Search results for: project management tools

Authors: Fotis Vouzas

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This paper is an attempt to investigate the Business Ethics link to Quality Management. Business Ethics as a management practice is well rooted in many organizations, but its contribution to quality management implementation programs and practices is not well documented. The ISO 9000 and the Business Excellence frameworks and Awards seem to provide a basis for the implementation of a TQM philosophy contributing to efficiency, enhanced performance and sustainability. The author examines a series of Corporate Ethics initiatives and investigates the relationship to Total Quality Management in an MNC operating in Greece. The data gathering was carried out through extensive and in-depth interviews with several multiple informants, i.e., the plant manager, the production manager, and the personnel manager, using a semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions.

Keywords: total quality management, business ethics, Greece, ISO 9000

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Authors: Zohreh Soltani, Seyedmohammadhossein Hosseinian

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Reduction of energy consumption in built infrastructure, through the installation of energy-efficient technologies, is a major approach to achieving sustainability. In practice, the viability of energy efficiency projects strongly depends on the cost reimbursement and profitability. These projects are subject to failure if the actual cost savings do not reimburse the project cost in a timely manner. In such cases, refinancing could be a solution to benefit from the long-term returns of the project if implemented wisely. However, very little is still known about the effect of refinancing options on financial performance of energy efficiency projects. To fill this gap, the present study investigates the financial behavior of energy efficiency projects with focus on refinancing options, such as Leveraged Loans. A System Dynamics (SD) model is introduced, and the model application is presented using an actual case-study data. The case study results indicate that while high-interest start-ups make using Leveraged Loan inevitable, refinancing can rescue the project and bring about profitability. This paper also presents some managerial implications of refinancing energy efficiency projects based on the case-study analysis. Results of this study help implementing financially viable energy efficiency projects, so the community could benefit from their environmental advantages widely.

Keywords: energy efficiency projects, leveraged loan, refinancing, sustainability

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Authors: Wei Bin Shen

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Lou Gang world irrigation project heritage in Taihu Lake is a systematic irrigation project integrating water conservancy, ecology and culture. Through the methods of historical documents and field investigation, this paper deeply analyzes the formation history, connotation and value of Lou Gang polder system: Lou Gang heritage, describes in detail the relationship between Lou Gang polder system in Taihu Lake and the development and evolution of Huzhou City, and initially explores the protection and Utilization Strategies of Lou Gang water conservancy cultural heritage resources in Taihu Lake from the current situation.

Keywords: Lou Gang, protection strategy, urban evolution, waterconservancyculturalheritage

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Authors: Anusha Vaddiraj Pallapu

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Measuring urban sustainable development is at the forefront in contributing to overall sustainability, and it refers to attaining social equity, environmental protection and minimizing the impacts of urbanization. Assessing performance of urban issues ranging from larger consumption of natural resources by humans in terms of lifestyle to creating a polluted nearby environment, social and even economic dimensions of sustainability major issues observed such as water quality, transportation, management of solid waste and traffic pollution. However, relying on the framework of the project to do the goals of sustainable development or minimization of urban impacts through management practices is not enough to deal with the present urban issues. The aim of the sustainability is to know how severely the resources are depleted because of human consumption and how issues are characterized. The paper aims to assign benchmarks for the selected sustainability indicators for research, and analysis is done through multivariate analysis in Indian context a case of Nagpur city to identify the play role of each urban issues in the overall sustainability. The main objectives of this paper are to examine the indicators over by time basis on various scenarios and how benchmarking is used, what and which categories of values should be considered as the performance of indicators function.

Keywords: environmental sustainability indicators, principal component analysis, urban sustainability, urban clusters, benchmarking

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Authors: Youn-Hwan Kim, Jae-Won Moon, Hae-Joong Kim

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This paper introduces the results of the study on the development of accelerated life test methods for the motor used in machine tools. In recent years, as well as efficiency for motors, there is a growing need for research on life expectancy of motors. It is considered impossible to calculate the acceleration coefficient by increasing the rotational load or temperature load as the acceleration stress in the motor system because the temperature of the copper exceeds the wire thermal class rating. This paper describes the equipment development procedure for the highly accelerated life test (HALT) of the 12kW three-phase squirrel-cage induction motors (SCIMs). After the test, the lifetime analysis was carried out, and it is compared with the life expectancy by finite element method (FEM) and bearing theory.

