Search results for: infrastructure management

Authors: Saidu Ibrahim, Winston M. W. Shakantu

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The problem of construction material waste remains unresolved, as a significant percentage of the materials delivered to some project sites end up as waste which might result in additional project cost. Cost overrun is a problem which affects 90% of the completed projects in the world. The argument on how to eliminate it has been on-going for the past 70 years, but there is neither substantial improvement nor significant solution for mitigating its detrimental effects. Research evidence has proposed various construction cost overruns and material-waste management approaches; nonetheless, these studies failed to give a clear indication on the framework and the equation for managing construction material waste and cost overruns. Hence, this research aims to develop a conceptual framework and a mathematical equation for managing material waste and cost overrun in the construction industry. The paper adopts the desktop methodological approach. This involves comparing the causes of material waste and those of cost overruns from the literature to determine the possible relationship. The review revealed a relationship between material waste and cost overrun that; increase in material waste would result to a corresponding increase in the amount of cost overrun at both the pre-contract and the post contract stages of a project. It was found from the equation that achieving an effective construction material waste management must ensure a “Good Quality-of-Planning, Estimating, and Design Management” and a “Good Quality- of-Construction, Procurement and Site Management”; a decrease in “Design Complexity” which would reduce “Material Waste” and subsequently reduce the amount of cost overrun by 86.74%. The conceptual framework and the mathematical equation developed in this study are recommended to the professionals of the construction industry.

Keywords: conceptual framework, cost overrun, material waste, project stags

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Authors: Thierry Ganomanana, Dominique Hervé, Solo Randriamahaleo

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Management of Malagasy renewable natural re-sources allows, in the case of forest, the mobilization of several actors with norms and/or territory. The interaction in this socio-ecosystem is represented by a graph of two different relationships in which most of action chains, from individual activities under the continuous of forest dynamic and discrete interventions by institutional, are also studied. The fuzzy set theory is adapted to graduate the elements of the set Illegal Activities in the space of sanction’s institution by his severity and in the space of degradation of forest by his extent.

Keywords: fuzzy set, graph, institution, renewable resource, system

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Authors: Nivedhitha Venkatakrishnan

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Flooding in urban areas in India has become a usual ritual phenomenon and a nightmare to most cities, which is a consequence of man-made disruption resulting in disaster. The City planning in India falls short of withstanding hydro generated disasters. This has become a barrier and challenge in the process of development put forth by urbanization, high population density, expanding informal settlements, environment degradation from uncollected and untreated waste that flows into natural drains and water bodies, this has disrupted the natural mechanism of hazard protection such as drainage channels, wetlands and floodplains. The magnitude and the impact of the mishap was high because of the failure of development policies, strategies, plans that the city had adopted. In the current scenario, cities are becoming the home for future, with economic diversification bringing in more investment into cities especially in domains of Urban infrastructure, planning and design. The uncertainty of the Urban futures in these low elevated coastal zones faces an unprecedented risk and threat. The study on focuses on three major pillars of resilience such as Recover, Resist and Restore. This process of getting ready to handle the situation bridges the gap between disaster response management and risk reduction requires a shift in paradigm. The study involved a qualitative research and a system design approach (framework). The initial stages involved mapping out of the urban water morphology with respect to the spatial growth gave an insight of the water bodies that have gone missing over the years during the process of urbanization. The major finding of the study was missing links between traditional water harvesting network was a major reason resulting in a manmade disaster. The research conceptualized the ideology of a sponge city framework which would guide the growth through institutional frameworks at different levels. The next stage was on understanding the implementation process at various stage to ensure the shift in paradigm. Demonstration of the concepts at a neighborhood level where, how, what are the functions and benefits of each component. Quantifying the design decision with rainwater harvest, surface runoff and how much water is collected and how it could be collected, stored and reused. The study came with further recommendation for Water Mitigation Spaces that will revive the traditional harvesting network.

Keywords: flooding, man made disaster, resilient city, traditional harvesting network, waterbodies

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Authors: Shadi Alghaffari, Hong-Oanh Nguyen, Peggy Chen, Hossein Enshaei

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The main purpose of this study was to explore the role of organisational effectiveness (OE) in seaports. OE is an important managerial concept, one that is necessary for leaders and directors in any organisation to understand the output of their work. OE has been applied in many organisations; however, it is a vital concept in the port business. This paper examines various approaches and applications of the OE concept to business management, and describes benefits that are important and applicable to seaport management. This research reviews and classifies articles published in relevant journals and books between 1950 and 2016; from the general literature on OE to the narrower field of OE in seaports. Based on the extensive literature review, this study identifies and discusses several issues relevant to both practices and theories of this concept. The review concludes by presenting a gap in the literature, as it found only a limited amount of research that endeavours to clarify OE in the seaport sector. As a result of this gap, seaports suffer from a lack of empirical study and are largely neglected in this subject area. The implementation of OE in this research has led to the maritime sector interfacing with different disciplines in order to acquire the advantage of enhancing managerial knowledge and competing successfully in the international marketplace.

Keywords: literature review, maritime, organisational effectiveness, seaport management

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Authors: Kamalendu Pal

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Supply chains are the spinal cord of trade and commerce. Their logistics use different transport corridors on regular basis for operational purpose. The international supply chain transport corridors include different infrastructure elements (e.g. weighbridge, package handling equipment, border clearance authorities, and so on) in supply chains. This paper presents the use of multi-agent systems (MAS) to model and simulate some aspects of transportation corridors, and in particular the area of weighbridge resource optimization for operational profit generation purpose. An underlying multi-agent model provides a means of modeling the relationships among stakeholders in order to enable coordination in a transport corridor environment. Simulations of the costs of container unloading, reloading, and waiting time for queuing up tracks have been carried out using data sets. Results of the simulation provide the potential guidance in making decisions about optimal service resource allocation in a trade corridor.

