Search results for: Public Facility Location

Authors: J. Nikolov, N. Todorovic, S. Forkapic, I. Bikit, D. Mrdja

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Exposure to radon occurs when breathing airborne radon while using water: showering, washing dishes, cooking, and drinking water that contain radon. The results of radon activity measurements in water from public drinking fountain in city of Novi Sad, Serbia is presented in this paper. Radon level in some samples exceeded EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recommendation for maximum contaminant level (MCL) for radon in drinking water of 11.1 Bq/l.

Keywords: radon, radioactivity dose, public drink fountain.

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Authors: M. Ahmadi Baseri, R. Mokhtari Malekabadi, A. Gandomkar

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Nowadays, one of the most important problems of the metropolises and the world large cities is the habitant traffic difficulty and lack of sufficient parking site for the vehicles. Esfahan city as the third metropolis of Iran has encountered with the vehicles parkingplace problems in the most parts of fourteen regions of the city. The non principled and non systematic dispersal and lack of parking sites in the city has created an unfavorable status for its traffic and has caused the air and sound pollutions increase; in addition, it wastes the most portions of the citizenship and travelers' charge and time in urban pathways and disturbs their mental and psychical calmness, thus leads to their intensive dissatisfaction. In this study, by the usage of AHP model in GIS environment, the effective criteria in selecting the public parking sites have been combined with each other, and the results of the created layers overlapping represent the parking utilitarian vastness and widths. The achieved results of this research indicate the pretty appropriate public parking sites selection in region number 3 of Esfahan; but inconsequential dispersal and lack of these parking sites in this region have caused abundant transportation problems in Esfahan city.

Keywords: Public parking lots, Parking site selection, Geographical Information System (GIS), Hierarchical Analysis Model, Isfahan city.

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Authors: Manal Rayes

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In its efforts to utilize the information and communication technology to enhance the quality of public service delivery, national and local governments around the world are competing to introduce more ICT applications as tools to automate processes related to law enforcement or policy execution, increase citizen orientation, trust, and satisfaction, and create one-stop-shops for public services. In its implementation, e-Government ICTs need to maintain transparency, participation, and collaboration. Due to this diverse of mixed goals and requirements, e-Government systems need to be designed based on special design considerations in order to eliminate the risks of failure to compliance to government regulations, citizen dissatisfaction, or market repulsion. In this article we suggest a framework with guidelines for designing government information systems that takes into consideration the special requirements of the public sector. Then we introduce two case studies and show how applying those guidelines would result in a more solid system design.

Keywords: e-government, framework, guidelines, system design.

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Authors: Seyed Mohammad Nasir Mousavi, Pasha Hejazi, Maryam Ebrahimian Dehkordi

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In order to study the Mutual effect of genotype × environment for the percent of oil index in sunflower items, an experiment was accomplished form complete random block designs in four iteration and was four diverse researching station comprising Esfahan, Birjand, Sari, and Karaj. Complex variance analysis showed that there is an important diversity between the items under investigation. The results relevant the coefficient variation of items Azargol and Vidoc has respectively allocated the minimum coefficient of variations. According to the results extrapolated from Shokla stability variance, the Items Brocar, Allison and Fabiola, are among the stable genotypes for oil percent respectively. In the biplot GGE, the location under investigations divided in two superenvironments, first one comprised of locations naming Esfahan, Karaj, and Birjand, and second one were such a location as Sari. By this point of view, in the first super-environment, the Item Fabiola and in the second Almanzor item was among the best items and crops.

Keywords: Sunflower, Stability, GGE biplot, Super- Environment.

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Authors: L. S. Zavodna, J. Zavodny Pospisil

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The aim of this paper is to identify the factors for sustainability in the accommodation sector. Although sustainability is a current trend in tourism, not many facilities know how to apply the concept in practice. This paper presents a model for the implementation of sustainability in hotels, hostels, campgrounds, or other facilities. First, there are identified sections of each accommodation facility, which can contribute to sustainability. Furthermore, concrete steps are presented to transfer this model into reality.