Keywords: acceleration coefficient, bearing, HALT, life expectancy, motor

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Authors: Julinda Keçi

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In many countries, governments have been promoting the involvement of private sector entities to enter into long-term agreements for the development and delivery of large infrastructure projects, with a focus on overcoming the limitations upon public fund of the traditional approach. The involvement of private sector through public-private partnerships (PPP) brings in new capital investments, value for money and additional risks to handle. Worldwide research studies have shown that an objective, systematic, reliable and user-oriented risk assessment process and an optimal allocation mechanism among different stakeholders is crucial to the successful completion. In this framework this paper, which is the first stage of a research study, aims to identify the main risks for the delivery of PPP projects. A review of cross-countries research projects and case studies was performed to map the key risks affecting PPP infrastructure delivery. The matrix of mapping offers a summary of the frequency of factors, clustered in eleven categories: Construction, Design, Economic, Legal, Market, Natural, Operation, Political, Project finance, Project selection and Relationship. Results will highlight the most critical risk factors, and will hopefully assist the project managers in directing the managerial attention in the further stages of risk allocation.

Keywords: construction, infrastructure, public private partnerships, risks

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Authors: Guoqian Ren, Haijiang Li, Jisong Zhang

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Over the past 40 years, urban development has undergone large-scale, high-speed expansion, beyond what was previously considered normal and in a manner not proportionally related to population growth or physical considerations. With more scientific and refined decision-making in the urban construction process, new urbanization approaches, aligned with public-private partnerships (PPPs) which evolved in the early 1990s, have become acceptable and, in some situations, even better solutions to outstanding urban municipal construction projects, especially in developing countries. However, as the main driving force to deal with urban public services, PPPs are still problematic regarding value for money (VFM) process in most large-scale construction projects. This paper therefore reviews recent PPP articles in popular project management journals and relevant toolkits, published in the last 10 years, to identify the indicators that influence VFM within PPPs across regions. With increasing concerns about profitability and environmental and social impacts, the current PPP structure requires a more integrated platform to manage multi-performance project life cycles. Building information modelling (BIM), a popular approach to the procurement process in AEC sectors, provides the potential to ensure VFM while also working in tandem with the semantic approach to holistically measure life cycle costs (LCC) and achieve better sustainability. This paper suggests that BIM applied to the entire PPP life cycle could support holistic decision-making regarding VFM processes and thus meet service targets.

Keywords: public-private partnership, value for money, building information modelling, semantic approach

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Authors: Pavol Tanuska, Pavel Vazan, Michal Kebisek, Dominika Jurovata

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The paper gives the results of the project that was oriented on the usage of knowledge discoveries from production systems for needs of the hierarchical process control. One of the main project goals was the proposal of knowledge discovery model for process control. Specifics data mining methods and techniques was used for defined problems of the process control. The gained knowledge was used on the real production system, thus, the proposed solution has been verified. The paper documents how it is possible to apply new discovery knowledge to be used in the real hierarchical process control. There are specified the opportunities for application of the proposed knowledge discovery model for hierarchical process control.

Keywords: hierarchical process control, knowledge discovery from databases, neural network, process control

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Authors: Athar Imtiaz, Abduljalil S. Al-Mudhary, Taha Mirhashemi, Roslina Ibrahim

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Information Technology (IT) is being used by almost all organizations throughout the world. However, its success at supporting and improving business is debatable. There is always the risk of IT project failure and studies have proven that a large number of IT projects indeed do fail. There are many components that further the success of IT projects; these have been studied in previous studies. Studies have found the most necessary components for success in software development projects, executive information systems etc. In this study, previous literature that has looked into these success promoting factors have been critically reviewed and analyzed. Fifteen critical Success Factors (CSF) of IT projects were enlisted and examined. These factors can be applied to all IT projects and is not specific to a particular type of IT/IS project. A hypothesis was also generated after the evaluation of the factors.