Keywords: multi-agent systems, simulation, supply chain, transport corridor, weighbridge

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Authors: Payal Maheshwari, Bansari Shah

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The research aimed to study the level of emotional intelligence (EI) and organizational role stress (ORS) of fire-fighters and the relationship between the two variables. Hundred and twenty fire-fighters were selected from different fire stations of Mumbai by purposive sampling. The firefighters who had the basic training, a minimum experience of 2 years and had been on the field during a crisis situation were selected for the study. The firefighters selected ranged from 23-58 years of age, and the number of years of experience ranged from 2 to 33 years. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the firefighters perceived themselves to be at an above average (57) and high (58) level of EI (M=429.35, SD=38.712). Domain-wise analysis disclosed that compared to self-awareness (92) and relationship management (93), more number of participants perceived themselves in the high category in the domains of self-management (108) and social management (106). Further, examination of the subdomain scores conveyed that a large number of participants rated themselves in the average level of these skills of accurate self-assessment (50), emotional self-control (50), adaptability (56) initiative (41), influence (66), change catalyst (53), and conflict management (50). With relation to the stress variable, it was found that almost half the number of the participants (59) rated themselves as having an average level of stress (M=137.44, SD=28.800). In most of the domains, majority of the participants perceived themselves as having an average level of stress, while in the domain of role isolation, self-role distance, and role ambiguity, majority of the firefighters rated themselves as having a low level of stress. A strong negative correlation (r=-.360**, p=.000) was found between EI and ORS. This study is a contribution to the literature and has implications for fire-fighters at the personal level, for the policymakers, and the fire department.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, organizational role stress, firefighters, relationship

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Authors: Chin-Hsiang Chu

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This article review the literature in the field among the marketing and aesthetics, the current market and customer-oriented product sales, and gradually from the practical functionality, transformed into the visual appearance of the concept note and the importance of marketing experience substance 'economic Aesthetics' trend. How to introduce the concept of aesthetic and differentiate products have become an important content of marketing management in for an organization in marketing.In previous studies,marketing aesthetic related researches are rare.Therefore, the purpose of this study to explore the connection between aesthetics and marketing of the market economy, and aggregated content through literature review, trying to find related research implications for the management of marketing aesthetics, market-oriented and customer value and development of the product. In this study, the problem statement and background, the development of the theory of evolution, as well as methods and results of discovery stage, literature review was conducted to explore. The results found: (1) Study of Aesthetics will help deepen the shopping environment and service environment commonly understood. (2) the perceived value of products imported aesthetic, consumer willingness to buy, and even premium products will be more attractive. (3) marketing personnel for general marketing management with a high degree of aesthetic identity. (4) management in marketing aesthetics connotation, aesthetic characteristics of five elements is greatly valued by the real-time, complex, specificity, attract sexual and richness. (5) allows consumers to experience through the process due to stimulate the senses, the mind and thinking with the corporate brand or have a deeper link. Results of this study can be used as business in a competitive market, new product development and design of the guide.

Keywords: marketing aesthetics, aesthetics economic, aesthetic, experiential marketing

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Authors: Anatoly V. Stepanov, Maria Y. Ilyushkina, Alexander S. Burnasov

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Expansion of tourism, especially after WWII, has led to significant improvements in the regional infrastructure. The present study has revealed a lot of progress in the advancement of industrial heritage narrative in the Central Urals. The evidence comes from the general public’s increased fascination with some of Europe’s oldest mining and industrial sites, and the agreement of many stakeholders that the Urals industrial heritage should be preserved. The development of tourist sites in Nizhny Tagil and Nevyansk, gold-digging in Beryosovsky, gemstone search in Murzinka, and the progress with the Urals Gemstone Ring project are the examples showing the immense opportunities of industrial heritage tourism development in the region that are still to be realized. Regardless of the economic future of the Central Urals, whether it will remain an industrial region or experience a deeper deindustrialization, the sprouts of the industrial heritage tourism should be advanced and amplified for the benefit of local communities and the tourist community at large as it is hard to imagine a more suitable site for the discovery of industrial and mining heritage than the Central Urals Region of Russia.

Keywords: industrial heritage, mining heritage, Central Urals, Russia

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Authors: Aida Mammadova, Juan Pastor Ivars

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Japanese gardens can be considered as the unique hubs to preserve urban biodiversity, as they provide the habitat for the diverse network of living organisms, facilitating to the movement of the rare species around the urban landscape, became the refuge for the moss and many endangered species. For the centuries, Japanese gardens were considered as ecologically sustainable and well-organized ecosystems, due to the skilled maintenances and management. However, unfortunately, due to the depopulations and ageing in Japanese societies, gardens are becoming more abandoned, and there is an urgent need to increase the awareness about the importance of the Japanese gardens to preserve the urban biodiversity. In this study, we have conducted the participatory educational field trips for 12 students into the to the five gardens protected by Kanazawa City and learned about the preservation activities conducted at the governmental, municipal, and local levels. After the courses, students have found a strong linkage between the gardens with the traditional culture. Kanazawa City, for more than 400 years is famous with traditional craft makings and tea ceremonies, and it was noticed that the cultural diversity of the city was strongly supported by the biodiversity of the gardens, and loss of the gardens would bring to the loss of the traditional culture. Using the experiential approach during the fieldworks, it was observed by the students that the linkage between the bio-cultural diversity strongly depends on humans’ activities. The continuous management and maintenance of the gardens are the contributing factor for the preservation of urban diversity. However, garden management is very time and capital consuming process, and it was also noticed that there is a big need to attract all levels of the society to preserve the urban biodiversity through the participatory urbanism.

Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, educational fieldwork, Japanese gardens

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Authors: Tamar Lazariashvili

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Introduction: The growth and development of the economy in the country depend on many factors, the most important of which is the use of innovation. The article analyzes the innovations and the potential of agricultural development in Georgia, presents the problems in the field, justifies the need to introduce innovations, shows the policy of innovation development, evaluates the positive and negative factors of the use of innovations in agriculture. Methodology: The article uses general and specific research methods, namely, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison and statistical ones: selection, grouping, observation, trend. All these methods used together in the article reveal the main problems and challenges and their development trends. Main Findings: The introduction of innovations for the country has an impact if there is established state support system for business development and the State creates an effective environment for innovation development. As a result, the appropriate establishment gives incentives to increase budget revenues, create new jobs, increase export turnover and improve the overall economic situation in the country. Georgia has sufficient resource potential to create and develop new businesses in agriculture by introducing innovations and contribute to the further socio-economic development of the country. Political and economic stability, the existing legislation in the country, infrastructure, the proper functioning of financial institutions and the qualification of the workforce are crucial for the development of innovations. These criteria determine the political and economic ratings of all countries of the world, which are of great importance to foreign investors in the implementation of innovations. Conclusion: Enactment of agro-insurance will increase the interest and confidence of financial institutions in the farming sector, financial resources will be accessible to the farmers that will facilitate the stable development of the sector in the country. The size of the agro-insurance market in the country should be increased and the new territories should be covered. The State must have an obligation to ensure the risk of farmers and subsidize insurance companies. Based on an analysis of the insurance market the conclusions on agro-insurance issues and the relevant recommendations are proposed. The introduction of innovations in agriculture will have a great impact on the Georgian economy: it will improve the technological base, establish enterprises equipped with modern equipment and methodologies, retrain existing enterprises, promote to improve skills of workers and improve management systems. Based on the analysis, conclusions are made about the prospects for the development of innovation in agriculture and relevant recommendations are proposed.

Keywords: agriculture, development potential, innovation, optimal environment

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Authors: Richard Joseph, Nerey Mvungi

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An electric power system includes a generating, a transmission, a distribution and consumers subsystems. An electrical power network in Tanzania keeps growing larger by the day and become more complex so that, most utilities have long wished for real-time monitoring and remote control of electrical power system elements such as substations, intelligent devices, power lines, capacitor banks, feeder switches, fault analyzers and other physical facilities. In this paper, the concept of automation of management of power systems from generation level to end user levels was determined by using Power System Simulator for Engineering (PSS/E) version 30.3.2.

Keywords: automation, distribution subsystem, generating subsystem, PSS/E, TANESCO, transmission subsystem

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Authors: Noriyuki Suyama

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This paper discusses purchasing behavior in retail stores, with a particular focus on the impact of weather changes on customers' purchasing behavior. Weather conditions are one of the factors that greatly affect the management and operation of retail stores. However, there is very little research on the relationship between weather conditions and marketing from an academic perspective, although there is some importance from a practical standpoint and knowledge based on experience. For example, customers are more hesitant to go out when it rains than when it is sunny, and they may postpone purchases or buy only the minimum necessary items even if they do go out. It is not difficult to imagine that weather has a significant impact on consumer behavior. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there have been only a few studies that have delved into the purchasing behavior of individual customers. According to Hirata (2018), the economic impact of weather in the United States is estimated to be 3.4% of GDP, or "$485 billion ± $240 billion per year. However, weather data is not yet fully utilized. Representative industries include transportation-related industries (e.g., airlines, shipping, roads, railroads), leisure-related industries (e.g., leisure facilities, event organizers), energy and infrastructure-related industries (e.g., construction, factories, electricity and gas), agriculture-related industries (e.g., agricultural organizations, producers), and retail-related industries (e.g., retail, food service, convenience stores, etc.). This paper focuses on the retail industry and advances research on weather. The first reason is that, as far as the author has investigated the retail industry, only grocery retailers use temperature, rainfall, wind, weather, and humidity as parameters for their products, and there are very few examples of academic use in other retail industries. Second, according to NBL's "Toward Data Utilization Starting from Consumer Contact Points in the Retail Industry," labor productivity in the retail industry is very low compared to other industries. According to Hirata (2018) mentioned above, improving labor productivity in the retail industry is recognized as a major challenge. On the other hand, according to the "Survey and Research on Measurement Methods for Information Distribution and Accumulation (2013)" by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the amount of data accumulated by each industry is extremely large in the retail industry, so new applications are expected by analyzing these data together with weather data. Third, there is currently a wealth of weather-related information available. There are, for example, companies such as WeatherNews, Inc. that make weather information their business and not only disseminate weather information but also disseminate information that supports businesses in various industries. Despite the wide range of influences that weather has on business, the impact of weather has not been a subject of research in the retail industry, where business models need to be imagined, especially from a micro perspective. In this paper, the author discuss the important aspects of the impact of weather on marketing strategies in the non-food retail industry.

Keywords: consumer behavior, weather marketing, marketing science, big data, retail marketing

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Authors: P. S. Surya Meghana, K. Lingeshwaran, C. Kannan, V. Raghavendran, C. Priya

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One of the most basic and powerful tools in all of science and medicine is the light microscope, the fundamental device for laboratory as well as research purposes. With the improving technology, the need for portable, economic and user-friendly instruments is in high demand. The conventional microscope fails to live up to the emerging trend. Also, adequate access to healthcare is not widely available, especially in developing countries. The most basic step towards the curing of a malady is the diagnosis of the disease itself. The main aim of this paper is to diagnose Malaria with the most common device, cell phones, which prove to be the immediate solution for most of the modern day needs with the development of wireless infrastructure allowing to compute and communicate on the move. This opened up the opportunity to develop novel imaging, sensing, and diagnostics platforms using mobile phones as an underlying platform to address the global demand for accurate, sensitive, cost-effective, and field-portable measurement devices for use in remote and resource-limited settings around the world.

