded by some form of AI is perhaps central to this discourse. A larger question is whether writing should be taught as an academic skill at all. In literature classrooms, this has major consequences as writing a traditional paper is still the single most preferred form of assessment. This study suggests that it is imperative to investigate alternative forms of assessment in literature, not only because the existing forms can be written by AI, but in a larger sense, students are increasingly skeptical of the purpose of such work. The extent to which an essay actually helps the students professionally is a question that academia has not yet answered. This paper suggests that using real-world tasks like creating podcasts, video tutorials, and websites is a far better way to evaluate students' critical thinking and application of ideas, as well as to develop digital skills which are important to their future careers. Using the example of a course in literature, this study will examine the possibilities and challenges of creating digital projects as a way of confronting the complexities of student evaluation in the future. The study is based on a specific university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context.

Keywords: assessment, literature, digital humanities, chatgpt

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Authors: Martina Holenko Dlab, Natasa Hoic-Bozic

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This paper presents an original approach to student and group activity level assessment that relies on certainty factors theory. Activity level is used to represent quantity and continuity of student’s contributions in individual and collaborative e‑learning activities (e‑tivities) and is calculated to assist teachers in assessing quantitative aspects of student's achievements. Calculated activity levels are also used to raise awareness and provide recommendations during the learning process. The proposed approach was implemented within the educational recommender system ELARS and validated using data obtained from e‑tivity realized during a blended learning course. The results showed that the proposed approach can be used to estimate activity level in the context of e-tivities realized using Web 2.0 tools as well as to facilitate the assessment of quantitative aspect of students’ participation in e‑tivities.

Keywords: assessment, ELARS, e-learning, recommender systems, student model

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Authors: S. Hasan, I. Beshara

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Infrastructure maintenance is a great challenge facing sustainable development of infrastructure assets due to the high cost of passive implementation of a sustainable maintenance plan. An assessment model of sustainable maintenance for highway infrastructure projects in Egypt is developed in this paper. It helps in improving the implementation of sustainable maintenance criteria. Thus, this paper has applied the analytical hierarchy processes (AHP) to rank and explore the weight of 26 assessment indicators using three hierarchy levels containing the main sustainable categories and subcategories with related indicators. Overall combined weight of each indicator for sustainable maintenance evaluation has been calculated to sum up to a sustainable maintenance performance index (SMI). The results show that the factor "Preventive maintenance cost" has the highest relative contribution factor among others (13.5%), while two factors of environmental performance have the least weights (0.7%). The developed model aims to provide decision makers with information about current maintenance performance and support them in the decision-making process regarding future directions of maintenance activities. It can be used as an assessment performance tool during the operation and maintenance stage. The developed indicators can be considered during designing the maintenance plan. Practices for successful implementation of the model are also presented.

Keywords: analytical hierarchy process, assessment performance Model, KPIs for sustainable maintenance, sustainable maintenance index

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Authors: Mohammed E. Mansour, Tamador M. A. Elhassan, Nahid A. Ibrahim, Awatif A. Ahmed, Manal A. Abdalla

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Rift valley fever (RVF) is mosquito-borne disease. RVF is transboundary zoonotic disease. It has socioeconomic and public health importance. This paper describes qualitative risk of the RVF vaccine production. RVF is endemic in the Sudan. It has been reported in Sudan due to abundance of Ades Eqytie. Thus, there is huge effort to control it. Vaccination practices had significant role to control and manage RVF. The risk assessment explains the likelihood of a risk as likely. Thus, insecticides and repellents synergize the effort of the vaccination.

Keywords: qualitative analysis, risk assessment, rift valley fever vaccine, quality control

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Authors: Zhidong Zhang, Yingchen Yang

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In this study, a diagnostic assessment model for Mastery Engineering Learning was established based on a group of undergraduate students who studied in an engineering course. A diagnostic assessment model can examine both students' learning process and report achievement results. One very unique characteristic is that the diagnostic assessment model can recognize the errors and anything blocking students in their learning processes. The feedback is provided to help students to know how to solve the learning problems with alternative strategies and help the instructor to find alternative pedagogical strategies in the instructional designs. Dynamics is a core course in which is a common course being shared by several engineering programs. This course is a very challenging for engineering students to solve the problems. Thus knowledge acquisition and problem-solving skills are crucial for student success. Therefore, developing an effective and valid assessment model for student learning are of great importance. Diagnostic assessment is such a model which can provide effective feedback for both students and instructor in the mastery of engineering learning.

