Search results for: Construction management

Authors: Aaron A. R. Nwabude

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This study used positivist quantitative approach to examine the mathematical concepts acquisition of- KS4 (14-16) Special Education Needs (SENs) students within the school sector education in England. The research is based on a pilot study and the design is completely holistic in its approach with mixing methodologies. The study combines the qualitative and quantitative methods of approach in gathering formative data for the design process. Although, the approach could best be described as a mix method, fundamentally with a strong positivist paradigm, hence my earlier understanding of the differentiation of the students, student – teacher body and the various elements of indicators that is being measured which will require an attenuated description of individual research subjects. The design process involves four phases with five key stages which are; literature review and document analysis, the survey, interview, and observation; then finally the analysis of data set. The research identified the need for triangulation with Reid-s phases of data management providing scaffold for the study. The study clearly identified the ideological and philosophical aspects of educational research design for the study of mathematics by the special education needs (SENs) students in England using the virtual learning environment (VLE) platform.

Keywords: VLE, Special Education Needs, Key stage4, School, Mathematics, Concepts Acquisition

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Authors: Pardeep Singh, Sanjay Sharma

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Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) has been one on the most vivid research areas in the field of computer vision over the last 10 years. Many programs and tools have been developed to formulate and execute queries based on the visual or audio content and to help browsing large multimedia repositories. Still, no general breakthrough has been achieved with respect to large varied databases with documents of difering sorts and with varying characteristics. Answers to many questions with respect to speed, semantic descriptors or objective image interpretations are still unanswered. In the medical field, images, and especially digital images, are produced in ever increasing quantities and used for diagnostics and therapy. In several articles, content based access to medical images for supporting clinical decision making has been proposed that would ease the management of clinical data and scenarios for the integration of content-based access methods into Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) have been created. This paper gives an overview of soft computing techniques. New research directions are being defined that can prove to be useful. Still, there are very few systems that seem to be used in clinical practice. It needs to be stated as well that the goal is not, in general, to replace text based retrieval methods as they exist at the moment.

Keywords: CBIR, GA, Rough sets, CBMIR

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Authors: Yolanda Ramírez, Ángel Tejada, Agustín Baidez

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In the higher education setting, there is a current trend in society toward greater openness and transparency. The economic, social and political changes that have occurred in recent years in public sector universities (particularly the New Public Management, the Bologna Process and the emergence of the “third mission”) call for a wider disclosure of value created by universities to support fundraising activities, to ensure accountability in the use of public funds and the outcomes of research and teaching, as well as close relationships with industries and territories. The paper has two purposes: 1) to explore the intellectual capital (IC) disclosure in Spanish universities through their websites, and 2) to identify university profiles. This study applies a content analysis to analyze the institutional websites of Spanish public universities and a cluster analysis. The analysis reveals that Spanish universities’ website content usually relates to human capital, while structural and relational capitals are less widely disclosed. Our research identifies three behavioral profiles of Spanish universities with regard to the online disclosure of IC (universities more proactive, universities less proactive and universities adopt a middle position in this regard. The results can serve as encouragement to university managers to enhance online IC disclosure to meet the information needs of university stakeholders.

Keywords: Universities, intellectual capital, disclosure, Internet.

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Authors: Farbod Behnaminia, Saeed Samet

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The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed many lives until a vaccine has been available, which caused the so-called "new normal". COVID-19 is an infectious disease. It can cause significant illness or death in anyone. Governments and health officials tried to impose rules and regulations to avoid and slow down transmission. Therefore, software engineers worldwide developed applications to trace and track patients’ movements and notify others, mainly using Bluetooth. In this way, everyone could be informed whether they came in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 and take proper safety precautions. Because most of the applications use technologies that can potentially reveal the user’s identity and location, researchers have debated privacy preservation and how to improve user privacy during such pandemics. We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the literature by looking for papers in the relevant field and dividing them into pre- and post-pandemic systems. Additionally, we discussed the many uses of blockchain technology in pandemic control. We found that two major obstacles facing blockchain implementation across many healthcare systems are scalability and privacy. The Polkadot platform is presented, along with a review of its efficacy in tackling current concerns. A more scalable healthcare system is achievable in near future using Polkadot as well as a much more privacy-preserving environment.

Keywords: Blockchain, Electronic Record Management, EHR, Privacy-Preserving, patient tracking, COVID-19, trust and confidence, Polkadot.