Keywords: cellular, hand-held, health care, image processing, malarial parasites, microscope

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Authors: Seyedeh Mersedeh Banijamali, Ali Rajabzadeh

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Industrial development in recent centuries has been replaced by a sustainable development. The industry executives, particularly in the development countries are looking for procedures to protect the environment, improve their organization's performance. One of these approaches is the green supply chain management. Green supply chain management approach as a comprehensive approach to environmental management that contains all flows from suppliers to producers and ultimately to consumers, in many industries, particularly in the Steel industry, which has a strategic role in the country's industrial and economic development, has been receiving significant attention. The purpose of this study is examining the impact of green supply chain on chain operational performance in the Steel industry and formulating model for it. In this way, first the components of green supply chain (in 5 dimensions, planning, sourcing, making, delivery and return) have been prioritized through TOPSIS decision technique and then impact of these components on operational performance has been modeled with model dynamic systems and Vensim software. This research shows that green supply chain has a positive impact on operational performance and improve it.

Keywords: green supply chain, the dimensions of the green supply chain, operational performance, steel industry, dynamical systems

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Authors: Manar Aslan, Ayse Yildiz

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The study was conducted descriptively to assess their hospital institutionalization of upper and mid-level managers of 18 hospitals affiliated to Public Hospitals Association. In its simplest form institutionalization is whatever the subject matter, is dominated by the rules of articulated and determined behavior in all kinds of business, interaction, and communication. Hospital service is a type of service carried out chained together. It should not be forgotten that this kind of services is carried out without barrier, and who and what to do with definite lines, hospital management is a process, and this process can be achieved through institutionalization. With the establishment of the Public Hospitals Unions in Turkey, all the state hospitals in the provinces have been gathered under this roof. One of the goals is to establish control mechanisms to ensure that hospitals reach pre-determined financial, medical, and administrative standards. In this way, the preparations for the institutionalization of units and hospital enterprises will be completed. The data of the study were collected by institutionalization management attitude scale (cronbach alpha: 0.98) of composed of 5 sub-dimensions and 52 questions in 18 hospitals’ managers (N=310) in the largest province in Turkey. The results of the study revealed that the total score taken by managers at the institutionalization scale was 200.80, and this was close to the maximum score. In addition, it was determined that the difference between the mean score of the scale and its sub-dimensions with the gender, the hospitals, and the management position.

Keywords: institutionalization, hospital, manager, evaluation

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Authors: Eva Nedeliakova, Michal Panak

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This article describes the results of research focused on progressive view on quality management. It characterizes a research of improving services in railway transport. Improvement of these services has a strong importance in customer considering on the future use of railway transport. The research provides quality characteristics of transportation, defines critical points of technological processes and specifies the quality model supported by software solution. Main principles and results of the research have a significant importance and belong to numerous initiatives aimed to develop and support railway transport.

Keywords: quality, service, software solution, railway transport

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Authors: Abdelghani Boudiaf

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The profusion of studies relating to the concept of organizational learning shows the importance that has been given to this concept in the management sciences. A few years ago, companies leaned towards ISO 9001 certification; this requires the implementation of the quality management system (QMS). In order for this objective to be achieved, companies must have a set of skills, which pushes them to develop learning through continuous training. The results of empirical research have shown that implementation of the QMS in the company promotes the development of learning. It should also be noted that several types of learning are developed in this sense. Given the nature of skills development is normative in the context of the quality demarche, companies are obliged to qualify and improve the skills of their human resources. Continuous training is the keystone to develop the necessary learning. To carry out continuous training, companies need to be able to identify their real needs by developing training plans based on well-defined engineering. The training process goes obviously through several stages. Initially, training has a general aspect, that is to say, it focuses on topics and actions of a general nature. Subsequently, this is done in a more targeted and more precise way to accompany the evolution of the QMS and also to make the changes decided each time (change of working method, change of practices, change of objectives, change of mentality, etc.). To answer our problematic we opted for the method of qualitative research. It should be noted that the case study method crosses several data collection techniques to explain and understand a phenomenon. Three cases of companies were studied as part of this research work using different data collection techniques related to this method.

Keywords: changing mentalities, continuing training, organizational learning, quality management system, skills development

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Authors: Prodipta Bhowmik, Poulami Saha, Preety Mehra, Yogesh Soni, Triloki Nath Jha

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In India, the smart city concept is growing day by day. So, for smart city development, a better traffic management and monitoring system is a very important requirement. Nowadays, road accidents increase due to more vehicles on the road. Reckless driving is mainly responsible for a huge number of accidents. So, an efficient traffic management system is required for all kinds of roads to control the traffic speed. The speed limit varies from road to road basis. Previously, there was a radar system but due to high cost and less precision, the radar system is unable to become favorable in a traffic management system. Traffic management system faces different types of problems every day and it has become a researchable topic on how to solve this problem. This paper proposed a computer vision and machine learning-based automated system for multiple vehicle detection, tracking, and speed estimation of vehicles using image processing. Detection of vehicles and estimating their speed from a real-time video is tough work to do. The objective of this paper is to detect vehicles and estimate their speed as accurately as possible. So for this, a real-time video is first captured, then the frames are extracted from that video, then from that frames, the vehicles are detected, and thereafter, the tracking of vehicles starts, and finally, the speed of the moving vehicles is estimated. The goal of this method is to develop a cost-friendly system that can able to detect multiple types of vehicles at the same time.