Keywords: diagnostic assessment, mastery learning, engineering, bayesian network model, learning processes

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Authors: Muhammad Rehan Usman, Muhammad Arslan Usman, Soo Young Shin

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The new era of digital communication has brought up many challenges that network operators need to overcome. The high demand of mobile data rates require improved networks, which is a challenge for the operators in terms of maintaining the quality of experience (QoE) for their consumers. In live video transmission, there is a sheer need for live surveillance of the videos in order to maintain the quality of the network. For this purpose objective algorithms are employed to monitor the quality of the videos that are transmitted over a network. In order to test these objective algorithms, subjective quality assessment of the streamed videos is required, as the human eye is the best source of perceptual assessment. In this paper we have conducted subjective evaluation of videos with varying spatial and temporal impairments. These videos were impaired with frame freezing distortions so that the impact of frame freezing on the quality of experience could be studied. We present subjective Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for these videos that can be used for fine tuning the objective algorithms for video quality assessment.

Keywords: frame freezing, mean opinion score, objective assessment, subjective evaluation

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Authors: Joyce Joas Kahembe

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The implementation of education assessment reforms in developing countries has been claimed to be problematic and difficult. The socio-economic teaching and learning environment has pointed to constraints in the education reform process. Nevertheless, there are existing assessment practices that if enhanced, can have potential to foster formative assessment practices in those contexts. The present study used the sociocultural perspective to explore teachers’ assessment practices and factors influencing them in Tanzania. Specifically, the sociocultural perspective helped to trace social, economic and political histories imparted to teachers’ assessment practices. The ethnographic oriented methods like interviews, observations and document reviews was used in this exploration. Teachers used assessment practices, such as questioning and answering, tests, assignments and examinations, for evaluating, monitoring and diagnosing students’ understanding, achievement and performance and standards and quality of instruction practices. The obtained assessment information functioned as feedback for improving students’ understanding, performance, and the standard and quality of teaching instruction and materials. For example, teachers acknowledged, praised, approved, disapproved, denied, graded, or marked students’ responses to give students feedback and aid learning. Moreover, teachers clarified and corrected or repeated students’ responses with worded/added words to improve students’ mastery of the subject content. Teachers’ assessment practices were influenced by the high demands of passing marks in the high stakes examinations and the contexts of the social economic teaching environment. There is a need to ally education assessment reforms with existing socio-economic teaching environments and society and institutional demands of assessment to make assessment reforms meaningful and sustainable. This presentation ought to contribute on ongoing strategies for contextualizing assessment practices for formative uses.

Keywords: assessment, feedback, practices, formative assessment

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Authors: Dragan Kljajic, Nikola Djuric, Karolina Kasas-Lazetic, Danka Antic

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Wireless communications have been expanded very fast in recent decades. This technology relies on an extensive network of base stations and antennas, using radio frequency signals to transmit information. Devices that use wireless communication, while offering various services, basically act as sources of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF). Such devices are permanently present in the human vicinity and almost constantly radiate, causing EMF pollution of the environment. This fact has initiated development of modern systems for observation of the EMF pollution, as well as for risk assessment. This paper presents the Serbian electromagnetic field monitoring network – SEMONT, designed for automated, remote and continuous broadband monitoring of EMF in the environment. Measurement results of the SEMONT monitoring at one of the test locations, within the main campus of the University of Novi Sad, are presented and discussed, along with corresponding exposure assessment of the general population, regarding the Serbian legislation.

Keywords: EMF monitoring, exposure assessment, sensor nodes, wireless network

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Authors: Catherine Maware, Olufemi Adetunji

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The paper is aimed at developing a model to measure the impact of Lean manufacturing deployment on organizational performance. The model will help industry practitioners to assess the impact of implementing Lean constructs on organizational performance. It will also harmonize the measurement models of Lean performance with the house of Lean that seems to have become the industry standard. The sheer number of measurement models for impact assessment of Lean implementation makes it difficult for new adopters to select an appropriate assessment model or deployment methodology. A literature review is conducted to classify the Lean performance model. Pareto analysis is used to select the Lean constructs for the development of the model. The model is further formalized through the use of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in defining the underlying latent structure of a Lean system. An impact assessment measurement model developed can be used to measure Lean performance and can be adopted by different industries.