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Authors: Humayun Murshed, Shibly Abdullah

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The research conducted in early seventies apparently assumed the existence of a universal decision model for union negotiators and furthermore tended to regard financial information as a ‘neutral’ input into a rational decision making process. However, research in the eighties began to question the neutrality of financial information as an input in collective bargaining rather viewing it as a potentially effective means for controlling the labour force. Furthermore, this later research also started challenging the simplistic assumptions relating particularly to union objectives which have underpinned the earlier search for universal union decision models. Despite the above developments there seems to be a dearth of studies in developing countries concerning the use of financial information in collective bargaining. This paper seeks to begin to remedy this deficiency. Utilising a case study approach based on two enterprises, one in the public sector and the other a multinational, the universal decision model is rejected and it is argued that the decision whether or not to use financial information is a contingent one and such a contingency is largely defined by the context and environment in which both union and management negotiators work. An attempt is also made to identify the factors constraining as well as promoting the use of financial information in collective bargaining, these being regarded as unique to the organisations within which the case studies are conducted.

Keywords: Collective Bargaining, Developing Countries, Disclosures, Financial Information.

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Authors: Maris Klavins, Valery Rodinov

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The aim of this study was to analyze long term changes of surface water quality in Latvia, spatial variability of water chemical composition, possible impacts of different pollution sources as well as to analyze the measures to protect national water resources - river basin management. Within this study, the concentrations of major water ingredients and microelements in major rivers and lakes of Latvia have been determined. Metal concentrations in river and lake waters were compared with water chemical composition. The mean concentrations of trace metals in inland waters of Latvia are appreciably lower than the estimated world averages for river waters and close to or lower than background values, unless regional impacts determined by local geochemistry. This may be explained by a comparatively lower level of anthropogenic load. In the same time in several places, direct anthropogenic impacts are evident, regarding influences of point sources both transboundary transport impacts. Also, different processes related to pollution of surface waters in Latvia have been analyzed. At first the analysis of changes and composition of pollutant emissions in Latvia has been realized, and the obtained results were compared with actual composition of atmospheric precipitation and their changes in time.

Keywords: Water quality, trend analysis, pollution, human impact.

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Authors: Raksha Sharma, Vishnu Kant Soni, Manoj Kumar Mishra, Prachet Bhuyan, Utpal Chandra Dey

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Grid computing is a group of clusters connected over high-speed networks that involves coordinating and sharing computational power, data storage and network resources operating across dynamic and geographically dispersed locations. Resource management and job scheduling are critical tasks in grid computing. Resource selection becomes challenging due to heterogeneity and dynamic availability of resources. Job scheduling is a NP-complete problem and different heuristics may be used to reach an optimal or near optimal solution. This paper proposes a model for resource and job scheduling in dynamic grid environment. The main focus is to maximize the resource utilization and minimize processing time of jobs. Grid resource selection strategy is based on Max Heap Tree (MHT) that best suits for large scale application and root node of MHT is selected for job submission. Job grouping concept is used to maximize resource utilization for scheduling of jobs in grid computing. Proposed resource selection model and job grouping concept are used to enhance scalability, robustness, efficiency and load balancing ability of the grid.

Keywords: Agent, Grid Computing, Job Grouping, Max Heap Tree (MHT), Resource Scheduling.

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Authors: A. Khanal, A. Osareh, G. Lebby

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Wind energy offers a significant advantage such as no fuel costs and no emissions from generation. However, wind energy sources are variable and non-dispatchable. The utility grid is able to accommodate the variability of wind in smaller proportion along with the daily load. However, at high penetration levels, the variability can severely impact the utility reserve requirements and the cost associated with it. In this paper the impact of wind energy is evaluated in detail in formulating the total utility cost. The objective is to minimize the overall cost of generation while ensuring the proper management of the load. Overall cost includes the curtailment cost, reserve cost and the reliability cost, as well as any other penalty imposed by the regulatory authority. Different levels of wind penetrations are explored and the cost impacts are evaluated. As the penetration level increases significantly, the reliability becomes a critical question to be answered. Here we increase the penetration from the wind yet keep the reliability factor within the acceptable limit provided by NERC. This paper uses an economic dispatch (ED) model to incorporate wind generation into the power grid. Power system costs are analyzed at various wind penetration levels using Linear Programming. The goal of this study is show how the increases in wind generation will affect power system economics.

Keywords: Balancing Reserves, Optimization, Wind Energy.