Keywords: OpenCV, Haar Cascade classifier, DLIB, YOLOV3, centroid tracker, vehicle detection, vehicle tracking, vehicle speed estimation, computer vision

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Authors: Olasunkanmi Olapeju

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A large chunk of global population are not yet connected to water borne faecal management systems that rely on flush mechanisms and sewers networks that are linked with a central treatment plant. Only about 10% of sub-Saharan African countries are connected to central sewage systems. In Nigeria, majority of the population do not only depend on on-plot sanitation systems, a huge chunk do not also have access to safe and improved toilets. Apart from the organizational challenges and technical capacity, the other major factors that account for why faecal waste management is yet unimproved in developing countries are faulty planning frameworks that fail to maintain balance between urbanization dynamics and infrastructures, and misconceptions about what modern sanitation is all about. In most cases, the quest to implement developmental patterns that integrate modern sewers based sanitation systems have huge financial and political costs. Faecal waste management in poor countries largely lacks the needed political attention and budgetary prioritization. Yet, the on-plot sanitation systems being mainly relied upon the need to be managed in a manner that is sustainable and healthy, pending when development would embrace a more sustainable off-site central sewage system. This study is aimed at investigating existing strategies for managing on-plot sanitation systems’ faecal waste in Ogun state, Nigeria, with the aim of recommending sustainable sanitation management systems. The study adopted the convergent parallel variant of the mixed-mode technique, which involves the adoption of both quantitative and qualitative method of data collection. Adopting a four-level multi-stage approach, which is inclusive of all political divisions in the study area, a total of 330 questionnaires were respectively administered in the study area. Moreover, the qualitative data adopted the purposive approach in scoping down to 33 key informants. SPSS software (Version 22.0) was employed for descriptively analysis. The study shows that about 52% of households adopt the non-recovery management (NRM) means of burying their latrines with sand sludge shrinkage with chemicals such as carbides. The dominance of the non-recovery management means seriously constrains the quest for faecal resource recovery. Essentially, the management techniques adopted by households depend largely on the technology of their sanitary containments, emptying means available, the ability of households to pay for the cost of emptying, and the social acceptability of the reusability of faecal waste, which determines faecal resource recoverability. The study suggests that there is a need for municipal authorities in the study area to urgently intervene in the sanitation sector and consider it a key element of the planning process. There is a need for a comprehensive plan that would ensure a seamless transition to the adoption of a modern sanitation management system.

Keywords: faecal, management, planning, waste, sanitation, sustainability

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Authors: Agoston Restas

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Introduction: This paper describes many initiatives and shows also practical examples which happened recently using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to support disaster management. Since the operation of manned aircraft at disasters is usually not only expensive but often impossible to use as well, in many cases managers fail to use the aerial activity. UAS can be an alternative moreover cost-effective solution for supporting disaster management. Methods: This article uses thematic division of UAS applications; it is based on two key elements, one of them is the time flow of managing disasters, other is its tactical requirements. Logically UAS can be used like pre-disaster activity, activity immediately after the occurrence of a disaster and the activity after the primary disaster elimination. Paper faces different disasters, like dangerous material releases, floods, earthquakes, forest fires and human-induced disasters. Research used function analysis, practical experiments, mathematical formulas, economic analysis and also expert estimation. Author gathered international examples and used own experiences in this field as well. Results and discussion: An earthquake is a rapid escalating disaster, where, many times, there is no other way for a rapid damage assessment than aerial reconnaissance. For special rescue teams, the UAS application can help much in a rapid location selection, where enough place remained to survive for victims. Floods are typical for a slow onset disaster. In contrast, managing floods is a very complex and difficult task. It requires continuous monitoring of dykes, flooded and threatened areas. UAS can help managers largely keeping an area under observation. Forest fires are disasters, where the tactical application of UAS is already well developed. It can be used for fire detection, intervention monitoring and also for post-fire monitoring. In case of nuclear accident or hazardous material leakage, UAS is also a very effective or can be the only one tool for supporting disaster management. Paper shows some efforts using UAS to avoid human-induced disasters in low-income countries as part of health cooperation.

Keywords: disaster management, floods, forest fires, Unmanned Aerial Systems

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Authors: Guo Haonan, Chen Peiyu, Zhao Hanyu, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar

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Unix and Unix-like operating systems are widely used due to their high stability but are limited by the parent-child process structure, and the child process depends on the parent process, so the crash of a single process may cause the entire process group or even the entire system to fail. Another possibility of unexpected process termination is that the system administrator inadvertently closed the terminal or pseudo-terminal where the application was launched, causing the application process to terminate unexpectedly. This paper mainly analyzes the reasons for the problems and proposes two solutions.

Keywords: process management, daemon, login-bash and non-login bash, process group

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Authors: Humaira Maheen, Elizabeth Hoban, Catherine Bennette