Keywords: impact measurement model, lean bundles, lean manufacturing, organizational performance

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Authors: R. Ajith, Kamal Bijlani

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Over the past few years, tremendous evolutions have happened in the educational discipline. Serious game, which is regarded as one of the most important inventions is being widely for learning purposes. Serious games can be used to negate the various drawbacks that the current evaluation and assessment methods have, like examination anxiety and the lack of proper feedback given to the learners. This paper proposes serious game as a tool for conducting evaluations and assessments. The examination anxiety faced by learners can be reduced, as they are provided with a game as an examination. The serious game also tracks learner’s actions, records them and provide feedback based on the predefined set of actions according to the course objectives. The appropriate feedback given to the learner will help in developmental activities in the learning process.

Keywords: serious games, evaluation, performance assessment, examination anxiety, performance feedback

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Authors: Karen Armstrong

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Recent concerns about the value of teaching cursive handwriting in the classroom are based on the belief that cursive handwriting or penmanship is an outdated and unnecessary skill in today’s online world. The discussion of this issue begins with a description of current initiatives to eliminate handwriting instruction in schools. This is followed by a brief history of cursive writing through the ages. Next considered is a description of its benefits as a preliminary process for younger children as compared with immediate instruction in keyboarding, particularly in the areas of vision, cognition, motor skills and automatic fluency. Also considered, is cursive’s companion, paper itself, and the impact of a paperless, “screen and keyboard” environment. The discussion concludes with a consideration of the unique contributions of cursive and keyboarding as written forms of communication, along with their respective surfaces, paper and screen. Finally, an assessment of the practical utility of each skill is followed by an informal assessment of what is lost and what remains as we move from a predominantly paper and pen world of handwriting to texting and keyboarding in an environment of screens.

Keywords: asemic writing, cursive, handwriting, keyboarding, paper

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Authors: K. Ivandic, F. Dodigovic, D. Stuhec, S. Strelec

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A characteristic value of certain geotechnical parameter results from an engineering assessment. Its selection has to be based on technical principles and standards of engineering practice. It has been shown that the results of engineering assessment of different authors for the same problem and input data are significantly dispersed. A survey was conducted in which participants had to estimate the force that causes a 10 cm displacement at the top of a axially in-situ compressed pile. Fifty experts from all over the world took part in it. The lowest estimated force value was 42% and the highest was 133% of measured force resulting from a mentioned static pile load test. These extreme values result in significantly different technical solutions to the same engineering task. In case of selecting a characteristic value of a geotechnical parameter the importance of the influence of an engineering assessment can be reduced by using statistical methods. An informative annex of Eurocode 1 prescribes the method of selecting the characteristic values of material properties. This is followed by Eurocode 7 with certain specificities linked to selecting characteristic values of geotechnical parameters. The paper shows the procedure of selecting characteristic values of a geotechnical parameter by using a statistical method with different initial conditions. The aim of the paper is to quantify an engineering assessment in the example of determining a characteristic value of a specific geotechnical parameter. It is assumed that this assessment is a random variable and that its statistical features will be determined. For this purpose, a survey research was conducted among relevant experts from the field of geotechnical engineering. Conclusively, the results of the survey and the application of statistical method were compared.

Keywords: characteristic values, engineering judgement, Eurocode 7, statistical methods

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Authors: D. Bąk-Grabowska, K. Grzesik, A. Iwanicka, A. Jagoda

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The process of human resources management in the structures of corporate groups demonstrates certain specificity, resulting from the division of decision-making and executive competencies, which occurs within these structures between a parent company and its subsidiaries. The subprocess of employee assessment is considered crucial, since it provides information for the implementation of personnel function. The empirical studies conducted in corporate groups, within which at least one company is located in Poland, confirmed the critical significance of employee assessment systems in the process of human resources management in corporate groups. Parent companies, most often, retain their decision-making authority within the framework of the discussed process and introduce uniform employee assessment and personnel controlling systems to subsidiary companies. However, the instruments for employee assessment applied in corporate groups do not present such specificity.

Keywords: corporate groups, employee periodical assessment system, holding, human resources management

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Authors: Catherine Omole

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Examination malpractice includes acts that temper with collecting accurate results during the conduct of an examination, thereby giving undue advantage to a student over his colleagues. Even though examination malpractice has been a lingering problem, examinations may not be easy to do away with completely as it is an important feedback tool in the learning process with several other functions e.g for the purpose of selection, placement, certification and promotion. Examination malpractice has created a lot of problems such as a relying on a weak work force based on false assessment results. The question is why is this problem still persisting, despite measures that have been taken to curb this ugly trend over the years? This opinion paper has identified modifications that could help relieve the student of the examination stress and thus increase the student’s effort towards effective learning and discourage examination malpractice in the long run.