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Authors: Vakhtang Geladze, Nana Bolashvili, Tamazi Karalashvili, Nino Machavariani, Vajha Neidze, Nana Kvirkvelia, Tamar Chichinadze

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Deficiency of fresh water is a vital global problem today. It must be taken into consideration that in the nearest future fresh water crisis will become even more acute owing to the global climate warming and fast desertification processes in the world. Georgia has signed the association agreement with Euro Union last year where the priority spheres of cooperation are the management of water resources, development of trans-boundary approach to the problem and active participation in the “Euro Union water initiative” component of “the East Europe, Caucasus and the Central Asia”. Fresh water resources are the main natural wealth of Georgia. According to the average water layer height, Georgia is behind such European countries only as Norway, Switzerland and Austria. The annual average water provision of Georgia is 4-8 times higher than in its neighbor countries Armenia and Azerbaijan. Despite abundant water resources in Georgia, there is considerable discrepancy between their volume and use in some regions because of the uneven territorial distribution. In the East Georgia, water supply of the territory and population is four times less than in the West Georgia.

Keywords: GIS, sociological survey, water consumption, water resources.

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Authors: Anjali Chatterjee, Nirmal Kumar Roy

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Economically transformers constitute one of the largest investments in a Power system. For this reason, transformer condition assessment and management is a high priority task. If a transformer fails, it would have a significant negative impact on revenue and service reliability. Monitoring the state of health of power transformers has traditionally been carried out using laboratory Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) tests performed at periodic intervals on the oil sample, collected from the transformers. DGA of transformer oil is the single best indicator of a transformer-s overall condition and is a universal practice today, which started somewhere in the 1960s. Failure can occur in a transformer due to different reasons. Some failures can be limited or prevented by maintenance. Oil filtration is one of the methods to remove the dissolve gases and prevent the deterioration of the oil. In this paper we analysis the DGA data by regression method and predict the gas concentration in the oil in the future. We bring about a comparative study of different traditional methods of regression and the errors generated out of their predictions. With the help of these data we can deduce the health of the transformer by finding the type of fault if it has occurred or will occur in future. Additional in this paper effect of filtration on the transformer health is highlight by calculating the probability of failure of a transformer with and without oil filtrating.

Keywords: Power Transformers, Dissolve gas Analysis, Regression method, Filtration, oil.

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Authors: S.P.Gautam, P.S.Bundela, R.K. Jain, V. N. Tripathi

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The manufacturing transmission line tower parts has being generated hazardous waste which is required proper disposal of waste for protection of land pollution. Manufacturing Process in the manufacturing of steel angle, plates, pipes, channels are passes through conventional, semi automatic and CNC machines for cutting, marking, punching, drilling, notching, bending operations. All fabricated material Coated with thin layer of Zinc in Galvanizing plant where molten zinc is used for coating. Prior to Galvanizing, chemical like 33% concentrated HCl Acid, ammonium chloride and d-oil being used for pretreatment of iron. The bath of water with sodium dichromate is used for cooling and protection of the galvanized steel. For the heating purpose the furnace oil burners are used. These above process the Zinc dross, Zinc ash, ETP sludge and waste pickled acid generated as hazardous waste. The RPG has made captive secured land fill site, since 1997 since then it was using for disposal of hazardous waste after completion of SLF (Secured land fill) site. The RPG has raised height from ground level then now it is being used for disposal of waste as he designed the SLF after in creasing height of from GL it is functional without leach ate or adverse impacts in the environment.

Keywords: Disposal, Drilling, Fabricated. Hazardous waste, Punching.

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Authors: Eberechi Weli, Michael Todinov

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The gap between the selection of risk-reduction options in the railway industry and the task of their effective implementation results in compromised safety and substantial losses. An effective risk management must necessarily integrate the evaluation phases with the implementation phase. This paper proposes an essential categorisation of risk reduction measures that best addresses a standard railway industry portfolio. By categorising the risk reduction options into design, operational, procedural and technical options, it is guaranteed that the efforts of the implementation facilitators (people, processes and supporting systems) are systematically harmonised. The classification is based on an integration of fundamental principles of risk reduction in the railway industry with the systems engineering approach.

This paper argues that the use of a similar classification approach is an attribute of organisations possessing a superior level of risk-reduction readiness. The integration of the proposed rational classification structure provides a solid ground for effective risk reduction.

Keywords: Cost effectiveness, organisational readiness, risk reduction, railway, system engineering.