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Background: Globally, role of Community Health Workers (CHW) as front line disaster health work force is underutilized. Developing countries which are at risk of natural disasters or humanitarian emergencies should lay down effective strategies especially to ensure adequate access to maternity care during crisis situation by using CHW as they are local, trained, and most of them possess a good relationship with the community. The Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) is a set of universal guidelines that addresses women’s reproductive health needs during the first phase of an emergency. According to the MISP, pregnant women should have access to a skilled birth attendant and adequate transportation arrangements so they can access a maternity care facility. Pakistan is one of the few countries which has been severely affected by a number of natural disaster as well as humanitarian emergencies in last decade. Pakistan has a young and structured National Disaster Management System in place, where District Authorities play a vital role in disaster management. The District Health Department develops the contingency health plan for an emergency situation and implements it under the existing district health human resources (health workers and medical staff at the health facility) and infrastructure (health care facilities). Methods: A mixed methods study was conducted in rural villages of Sindh adjacent to the river Indus, and included in-depth interviews with 15 women who gave birth during the floods, structured interviews with 668 women who were pregnant during 2010-2014, and in-depth interviews with 25 community health workers (CHW) and 30 key informants. Results: Women said that giving birth in the relief camps during the floods was one of the most challenging times of their life. The district health department didn’t make transportation arrangement for labouring women from relief camp to the nearest health care facility. As a result 91.2% women gave birth in temporary shelters with the help of a traditional birth attendant (Dai) with no clean physical space available to birth. Of the 332 women who were pregnant at the time of the floods, 26 had adverse birth outcomes; 10 had miscarriages, 14 had stillbirths and there were four neonatal deaths. Conclusion: The district health department was not able to provide access to adequate maternity care during according to the international standard during the floods in 2011. We propose a model where CHWs will be used as frontline maternity care providers during any emergency or disaster situations in Pakistan. A separate "birthing station" should be mandatory in all district relief camps, managed by CHWs. Community midwives (CMW) would and the Lady Health Workers (LHW) would provide antenatal and postnatal care alongside, vaccination for pregnant women, neonates and children under five. There must be an ambulance facility for emergency obstetric cases and all district health facilities should have at least two medical staff identified and trained for emergency obstetric management. The District Health Department must provide clean birthing kits and regular and emergency contraceptives in the relief camps. Methods: A mixed methods study was conducted in rural villages of Sindh adjacent to the river Indus, and included in-depth interviews with 15 women who gave birth during the floods, structured interviews with 668 women who were pregnant during 2010-2014, and in-depth interviews with 25 community health workers (CHW) and 30 key informants. Results: Women said that giving birth in the relief camps during the floods was one of the most challenging times of their life. Nearly 91.2% women gave birth in temporary shelters with the help of a traditional birth attendant (Dai) with no clean physical space available to birth, and the health camp was mostly accessed by men and always overcrowded. There was no obstetric trained medical staff in the health camps or transportation provided to take women with complications to the nearest health facility. The rate of adverse outcome following disaster was 22.2% (95% CI: 8.62% – 42.2%) amongst 27 women who did not evacuate as compare to 7.91% (95% CI: 5.03% – 11.8%) among 278 women who lived in relief camp study participants. There were 27 women who evacuated on pre-flood warning and had 0% rate of adverse outcome. Conclusion: We propose a model where CHWs will be used as frontline maternity care providers during any emergency or disaster situations in Pakistan. A separate "birthing station" should be mandatory in all district relief camps, managed by CHWs. Community midwives (CMW) would and the Lady Health Workers (LHW) would provide antenatal and postnatal care alongside, vaccination for pregnant women, neonates and children under five. There must be an ambulance facility for emergency obstetric cases and all district health facilities should have at least two medical staff identified and trained for emergency obstetric management. The District Health Department must provide clean birthing kits and regular and emergency contraceptives in the relief camps.

Keywords: natural disaster, maternity care model, rural, Pakistan, community health workers

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Authors: Yobo Opare-Addo

Abstract:

Ghana came under a military and democratic rule of the same leadership from 1981-2000. These were the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), a military government and a democratic government, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) both under the leadership of Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings. Meanwhile the year 1985 marked a turning point in the development of the tourism industry in Ghana. Interest in tourism among African governments and for that matter the ‘PNDC cum NDC Government’ (PNDC/NDC) arose because of adverse developments in intangible exports and a corresponding decline in commodity export earnings. The ‘PNDC/NDC Government’ undertook measures and policies to improve the tourism industry and at the same time embarked on export diversification to reap the foreign exchange that the industry could generate in Ghana. The objective of this paper is to examine the measures and policies of the PNDC/NDC to improve the tourism industry in order to reap the foreign exchange. It specifically interrogates the role of the government as an agent of tourism development, through its deliberate creation of a conducive environment for tourism to flourish, the involvement of the private sector both foreign and local and the provision of tourism facilities and infrastructure and how these factors impacted on the tourism industry in Ghana. In the final analysis it evaluates the degree of success of the PNDC/NDC Government in this arena of Ghana’s socio-cultural and economic development. Introduction The Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), a military government under the leadership of Flt. Lt J.J. Rawlings overthrew a constitutionally elected government of People’s National Party in 1981. In 1992, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the general election conducted in December. Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings, the party’s leader became the President of the Fourth Republic from January 1993 to December 2000. It was refreshing to see Ghanaians embrace democracy with renewed energy, zeal, and enthusiasm. This paper takes a critical look at the efforts of the PNDC cum NDC Government (PNDC/NDC) to develop tourism in Ghana during the period from 1981-2000 Methodology: Qualitative method of research was adopted for the study. Data was collected from both primary and secondary sources, and analysis was done using descriptive analysis because descriptive analysis made it possible to describe or summarize the statistical data in the research. To gather data from primary sources, questionnaires, oral interviews, and semi-structured discussions were conducted. Respondents included public officials from Ghana Tourist Board, Ministry of Tourism, Hoteliers, restaurant operators and travel and tour operators in Accra. Secondary data sources included articles in journals, reports, magazines, bulletins, and books. The major findings included statistical data for tourism arrivals and receipts during the period and the status of the industry by the year 2000. Conclusion: The paper contributes to knowledge on political and historical aspects of tourism development in Ghana, which is almost non-existent, attitudes of the PNDC cum NDC government towards tourism development and the debates on the generation of foreign exchange to Ghana and third world countries.