Keywords: assessment, examination malpractice, learning, science classroom

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Authors: Salima Smiti, Ines Gasmi, Makram Soui

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Credit risk is the most important issue for financial institutions. Its assessment becomes an important task used to predict defaulter customers and classify customers as good or bad payers. To this objective, numerous techniques have been applied for credit risk assessment. However, to our knowledge, several evaluation techniques are black-box models such as neural networks, SVM, etc. They generate applicants’ classes without any explanation. In this paper, we propose to assess credit risk using rules classification method. Our output is a set of rules which describe and explain the decision. To this end, we will compare seven classification algorithms (JRip, Decision Table, OneR, ZeroR, Fuzzy Rule, PART and Genetic programming (GP)) where the goal is to find the best rules satisfying many criteria: accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the GP algorithm for German and Australian datasets compared to other rule-based techniques to predict the credit risk.

Keywords: credit risk assessment, classification algorithms, data mining, rule extraction

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Authors: Hossam Shalabi, George Hadjisophocleous

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The Canadian Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) use some portions of NUREG/CR-6850 in carrying out Fire Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). An assessment for the applicability of NUREG/CR-6850 to CANDU reactors was performed and a CANDU Fire PRA was introduced. There are 19 operating CANDU reactors in Canada at five sites (Bruce A, Bruce B, Darlington, Pickering and Point Lepreau). A fire load density survey was done for all Fire Safe Shutdown Analysis (FSSA) fire zones in all CANDU sites in Canada. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard 557 proposes that a fire load survey must be conducted by either the weighing method or the inventory method or a combination of both. The combination method results in the most accurate values for fire loads. An updated CANDU Fire PRA model is demonstrated in this paper that includes the fuel survey in all Canadian CANDU stations. A qualitative screening step for the CANDU fire PRA is illustrated in this paper to include any fire events that can damage any part of the emergency power supply in addition to FSSA cables.

Keywords: fire safety, CANDU, nuclear, fuel densities, FDS, qualitative analysis, fire probabilistic risk assessment

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Authors: Hilalah Alturkistani, Alaa AlFaadhel, Nora AlJahani, Fatiha Djebbar

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Cloud computing is one of the most widely used technology which provides opportunities and services to government entities, large companies, and standard users. However, cybersecurity risk management studies of cloud computing and resiliency approaches are lacking. This paper proposes resilient cloud cybersecurity risk assessment and management tailored specifically, to Dropbox with two approaches:1) technical-based solution motivated by a cybersecurity risk assessment of cloud services, and 2)a target personnel-based solution guided by cybersecurity-related survey among employees to identify their knowledge that qualifies them withstand to any cyberattack. The proposed work attempts to identify cloud vulnerabilities, assess threats and detect high risk components, to finally propose appropriate safeguards such as failure predicting and removing, redundancy or load balancing techniques for quick recovery and return to pre-attack state if failure happens.

Keywords: cybersecurity risk management plan, resilient cloud computing, cyberattacks, cybersecurity risk assessment

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Authors: Sahar Navabakhsh, Rokia Raslan, Yair Schwartz

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Decision-making on regeneration of housing estates, whether to refurbish or re-build, has been mostly triggered by economic factors. To enable sustainable growth, it is vital that environmental and social impacts of different scenarios are also taken into account. The methodology used to include all the three sustainable development pillars is called Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), which comprises of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the assessment of environmental impacts of buildings. Current practice of LCA is regularly conducted post design stage and by sustainability experts. Not only is undertaking an LCA at this stage less effective, but issues such as the limited scope for the definition and assessment of environmental impacts, the implication of changes in the system boundary and the alteration of each of the variable metrics, employment of different Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods and use of various inventory data for Life Cycle Inventory Analysis can result in considerably contrasting results. Given the niche nature and scarce specialist domain of LCA of buildings, the majority of the stakeholders do not contribute to the generation or interpretation of the impact assessment, and the results can be generated and interpreted subjectively due to the mentioned uncertainties. For an effective and democratic assessment of environmental impacts, different stakeholders, and in particular the community and design team should collaborate in the process of data collection, assessment and analysis. This paper examines and evaluates a participatory approach to LCSA through the analysis of a case study of a housing estate in South West London. The study has been conducted throughout tier-based collaborative methods to collect and share data through surveys and co-design workshops with the community members and the design team as the main stakeholders. The assessment of lifecycle impacts is conducted throughout the process and has influenced the decision-making on the design of the Community Plan. The evaluation concludes better assessment transparency and outcome, alongside other socio-economic benefits of identifying and engaging the most contributive stakeholders in the process of conducting LCSA.

