Search results for: Evaluation indicators

Authors: C. Slim

Abstract:

This paper presents an integrated model, which hybridized data envelopment analysis (DEA) and support vector machine (SVM) together, to class countries according to their efficiency and performance. This model takes into account aspects of multi-dimensional indicators, decision-making hierarchy and relativity of measurement. Starting from a set of indicators of performance as exhaustive as possible, a process of successive aggregations has been developed to attain an overall evaluation of a country’s competitiveness.

Keywords: Artificial neural networks, support vector machine, data envelopment analysis, aggregations, indicators of performance.

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Authors: M. Kashiripoor

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Existing indicators for sustainable urban development do not identify the features of cities’ planning structures and their architecture. Iranian city has special relevance problem of assessing the conformity of their planning and development of the concept of sustainable development. Based on theoretical sources, the author concludes that, despite the existence of common indicators for sustainable development of settlements, specialized evaluation criteria city structure planning has not been developed. He is trying to fill this gap and put forward a system of indicators characterizing the level of development of the architectural-planning structure of the city. The proposed system of indicators is designed based on technical and economic urban standard indicators from different countries. Alternative designing systems and requirements of modern rating systems like LEED-ND comprise a criterion for evaluation of urban structures in accordance with principles of "Green" building and New Urbanism. Urban development trends are close in spirit of sustainable development and developed under its influence. The study allowed concluding that a system of indicators to identify the relevant architectural-planning structure of the city, requirements of sustainable development, should be adapted to the conditions of each country, particularly in Iran. The article attempts typology proposed indicators, which are presented in tabular form and are divided into two types: planning and spatial. This article discusses the known indicators of sustainable development and proposed specific system of indicators characterizing the level of development of architectural-planning structure of the city. This article examines indicators for evaluating level of city' planning structure development. The proposed system of indicators is derived from the urban planning standards and rating systems such as LEED-ND, BREEAM Community and CASBEE-UD.

Keywords: Architectural-planning structure of cities, urban planning indicators, urban space indicators.

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Authors: Petar Halachev

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Forecasting the values of the indicators, which characterize the effectiveness of performance of organizations is of great importance for their successful development. Such forecasting is necessary in order to assess the current state and to foresee future developments, so that measures to improve the organization-s activity could be undertaken in time. The article presents an overview of the applied mathematical and statistical methods for developing forecasts. Special attention is paid to artificial neural networks as a forecasting tool. Their strengths and weaknesses are analyzed and a synopsis is made of the application of artificial neural networks in the field of forecasting of the values of different education efficiency indicators. A method of evaluation of the activity of universities using the Balanced Scorecard is proposed and Key Performance Indicators for assessment of e-learning are selected. Resulting indicators for the evaluation of efficiency of the activity are proposed. An artificial neural network is constructed and applied in the forecasting of the values of indicators for e-learning efficiency on the basis of the KPI values.

Keywords: artificial neural network, balanced scorecard, e-learning

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Authors: Marie Mikušová, Viktorie Janečková

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Measurement and the following evaluation of performance represent important part of management. The paper focuses on indicators as the basic elements of performance measurement system. It emphasizes a necessity of searching requirements for quality indicators so that they can become part of the useful system. It introduces standpoints for a systematic dividing of indicators so that they have as high as possible informative value of background sources for searching, analysis, designing and using of indicators. It draws attention to requirements for indicators' quality and at the same it deals with some dangers decreasing indicator's informative value. It submits a draft of questions that should be answered at the construction of indicator. It is obvious that particular indicators need to be defined exactly to stimulate the desired behavior in order to attain expected results. In the enclosure a concrete example of the defined indicator in the concrete conditions of a small firm is given. The authors of the paper pay attention to the fact that a quality indicator makes it possible to get to the basic causes of the problem and include the established facts into the company information system. At the same time they emphasize that developing of a quality indicator is a prerequisite for the utilization of the system of measurement in management.