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Authors: R. Deju, M. Mincu, D. Gurau

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During the interim storage or final disposal of low level waste, migration/diffusion of radionuclides can occur when the waste comes in contact with water. The long-term leaching behaviour into surrounding fluid (demineralized water) of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁶⁰Co and ¹⁵²Eu radionuclides, artificially incorporated in mortar matrices made from natural aggregates (river sand) and recycled radioactive concrete was studied. Results presented in this work are obtained in two years of mortar testing and will be used for the safety increasing in the storage of low level radioactive waste. The study involved the influence of curing time, type and size distribution of the aggregates on leaching behaviour. The mortar samples were immersed in distilled water for 30 days. The leached activity of the mortar samples was measured on samples from the immersing water and analyzed through a gamma-ray spectrometry method using an HPGe detector with a GESPECOR code for efficiency evaluation. The long-term leaching behaviour of the radionuclides was evaluated from the leaching data calculating the apparent diffusion coefficient.

Keywords: Leaching behaviour, recycling of radioactive concrete, waste management, gamma-ray spectrometry.

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Authors: Reza Ghasemi, Negin Amiri Hazaveh

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In this paper, control methodology based on the selection of the type of traffic light and the period of the green phase to accomplish an optimum balance at intersections is proposed. This balance should be flexible to the static behavior of time, and randomness in a traffic situation; the goal of the proposed method is to reduce traffic volume in transportation, the average delay for each vehicle, and control over the crash of cars. The proposed method was specifically investigated at the intersection through an appropriate timing of traffic lights by sampling a multi-agent system. It consists of a large number of intersections, each of which is considered as an independent agent that exchanges information with each other, and the stability of each agent is provided separately. The robustness against uncertainties, scalability, and stability of the closed-loop overall system are the main merits of the proposed methodology. The simulation results show that the fuzzy intelligent controller in this multi-factor system which is a Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy is more useful than scheduling in the fixed-time method and it reduces the lengths of vehicles queuing.

Keywords: Fuzzy intelligent controller, traffic-light control, multi-agent systems, state space equations, stability.

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Authors: Jörg Lenhardt, Wolfram Schiffmann, Jörg Keller

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While the feature sizes of recent Complementary Metal Oxid Semiconductor (CMOS) devices decrease the influence of static power prevails their energy consumption. Thus, power savings that benefit from Dynamic Frequency and Voltage Scaling (DVFS) are diminishing and temporal shutdown of cores or other microchip components become more worthwhile. A consequence of powering off unused parts of a chip is that the relative difference between idle and fully loaded power consumption is increased. That means, future chips and whole server systems gain more power saving potential through power-aware load balancing, whereas in former times this power saving approach had only limited effect, and thus, was not widely adopted. While powering off complete servers was used to save energy, it will be superfluous in many cases when cores can be powered down. An important advantage that comes with that is a largely reduced time to respond to increased computational demand. We include the above developments in a server power model and quantify the advantage. Our conclusion is that strategies from datacenters when to power off server systems might be used in the future on core level, while load balancing mechanisms previously used at core level might be used in the future at server level.

Keywords: Power efficiency, static power consumption, dynamic power consumption, CMOS.

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Authors: M. Gooroochurn, D. Kerr, K. Bouazza-Marouf, M. Vloeberghs

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This paper presents the automated methods employed for extracting craniofacial landmarks in white light images as part of a registration framework designed to support three neurosurgical procedures. The intraoperative space is characterised by white light stereo imaging while the preoperative plan is performed on CT scans. The registration aims at aligning these two modalities to provide a calibrated environment to enable image-guided solutions. The neurosurgical procedures can then be carried out by mapping the entry and target points from CT space onto the patient-s space. The registration basis adopted consists of natural landmarks (eye corner and ear tragus). A 5mm accuracy is deemed sufficient for these three procedures and the validity of the selected registration basis in achieving this accuracy has been assessed by simulation studies. The registration protocol is briefly described, followed by a presentation of the automated techniques developed for the extraction of the craniofacial features and results obtained from tests on the AR and FERET databases. Since the three targeted neurosurgical procedures are routinely used for head injury management, the effect of bruised/swollen faces on the automated algorithms is assessed. A user-interactive method is proposed to deal with such unpredictable circumstances.

Keywords: Face Processing, Craniofacial Feature Extraction, Preoperative to Intraoperative Registration, Registration Basis.