Keywords: ghana, infrastructure, policies, privatization, tourism facilities

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Authors: Yananda Siraphatthada

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The objectives of this research were to study the level of influencing factors, leadership, supply chain management, innovation, competitive advantages, business success, and affecting factors to the business success of the mobile phone system service providers in Bangkok Metropolitan. This research was done by the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach. The quantitative approach was used for questionnaires to collect data from the 331 mobile service shop managers franchised by AIS, Dtac and TrueMove. The mobile phone system service providers/shop managers were randomly stratified and proportionally allocated into subgroups exclusive to the number of the providers in each network. In terms of qualitative method, there were in-depth interviews of 6 mobile service providers/managers of Telewiz and Dtac and TrueMove shop to find the agreement or disagreement with the content analysis method. Descriptive Statistics, including Frequency, Percentage, Means and Standard Deviation were employed; also, the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used as a tool for data analysis. The content analysis method was applied to identify key patterns emerging from the interview responses. The two data sets were brought together for comparing and contrasting to make the findings, providing triangulation to enrich result interpretation. It revealed that the level of the influencing factors – leadership, innovation management, supply chain management, and business competitiveness had an impact at a great level, but that the level of factors, innovation and the business, financial success and nonbusiness financial success of the mobile phone system service providers in Bangkok Metropolitan, is at the highest level. Moreover, the business influencing factors, competitive advantages in the business of mobile system service providers which were leadership, supply chain management, innovation management, business advantages, and business success, had statistical significance at .01 which corresponded to the data from the interviews.

Keywords: mobile service providers, facilitating factors, Bangkok Metropolitan, business success

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Authors: Vethathirri Ramanujam Srinivasan, S. M. Shiva Nagendra

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Air quality management in urban areas is a serious concern in both developed and developing countries. In this regard, more number of air quality monitoring stations are planned to mitigate air pollution in urban areas. In India, Central Pollution Control Board has set up 574 air quality monitoring stations across the country and proposed to set up another 500 stations in the next few years. The number of monitoring stations for each city has been decided based on population data. The setting up of ambient air quality monitoring stations and their operation and maintenance are highly expensive. Therefore, there is a need to optimize monitoring networks for air quality management. The present paper discusses the various methods such as Indian Standards (IS) method, US EPA method and European Union (EU) method to arrive at the minimum number of air quality monitoring stations. In addition, optimization of rain-gauge method and Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) method using Geographical Information System (GIS) are also explored in the present work for the design of air quality network in Chennai city. In summary, additionally 18 stations are required for Chennai city, and the potential monitoring locations with their corresponding land use patterns are ranked and identified from the 1km x 1km sized grids.

Keywords: air quality monitoring network, inverse distance weighted method, population based method, spatial variation

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Authors: Tassadit Issaadi Hamitouche, Nicolas Gillard, Jean Petit, Valerie Lavaste, Celine Mayousse

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Water is a fundamental resource for the industry. It is taken from the environment either from municipal distribution networks or from various natural water sources such as the sea, ocean, rivers, aquifers, etc. Once used, water is discharged into the environment, reprocessed at the plant or treatment plants. These withdrawals and discharges have a direct impact on natural water resources. These impacts can apply to the quantity of water available, the quality of the water used, or to impacts that are more complex to measure and less direct, such as the health of the population downstream from the watercourse, for example. Based on the analysis of data (meteorological, river characteristics, physicochemical substances), we wish to predict water stress episodes and anticipate prefectoral decrees, which can impact the performance of plants and propose improvement solutions, help industrialists in their choice of location for a new plant, visualize possible interactions between companies to optimize exchanges and encourage the pooling of water treatment solutions, and set up circular economies around the issue of water. The development of a system for the collection, processing, and use of data related to water resources requires the functional constraints specific to the latter to be made explicit. Thus the system will have to be able to store a large amount of data from sensors (which is the main type of data in plants and their environment). In addition, manufacturers need to have 'near-real-time' processing of information in order to be able to make the best decisions (to be rapidly notified of an event that would have a significant impact on water resources). Finally, the visualization of data must be adapted to its temporal and geographical dimensions. In this study, we set up an infrastructure centered on the TICK application stack (for Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf, and Kapacitor), which is a set of loosely coupled but tightly integrated open source projects designed to manage huge amounts of time-stamped information. The software architecture is coupled with the cross-industry standard process for data mining (CRISP-DM) data mining methodology. The robust architecture and the methodology used have demonstrated their effectiveness on the study case of learning the level of a river with a 7-day horizon. The management of water and the activities within the plants -which depend on this resource- should be considerably improved thanks, on the one hand, to the learning that allows the anticipation of periods of water stress, and on the other hand, to the information system that is able to warn decision-makers with alerts created from the formalization of prefectoral decrees.

Keywords: data mining, industry, machine Learning, shortage, water resources

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Authors: James Semmens, James Boyd, Anna Ferrante, Katrina Spilsbury, Sean Randall, Adrian Brown