Keywords: life cycle assessment, participatory LCA, life cycle sustainability assessment, participatory processes, decision-making, housing estate regeneration

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Authors: Sergo Tsiramua, Sulkhan Sulkhanishvili, Elisabed Asabashvili, Lazare Kvirtia

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The paper presents logical-probabilistic methods, models and algorithms for reliability assessment of complex systems, based on which a web application for structural analysis and reliability assessment of systems was created. The reliability assessment process included the following stages, which were reflected in the application: 1) Construction of a graphical scheme of the structural reliability of the system; 2) Transformation of the graphic scheme into a logical representation and modeling of the shortest ways of successful functioning of the system; 3) Description of system operability condition with logical function in the form of disjunctive normal form (DNF); 4) Transformation of DNF into orthogonal disjunction normal form (ODNF) using the orthogonalization algorithm; 5) Replacing logical elements with probabilistic elements in ODNF, obtaining a reliability estimation polynomial and quantifying reliability; 6) Calculation of weights of elements. Using the logical-probabilistic methods, models and algorithms discussed in the paper, a special software was created, by means of which a quantitative assessment of the reliability of systems of a complex structure is produced. As a result, structural analysis of systems, research and designing of optimal structure systems are carried out.

Keywords: Complex systems, logical-probabilistic methods, orthogonalization algorithm, reliability, weight of element

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Authors: Kitty Kioskli, Nineta Polemi

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Evaluating the levels of cyber-security risks within an enterprise is most important in protecting its information system, services and all its digital assets against security incidents (e.g. accidents, malicious acts, massive cyber-attacks). The existing risk assessment methodologies (e.g. eBIOS, OCTAVE, CRAMM, NIST-800) adopt a technical approach considering as attack factors only the capability, intention and target of the attacker, and not paying attention to the attacker’s psychological profile and personality traits. In this paper, a socio-technical approach is proposed in cyber risk assessment, in order to achieve more realistic risk estimates by considering the personality traits of the attackers. In particular, based upon principles from investigative psychology and behavioural science, a multi-dimensional, extended, quantifiable model for an attacker’s profile is developed, which becomes an additional factor in the cyber risk level calculation.

Keywords: attacker, behavioural models, cyber risk assessment, cybersecurity, human factors, investigative psychology, ISO27001, ISO27005

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Authors: Mehtap Dursun, Zeynep Şener

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Supplier selection is considered as one of the most critical issues encountered by operations and purchasing managers to sharpen the company’s competitive advantage. In this paper, a novel fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach integrating quality function deployment (QFD) and decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method is proposed for supplier selection. The proposed methodology enables to consider the impacts of inner dependence among supplier assessment criteria. A house of quality (HOQ) which translates purchased product features into supplier assessment criteria is built using the weights obtained by DEMATEL approach to determine the desired levels of supplier assessment criteria. Supplier alternatives are ranked by a distance-based method.

Keywords: DEMATEL, group decision making, QFD, supplier selection

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Authors: Golshid Gilani, Albert De La Fuente, Ana Blanco

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Sustainability assessment of new and existing buildings has generated a growing interest due to the evident environmental, social and economic impacts during their construction and service life. Façades, as one of the most important exterior elements of a building, may contribute to the building sustainability by reducing the amount of energy consumption and providing thermal comfort for the inhabitants, thus minimizing the environmental impact on both the building and on the environment. Various methods have been used for the sustainability assessment of buildings due to the importance of this issue. However, most of the existing methods mainly concentrate on environmental and economic aspects, disregarding the third pillar of sustainability, which is the social aspect. Besides, there is a little focus on comprehensive sustainability assessment of facades, as an important element of a building. This confirms the need of developing methods for assessing the sustainable performance of building façades as an important step in achieving building sustainability. In this respect, this paper aims at presenting a model for assessing the global sustainability of façade systems. for that purpose, the Integrated Value Model for Sustainable Assessment (MIVES), a Multi-Criteria Decision Making model that integrates the main sustainability requirements (economic, environmental and social) and includes the concept of value functions, used as an assessment tool.