Keywords: critical success factors, CSF, IT projects, IS projects, software development projects

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Authors: Abrar Abuzaid, Maha Alaaeddine, Haya Alesayi

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This project is centered around understanding the usage and impact of Alexa, Amazon's popular virtual assistant, in everyday life. Alexa, known for its integration into devices like Amazon Echo, offers functionalities such as voice interaction, media control, providing real-time information, and managing smart home devices. Our primary focus is to conduct a straightforward survey aimed at uncovering how people use Alexa in their daily routines. We plan to reach out to a wide range of individuals to get a diverse perspective on how Alexa is being utilized for various tasks, the frequency and context of its use, and the overall user experience. The survey will explore the most common uses of Alexa, its impact on daily life, features that users find most beneficial, and improvements they are looking for. This project is not just about collecting data but also about understanding the real-world applications of a technology like Alexa and how it fits into different lifestyles. By examining the responses, we aim to gain a practical understanding of Alexa's role in homes and possibly in workplaces. This project will provide insights into user satisfaction and areas where Alexa could be enhanced to meet the evolving needs of its users. It’s a step towards connecting technology with everyday life, making it more accessible and user-friendly

Keywords: Amazon Alexa, artificial intelligence, smart speaker, natural language processing

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Authors: Nadia Sid, Alan Taylor, Marion Bourebrab

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The construction sector is on the critical path to decarbonise the European economy by 2050. In order to achieve this objective it must enable reducing its CO2 emission by 90% and its energy consumption by as much as 50%. For this reason, a new class of low environmental impact construction materials named “eco-material” are becoming increasingly important in the struggle against climate change. A European funded collaborative project ISOBIO coordinated by TWI is aimed at taking a radical approach to the use of bio-based aggregates to create novel construction materials that are usable in high volume in using traditional methods, as well as developing markets such as exterior insulation of existing house stocks. The approach taken for this project is to use finely chopped material protected from bio-degradation through the use of functionalized silica nanoparticles. TWI is exploring the development of novel inorganic-organic hybrid nano-materials, to be applied as a surface treatment onto bio-based aggregates. These nanoparticles are synthesized by sol-gel processing and then functionalised with silanes to impart multifunctionality e.g. hydrophobicity, fire resistance and chemical bonding between the silica nanoparticles and the bio-based aggregates. This talk will illustrate the approach taken by TWI to design the functionalized silica nanoparticles by using a material-by-design approach. The formulation and synthesize process will be presented together with the challenges addressed by those hybrid nano-materials. The results obtained with regards to the water repellence and fire resistance will be displayed together with preliminary public results of the ISOBIO project. (This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 641927).

Keywords: bio-sourced material, composite material, durable insulation panel, water repellent material

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Authors: Salwana Hassan, Rashidah Abdul Rahman

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Poverty in rural Malaysia remains unresolved and contribute 7.8% to the whole poverty figure in Malaysia. Among the rural folks, 50% is women. Thus, women, as the significant human capital to fight the long lost battle of poverty , is indispensable. This will also serve as an equal opportunity for women to play active and positive roles to develop the society that has been the tasks for men all this while. More importantly rural women folks have the potential to offer better quality of life for their family by providing extra income and monetary support whenever their husbands are not able to work. The reality in this, however, cannot be solved easily as there are many factors that stand in the way and prevent the resolutions to be observed.In this regard, this paper describes a model that has been used to resolve such issues in rural Malaysia. The model utilizes a synergetic effort between an academic institution, an NGO that govern the rural women folks and a private trading company that sell the finished product. The project was conducted in rural area of Selangor and has been in operations since the end of 2013. It shows positive outcome and could be used in other rural areas of Malaysia. The project captures the influence of the NGO programs upon rural women entrepreneurship and how a private trading company can facilitate to help develop a community. As a result the project reveals that self-income generating activities by entrepreneurship are the important contributing factor to empowering rural women folks in Malaysia.