Keywords: performance, measurement, firm, indicator

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Authors: Khalid Obaed Mahmod, Mesut Cevik

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The term smart city has appeared recently and was accompanied by many definitions and concepts, but as a simplified and clear definition, it can be said that the smart city is a geographical location that has gained efficiency and flexibility in providing public services to citizens through its use of technological and communication technologies, and this is what distinguishes it from other cities. Smart cities connect the various components of the city through the main and sub networks in addition to a set of applications, and thus are able to collect data that is the basis for providing technological solutions to manage resources and provide services. The basis of the work of the smart city is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and the technology of the Internet of Things (IoT). The work presents the concept of smart cities, the pillars, standards and evaluation indicators on which smart cities depend, and the reasons that prompted the world to move towards its establishment. It also provides a simplified hypothetical way to measure the ideal smart city model by defining some indicators and key pillars, simulating them with logic circuits and testing them to determine if the city can be considered an ideal smart city or not.

Keywords: Evaluation indicators, logic gates, performance factors, pillars, smart city.

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Authors: S. Rezaei, Z. Mirzaei, M. Khalighi, J. Bahrami

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Bridges, as an essential part of road infrastructures, are affected by various deterioration mechanisms over time due to the changes in their performance. As changes in performance can have many negative impacts on society, it is essential to be able to evaluate and measure the performance of bridges throughout their life. This evaluation includes the development or the choice of the appropriate performance indicators, which, in turn, are measured based on the selection of appropriate models for the existing deterioration mechanism. The purpose of this article is a statistical study of indicators and deterioration mechanisms of bridges in order to discover further research capacities in bridges performance assessment. For this purpose, some of the most common indicators of bridge performance, including reliability, risk, vulnerability, robustness, and resilience, were selected. The researches performed on each index based on the desired deterioration mechanisms and hazards were comprehensively reviewed. In addition, the formulation of the indicators and their relationship with each other were studied. The research conducted on the mentioned indicators were classified from the point of view of deterministic or probabilistic method, the level of study (element level, object level, etc.), and the type of hazard and the deterioration mechanism of interest. For each of the indicators, a number of challenges and recommendations were presented according to the review of previous studies.

Keywords: Bridge, deterioration mechanism, lifecycle, performance indicator.

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Authors: Grigoris Giannarakis, Nikolaos Litinas, Ioannis Theotokas

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The aim of the study is to investigate a number of characteristics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) indicators that should be adopted by CSR assessment methodologies. For the purpose of this paper, a survey among the Greek companies that belong to FTSE 20 in Athens Exchange (FTSE/Athex-20) has been conducted, as these companies are expected to pioneer in the field of CSR. The results show consensus as regards the characteristics of indicators such as the need for the adoption of general and specific sector indicators, financial and non-financial indicators, the origin and the weight rate. However, the results are contradictory concerning the appropriate number of indicators for the assessment of CSR and the unit of measurement. Finally, the company-s sector is a more important dimension of CSR than the size and the country where the company operates. The purpose of this paper is to standardize the main characteristics of CSR indicators.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, Greece, Indicators

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Authors: Norman Wu, Darren Sun

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Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used for post result evaluation in the construction industry, and they normally do not have provisions for changes. This paper proposes a set of dynamic key performance indicators (d-KPIs) which predicts the future performance of the activity being measured and presents the opportunity to change practice accordingly. Critical to the predictability of a construction project is the ability to achieve automated data collection. This paper proposes an effective way to collect the process and engineering management data from an integrated construction management system. The d-KPI matrix, consisting of various indicators under seven categories, developed from this study can be applied to close monitoring of the development projects of aged-care facilities. The d-KPI matrix also enables performance measurement and comparison at both project and organization levels.

Keywords: Aged-care project, construction, dynamic KPI, healthcare system.

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Authors: Kyonghoon Kim, Wonyoung Park, Taeil Park

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Aging infrastructures became a serious social problem. This brought out the increased need for the legislation of a new strict guideline for infrastructure management. Although existing guidelines provided basics of how to evaluate and manage the condition of infrastructures, they needed improvements for their evaluation procedures. Most guidelines mainly focused on the structural condition of infrastructures and did not properly reflect service aspects of infrastructures such as performance, public demand, capacity, etc., which were significantly valuable to public. Regardless of the importance, these factors were often neglected in infrastructure evaluations, because they were quite subjective and difficult to quantify in rational manner. Thus, this study proposed a framework to properly identify and evaluate the service indicators. This study showed that service indicators could be grouped into two categories and properly evaluated using AHP and Fuzzy. Overall, proposed framework is expected to assist governmental agency in establishing effective investment strategies for infrastructure improvements.