Keywords: Accommodation sector, model, sustainable tourism, sustainability.

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Authors: Jean-Pierre Dubois, Jihad S. Daba, M. Nader, C. El Ferkh

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GSM has undoubtedly become the most widespread cellular technology and has established itself as one of the most promising technology in wireless communication. The next generation of mobile telephones had also become more powerful and innovative in a way that new services related to the user-s location will arise. Other than the 911 requirements for emergency location initiated by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) of the United States, GSM positioning can be highly integrated in cellular communication technology for commercial use. However, GSM positioning is facing many challenges. Issues like accuracy, availability, reliability and suitable cost render the development and implementation of GSM positioning a challenging task. In this paper, we investigate the optimal mobile position tracking means. We employ an innovative scheme by integrating the Kalman filter in the localization process especially that it has great tracking characteristics. When tracking in two dimensions, Kalman filter is very powerful due to its reliable performance as it supports estimation of past, present, and future states, even when performing in unknown environments. We show that enhanced position tracking results is achieved when implementing the Kalman filter for GSM tracking.

Keywords: Cellular communication, estimation, GSM, Kalman filter, positioning

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Authors: Medya Fathi

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When public transportation projects were delivered through design-bid-build and later design-build, governments found a serious issue: inadequate funding. With population growth, governments began to develop new arrangements in which the private sectors were involved to cut the financial burden. This arrangement, Public-Private Partnership (PPP), has its own risks; however, performance outputs can motivate or discourage its use. On top of such output are time and budget, which can be affected by the type of project delivery methods. Project completion within or ahead of schedule as well as within or under budget is among any owner’s objectives. With a higher application of PPP in the highway industry in the US and insufficient research, the current study addresses the schedule and cost performance of PPP highway projects and determines which one outperforms the other. To meet this objective, after collecting performance data of all PPP projects, schedule growth and cost growth are calculated, and finally, statistical analysis is conducted to evaluate the PPP performance. The results show that PPP highway projects on average have saved time and cost; however, the main benefit is a faster delivery rather than an under-budget completion. This study can provide better insights to understand PPP highways’ performance and assist practitioners in applying PPP for transportation projects with the opportunity to save time and cost.

Keywords: Cost, delivery method, highway, public-private partnership, schedule, transportation.

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Authors: Muhammad F. Yaqub, Iqbal Gondal, Joarder Kamruzzaman

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Occurrence of a multiple-points fault in machine operations could result in exhibiting complex fault signatures, which could result in lowering fault diagnosis accuracy. In this study, a multiple-points defect model (MPDM) is proposed which can simulate fault signature-s dynamics for n-points bearing faults. Furthermore, this study identifies that in case of multiple-points fault in the rotary machine, the location of the dominant component of defect frequency shifts depending upon the relative location of the fault points which could mislead the fault diagnostic model to inaccurate detections. Analytical and experimental results are presented to characterize and validate the variation in the dominant component of defect frequency. Based on envelop detection analysis, a modification is recommended in the existing fault diagnostic models to consider the multiples of defect frequency rather than only considering the frequency spectrum at the defect frequency in order to incorporate the impact of multiple points fault.

Keywords: Envelop detection, machine defect frequency, multiple faults, machine health monitoring.

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Authors: Aishwarya Shekhar, Devesh Kumar Srivastava

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Cloud computing has emerged as a promising direction for cost efficient and reliable service delivery across data communication networks. The dynamic location of service facilities and the virtualization of hardware and software elements are stressing the communication networks and protocols, especially when data centres are interconnected through the internet. Although the computing aspects of cloud technologies have been largely investigated, lower attention has been devoted to the networking services without involving IT operating overhead. Cloud computing has enabled elastic and transparent access to infrastructure services without involving IT operating overhead. Virtualization has been a key enabler for cloud computing. While resource virtualization and service abstraction have been widely investigated, networking in cloud remains a difficult puzzle. Even though network has significant role in facilitating hybrid cloud scenarios, it hasn't received much attention in research community until recently. We propose Network as a Service (NaaS), which forms the basis of unifying public and private clouds. In this paper, we identify various challenges in adoption of hybrid cloud. We discuss the design and implementation of a cloud platform.