Keywords: poverty, empowerment, rural, entrepreneurship, community

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Authors: Nurul Nadhirah Anuar, Muhammad Fauzi Abdul Ghani

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Scheduled waste management is very important in environmental and health aspects. Despite it is very important, the research study on schedule waste management is very little in the highway industry even though there is a rapid growth of highway operation in the Asian region. It should be noted that there are many unnoticeable wastes in highway industry that should be managed properly. This paper aims to define the scheduled waste, to provide a conceptual framework of the scheduled waste management in highway industry, to highlight the effect of improper management of scheduled waste and to encourage future researchers to identify and share the present practice of scheduled management in their country. The understanding on effective management of scheduled waste will help the operators of highway industry, the academicians, future researchers, and encourage a friendly environment around the world. The study on scheduled waste management in highway industry is very crucial as compared to factories in which the factories are located on specified areas whereas, highway transverse and run along kilometers crossing the various type of environment, residential and schools. Using Environmental Quality (Scheduled Waste) Regulations, 2005 as a guide, this conceptual paper highlight several scheduled wastes produced by highway industry in Malaysia and provide a conceptual framework of scheduled waste management that focused on the highway industry. Understanding on schedule waste management is vital in order to preserve the environment. Besides that, the waste substances are hazardous to human being. Many diseases have been associated with the improper management of scheduled waste such as cancer, throat irritation and respiration problem.

Keywords: Asia region, environment, highway industry, scheduled waste

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Authors: Pouria Ghidi

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Creating convergence in trade is very important, but in practice, this seems out of reach due to the conflict of interests and views of countries. The most important mission of UNCITRAL is to standardize and modernize international trade law through legislative and non-legislative tools on various issues of international trade law between governments. Unfortunately, the performance of governments has shown that, except in some cases, unity is not welcomed. Therefore, although unification is envisaged as a goal, it is more practical to create convergence between countries. In a variety of ways, UNCITRAL seeks to create a kind of common ground between influential actors in the international trade law system that approaches a degree of convergence of views. Accordingly, this realization seeks to find these mechanisms and their impact on creating convergence among actors in the field of international trade. In other words, this study seeks to address the question of what tools the UN Commission on International Trade Law uses to develop the convergence of rules and regulations in this area, which groups it targets, and at what levels they work.

Keywords: UNCITRAL, harmonization, unification in interpretation, international trade law, model laws

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Authors: Paulo Mendonca, Nzar Faiq Naqeshbandi

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The objective of this study is to propose an interactive design environment that outlines the underlying computational framework to reach self-supporting overhangs. The research demonstrates the digital printability of overhangs taking into consideration factors related to the geometry design, the material used, the applied support, and the printing set-up of slicing and the extruder inclination. Parametric design tools can contribute to the design phase, form-finding, and stability optimization of self-supporting structures while printing in order to hold the components in place until they are sufficiently advanced to support themselves. The challenge is to ensure the stability of the printed parts in the critical inclinations during the whole fabrication process. Facilitating the identification of parameterization will allow to predict and optimize the process. Later, in the light of the previous findings, some guidelines of simulations and physical tests are given to be conducted for estimating the structural and functional performance.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, overhangs, self-support overhangs, printability, parametric tools

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Authors: Tarek Fatouh, Chehab Elbelehy, Alaa Abdelsalam, Eman Elakkad, Alaa Abdelshafie

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This paper aims to explore the possibility of time compression in Engineer to Order production networks. A case study research method is used in a Norwegian shipbuilding project by implementing a value stream mapping lean tool with total cycle time as a unit of analysis. The analysis resulted in demonstrating the time deviations for the planned tasks in one of the processes in the shipbuilding project. So, authors developed a future state map by removing time wastes from value stream process.

Keywords: engineer to order, total cycle time, value stream mapping, shipbuilding

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Authors: Muhammad A. Ishaq, S. U. R. Aliyu

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This paper on an exposition of Islamic fiscal policy attempts to discuss the basic principles of Islamic fiscal policy in an Islamic economy. The paper presents a number of definitions of the subject matter, its nature and its tools of application. Government spending, taxation and public borrowings were identified as the tools of the policy. The paper identifies zakat both as a veritable source of revenue and a major instrument of economic stabilization. Furthermore, the paper presents an algebraic 2-sector and 3-sector models from the basic Keynesian model. The paper posits that in view of uniqueness of its instruments, absence of interest rate in the economy and the policy’s derive towards socioeconomic justice and redistribution, Islamic fiscal policy is capable of stabilizing Islamic economy and ushering it into the path of long term economic growth and prosperity.