Keywords: Infrastructure, evaluation, serviceability, fuzzy.

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Authors: Carlos Sanchís-Pedregosa, José A. D. M achuca, María del Mar González-Zamora

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The growing outsourcing of logistics services resulting from the ongoing current in firms of costs reduction/increased efficiency means that it is becoming more and more important for the companies doing the outsourcing to carry out a proper evaluation. The multiple definitions and measures of logistics service performance found in research on the topic create a certain degree of confusion and do not clear the way towards the proper measurement of their performance. Do a model and a specific set of indicators exist that can be considered appropriate for measuring the performance of logistics services outsourcing in industrial environments? Are said indicators in keeping with the objectives pursued by outsourcing? We aim to answer these and other research questions in the study we have initiated in the field within the framework of the international High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project of which this paper forms part. As the first stage of this research, this paper reviews articles dealing with the topic published in the last 15 years with the aim of detecting the models most used to make this measurement and determining which performance indicators are proposed as part of said models and which are most used. The first steps are also taken in determining whether these indicators, financial and operational, cover the aims that are being pursued when outsourcing logistics services. The findings show there is a wide variety of both models and indicators used. This would seem to testify to the need to continue with our research in order to try to propose a model and a set of indicators for measuring the performance of logistics services outsourcing in industrial environments.

Keywords: Logistics, objectives, outsourcing, performancemeasurement systems

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Authors: L. Melecký

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Measurement of competitiveness between countries or regions is an important topic of many economic analysis and scientific papers. In European Union (EU), there is no mainstream approach of competitiveness evaluation and measuring. There are many opinions and methods of measurement and evaluation of competitiveness between states or regions at national and European level. The methods differ in structure of using the indicators of competitiveness and ways of their processing. The aim of the paper is to analyze main sources of competitive potential of the EU Member States with the help of Factor analysis (FA) and to classify the EU Member States to homogeneous units (clusters) according to the similarity of selected indicators of competitiveness factors by Cluster analysis (CA) in reference years 2000 and 2011. The theoretical part of the paper is devoted to the fundamental bases of competitiveness and the methodology of FA and CA methods. The empirical part of the paper deals with the evaluation of competitiveness factors in the EU Member States and cluster comparison of evaluated countries by cluster analysis. 

Keywords: Competitiveness, cluster analysis, EU, factor analysis, multivariate methods.

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Authors: Veruska C. Dutra, Afonso R. Aquino

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Since the 1980s, global tourism activity has consolidated worldwide to become an important economic contributor, and consequently, the sociocultural and environmental impacts are starting to become evidenced. This raises the need of discussing about actions for sustainable tourism that should be linked not only to the economy, but also to the environment and social aspects. The work that is going to be presented is part of a doctoral research project in Sciences undertaken at the Sao Paulo University, Brazil. It aims to analyze whether the monitoring of the tourism sector with a focus on sustainability is applicable or not, through those indicators, put in a case study in the Jalapão State Park (JSP) conservation unit, in the state of Tocantins, Brazil. This is a study of an interdisciplinary nature that had the deductive method as its guide. We concluded that the key points of the sustainable tourism, when analyzed with the focal point in environmental indicators, are an important evaluation and quantification tool of that activity in the study locus. It displayed itself as an adequate tool for monitoring, thus decoding, the main environmental impacts that occur in tourism regions and their intensity, which is made possible through analysis, and has the objective to trace ways to prevent and correct the presented impacts.

Keywords: Economic indicators, tourism, sustainability, Jalapão.

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Authors: Veruska C. Dutra, Lucio F. M. Adorno, Mary L. G. S. Senna

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From the start, the importance of having a plan to sustain tourism was acknowledged. The correct methods to monitor that type of tourism have been researched. Thus, we propose in this work to analyze the applicability of a monitoring and assistance method on the understanding of the tourism sustainability in a small size destiny or getaway. In this study, the subject is Lagoa da Confusão, in the state of Tocantins and the analysis was carried out through the efficiency of the local indicators, according to the WOT approach. We concluded that the sustainable tourism key points that were analyzed demonstrated to be important evaluation and quantification tools for the proposed tasks to be developed in the mentioned destiny. This is a study of an interdisciplinary character and the deductive method was chosen as the guiding line.