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Authors: Selma Sbit, Mohamed Bechir Dadi, Belgacem Chibani Rhaimi

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Incorporating Home eNodeB (HeNB) in cellular networks, e.g. Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A), is beneficial for extending coverage and enhancing capacity at low price especially within the non-line-of sight (NLOS) environments such as homes. HeNB or femtocell is a small low powered base station which provides radio coverage to the mobile users in an indoor environment. This deployment results in a heterogeneous network where the available spectrum becomes shared between two layers. Therefore, a problem of Inter Cell Interference (ICI) appears. This issue is the main challenge in LTE-A. To deal with this challenge, various techniques based on frequency, time and power control are proposed. This paper deals with the impact of carrier aggregation and higher order MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) schemes on the LTE-Advanced performance. Simulation results show the advantages of these schemes on the system capacity (4.10⁹ b/s/Hz when bandwidth B=100 MHz and when applying MIMO 8x8 for SINR=30 dB), maximum theoretical peak data rate (more than 4 Gbps for B=100 MHz and when MIMO 8x8 is used) and spectral efficiency (15 b/s/Hz and 30b/s/Hz when MIMO 4x4 and MIMO 8x8 are applying respectively for SINR=30 dB).

Keywords: LTE-Advanced, carrier aggregation, MIMO, capacity, peak data rate, spectral efficiency.

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Authors: Tao Zou, Zhengnan Zhou

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In the context of global climate change, flooding and sea level rise is increasingly threatening coastal urban areas, in which large population is continuously concentrated. Dutch experiences in urban water system management provide high reference value for sustainable coastal urban development projects. Preliminary studies shows the urban water system in Almere, a typical Dutch polder city, have three kinds of operational modes, achieving functions as: (1) coastline control – strong multiple damming system prevents from storm surges and maintains sufficient capacity upon risks; (2) high flexibility – large area and widely scattered open water system greatly reduce local runoff and water level fluctuation; (3) internal water maintenance – weir and sluice system maintains relatively stable water level, providing excellent boating and landscaping service, coupling with water circulating model maintaining better water quality. Almere has provided plenty of hints and experiences for ongoing development of coastal cities in emerging economies.

Keywords: Coastal area, resilience, sustainable urban watersystem, water circulation.

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Authors: Cheng Zhang, James Marco, Walid Allafi, Truong Q. Dinh, W. D. Widanage

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Equivalent circuit models (ECMs) are widely used in battery management systems in electric vehicles and other battery energy storage systems. The battery dynamics and the model parameters vary under different working conditions, such as different temperature and state of charge (SOC) levels, and therefore online parameter identification can improve the modelling accuracy. This paper presents a way of online ECM parameter identification using a continuous time (CT) estimation method. The CT estimation method has several advantages over discrete time (DT) estimation methods for ECM parameter identification due to the widely separated battery dynamic modes and fast sampling. The presented method can be used for online SOC estimation. Test data are collected using a lithium ion cell, and the experimental results show that the presented CT method achieves better modelling accuracy compared with the conventional DT recursive least square method. The effectiveness of the presented method for online SOC estimation is also verified on test data.

Keywords: Equivalent circuit model, continuous time domain estimation, linear integral filter method, parameter and SOC estimation, recursive least square.

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Authors: Lorenzo Casagrande, Antonio Bonati, Ferdinando Auricchio, Antonio Occhiuzzi

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This paper summarizes the results of a survey on smart non-structural element dynamic dissipation when installed in modern high-rise mega-frame prototypes. An innovative glazed curtain wall was designed using Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) joints in order to increase the energy dissipation and enhance the seismic/wind response of the structures. The studied buildings consisted of thirty- and sixty-storey planar frames, extracted from reference three-dimensional steel Moment Resisting Frame (MRF) with outriggers and belt trusses. The internal core was composed of a CBF system, whilst outriggers were placed every fifteen stories to limit second order effects and inter-storey drifts. These structural systems were designed in accordance with European rules and numerical FE models were developed with an open-source code, able to account for geometric and material nonlinearities. With regard to the characterization of non-structural building components, full-scale crescendo tests were performed on aluminium/glass curtain wall units at the laboratory of the Construction Technologies Institute (ITC) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), deriving force-displacement curves. Three-dimensional brick-based inelastic FE models were calibrated according to experimental results, simulating the fac¸ade response. Since recent seismic events and extreme dynamic wind loads have generated the large occurrence of non-structural components failure, which causes sensitive economic losses and represents a hazard for pedestrians safety, a more dissipative glazed curtain wall was studied. Taking advantage of the mechanical properties of SMA, advanced smart joints were designed with the aim to enhance both the dynamic performance of the single non-structural unit and the global behavior. Thus, three-dimensional brick-based plastic FE models were produced, based on the innovated non-structural system, simulating the evolution of mechanical degradation in aluminium-to-glass and SMA-to-glass connections when high deformations occurred. Consequently, equivalent nonlinear links were calibrated to reproduce the behavior of both tested and smart designed units, and implemented on the thirty- and sixty-storey structural planar frame FE models. Nonlinear time history analyses (NLTHAs) were performed to quantify the potential of the new system, when considered in the lateral resisting frame system (LRFS) of modern high-rise MRFs. Sensitivity to the structure height was explored comparing the responses of the two prototypes. Trends in global and local performance were discussed to show that, if accurately designed, advanced materials in non-structural elements provide new sources of energy dissipation.