Keywords: façade, MCDM, MIVES, sustainability

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Authors: Eun-Chan Kim, Jeong-Hwan Oh, Seung-Guk Lee

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Billions of tones of ballast water including various aquatic organisms are being carried around the world by ships. When the ballast water is discharged into new environments, some aquatic organisms discharged with ballast water may become invasive and severely disrupt the native ecology. Thus, International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted the Ballast Water Management Convention in 2004. Regulation A-4 of the convention states that a government in waters under their jurisdiction may grant exemptions to any requirements to ballast water management, but only when they are granted to a ship or ships on a voyage or voyages between specified ports or locations, or to a ship which operates exclusively between specified ports or locations. In order to grant exemptions, risk assessment should be conducted based on the guidelines for risk assessment developed by the IMO. For the risk assessment, it is essential to collect the relevant information and establish a database system. This paper studies the database system for ballast water risk assessment. This database consists of the shipping database, ballast water database, port environment database and species database. The shipping database has been established based on the data collected from the port management information system of Korea Government. For the ballast water database, ballast water discharge has only been estimated by the loading/unloading of the cargoes as the convention has not come into effect yet. The port environment database and species database are being established based on the reference documents, and existing and newly collected monitoring data. This database system has been approved to be a useful system, capable of appropriately analyzing the risk assessment in the all ports of Korea.

Keywords: ballast water, IMO, risk assessment, shipping, environment, species

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Authors: Malik Ghulam Behlol, Alison Fox, Faiza Masood, Sabiha Arshad

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This paper explores the barriers to the application of learning-supportive assessment at teaching practicum while investigating the role of university teachers (UT), cooperative teachers (CT), prospective teachers ( PT) and heads of the practicum schools (HPS) in the selected universities of Pakistan and the UK. It is a qualitative case study and data were collected through the lesson observation of UT in the pre-service teacher education setting and PT in practicum schools. Interviews with UT, HPS, and Focus Group Discussions with PT were conducted too. The study has concluded that as compared to the UK counterpart, PT in Pakistan faces significant barriers in applying learning-supportive assessment in the school practicum settings because of large class sizes, lack of institutionalised collaboration between universities and schools, poor modelling of the lesson, ineffective feedback practices, lower order thinking assignments, and limited opportunities to use technology in school settings.

Keywords: assessment, pre-service teacher education, theory-practice gap, teacher education

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Authors: Taleb Hosni Abderrahmane, Berga Abdelmadjid

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The development of numerical analysis and its application to geomechanics problems have provided geotechnical engineers with extremely powerful tools. One of the most important problems in geotechnical engineering is the slope stability assessment. It is a very difficult task due to several aspects such the nature of the problem, experimental consideration, monitoring, controlling, and assessment. The main objective of this paper is to perform a comparative numerical study between the following methods: The Limit Equilibrium (LEM), Finite Element (FEM), Limit Analysis (LAM) and Distinct Element (DEM). The comparison is conducted in terms of the safety factors and the critical slip surfaces. Through the results, we see the feasibility to analyse slope stability by many methods.

Keywords: comparison, factor of safety, geomechanics, numerical methods, slope analysis, slip surfaces

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Authors: Minseock Seo

Abstract:

Dental education consists of both theoretical and practical learning for students. When dental students encounter practical courses as a new educational experience, they must also learn to evaluate themselves. The aim of this study was to investigate the self-assessment scores of third-year dental students and compare with the scores graded by the faculty in preclinical endodontic practice in a dental school in Korea. Faculty- and student-assigned scores were calculated from preclinical endodontic practice performed on phantom patients. The students were formally instructed on grading procedures for endodontic treatment. After each step, each item was assessed by the student. The students’ self-assessment score was then compared to the score by the faculty. The students were divided into 4 groups by analyzing the scores of self-assessment and faculty-assessment and statistically analyzed by summing the theoretical and practical examination scores. In the theoretical exam score, the group who over-estimated their performance (H group) was lower than the group with lower evaluation (L group). When comparing the first and last score determined by the faculty, H groups didn’t show any improvement, while the other group did. In H group, the less improvement of the self-assessment, the higher the theoretical exam score. In L group, the higher improvement of the self-assessment, the better the theoretical exam score. The results point to the need to develop students’ self-insight with more exercises and practical training.

Keywords: dental students, endodontic, preclinical practice, self-assessment

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