Keywords: Indicators, Lagoa da Confusão, Tocantins, Brazil, monitoring, sustainability.

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Authors: Theingi Shwe, Riken Homma, Kazuhisa Iki, Juko Ito

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The growing cities of the developing country are characterized by rapid growth and poor infrastructure management inviting and accelerating relative environmental problems. Even though the movements of the sustainability had already been developed around the world, it is still increasing in the developing countries to plant sustainable practices. Aligned with the sustainable development actions, many sustainable assessment tools are also developed to rate and evaluate the sustainability performances through the building to community level. Among them, CASBEE is developed by Japanese organizations and is recognized as one of the international well-known assessment tools. The main purpose of the study is to find out the potential of CASBEE tool reflecting sustainability city level performances in developing countries. The research framework was designed with three major phases: Quantitative Approach, Qualitative Approach and Evaluation Reflection. The first two approaches were based on the investigation of tool’s contents and indicators by means of three sustainable dimensions and sustainability categories. To know the reality and reflection on developing country, Pathein City from Myanmar was selected and evaluated by 2012 version of CASBEE for Cities. The evaluation practices went through assigned indicators and the evaluation outcome presents the performances of Pathein city’s environmental efficiency as a very good in current conditions. The results of this study indicate that the indicators of this tool have balance coverage among three dimensions of sustainability but it has not yet counted enough for some indicators like location, infrastructure and institution which are relative to society dimension. In the developing countries’ cities, the most critical issues on development such as affordable housing and heritage preservation which are already planted in Pathein City but the tool does not account for those issues. Moreover, in some of the indicators, the benchmark and the weighting coefficient are strongly linked to the system birth region. By means of this study, it can be stated that CASBEE for Cities would be potential for delivering sustainable city level development in developing country especially in Myanmar along with further inclusion of the indicators.

Keywords: Assessment tool, CASBEE, developing country, Myanmar, Pathein city, sustainable development.

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Authors: José A. D. Machuca, Bernabé Escobar-Pérez, Pedro Garrido Vega, Darkys E. Lujan García

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Starting with an analysis of the financial and operational indicators that can be found in the specialised literature, this study aims to contribute to improvements in the performance measurement systems used when the unit of analysis is the manufacturing plant. For this a search was done in the highest impact Journals of Production and Operations Management and Management Accounting , with the aim of determining the financial and operational indicators used to evaluate performance when Advanced Production Practices have been implemented, more specifically when the practices implemented are Total Quality Management, JIT/Lean Manufacturing and Total Productive Maintenance. This has enabled us to obtain a classification of the two types of indicators based on how much each is used. For the financial indicators we have also prepared a proposal that can be adapted to manufacturing plants- accounting features. In the near future we will propose a model that links practices implementation with financial and operational indicators and these two last with each other. We aim to will test this model empirically with the data obtained in the High Performance Manufacturing Project.

Keywords: Advanced Production Practices, Financial Indicators, Non-Financial Indicators

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Authors: Mihai Caramihai, Irina Severin

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Despite the extensive use of eLearning systems, there is no consensus on a standard framework for evaluating this kind of quality system. Hence, there is only a minimum set of tools that can supervise this judgment and gives information about the course content value. This paper presents two kinds of quality set evaluation indicators for eLearning courses based on the computational process of three known metrics, the Euclidian, Hamming and Levenshtein distances. The “distance" calculus is applied to standard evaluation templates (i.e. the European Commission Programme procedures vs. the AFNOR Z 76-001 Standard), determining a reference point in the evaluation of the e-learning course quality vs. the optimal concept(s). The case study, based on the results of project(s) developed in the framework of the European Programme “Leonardo da Vinci", with Romanian contractors, try to put into evidence the benefits of such a method.

Keywords: eLearning, European programme, metrics, quality evaluation

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Authors: Miguel José Oliveira, Fátima Farinha, Elisa M. J. da Silva, Rui Lança, Manuel Duarte Pinheiro, Cátia Miguel

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The Observatory of Sustainability of the Algarve Region for Tourism (OBSERVE) will be a valuable tool to assess the sustainability of this region. The OBSERVE tool is designed to provide data and maintain an up-to-date, consistent set of indicators defined to describe the region on the environmental, sociocultural, economic and institutional domains. This ongoing two-year project has the active participation of the Algarve’s stakeholders, since they were consulted and asked to participate in the discussion for the indicators proposal. The environmental and sociocultural indicators chosen must indicate the characteristics of the region and should be in alignment with other global systems used to monitor the sustainability. This paper presents a review of sustainability indicators systems that support the first proposal for the environmental and sociocultural indicators. Others constraints are discussed, namely the existing data and the data available in digital platforms in a format suitable for automatic importation to the platform of OBSERVE. It is intended that OBSERVE will be a valuable tool to assess the sustainability of the region of Algarve.