Keywords: Cloud computing, networking, infrastructure, hybrid cloud, open stack, Naas.

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Authors: C. R. Balamurugan, P. Vijayakumar, P. Kiruba, S. Arun Kanna, E. R. Hariprasath, C. Anu Priya

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This paper studies in details about the need of quadcopter in various fields especially in the place of remote area where the road transportation facility is very less. It is used to monitor and collect data in a specific region. The movement of this quadcopter is controlled by the Raspberry Pi. FPV camera is used for capturing the image and will transmit the image to the receiver which can be monitored using an android smart phone. This is mainly used for surveillance purpose and hidden activities can be captured.

Keywords: FPV camera, A2212 brushless direct current motor, Raspberry Pi, lithium polymer battery.

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Authors: Julinda Keçi

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

Keywords: Construction, infrastructure, public private partnerships, risks.

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Authors: Poramet Saeng-On

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This research aims to develop ways of lodging business management of Bang Khonthi community in Samut Songkram province that are appropriate with the cultural context of the Bang Khonthi community. Eight lodging business owners were interviewed. It was found that lodging business that are family business must be done with passion, correct understanding of self, culture, nature, Thai way of life, thorough, professional development, environmentally concerned, building partnerships with various networks both community level, and public sector and business cohorts. Public relations should be done through media both traditional and modern outlets, such as websites and social networks to provide customers convenience, security, happiness, knowledge, love and value when travel to Bang Khonthi. This will also help them achieve sustainability in business, in line with the 10 Home Stay Standard Thailand. Suggestions for operators are as follows: Operators need to improve their public relations work. They need to use technology in public relations such as the internet. Management standards must be improved. Souvenir and local products shops should be arranged in the compound. Product pricing must be set accordingly. They need to join hands to help each other. Quality of the business operation should be raised to meet the standards. Educational measures to reduce the impact caused by tourism on the community such as efforts to reduce energy consumption.

Keywords: Homestay, lodging business, management, standard.

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Authors: Jintana Khemprasit, Vatcharaporn Esichaikul

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Crime is a major societal problem for most of the world's nations. Consequently, the police need to develop new methods to improve their efficiency in dealing with these ever increasing crime rates. Two of the common difficulties that the police face in crime control are crime investigation and the provision of crime information to the general public to help them protect themselves. Crime control in police operations involves the use of spatial data, crime data and the related crime data from different organizations (depending on the nature of the analysis to be made). These types of data are collected from several heterogeneous sources in different formats and from different platforms, resulting in a lack of standardization. Moreover, there is no standard framework for crime data collection, integration and dissemination through mobile devices. An investigation into the current situation in crime control was carried out to identify the needs to resolve these issues. This paper proposes and investigates the use of service oriented architecture (SOA) and the mobile spatial information service in crime control. SOA plays an important role in crime control as an appropriate way to support data exchange and model sharing from heterogeneous sources. Crime control also needs to facilitate mobile spatial information services in order to exchange, receive, share and release information based on location to mobile users anytime and anywhere.

Keywords: Crime Control, Geographic Information System (GIS), Mobile GIS, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

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Authors: Kai-Ying A. Chan, Leon A.G. Oerlemans, Marthinus W. Pretorius

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Science parks are often established to drive regional economic growth, especially in countries with emerging economies. However, mixed findings regarding the performances of science park firms are found in the literature. This study tries to explain these mixed findings by taking a relational approach and exploring (un)intended knowledge transfers between new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in the emerging South African economy. Moreover, the innovation outcomes of these NTBFs are examined by using a multi-dimensional construct. Results show that science park location plays a significant role in explaining innovative sales, but is insignificant when a different indicator of innovation outcomes is used. Furthermore, only for innovations that are new to the firms, both science park location and intended knowledge transfer via informal business relationships have a positive impact; whereas social relationships have a negative impact.