Keywords: automatic built-in-stabilizers, government spending, Islamic fiscal policy, taxation, zakat

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Authors: Tanapoom Phuncharoen, Tawiwat Sriwongsa, Kanita Boonruang, Apichit Svang-Ariyaskul

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The production of dimethyl acetal, isovaleradehyde, and pyridine were simulated using Aspen Plus simulation. Upgrading cleaning water from wine industrial production is the main objective of the project. The winery waste composes of acetaldehyde, methanol, ethyl acetate, 1-propanol, water, isoamyl alcohol, and isobutanol. The project is separated into three parts; separation, reaction, and purification. Various processes were considered to maximize the profit along with obtaining high purity and recovery of each component with optimum heat duty. The results show a significant value of the product with purity more than 75% and recovery over 98%.

Keywords: dimethyl acetal, pyridine, wine, aspen plus, isovaleradehyde, polymeric precursors

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Authors: A. Aljohani, D. Moore, D. D. Ahiaga-Dagbui

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Cost overruns are endemic in the delivery of construction projects. The problem is global. It occurs irrespective of type and size of the project, its location, procurement method or client. The size of overruns can be as high as 200% in some cases. Projects thus unfortunately often make the news headlines, not for their immense socio-economic contribution to society, but for being poorly procured. In Saudi Arabia, two-thirds of construction projects are publicly procured by the Saudi government, which has been invested Billions of dollars in infrastructure projects each year as part of an ambitious strategic development agenda to shift from mainly oil dependency to multi-source dependency. However, reports show that about 3,000 public projects face diverse issues related to time and cost overrun. As part of an on-going study to develop a framework for effective public procurement for the Saudi Arabian construction industry, this paper reports the initial findings of the causes of cost overruns in the context of the Gulf State. It also evaluates the interface between some of the front-end loading issues in public procurement in Saudi and their effects on project performance. A systematic review of the existing literature on construction cost overruns, with focus on the Saudi Arabian construction industry has been used. One of the initial findings is that a fixed-price contract is usually used by the client in an attempt to transfer all financial risks to the contractors. This has the unintended consequence of creating a turbulent environment for the delivery of the project which leads to project abandonment by contractors, poor quality of work and substantial rework. Further work is being undertaken to empirically verify the initial findings reported in this paper and their generalizability for the construction industry as a whole.

Keywords: cost overrun, public procurement, Saudi Arabia, construction projects

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Authors: Hidayah bt Rahmalan, Marhazli Kipli, Muhammad Suffian Sikandar Ghani, Maisarah Abu, Muhammad Faisal Ashaari, Norlizam Md Sukiban

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This study presents an example of activity management system for e-Masjid implementing elements of usability and sociability. It is expected to resolve the shortcomings of the most e-Masjid that provide lot of activities to their community. However, the data on handling a lot of activities or events in which involve a lot of people will be difficult to manipulate. Thus, this paper presents the usability and sociability element on an activity management system that not only eases the job for the user but being practical for future when the community join any events. For the time being, this activity management system was only applied for Sayyidina Abu Bakar Mosque in Utem, Malacca.

Keywords: e-masjid, usability, sociability, activity management system

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Authors: Shahin Shabani, Pouya Pourmadadi

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Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) have been used for the construction of various tunnels for mining projects for the purpose of access, conveyance of ore and waste, drainage, exploration, water supply and water diversion. Several mining projects have seen the successful and economic beneficial use of TBMs, and there is an increasing awareness of the benefits of TBMs for mining projects. Key technical considerations for the use of TBMs for the construction of tunnels for mining projects include geological issues (rock type, rock alteration, rock strength, rock abrasivity, durability, ground water inflows), depth of cover and the potential for overstressing/rockbursts, site access and terrain, portal locations, TBM constraints, minimum tunnel size, tunnel support requirements, contractor and labor experience, and project schedule demands. This study focuses on tunnelling mining, with the goal to develop methods and tools to be used to gain understanding of these processes, and to analyze metro of Tehran. The Metro Line 7 of Tehran is one of the Longest (26 Km) and deepest (27m) of projects that’s under implementation. Because of major differences like passing under all geotechnical layers of the town and encountering part of it with underground water table and also using mechanized excavation system, is one of special metro projects.