Keywords: Sustainability, observatory, environmental indicators, sociocultural indicators, development, tourism, Algarve.

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Authors: T. Gómez-Navarro, M. García-Melón, D. Díaz-Martín, S. Acuna-Dutra,

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In this paper a new approach to prioritize urban planning projects in an efficient and reliable way is presented. It is based on environmental pressure indices and multicriteria decision methods. The paper introduces a rigorous method with acceptable complexity of rank ordering urban development proposals according to their environmental pressure. The technique combines the use of Environmental Pressure Indicators, the aggregation of indicators in an Environmental Pressure Index by means of the Analytic Network Process method and interpreting the information obtained from the experts during the decision-making process. The ANP method allows the aggregation of the experts- judgments on each of the indicators into one Environmental Pressure Index. In addition, ANP is based on utility ratio functions which are the most appropriate for the analysis of uncertain data, like experts- estimations. Finally, unlike the other multicriteria techniques, ANP allows the decision problem to be modelled using the relationships among dependent criteria. The method has been applied to the proposal for urban development of La Carlota airport in Caracas (Venezuela). The Venezuelan Government would like to see a recreational project develop on the abandoned area and mean a significant improvement for the capital. There are currently three options on their table which are currently under evaluation. They include a Health Club, a Residential area and a Theme Park. The participating experts coincided in the appreciation that the method proposed in this paper is useful and an improvement from traditional techniques such as environmental impact studies, lifecycle analysis, etc. They find the results obtained coherent, the process seems sufficiently rigorous and precise, and the use of resources is significantly less than in other methods.

Keywords: Environmental pressure indicators, multicriteria decision analysis, analytic network process.

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Authors: M. Moeinaddini, Z. Asadi-Shekari, M. Zaly Shah, A. Hamzah

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Currently, planners try to have more green travel options to decrease economic, social and environmental problems. Therefore, this study tries to find significant urban travel factors to be used to increase the usage of alternative urban travel modes. This paper attempts to identify the relationship between prominent urban mobility indicators and daily trips by public transport in 30 cities from various parts of the world. Different travel modes, infrastructures and cost indicators were evaluated in this research as mobility indicators. The results of multi-linear regression analysis indicate that there is a significant relationship between mobility indicators and the daily usage of public transport.

Keywords: Green travel modes, urban travel indicators, daily trips by public transport, multi-linear regression analysis.

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Authors: L. Aparecida Bastos, J. Leige Lopes, J. Crepaldi, R. Monteiro da Silva

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The objective of this study is to analyze the evolution of some social and economic indicators of Mercosur´s economies from 1980 to 2012, based on the statistics of the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA). The objective is to observe if after the accession of these economies to Mercosur (the first accessions occurred in 1994) these indicators showed better performance, in order to demonstrate if economic integration contributed to improved trade, macroeconomic performance, and level of social and economic development of member countries. To this end, the methodologies used will be a literature review and descriptive statistics. The theoretical framework that guides the work are the theories of Integration: Classical Liberal, Marxist and structural-proactive. The results reveal that most social and economic indicators showed better performance in those economies that joined Mercosur after 1994. This work is the result of an investigation already completed.

Keywords: Economic integration, mercosur, social indicators, economic indicators.

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Authors: I. Erins, J. Erina

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The aim of the present article is to determine the impact of the external and internal factors of bank performance on the profitability indicators of the CEE countries banks in the period from 2006 to 2012. On the basis of research conducted abroad on bank and macroeconomic profitability indicators, in order to obtain research results, the authors evaluated return on average assets (ROAA) and return on average equity (ROAE) indicators of the CEE countries banks. The authors analyzed profitability indicators of banks using descriptive methods, SPSS data analysis methods, as well as data correlation and linear regression analysis. The authors concluded that most internal and external indicators of bank performance have no direct influence the profitability of the banks in the CEE countries. The only exceptions are credit risk and bank size, which affect one of the measures of bank profitability – return on average equity.