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‘Big data’ is a relatively new concept that describes data so large and complex that it exceeds the storage or computing capacity of most systems to perform timely and accurate analyses. Health services generate large amounts of data from a wide variety of sources such as administrative records, electronic health records, health insurance claims, and even smart phone health applications. Health data is viewed in Australia and internationally as highly sensitive. Strict ethical requirements must be met for the use of health data to support health research. These requirements differ markedly from those imposed on data use from industry or other government sectors and may have the impact of reducing the capacity of health data to be incorporated into the real time demands of the Big Data environment. This ‘big data revolution’ is increasingly supported by national governments, who have invested significant funds into initiatives designed to develop and capitalize on big data and methods for data integration using record linkage. The benefits to health following research using linked administrative data are recognised internationally and by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Roadmap, which outlined a multi-million dollar investment strategy to develop national record linkage capabilities. This led to the establishment of the Population Health Research Network (PHRN) to coordinate and champion this initiative. The purpose of the PHRN was to establish record linkage units in all Australian states, to support the implementation of secure data delivery and remote access laboratories for researchers, and to develop the Centre for Data Linkage for the linkage of national and cross-jurisdictional data. The Centre for Data Linkage has been established within Curtin University in Western Australia; it provides essential record linkage infrastructure necessary for large-scale, cross-jurisdictional linkage of health related data in Australia and uses a best practice ‘separation principle’ to support data privacy and security. Privacy preserving record linkage technology is also being developed to link records without the use of names to overcome important legal and privacy constraint. This paper will present the findings of the first ‘Proof of Concept’ project selected to demonstrate the effectiveness of increased record linkage capacity in supporting nationally significant health research. This project explored how cross-jurisdictional linkage can inform the nature and extent of cross-border hospital use and hospital-related deaths. The technical challenges associated with national record linkage, and the extent of cross-border population movements, were explored as part of this pioneering research project. Access to person-level data linked across jurisdictions identified geographical hot spots of cross border hospital use and hospital-related deaths in Australia. This has implications for planning of health service delivery and for longitudinal follow-up studies, particularly those involving mobile populations.

Keywords: data integration, data linkage, health planning, health services research

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Authors: Rahmat Irawan, Mundhir Hanifsyam Harahap, Andar Ristabet Hesda

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As a public sector organization in Indonesia, Directorate General of State Asset Management (DGSAM) which is a unit under the Ministry of Finance of The Republic of Indonesia, has many constraints in managing its employees. While private organizations are able to conduct a human resource management as the best practice, DGSAM is limited by many regulations, especially about punishment and lay off policy for under-performance employees. Therefore, since 2015, DGSAM tries to implement a new and uncommon approach considering employees’ preference to encourage the motivation and performance of employees. DGSAM’s employees may propose the job places, and DGSAM considers them in deciding employees deployment. This study tries to determine the impact of preference-based approach toward employees’ satisfaction and organizational performance. This study uses quantitative approaches by regression analysis to measure the impact of deployment toward satisfaction of deployed employees and performance change of related units in DGSAM. The result of this study shows that preference-based approach significantly improves employees’ satisfaction and performance of related units as well. Based on the results of this study, it can be suggested that the approach is able to be implemented in the wider scope of the Ministry of Finance of The Republic of Indonesia and whole public sector organization in Indonesia. However, this study only focuses on short term measurement, so it is suggested to do further study to analyze the long-term impact.

Keywords: employee deployment, employee satisfaction, human resource management, organizational performance, preference-based approach

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Authors: Mahadehe Hassan

Abstract:

In most countries manufacturing, trading and distribution of gasoline and diesel fuels belongs to the most important sectors of national economy. For Bangladesh, a robust, well-functioning, secure and smartly managed national fuel distribution chain is an essential precondition for achieving Government top priorities in development and modernization of transportation infrastructure, protection of national environment and population health as well as, very importantly, securing due tax revenue for the State Budget. Bangladesh is a developing country with complex fuel supply network, high fuel taxes incidence and – till now - limited possibilities in application of modern, automated technologies for Government national fuel market control. Such environment allows dishonest physical and legal persons and organized criminals to build and profit from illegal fuel distribution schemes and fuel illicit trade. As a result, the market transparency and the country attractiveness for foreign investments, law-abiding economic operators, national consumers, State Budget and the Government ability to finance development projects, and the country at large suffer significantly. Research shows that over 50% of retail petrol stations in major agglomerations of Bangladesh sell adulterated fuels and/or cheat customers on the real volume of the fuel pumped into their vehicles. Other forms of detected fuel illicit trade practices include misdeclaration of fuel quantitative and qualitative parameters during internal transit and selling of non-declared and smuggled fuels. The aim of the study is to recommend the implementation of a National Fuel Distribution Integrity Program (FDIP) in Bangladesh to address and resolve fuel adulteration and illicit trade problems. The program should be customized according to the specific needs of the country and implemented in partnership with providers of advanced technologies. FDIP should enable and further enhance capacity of respective Bangladesh Government authorities in identification and elimination of all forms of fuel illicit trade swiftly and resolutely. FDIP high-technology, IT and automation systems and secure infrastructures should be aimed at the following areas (1) fuel adulteration, misdeclaration and non-declaration; (2) fuel quality and; (3) fuel volume manipulation at retail level. Furthermore, overall concept of FDIP delivery and its interaction with the reporting and management systems used by the Government shall be aligned with and support objectives of the Vision 2041 and Smart Bangladesh Government programs.

Keywords: fuel adulteration, octane, kerosene, diesel, petrol, pollution, carbon emissions

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Authors: Nancy Sakr, Mohamed Abou-Zeid

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World energy consumption has increased rapidly in the past few years. Due to population growth, total energy consumption is increasing; a large amount of energy is wasted on the cooling and heating processes in buildings. However, using thermal heating management can minimize costs, heat consumption and create a management system for the heat insulation for buildings. This concept is being implemented through different approaches. Based on analysis and research, there is evidence in the energy consumption before and after testing and applying construction approaches for thermal heating management in building units. This investigation addresses the evaluation of the influence of external coatings on energy consumption. Coatings are considered one of the smart effective available approaches for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, this approach is not widely applied in the construction industry. It needs more data to prove effectiveness and credibility between people to use it as a smart thermal insulation approach. Two precedents have been analyzed in order to monitor buildings’ heat exposure, and how the buildings will be affected by thermal insulation materials. Data sheets from chemical companies which produce similar coatings are compared with the usual products and the protective thermal products.

Keywords: energy consumption, building envelope, thermal insulation, protective coatings

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