Keywords: Advanced technologies, glazed curtain walls, non-structural elements, seismic-action reduction, shape memory alloy.

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Authors: Lina Galinskaitė, Gytautas Ignatavičius

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Animal vehicle collisions (AVCs) affect human safety, cause property damage and wildlife welfare. The number of AVCs are increasing and creating serious implications for the animal conservation and management. Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and other large ungulates (moose, wild boar, red deer) are the most frequently collided ungulate with vehicles in Europe. Therefore, we analyzed temporal patterns of roe deer vehicle collisions (RDVC) occurring in Lithuania. Using a comprehensive dataset, consisting of 15,891 data points, we examined the influence of different time units (i.e. time of the day, day of week, month, and season) on RDVC. We identified accident periods within the analyzed time units. Highest frequencies of RDVC occurred on Fridays. Highest frequencies of roe deer-vehicle accidents occurred in May, November and December. Regarding diurnal patterns, most of RDVC occur after sunset and before sunset (during dark hours). Since vehicle collisions with animals showed temporal variation, these should be taken into consideration in developing statistical models of spatial AVC patterns, and also in planning strategies to reduce accident risk.

Keywords: Animal vehicle collision, diurnal patterns, road safety, roe deer, statistical analysis.

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Authors: Alena Dadova, Katarina Holla, Anna Cidlinova, Linda Makovicka Osvaldova, Jiri Vala, Samuel Kockar

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Occupational health and safety (OHS) is an area in which procedures and applications are constantly evolving and changing through legislation and new directives and guidelines. In this way, the relevant organizations strive to ensure continuous progress and the advantage of up-to-date information to ensure safety and prevent occupational accidents. Three ESENER surveys have been carried out in the European Union, led by the Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). On the basis of surveys, it was determined how European workplaces manage risks and how they manage the field of safety and health protection at work. Thousands of companies and organizations in the European Union were involved in the surveys. Organizations and businesses were presented with a questionnaire that focused on the following topics: the impact of general risks on the field of OSH and the possibility of their management, psychosocial risks and other factors such as stress, harassment and bullying, and employee participation in OSH procedures. The article is dedicated to the fundamental conclusions from these surveys and their subsequent connection with the strategic intent of the Strategic Framework of European Union for the years 2021-2027. In the conclusion, emerging risks are identified and the EU will soon have to deal with them.

Keywords: ESENER, emerging risks, strategic framework in OSH, EU.

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Authors: Mia Wimala, Emma Akmalah, Ira Irawati, M. Rangga Sururi

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One way that has been aggressively implemented in creating a sustainable environment nowadays is through the implementation of green building concept. In order to ensure the success of its implementation, the support and initiation from educational institutions, especially higher education institutions are indispensable. This research was conducted to figure out the obstacles restraining the success of green campus implementation in Indonesia, as well as to propose strategies to overcome those obstacles. The data presented in this paper are mainly derived from interview and questionnaire distributed randomly to the staffs and students in 10 (ten) major institutions around Jakarta and West Java area. The data were further analyzed using ANOVA and SWOT analysis. According to 182 respondents, it is found that resistance to change, inadequate knowledge, information and understanding, no penalty for any environmental violation, lack of reward for green campus practices, lack of stringent regulations/laws, lack of management commitment, insufficient funds are the obstacles to the green campus movement in Indonesia. In addition, out of 6 criteria considered in UI GreenMetric World Ranking, education was the only criteria that had no significant difference between public and private universities in generating the green campus performance. The work concludes with recommendation of strategies to improve the implementation of green campus in the future.

Keywords: Green campus, obstacles, sustainable, higher education institutions.