Keywords: knowledge flows, innovative performances, science parks, new technology-based firms

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Authors: Hasimah Sapiri, Anton Abdulbasah Kamil, Razman Mat Tahar, Hanafi Tumin

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Salary risk and demographic risk have been identified as main risks in analyzing pension expenditure particularly in Defined Benefit pension plan. Therefore, public pension plan in Malaysia is studied to analyze pension expenditure due to salary and demographic risk. Through the literature review and interview session with several officers in public sector, factors affecting pension expenditure are determined. Then, the inter-relationships between these factors are analyzed through causal loop diagram. The System Dynamics model is later developed using iThink software to show how demographic and salary changes affect the pension expenditure. Then, by using actual data, the impact of different policy scenarios on pension expenditure is analyzed. It is shown that dynamics simulation model of pension expenditure is useful to evaluate the impact of changes and policy decisions on risk particularly involving demographic and salary risk.

Keywords: Demographic and Salary risk, Pension Expenditure, Public Policy, System Dynamics.

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Authors: Nikolaos Georgantzis, Efi Vasileiou

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We present results from experimental price-setting oligopolies in which green firms undertake different levels of energy-saving investments motivated by public subsidies and demand-side advantages. We find that consumers reveal higher willingness to pay for greener sellers’ products. This observation in conjunction to the fact that greener sellers set higher prices is compatible with the use and interpretation of energy-saving behaviour as a differentiation strategy. However, sellers do not exploit the resulting advantage through sufficiently high price-cost margins, because they seem trapped into “run to stay still” competition. Regarding the use of public subsidies to energy-saving sellers we uncover an undesirable crowding-out effect of consumers’ intrinsic tendency to support green manufacturers. Namely, consumers may be less willing to support a green seller whose energy-saving strategy entails a direct financial benefit. Finally, we disentangle two alternative motivations for consumer’s attractions to pro-social firms; first, the self-interested recognition of the firm’s contribution to the public and private welfare and, second, the need to compensate a firm for the cost entailed in each pro-social action. Our results show the prevalence of the former over the latter.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, energy savings, public good, experiments, vertical differentiation, altruism.

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Authors: Tayebeh Saghapour, Sara Moridpour, Russell George Thompson

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One of the common aims of transport policy makers is to switch people’s travel to active transport. For this purpose, a variety of transport goals and investments should be programmed to increase the propensity towards active transport mode choice. This paper aims to investigate whether built environment features in neighbourhoods could enhance the odds of active transportation. The present study introduces an index measuring public transport accessibility (PTAI), and a walkability index along with socioeconomic variables to investigate mode choice behaviour. Using travel behaviour data, an ordered logit regression model is applied to examine the impacts of explanatory variables on walking trips. The findings indicated that high rates of active travel are consistently associated with higher levels of walking and public transport accessibility.

Keywords: Active transport, public transport accessibility, walkability, ordered logit model.

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Authors: S. Priyanto, E.P Friandi

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Yogyakarta, as the capital city of Yogyakarta Province, has important roles in various sectors that require good provision of public transportation system. Ideally, a good transportation system should be able to accommodate the amount of travel demand. This research attempts to develop a trip generation model to predict the number of public transport passenger in Yogyakarta city. The model is built by using multiple linear regression analysis, which establishes relationship between trip number and socioeconomic attributes. The data consist of primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected by conducting household surveys which randomly selected. The resulted model is further applied to evaluate the existing TransJogja, a new Bus Rapid Transit system serves Yogyakarta and surrounding cities, shelters.

Keywords: Multiple linear regression, shelter evaluation, travel demand, trip generation.

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Authors: Riham A. Ragheb

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Water is a fundamental attraction in all cultures and among all classes of people,tourists and citizens. It is a favorite location for major tourism initiatives, celebrations and ceremonies. The vitality of any city depends on citizen action to take part in creating the neighborhoods they desire. Waterfront can provide extensive new areas of high quality public open space in parts of the city that are popular venues for social activities and also have the highest land values. Each city must have a character that can be used as a key attraction for the development. The morphology of a waterfront can be identified by both its physical characteristics and the socio-cultural activities that take place in the area. Alexandria has been selected as an area of study because it has a unique character due to its possession of a variety of waterfronts.