Keywords: TBM, tunnel boring machines economic, metro, line 7

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Authors: Nino G. Vepkhvadze, Tea Enukidze

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Every year the number of countries around the world face the risk of the spread of infectious diseases that bring significant ecological and social-economic damage. Hence, the importance of food product safety is emphasized that is the issue of interest for many countries. To solve them, it’s necessary to conduct preventive measures against the diseases, have accurate diagnostic results, leadership, and management. The Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) disease is caused by a morbillivirus closely related to the rinderpest virus. PPR is a transboundary disease as it emerges and evolves, considered as one of the top most damaging animal diseases. The disease imposed a serious threat to sheep-breeding when the farms of sheep, goats are significantly growing within the country. In January 2016, PPR was detected in Georgia. Up to present the origin of the virus, the age relationship of affected ruminants and the distribution of PPRV in Georgia remains unclear. Due to the nature of PPR, and breeding practices in the country, reemerging of the disease in Georgia is highly likely. The purpose of the studies is to provide laboratories with efficient tools allowing the early detection of PPR emergence and re-emergences. This study is being accomplished under the Biological Threat Reduction Program project with the support of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The purpose of the studies is to investigate the samples and identify areas at high risk of the disease. Georgia has a high density of small ruminant herds bred as free-ranging, close to international borders. Kakheti region, Eastern Georgia, will be considered as area of high priority for PPR surveillance. For this reason, in 2019, in Kakheti region investigated n=484 sheep and goat serum and blood samples from the same animals, utilized serology and molecular biology methods. All samples were negative by RT-PCR, and n=6 sheep samples were seropositive by ELISA-Ab. Future efforts will be concentrated in areas where the risk of PPR might be high such as international bordering regions of Georgia. For diagnostics, it is important to integrate the PPRV knowledge with epidemiological data. Based on these diagnostics, the relevant agencies will be able to control the disease surveillance.

Keywords: animal disease, especially dangerous pathogen, laboratory diagnostics, virus

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Authors: Rebecca Angeles

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This case study features the Kuehne + Nagel PharmaChain solution for ‘cold chain’ pharmaceutical and biologic product shipments with IOT-enabled features for shipment temperature and location tracking. Using the case study method and content analysis, this research project investigates the application of the structurational model of technology theory introduced by Orlikowski in order to interpret the firm’s entry and participation in the IOT-impelled marketplace.

Keywords: Internet of Things (IOT), radio frequency identification (RFID), structurational model of technology (Orlikowski), supply chain management

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Authors: Sujit K. Basak

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This paper presents a comparison of reference management software between RefWorks and Zotero. The results were drawn by comparing two software and the novelty of this paper is the comparative analysis of software and it has shown that ReftWorks can import more information from the Google Scholar for the researchers. This finding could help to know researchers to use the reference management software.

Keywords: analysis, comparative analysis, reference management software, researchers

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Authors: Jan-Peter Mund, Christian Kind

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In view of the ongoing climate change and global warming, fires along railways in Germany are occurring more frequently, with sometimes massive consequences for railway operations and affected railroad infrastructure. In the absence of systematic studies within the infrastructure network of German Rail, little is known about the causes of such embankment fires. Since a further increase in these hazards is to be expected in the near future, there is a need for a sound knowledge of triggers and drivers for embankment fires as well as methodical knowledge of prediction tools. Two predictable future trends speak for the increasing relevance of the topic: through the intensification of the use of rail for passenger and freight transport (e.g..: doubling of annual passenger numbers by 2030, compared to 2019), there will be more rail traffic and also more maintenance and construction work on the railways. This research project approach uses satellite data to identify historical embankment fires along rail network infrastructure. The team links data from these fires with infrastructure and weather data and trains a machine-learning model with the aim of predicting fire hazards on sections of the track. Companies reflect on the results and use them on a pilot basis in precautionary measures.

