Coastal resource planning system: Integrating evaluation of ecological integrity and ecosystem services valuation

Efficient and effective coastal management decisions rely on knowledge of the impact of human activities on ecosystem integrity, vulnerable species, and valued ecosystem services—collectively, human impact on environmental quality (EQ). Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is an emerging approach to address the dynamics and complexities of coupled social-ecological systems. EBM “is intended to directly address the long-term sustainable delivery of ecosystem services and the resilience of marine ecosystems to perturbations” (Rosenberg and Sandifer, 2009). The lack of a tool that integrates human choices with the ecological connections between contributing watersheds and nearshore areas, and that incorporates valuation of ecosystem services, is a critical missing piece needed for effective and efficient coastal management. To address the need for an integrative tool for evaluation of human impacts on ecosystems and their services, Battelle developed the EcoVal™ Environmental Quality Evaluation System. The EcoVal system is an updated (2009) version of the EQ Evaluation System for Water Resources developed by Battelle for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Dee et al., 1972). The Battelle EQ evaluation system has a thirty-year history of providing a standard approach to evaluate watershed EQ. This paper describes the conceptual approach and methodology of the updated EcoVal system and its potential application to coastal ecosystems. (PDF contains 4 pages

Decision Support System for Managing and Determining International Class Program

Indonesian higher education today is faced with serious challenges that will threaten the existence of some universities. An increasing international competition will require that universities take a progressive approach to attract enough students to ensure their survival. One way the universities must improve is in the quality of their administration management. While universities in Indonesia do not compare well internationally, steps can be taken to improve the quality. There are potential lessons to be learned from corporate experience in quality control management. Decision-making in the field of academic resource planning involves extensive analysis of many data originating from multiple systems. Academic resource planning management is concerned with management resources in order to effectively support the university’s educational framework (such as offered degrees, enrolment and retention, resources teaching, course structure and curriculum). We propose a methodology for managing and determining the proposed International class based on many criteria of academic performance in university. The approach has been implemented as a decision support system allowing evaluation of various criteria and scenarios. The system combines two different methods in decision support system: Analytical hierarchy Process (AHP) and linear weightage model, the proposed model uses the AHP pairwise comparisons and the measure scale to generate the weights for the criteria which are much better and guarantee more fairly preference of criteria. Applying the system as decision-support facility for the management has resulted in significant acceleration of planning procedures and implementation, raised the overall effectiveness with respect to the underlying methodology and ultimately enabled more efficient academic administration

An Adaptive Inventory Management System for Hospital Supply Chain

In healthcare, delivering high quality care to the patients typically requires significant investment in supply chain management systems. Inventory management is an important part of any supply chain system. Researchers have indicated great potential for optimizing existing healthcare inventory systems, especially within hospitals. With ever changing needs, product prices and policies, managing inventory of products in hospitals becomes difficult. As time progresses, the inventory policies of products become sub-optimal. In this research, we study multiple echelons of a hospital supply chain considering the distributors, to address the need for an efficient and effective hospital inventory management system. We propose a method consisting of two components: (1) system design and optimization; and (2) system monitoring, evaluation, and forecasting. The system design and optimization methodology includes a sim-heuristic approach where optimization of inventory levels and hospital operations is considered. As time evolves, to monitor the relevant system performance measures over time, control-chart like methods are used. When significant deviations in system performance occur, a re-evaluation of the inventory decision variables and/or system operations is conducted to maintain an efficient inventory system. A hierarchical procedure is used to determine the extent of evaluation of the system. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of this methodology

Enablers and Constraints in Implementing Lean Manufacturing: evidence from Brazilian SMEs

Lean Manufacturing has revolutionized the global manufacturing environment at an unprecedented rate. In scholarly and managerial literature, many works have reported that Lean Manufacturing is a very efficient approach and a straightforward way towards process improvements, in terms of productivity and value adding activities ratio. However, many studies on Lean Manufacturing have highlighted many problems in its implementation. The analysis carried out within the research project is aimed to the factors enabling or constraining the Lean Transformation of a firm’s production system, along with the most relevant tools or practices to be applied. The research methodology used is the so-called “Normative Delphi” with a panel formed by 32 experts coming from 16 Brazilian SMEs. Our results are partially consistent with what has already been discussed in the literature and we found that the most relevant tools/practices are: value stream mapping, 5S methodology, and Kaizen (Gemba walks); the top three enabling factors are: knowledge and sponsorship of senior management, focus on continuous improvement, and employee development fostered by the company; finally, the main critical constraints are: little support from the top management, resistance to change by middle management, and poor or non-qualified Lean training activities