This paper aims to set some criteria of successful waterfront development and then through these criteria analyzing the development of the Qaitbay waterfront in the eastern harbor in Alexandria, Egypt. Hence, a comprehensive improvement of the waterfront areas is certainly needed to ensure a successful waterfront development radiated the sense of uniformity and coherence.

Alexandria can benefit from these criteria to develop its urban waterfront in order to preserve and revitalize its unique waterfront character and achieve mixed uses and tourism development.

Keywords: Place making, Qaitbay, responsive environment, sustainable urban design, waterfront development.

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Authors: Thomas S. Abia II, Citlali Garcia-Saucedo

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A continuous copper precipitation treatment (CCPT) system was conceived at Intel Chandler Site to serve as a first-of-kind (FOK) facility-scale waste copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and manganese (Mn) co-precipitation facility. The process was designed to treat highly variable wastewater discharged from a substrate packaging research factory. The paper discusses metals co-precipitation induced by internal changes for manufacturing facilities that lack the capacity for hardware expansion due to real estate restrictions, aggressive schedules, or budgetary constraints. Herein, operating parameters such as pH and oxidation reduction potential (ORP) were examined to analyze the ability of the CCPT System to immobilize various waste metals. Additionally, influential factors such as influent concentrations and retention times were investigated to quantify the environmental variability against system performance. A total of 2,027 samples were analyzed and statistically evaluated to measure the performance of CCPT that was internally retrofitted for Mn abatement to meet environmental regulations. In order to enhance the consistency of the influent, a separate holding tank was cannibalized from another system to collect and slow-feed the segregated Mn wastewater from the factory into CCPT. As a result, the baseline influent Mn decreased from 17.2+18.7 mg¹L^-1 at pre-pilot to 5.15+8.11 mg¹L^-1 post-pilot (70.1% reduction). Likewise, the pre-trial and post-trial average influent Cu values to CCPT were 52.0+54.6 mg¹L^-1 and 33.9+12.7 mg¹L^-1, respectively (34.8% reduction). However, the raw Ni content of 0.97+0.39 mg¹L^-1 at pre-pilot increased to 1.06+0.17 mg¹L^-1 at post-pilot. The average Mn output declined from 10.9+11.7 mg¹L^-1 at pre-pilot to 0.44+1.33 mg¹L^-1 at post-pilot (96.0% reduction) as a result of the pH and ORP operating setpoint changes. In similar fashion, the output Cu quality improved from 1.60+5.38 mg¹L^-1 to 0.55+1.02 mg¹L^-1 (65.6% reduction) while the Ni output sustained a 50% enhancement during the pilot study (0.22+0.19 mg¹L^-1 reduced to 0.11+0.06 mg¹L^-1). pH and ORP were shown to be significantly instrumental to the precipitative versatility of the CCPT System.

Keywords: Copper, co-precipitation, industrial wastewater treatment, manganese, optimization, pilot study.

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Authors: Roshayani Arshad, Normah Omar, Siti Fatimah Awang

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The move from cash accounting to accrual accounting, or rule-based to principle-based accounting, by many governments is part of an ongoing efforts in promoting a more business-like and performance-focused public sector. Using questionnaire responses from preparers of financial statements of public universities in Malaysia, this study examines the implementation challenges and benefits of principle-based accounting. Results from these responses suggest that most respondents perceived significant costs would be incurred in relation to staff training and recruitment of staffs with relevant technical knowledge. In addition, most respondents also perceived that there will be significant changes in the current accounting system and structure in order to comply with the principle-based accounting requirements. However, most respondents perceived that these changes might not result in significant benefits for management purposes, for example, financial management, budgeting and allocation of resources. Nevertheless, most respondents perceived that principle-based accounting information would facilitate the monitoring function of the board. The general perception is that adoption of principle-based accounting information is not significantly useful than rule-based accounting information is expected to change over time as preparers of the financial statements gradually understand and appreciate the benefits of principle-based accounting information. This infers that the perceived usefulness of different accounting system is a function of familiarity by the preparers.