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Authors: Omar Hamdy, Schichen Zhao, Hussein Abd El-Atty, Ayman Ragab, Muhammad Salem

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One of the most risky areas in Aswan is Abouelreesh, which is suffering from flood disasters, as heavy deluge inundates urban areas causing considerable damage to buildings and infrastructure. Moreover, the main problem was the urban sprawl towards this risky area. This paper aims to identify the urban areas located in the risk areas prone to flash floods. Analyzing this phenomenon needs a lot of data to ensure satisfactory results; however, in this case the official data and field data were limited, and therefore, free sources of satellite data were used. This paper used ArcGIS tools to obtain the storm water drains network by analyzing DEM files. Additionally, historical imagery in Google Earth was studied to determine the age of each building. The last step was to overlay the urban area layer and the storm water drains layer to identify the vulnerable areas. The results of this study would be helpful to urban planners and government officials to make the disasters risk estimation and develop primary plans to recover the risky area, especially urban areas located in torrents.

Keywords: Risk area, DEM, storm water drains, GIS.

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Authors: Remica Aggarwal, Sanjeet Singh

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The decision to recruit manpower in an organization requires clear identification of the criteria (attributes) that distinguish successful from unsuccessful performance. The choice of appropriate attributes or criteria in different levels of hierarchy in an organization is a multi-criteria decision problem and therefore multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques can be used for prioritization of such attributes. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one such technique that is widely used for deciding among the complex criteria structure in different levels. In real applications, conventional AHP still cannot reflect the human thinking style as precise data concerning human attributes are quite hard to be extracted. Fuzzy logic offers a systematic base in dealing with situations, which are ambiguous or not well defined. This study aims at defining a methodology to improve the quality of prioritization of an employee-s performance measurement attributes under fuzziness. To do so, a methodology based on the Extent Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is proposed. Within the model, four main attributes such as Subject knowledge and achievements, Research aptitude, Personal qualities and strengths and Management skills with their subattributes are defined. The two approaches conventional AHP approach and the Extent Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process approach have been compared on the same hierarchy structure and criteria set.

Keywords: AHP, Extent analysis method, Fuzzy AHP, Prioritization.

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Authors: Prapoj Na Bangchang

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The research aimed to study the satisfaction of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students towards the university radio station which broadcasts in both analog on FM 97.25 MHz and online via the university website. The sample used in this study consists of undergraduate students year 1 to year 4 from 6 faculties i.e. Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Management Science and Faculty of Industrial Technology, and Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts totaling 200 students. The tools used for data collection is survey. Data analysis applied statistics that are percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results showed that Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students were satisfied to the place of listening service, followed by channels of broadcasting that cover both analog signals on 97.25 MHz FM and online via the Internet. However, the satisfaction level of the content offered was very low. Most of the students want the station to improve the content. Entertainment content was requested the most, followed by sports content. The lowest satisfaction level is with the broadcasting quality through analog signal. Most students asked the station to improve on the issue. However, overall, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students were satisfied with the university radio station broadcasted online via the university website.

Keywords: Satisfaction, students, radio station, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University.

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Authors: Ghias ul Hassan, Bilal Nasir, Israr ul Haque, ShafiqAwan, Ghias Un NabiTayyab, S. Hassan Akhtar Bokhari, Khawar Saeed, Qazi Masroor

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Introduction: Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin combination is standard of care in the management of chronic HCV infected patients. Efficacy of the therapy is judged by the ability to achieve biochemical and virological response as judged by RVR, EVR, ETR and SVR.Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of newly marketed biosimilar Pegylated Interferon Alpha 40KD (Peg INF) in chronic HCV patients. Materials and methods: This was observational, prospective multicentre study to evaluate the ability of biosimilar pegylated interferon alfa 2a (40KD) along with Ribavirin (weight based) to achieve SVR. The enrolled patients were separated into Naïve (A), Relapsers (B) and Non Responders(C) based on the previous history of interferon exposure and its response. The RGT was followed on ALT and RVR, EVR, ETR and SVR.Results:As per protocol analysis estimated SVR for three groups is 86.6% for naïve, 89.4% for relapsers and 52.4% for non-responders to standard interferon. Conclusion: It is concluded that Bio-similar pegylated interferon alfa-2a (40kD) along with Ribavirin has good anti-viral efficacy in Naïve, Relapsers and Non-responders to standard IFN of chronic HCV infected patients requiring treatment.

Keywords: SVR (Sustained virological response), NR (Nonresponders), Pegylated Interferon.