Management of threats and errors in normal operations of assistant controllers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Aviation at Massey University

"To err is indeed human, so to err is normal" Human errors are usually pronounced in accident or incident reports. Seldom does one pay enough attention to these errors during daily normal operations as these either go unnoticed or unreported for whatsoever the reasons may be. Therefore, the causes of these errors and also the system threats prevalent in the daily operations may not be fully contained. On the other hand, problematic situations that are successfully tackled by human skills are quite often treated as less important than they really are. The job of an assistant controller (AC) is one of the important domains in air traffic management (ATM). The AC work together with air traffic controllers as team members and they do have direct and indirect contributions to the safe, orderly and efficient flow of air traffic. In this study, the threats, errors and potential undesired states occurring with AC during normal operations will be recorded by a methodology, which is new to Hong Kong Air Traffic Control (ATC). This methodology, called Normal Operations Safety Observation (NOSO), is built on the Threat and Error Management (TEM) framework. The results will generate a broad outline on what sorts of threats, errors and undesired states an AC can be facing during normal operations. The relative frequencies of occurrence of these conditions will be presented separately in tables and figures. The AC's potential vulnerabilities and capabilities to cope with these threats, errors and undesired states will be discussed together with a suggested ranking. It is envisaged that an analysis of the data collected will aid the development and evaluation of safety defence measures in ATM and further support the applicability of this data collection methodology in other ATM operations and subsequent researches. KEYWORDS:- Normal Operations Safety Observation, Threat and Error Management, Safety Management, Air Traffic Control

Evaluation of Property Management System (E-property) in Owerri Municipal Imo State, Southeast Nigeria

Property management system is a complete end-to-end solution to cover all aspects of Estate day to day activity and property buying and selling procedures for large and small organizations. The objective of this work is to develop and design an e-property management system that will automate all processes of property management to make information concerning properties available on demand. I was motivated by the problems associated with the manual property management such as loss of property documents, sales of the property with fake property documents, the conspiracy of fraudsters with the staff of the ministry of lands as well as the numerous litigations and other violent acts associated with manual property management. The software engineering methodology adopted is a structured system analysis and design methodology. The expected result is to develop a property management software that will guarantee the effective and efficient management of properties that can reduce illegal practices associated with property management

Methodology of Transportation System Management

In this paper, we propose an improved design methodology to meet the changing demands of an existing transport system available in rural or urban areas. This is necessary to focuses on the convenience and comfort for road users. Effective control of the overall transport system is essential to enhance the safety and convenience. However, onion changes in population coupled with the economic development, mean that most of the control and management methods can quickly become dated or even have been unsuitable, leading to the vehicle development. This paper thus seeks to develop a practical and efficient methodology to allow current transport system to be updated to alleviate congestion. For this purpose we undertake a comparison between internal transport system and urban traffic. The methodology useful for many applications which are necessary for development in current transport system

Requirement Model of School Attendance Monitoring System (SAMS) in Secondary Schools

The focus of this study is to get a good requirement model for Student Attendance Monitoring Systems (SAMS) in secondary school. It is aimed at system designer who want to know how to design an efficient SAMS. Methodology was used for this study requirement modelling process. The methodology comprises four main phases. requirements elicitation, requirements analysis, requirements management and requirements verification. At the end of this study, a SAMS prototype were designed based on the requirement model. User acceptance testing was conducted to examine user's satisfaction

Computational Modelling for Bankruptcy Prediction: Semantic data Analysis Integrating Graph Database and Financial Ontology

In this paper, we propose a novel intelligent methodology to construct a Bankruptcy Prediction Computation Model, which is aimed to execute a company's financial status analysis accurately. Based on the semantic data analysis and management, our methodology considers Semantic Database System as the core of the system. It comprises three layers: an Ontology of Bankruptcy Prediction, Semantic Search Engine, and a Semantic Analysis Graph Database system. The Ontological layer defines the basic concepts of the financial risk management as well as the objects that serve as sources of knowledge for predicting a company's bankruptcy. The Graph Database layer utilises a powerful semantic data technology, which serves as a semantic data repository for our model. The article provides a detailed description of the construction of the Ontology and its informal conceptual representation. We also present a working prototype of the Graph Database system, constructed using the Neo4j application, and show the connection between well-known financial ratios. We argue that this methodology which utilises state of the art semantic data management mechanisms enables data processing and relevant computations in a more efficient way than approaches using the traditional relational database. These give us solid grounds to build a system that is capable of tackling the data of any complexity level