Keywords: Accrual accounting, principle-based accounting, public sector, rule-based accounting.

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Authors: Chimaobi V. Okolo, Kenneth A. Okpala, Johnbull S. Ogboi

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A teeming set of doctors that graduated from various universities within and outside Nigeria with the hope of practicing in the country, has their hope shattered because of poor financing, lack of medical equipments and a very weak healthcare systems. Such hydra headed challenges, allows room for quackery which increasingly contributes to the cause of mortality in Nigeria. With a view of reversing the challenges of healthcare delivery and financing in Nigeria, African Health Market for Equity (AHME), a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation [With contribution from Department For International Development (DFID)] and currently implemented in three African Countries (Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana) over a Five (5) year period supports the healthcare sector via Medical credit fund (MCF). The study examines the impact of credit policy and medical credit funding on Nigerian health market. Ordinary least square analysis, correlation and granger causality tests were employed to measure the extent to which the Nigerian healthcare market has been influenced. Medical credit fund significantly and positively influenced average monthly turnover of private healthcare providers and Commercial bank’s lending rate had a weak relationship with access to credit/approved loans (13.46%). The programme has so far made 13.91% progress, which is very poor, considering the minimum targeted private health care providers (437.6) and expected number of loan approvals (180.4) for the two years. Medical credit policy in Nigeria should be revised to include private healthcare providers in rural area for more positive impact and increased returns. Good brand advert and sensitization of the programme to stakeholders and health pressure group, and an extension of the programme beyond five years is necessary to better address the issues raised in the study.

Keywords: Credit, health market, medical credit facility, policy.

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Authors: Pimporn Thongmuang

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The import value of Antimicrobial drugs reached approximately fifteen million Baht in 2010, considered as the highest import value of all modern drugs, and this value is rising every year. Antimicrobials are considered the hazardous drugs by the Ministry of Public Health (No. 10). This research was conducted in order to investigate the past knowledge of drug use and Antimicrobial drug use behavior. A total of 757 students were selected as the samples out of a population of 1,800 students. This selected students had the experience of Antimicrobial drugs use a year ago. A questionnaire was utilized in this research. The findings put on the view that knowledge gained by the students about proper use of Antimicrobials drugs was not brought into practice. This suggests that the education procedure regarding drug use needs adjustment. And therefore the findings of this research are expected to be utilized as guidelines for educating people about the proper use of Antimicrobials drugs. At a broader perspective, correct drug use behavior of the public may potentially reduce drug cost of the Ministry of Public Health of Thailand.

Keywords: Drug Use Knowledge, Antimicrobial Drugs, Drug Use Behavior.

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Authors: Robert Koch, Mario Golling, Gabi Dreo Rodosek

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Tracing and locating the geographical location of users (Geolocation) is used extensively in todays Internet. Whenever we, e.g., request a page from google we are - unless there was a specific configuration made - automatically forwarded to the page with the relevant language and amongst others, dependent on our location identified, specific commercials are presented. Especially within the area of Network Security, Geolocation has a significant impact. Because of the way the Internet works, attacks can be executed from almost everywhere. Therefore, for an attribution, knowledge of the origination of an attack - and thus Geolocation - is mandatory in order to be able to trace back an attacker. In addition, Geolocation can also be used very successfully to increase the security of a network during operation (i.e. before an intrusion actually has taken place). Similar to greylisting in emails, Geolocation allows to (i) correlate attacks detected with new connections and (ii) as a consequence to classify traffic a priori as more suspicious (thus particularly allowing to inspect this traffic in more detail). Although numerous techniques for Geolocation are existing, each strategy is subject to certain restrictions. Following the ideas of Endo et al., this publication tries to overcome these shortcomings with a combined solution of different methods to allow improved and optimized Geolocation. Thus, we present our architecture for improved Geolocation, by designing a new algorithm, which combines several Geolocation techniques to increase the accuracy.