Keywords: Banks, CEE countries, Profitability ROAA, ROAE.

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Authors: C. Ardil

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In this research, the Balkan peninsula countries' developmental integration into European Union represents the strategic economic development objectives of the countries in the region. In order to objectively analyze the level of economic development competition of Balkan Peninsula countries, the mathematical compromise programming technique of multicriteria evaluation is used in this ranking problem. The primary aim of this research is to explain the role and significance of the multicriteria method evaluation using a real example of compromise solutions. Using the mathematical compromise programming technique, twelve countries of the Balkan Peninsula are economically evaluated and mutually compared. The economic development evaluation of the countries is performed according to five evaluation criteria forming the basis for economic development evaluation. The multiattribute model is solved using the mathematical compromise programming technique for producing different Pareto solutions. The results obtained by the multicriteria evaluation gives the possibility of identification and evaluation of the most eminent economic development indicators for each country separately. Finally, in this way, the proposed method has proved to be a successful model for the evaluation of the Balkan peninsula countries' economic development competition.

Keywords: Balkan peninsula countries, standard deviation, multicriteria decision making, mathematical compromise programming, multicriteria decision making, multicriteria analysis, multicriteria decision analysis.

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Authors: M. Caramihai, Irina Severin, H. Balan, A. Blidaru, V. Balanica

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Accurate assessment of the primary tumor response to treatment is important in the management of breast cancer. This paper introduces a new set of treatment evaluation indicators for breast cancer cases based on the computational process of three known metrics, the Euclidian, Hamming and Levenshtein distances. The distance principals are applied to pairs of mammograms and/or echograms, recorded before and after treatment, determining a reference point in judging the evolution amount of the studied carcinoma. The obtained numerical results are indeed very transparent and indicate not only the evolution or the involution of the tumor under treatment, but also a quantitative measurement of the benefit in using the selected method of treatment.

Keywords: Breast cancer, Distance metrics, Cancer treatment evaluation.

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Authors: Livier Serna, Xavier Fischer, Fouad Bennis

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In this paper, a decision aid method for preoptimization is presented. The method is called “negotiation", and it is based on the identification, formulation, modeling and use of indicators defined as “negotiation indicators". These negotiation indicators are used to explore the solution space by means of a classbased approach. The classes are subdomains for the negotiation indicators domain. They represent equivalent cognitive solutions in terms of the negotiation indictors being used. By this method, we reduced the size of the solution space and the criteria, thus aiding the optimization methods. We present an example to show the method.

Keywords: Optimization Model Reduction, Pre-Optimization, Negotiation Process, Class-Making, Cognition Based VirtualExploration.

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Authors: Masoud Mahdavi

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The structure is made using different members and combining them with each other. These members are basically based on technical and engineering principles and are combined in different ways and have their own unique effects on the building. Trusses are one of the most common and important members of the structure, accounting for a large percentage of the power transmission structure in the building. Different types of trusses are based on structural needs and evaluating and making complete comparisons between them is one of the most important engineering analyses. In the present study, four types of trusses have been studied; 1) Hawe truss, 2) Pratt truss, 3) k truss, and 4) warren truss, under cyclic loading for 80 seconds. The trusses are modeled in 3d using st₃₇ steel. The results showed that Hawe trusses had higher values ​​than all other trusses (k, Pratt and Warren) in all the studied indicators. Indicators examined in the study include; 1) von Mises stresses, 2) displacement, 3) support force, 4) velocity, 5) acceleration, 6) capacity (hysteresis curve) and 7) energy diagram. Pratt truss in indicators; Mises stress, displacement, energy have the least amount compared to other trusses. K truss in indicators; support force, speed and acceleration are the lowest compared to other trusses.

Keywords: Hawe truss, Pratt truss, K truss, Warren truss, cyclic loading, finite element method.

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Authors: Kailash, Rajeev Kumar Saha, Sanjeev Goyal

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Each and every manufacturing industry has a goal that describes its purpose and destination. The goal of any industry may be achieved by team work and managerial skills of all departments. However, achieving goals and objectives is not enough to improve the internal supply chain management performance of manufacturing industries therefore proper identification of performance indicators for benchmarking of internal supply chain management is essential for the growth of manufacturing industry. The identification of benchmarking performance indicators and their impact on internal supply chain management performance is vital for productivity and performance improvement. This study identifies the benchmarking performance indicators to improve internal supply chain performance of Indian manufacturing industries through literature review.