Keywords: embankment fires, railway maintenance, machine learning, remote sensing, VIIRS data

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Authors: Anam Alam, Rahim Jamaluddin Kanji

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With the rapid growth of event in everywhere, event extraction has now become an important matter to retrieve the information from the unstructured data. One of the challenging problems is to extract the event from it. An event is an observable occurrence of interaction among entities. The paper investigates the effectiveness of event extraction capabilities of three software tools that are Wandora, Nitro and SPSS. We performed standard text mining techniques of these tools on the data sets of (i) Afghan War Diaries (AWD collection), (ii) MUC4 and (iii) WebKB. Information retrieval measures such as precision and recall which are computed under extensive set of experiments for Event Extraction. The experimental study analyzes the difference between events extracted by the software and human. This approach helps to construct an algorithm that will be applied for different machine learning methods.

Keywords: event extraction, Wandora, nitro, SPSS, event analysis, extraction method, AFG, Afghan War Diaries, MUC4, 4 universities, dataset, algorithm, precision, recall, evaluation

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Authors: Alia El Akhrass, Raheed Al Jifri, Sara Babalghoum, Jana Bushnag

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This project delves into exploring the functionalities of Mailchimp, an artificial intelligence application. The objective is to comprehend its operations through the AI tools it offers. To achieve this, a survey was conducted among peers, seeking insights into Mailchimp's functionality, accessibility, efficiency, and overall benefits. The survey aimed to gather valuable feedback for analysis. Subsequently, a thorough analysis of the collected data was performed to identify trends, patterns, and areas of improvement. Visual representations were then crafted to effectively summarize the findings, aiding in conveying the research outcomes clearly. Founded in 2001, Mailchimp initially provided email marketing services but has since expanded into a comprehensive marketing platform. Its focus on simplicity and accessibility has contributed to its success among businesses of all sizes. Alternative platforms such as Constant Contact, AWeber, and GetResponse offer similar services with their own unique strengths. Mailchimp's journey exemplifies the importance of vision and adaptability in the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape. By prioritizing innovation, user-centricity, and customer service, Mailchimp has established itself as a trusted partner in the field of digital marketing, enabling businesses to effectively connect with their customers and achieve their marketing goals.

Keywords: email marketing, ai tool, connect, communicate, generate

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Authors: Martina Maria Keitsch, Sangeeta Singh

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There has been a growing recognition that sustainable development needs to consider economic, social and environmental aspects including gender. In Nepal, the majority of the population lives in rural areas, and many households do not have access to electricity. In rural areas, the difficulty of accessing energy is becoming one of the greatest constraints for improving living conditions. This is particularly true for women and children, who spent much time for collecting firewood and cooking and thus are often deprived of time for education, political- and business activities. The poster introduces an education and research project financed by the Norwegian Government. The project runs from 2015-2020 and is a collaboration between the Norwegian University of Science (NTNU) and Technology Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University. It has the title Master program and Research in Energy for Sustainable Social Development Energy for Sustainable Social Development (MSESSD). The project addresses engineering and architecture students and comprises several integral activities towards gender mainstreaming. The following activities are conducted; 1. Creating academic opportunities, 2. Updating administrative personnel on strategies to effectively include gender issues, 3. Integrating female and male stakeholders in the design process, 4. Sensitizing female and male students for gender issues in energy systems. The project aims to enable students to design end-user-friendly solutions which can, for example, save time that can be used to generate and enhance income. Relating to gender mainstreaming, design concepts focus on smaller-scale technologies, which female stakeholders can take control of and manage themselves. Creating academic opportunities, we have a 30% female students’ rate in each master student batch in the program with the goal to educate qualified female personnel for academia and policy-making/government. This is a very ambitious target in a Nepalese context. The rate of female students, who completed the MSc program at IOE between 1998 and January 2015 is 10% out of 180 students in total. For recruiting, female students were contacted personally and encouraged to apply for the program. Further, we have established a Master course in gender mainstreaming and energy. On an administrative level, NTNU has hosted a training program for IOE on gender-mainstreaming information and -strategies for academic education. Integrating female and male stakeholders, local women groups such as, e.g., mothers group are actively included in research and education for example in planning, decision-making, and management to establish clean energy solutions. The project meets women’s needs not just practically by providing better technology, but also strategically by providing solutions that enhance their social and economic decision-making authority. Sensitizing the students for gender issues in energy systems, the project makes it mandatory to discuss gender mainstreaming based on the case studies in the Master thesis. All activities will be discussed in detail comprising an overview of MSESSD, the gender mainstreaming master course contents’, and case studies where energy solutions were co-designed with men and women as lead-users and/or entrepreneurs. The goal is to motivate educators to develop similar forms of transnational gender collaboration.