Keywords: IP geolocation, prosecution of computer fraud, attack attribution, target-analysis

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Authors: Kalayanee Koonmee

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An incentive for performance, as one subsystem of a new performance management system, has been implemented in the Thai public sector since 2004. This research investigates the development of organizational justice in the incentive allocation by comparing the roles of distributive and procedural justice on national personnel-s attitudinal outcomes (incentive satisfaction and job performance) between 2 periods, i.e. 2006 and 2008. The data were collected via self-administered questionnaires completed by national government officers and employees. They were stratified using multistage sampling with 2,600 usable samples or 72.0% response rate in 2006, and 1,969 usable samples or 59.3% in 2008. The findings are: (1) There is no difference in means between the two periods relating to distributive justice, procedural justice, incentive satisfaction and job performance. (2) Distributive justice and procedural justice played more important roles in predicting incentive satisfaction and job performance in 2008 than in 2006.

Keywords: Distributive justice, incentive allocation, proceduraljustice, Thai public sector.

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Authors: Kripesh Adhikari, Hamid Bouchachia, Hammadi Nait-Charif

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Falls are one of the major causes of injury and death among elderly people aged 65 and above. A support system to identify such kind of abnormal activities have become extremely important with the increase in ageing population. Pose estimation is a challenging task and to add more to this, it is even more challenging when pose estimations are performed on challenging poses that may occur during fall. Location of the body provides a clue where the person is at the time of fall. This paper presents a vision-based tracking strategy where available joints are grouped into three different feature points depending upon the section they are located in the body. The three feature points derived from different joints combinations represents the upper region or head region, mid-region or torso and lower region or leg region. Tracking is always challenging when a motion is involved. Hence the idea is to locate the regions in the body in every frame and consider it as the tracking strategy. Grouping these joints can be beneficial to achieve a stable region for tracking. The location of the body parts provides a crucial information to distinguish normal activities from falls.

Keywords: Fall detection, machine learning, deep learning, pose estimation, tracking.

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Authors: Ferdi Sönmez, Nihal Yorulmaz

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Decision making on the true planning of the public transportation systems to serve potential users is a must for metropolitan areas. To take attraction of travelers to projected modes of transport, adequately fair overall travel times should be provided. In this fashion, other benefits such as lower traffic congestion, road safety and lower noise and atmospheric pollution may be earned. The congestion which comes with increasing demand of public transportation is becoming a part of our lives and making residents’ life difficult. Hence, regulations should be done to reduce this congestion. To provide a constructive and balanced regulation in public transportation systems, right stations should be located in right places. In this study, it is aimed to design and implement a Decision Support System (DSS) Application to determine the optimal bus stop places for public transport in Istanbul which is one of the biggest and oldest cities in the world. Required information is gathered from IETT (Istanbul Electricity, Tram and Tunnel) Enterprises which manages all public transportation services in Istanbul Metropolitan Area. By using the most real-like values, cost assignments are made. The cost is calculated with the help of equations produced by bi-level optimization model. For this study, 300 buses, 300 drivers, 10 lines and 110 stops are used. The user cost of each station and the operator cost taken place in lines are calculated. Some components like cost, security and noise pollution are considered as significant factors affecting the solution of set covering problem which is mentioned for identifying and locating the minimum number of possible bus stops. Preliminary research and model development for this study refers to previously published article of the corresponding author. Model results are represented with the intent of decision support to the specialists on locating stops effectively.

Keywords: User cost, bi-level optimization model, decision support, operator cost, transportation.

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Authors: Kgabo H. Badimo, Sheryl Buckley

Abstract:

Knowledge is increasingly recognised in this, the knowledge era, as a strategic resource, by public sector organisations, in view of the public sector reform initiatives. People and knowledge play a vital role in attaining improved organisational performance and high service quality. Many government departments in the public sector have started to realise the importance of knowledge management in streamlining their operations and processes. This study focused on knowledge management in the public healthcare service organisations, where the concept of service provider competitiveness pales to insignificance, considering the huge challenges emanating from the healthcare and public sector reforms. Many government departments are faced with challenges of improving organisational performance and service delivery, improving accountability, making informed decisions, capturing the knowledge of the aging workforce, and enhancing partnerships with stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the knowledge management practices of the Gauteng Department of Health in South Africa, in order to understand how knowledge management practices influence improvement in organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. This issue is explored through a review of literature on dominant views on knowledge management and healthcare service delivery, as well as results of interviews with, and questionnaire responses from, the general staff of the Gauteng Department of Health. Web-based questionnaires, face-to-face interviews and organisational documents were used to collect data. The data were analysed using both the quantitative and qualitative methods. The central question investigated was: To what extent can the conditions required for successful knowledge management be observed, in order to improve organisational performance and healthcare service delivery in the Gauteng Department of Health. The findings showed that the elements of knowledge management capabilities investigated in this study, namely knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge application, have a positive, significant relationship with all measures of organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. These findings thus indicate that by employing knowledge management principles, the Gauteng Department of Health could improve its ability to achieve its operational goals and objectives, and solve organisational and healthcare challenges, thereby improving organisational performance and enhancing healthcare service delivery in Gauteng.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Healthcare Service Delivery, Public Healthcare, Public Sector.

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Authors: M. Gomaa Abdoelatef, Robert M. Field, Lee, Yong-Kwan

Abstract:

Growing human population has placed increased demands on water supplies and spurred a heightened interest in desalination infrastructure. Key elements of the economics of desalination projects are thermal and electrical inputs. With growing concerns over use of fossil fuels to (indirectly) supply these inputs, coupling of desalination with nuclear power production represents a significant opportunity. Individually, nuclear and desalination technologies have a long history and are relatively mature. For desalination, Reverse Osmosis (RO) has the lowest energy inputs. However, the economically driven output quality of the water produced using RO, which uses only electrical inputs, is lower than the output water quality from thermal desalination plants. Therefore, modern desalination projects consider that RO should be coupled with thermal desalination technologies (MSF, MED, or MED-TVC) with attendant steam inputs to permit blending to produce various qualities of water. A large nuclear facility is well positioned to dispatch large quantities of both electrical and thermal power. This paper considers the supply of thermal energy to a large desalination facility to examine heat balance impact on the nuclear steam cycle. The APR1400 nuclear plant is selected as prototypical from both a capacity and turbine cycle heat balance perspective to examine steam supply and the impact on electrical output. Extraction points and quantities of steam are considered parametrically along with various types of thermal desalination technologies to form the basis for further evaluations of economically optimal approaches to the interface of nuclear power production with desalination projects. In our study, the thermodynamic evaluation will be executed by DE-TOP, an IAEA sponsored program. DE-TOP has capabilities to analyze power generation systems coupled to desalination plants through various steam extraction positions, taking into consideration the isolation loop between the nuclear and the thermal desalination facilities (i.e., for radiological isolation).

Keywords: APR1400, Cogeneration, Desalination, DE-TOP, IAEA, MED, MED-TVC, MSF, RO.

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Authors: Panikos Heracleous

Abstract:

In this study, the use of silicon NAM (Non-Audible Murmur) microphone in automatic speech recognition is presented. NAM microphones are special acoustic sensors, which are attached behind the talker-s ear and can capture not only normal (audible) speech, but also very quietly uttered speech (non-audible murmur). As a result, NAM microphones can be applied in automatic speech recognition systems when privacy is desired in human-machine communication. Moreover, NAM microphones show robustness against noise and they might be used in special systems (speech recognition, speech conversion etc.) for sound-impaired people. Using a small amount of training data and adaptation approaches, 93.9% word accuracy was achieved for a 20k Japanese vocabulary dictation task. Non-audible murmur recognition in noisy environments is also investigated. In this study, further analysis of the NAM speech has been made using distance measures between hidden Markov model (HMM) pairs. It has been shown the reduced spectral space of NAM speech using a metric distance, however the location of the different phonemes of NAM are similar to the location of the phonemes of normal speech, and the NAM sounds are well discriminated. Promising results in using nonlinear features are also introduced, especially under noisy conditions.

Keywords: Speech recognition, unvoiced speech, nonlinear features, HMM distance measures

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