Keywords: Benchmarking, Internal supply chain management, performance indicators, scenario of Indian manufacturing industries.

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Authors: Reza Mokhtari Malek Abadi, Mohsen Saghaei, Fatima Iman

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This paper investigates the indices of a creative city in Isfahan. Its main aim is to evaluate quantitative status of the creative city indices in Isfahan city, analyze the dispersion and distribution of these indices in Isfahan city. Concerning these, this study tries to analyze the creative city indices in fifteen area of Isfahan through secondary data, questionnaire, TOPSIS model, Shannon entropy and SPSS. Based on this, the fifteen areas of Isfahan city have been ranked with 12 factors of creative city indices. The results of studies show that fifteen areas of Isfahan city are not equally benefiting from creative indices and there is much difference between the areas of Isfahan city.

Keywords: Grading, creative city, creative city evaluation indicators, regional planning model.

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Authors: Xhevrie Mamaqi, Jesus Miguel, Pilar Olave

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The lifelong learning is a crucial element in the modernization of European education and training systems. The most important actors in the development process of the lifelong learning are the trainers, whose professional characteristics need new competences and skills in the current labour market. The main objective of this paper is to establish an importance ranking of the new competences, capabilities and skills that the lifelong learning Spanish trainers must possess nowadays. A wide study of secondary sources has allowed the design of a questionnaire that organizes the trainer-s skills and competences. The e-Delphi method is used for realizing a creative, individual and anonymous evaluation by experts on the importance ranking that presents the criteria, sub-criteria and indicators of the e-Delphi questionnaire. Twenty Spanish experts in the lifelong learning have participated in two rounds of the e- DELPHI method. In the first round, the analysis of the experts- evaluation has allowed to establish the ranking of the most importance criteria, sub-criteria and indicators and to eliminate the least valued. The minimum level necessary to reach the consensus among experts has been achieved in the second round.

Keywords: competences and skills, lifelong learningtrainers, Spain, e-DELHI method.

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Authors: Marta Czyżewska, Krzysztof Pancerz, Jarosław Szkoła

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The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of several indicators determining innovativeness of countries' economies by applying selected soft computing methods. Such methods enable us to identify correlations between indicators for period 2006-2010. The main attention in the paper is focused on selecting proper computer tools for solving this problem. As a tool supporting identification, the X-means clustering algorithm, the Apriori rules generation algorithm as well as Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOMs) have been selected. The paper has rather a rudimentary character. We briefly describe usefulness of the selected approaches and indicate some challenges for further research.

Keywords: Assessment of indicators, innovativeness, soft computing.

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Authors: Ali Alotaibi, Francis Edum-Fotwe, Andrew Price /

Abstract:

Mega construction projects create buildings and major infrastructure to respond to work and life requirements while playing a vital role in promoting any nation’s economy. However, the industry is often criticised for not balancing economic, environmental and social dimensions of their projects, with emphasis typically on one aspect to the detriment of the others. This has resulted in many negative impacts including environmental pollution, waste throughout the project lifecycle, low productivity, and avoidable accidents. The identification of comprehensive Social Responsibility (SR) indicators, which combine social, environmental and economic aspects, is urgently needed. This is particularly the case in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which often has mega public construction projects. The aim of this paper is to develop a set of wide-ranging SR indicators which encompass social, economic and environmental aspects unique to the KSA. A qualitative approach was applied to explore relevant indicators through a review of the existing literature, international standards and reports. A list of appropriate indicators was developed, and its comprehensiveness was corroborated by interviews with experts on mega construction projects working with SR concepts in the KSA. The findings present 39 indicators and their metrics, covering 10 economic, 12 environmental and 17 social aspects of SR mapped against their references. These indicators are a valuable reference for decision-makers and academics in the KSA to understand factors related to SR in mega construction projects. The indicators are related to mega construction projects within the KSA and require validation in a real case scenario or within a different industry to demonstrate their generalisability.

Keywords: Social responsibility, construction projects, economic, social, environmental, indicators.

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