Keywords: knowledge generation on gender mainstreaming, sensitizing students, stakeholder inclusion, education strategies for design and architecture in gender mainstreaming, facilitation for cooperation

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Authors: Anocha Rojanapanich

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The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of earnings management on corporate transparency of the company in Dusit area workplace via financial reporting reliability and stakeholder acceptance as independent variable. And the company in Dusit are are taken as the population and sample. The questionnaire is used to collect data. Exploratory Factor Analysis is implemented to ensure construct validity, and correlation statistic is selected to test the relationship among all variable and the ordinary least squares regression is used to explore the hypothesized. The results show that earnings management has a significant and negative impact on financial reporting reliability, stakeholder acceptance, and corporate transparency. Both financial reporting reliability and stakeholder acceptance have an important and positive effect on corporate transparency, and they are then mediators of the earnings management-corporate transparency relationships.

Keywords: dusit area workplace, earnings management, financial report, business and marketing management

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Authors: Jara Kaye S. Villanueva, M. Rosario Concepcion O. Ang

Abstract:

For the past few years, Philippines has depended most of its energy source on oil, coal, and fossil fuel. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), the dominance of coal in the energy mix will continue until the year 2020. The expanding energy needs in the country have led to increasing efforts to promote and develop renewable energy. This research is a part of the government initiative in preparation for renewable energy development and expansion in the country. The Philippine Renewable Energy Resource Mapping from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Surveys is a three-year government project which aims to assess and quantify the renewable energy potential of the country and to put them into usable maps. This study focuses on the site suitability analysis of the four renewable energy sources – biomass (coconut, corn, rice, and sugarcane), hydro, solar, and wind energy. The site assessment is a key component in determining and assessing the most suitable locations for the construction of renewable energy power plants. This method maximizes the use of both the technical methods in resource assessment, as well as taking into account the environmental, social, and accessibility aspect in identifying potential sites by utilizing and integrating two different methods: the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. For the MCDA, Analytical Hierarchy Processing (AHP) is employed to determine the parameters needed for the suitability analysis. To structure these site suitability parameters, various experts from different fields were consulted – scientists, policy makers, environmentalists, and industrialists. The need to have a well-represented group of people to consult with is relevant to avoid bias in the output parameter of hierarchy levels and weight matrices. AHP pairwise matrix computation is utilized to derive weights per level out of the expert’s gathered feedback. Whereas from the threshold values derived from related literature, international studies, and government laws, the output values were then consulted with energy specialists from the DOE. Geospatial analysis using GIS tools translate this decision support outputs into visual maps. Particularly, this study uses Euclidean distance to compute for the distance values of each parameter, Fuzzy Membership algorithm which normalizes the output from the Euclidean Distance, and the Weighted Overlay tool for the aggregation of the layers. Using the Natural Breaks algorithm, the suitability ratings of each of the map are classified into 5 discrete categories of suitability index: (1) not suitable (2) least suitable, (3) suitable, (4) moderately suitable, and (5) highly suitable. In this method, the classes are grouped based on the best groups similar values wherein each subdivision are set from the rest based on the big difference in boundary values. Results show that in the entire Philippine area of responsibility, biomass has the highest suitability rating with rice as the most suitable at 75.76% suitability percentage, whereas wind has the least suitability percentage with score 10.28%. Solar and Hydro fall in the middle of the two, with suitability values 28.77% and 21.27%.

Keywords: site suitability, biomass energy, hydro energy, solar energy, wind energy, GIS

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