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Authors: Chris Fersterer, Col Fay, Tobias Danielmeier, Kat Achterberg, Scott Willis

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New Zealand, an island nation, has an extensive coastline peppered with small communities of iconic buildings known as Bachs. Post WWII, these modest buildings were constructed by their owners as retreats and generally were small, low cost, often using recycled material and often they fell below current acceptable building standards. In the latter part of the 20^th century, real estate prices in many of these communities remained low and these areas became permanent residences for people attracted to this affordable lifestyle choice. The Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust (BRCT) is an organisation that recognises the vulnerability of communities in low lying settlements as now being prone to increased flood threat brought about by climate change and sea level rise. Some of the inhabitants of Blueskin Bay, Otago, NZ have already found their properties to be un-insurable because of increased frequency of flood events and property values have slumped accordingly. Territorial authorities also acknowledge this increased risk and have created additional compliance measures for new buildings that are less than 2 m above tidal peaks. Community resilience becomes an additional concern where inhabitants are attracted to a lifestyle associated with a specific location and its people when this lifestyle is unable to be met in a suburban or city context. Traditional models of social housing fail to provide the sense of community connectedness and identity enjoyed by the current residents of Blueskin Bay. BRCT have partnered with the Otago Polytechnic Design School to design a new form of community housing that can react to this environmental change. It is a longitudinal project incorporating participatory approaches as a means of getting people ‘on board’, to understand complex systems and co-develop solutions. In the first period, they are seeking industry support and funding to develop a transportable and fully self-contained housing model that exploits current technologies. BRCT also hope that the building will become an educational tool to highlight climate change issues facing us today. This paper uses the Climate Safe House (CSH) as a case study for education in architectural sustainability through experiential learning offered as part of the Otago Polytechnics Bachelor of Design. Students engage with the project with research methodologies, including site surveys, resident interviews, data sourced from government agencies and physical modelling. The process involves collaboration across design disciplines including product and interior design but also includes connections with industry, both within the education institution and stakeholder industries introduced through BRCT. This project offers a rich learning environment where students become engaged through project based learning within a community of practice, including architecture, construction, energy and other related fields. The design outcomes are expressed in a series of public exhibitions and forums where community input is sought in a truly participatory process.

Keywords: Community resilience, problem based learning, project based learning, case study.

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Authors: Nhon Do, Thuong Huynh, An Pham

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Nowadays, organizing a repository of documents and resources for learning on a special field as Information Technology (IT), together with search techniques based on domain knowledge or document-s content is an urgent need in practice of teaching, learning and researching. There have been several works related to methods of organization and search by content. However, the results are still limited and insufficient to meet user-s demand for semantic document retrieval. This paper presents a solution for the organization of a repository that supports semantic representation and processing in search. The proposed solution is a model which integrates components such as an ontology describing domain knowledge, a database of document repository, semantic representation for documents and a file system; with problems, semantic processing techniques and advanced search techniques based on measuring semantic similarity. The solution is applied to build a IT learning materials management system of a university with semantic search function serving students, teachers, and manager as well. The application has been implemented, tested at the University of Information Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and has achieved good results.

Keywords: document retrieval system, knowledgerepresentation, document representation, semantic search, ontology.

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Authors: A. Montazar

Abstract:

The great challenge of the agricultural sector is to produce more crop from less water, which can be achieved by increasing crop water productivity. The modernization of the irrigation systems offers a number of possibilities to expand the economic productivity of water and improve the virtual water status. The objective of the present study is to assess the global water productivity (GWP) within the major irrigation command areas of I.R. Iran. For this purpose, fourteen irrigation command areas where located in different areas of Iran were selected. In order to calculate the global water productivity of irrigation command areas, all data on the delivered water to cropping pattern, cultivated area, crops water requirement, and yield production rate during 2002-2006 were gathered. In each of the command areas it seems that the cultivated crops have a higher amount of virtual water and thus can be replaced by crops with less virtual water. This is merely suggested due to crop water consumption and at the time of replacing crops, economic value as well as cultural and political factors must be considered. The results indicated that the lowest GWP belongs to Mahyar and Borkhar irrigation areas, 0.24 kg m-3, and the highest is that of the Dez irrigation area, 0.81 kg m-3. The findings demonstrated that water management in the two irrigation areas is just efficient. The difference in the GWP of irrigation areas is due to variations in the cropping pattern, amount of crop productions, in addition to the effective factors in the water use efficiency in the irrigation areas.

Keywords: Iran, Irrigation command area, Water productivity, Virtual water.

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