Sustainability as a Multi-criteria Concept

Sustainability is a fairly old concept, born in the 18th century in the field of forestry, within a mono-functionality perspective. The concept has considerably evolved in the last few years towards a multi-functionality context, with applications reported in practically all areas of economic interest. On the other hand, modern sustainability is a complex problem, for two reasons: a) The multiplicity of functions of a very different nature involved in the process and b) The manner in which different segments of the society or stakeholders perceive the relative importance of these functions. For the above reasons, a realistic approach for dealing with the sustainability issue requires taking into consideration multiple criteria of different nature (economic, environmental and social), and in many cases within a participatory decision making framework. This book presents a collection of papers, dealing with different theoretical and applied issues of sustainability, with the help of a modern multi-criteria decision-making theory, with a single as well as several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Hopefully, this material will encourage academics and practitioners to alter their research in this hot and vital topic. After all, the sustainable management of the environment and its embedded resources is one of the most important, if not the major challenge of the 21st century

Modeling and Optimization of Renewable Energy Systems

This book includes solar energy, wind energy, hybrid systems, biofuels, energy management and efficiency, optimization of renewable energy systems and much more. Subsequently, the book presents the physical and technical principles of promising ways of utilizing renewable energies. The authors provide the important data and parameter sets for the major possibilities of renewable energies utilization which allow an economic and environmental assessment. Such an assessment enables us to judge the chances and limits of the multiple options utilizing renewable energy sources. It will provide useful insights in the modeling and optimization of different renewable systems. The primary target audience for the book includes students, researchers, and people working on renewable energy systems

Advances in Optimization and Nonlinear Analysis

The present book focuses on that part of calculus of variations, optimization, nonlinear analysis and related applications which combines tools and methods from partial differential equations with geometrical techniques. More precisely, this work is devoted to nonlinear problems coming from different areas, with particular reference to those introducing new techniques capable of solving a wide range of problems. The book is a valuable guide for researchers, engineers and students in the field of mathematics, operations research, optimal control science, artificial intelligence, management science and economics

Social work with airports passengers

Social work at the airport is in to offer to passengers social services. The main methodological position is that people are under stress, which characterized by a particular set of characteristics in appearance and behavior. In such circumstances passenger attracts in his actions some attention. Only person whom he trusts can help him with the documents or psychologically

Resilience The 2nd International Workshop on Modelling of Physical Economic and Social Systems for Resilience Assessment

JRC Directorate E – Space, Security and Migration has organized the 2nd international workshop on Modelling of Physical, Economic and Social Systems for Resilience Assessment in Ispra that will consist in more than ten sessions for three days of full immersion into this topic. Interest in resilience has been rising rapidly during the last twenty years, both among policy makers and academia, as a response to increasing concern about the potential effect of shocks to individuals, civil infrastructure, regions, countries and social, economic and political institutions. The objective of the workshop is to bring together the scientific community and policy makers towards developing better policies and practices incorporating the element of resilience in various fields. This workshop has been organized in close collaboration with NIST and Colorado State University who organized in Washington on 19-21 October 2016 the 1st International workshop on the same subject. This is a follow-up of several similar events in this field. The JRC already organized a higher level event, the JRC-EPSC annual conference "Building a Resilient Europe in a Globalised World" in September 2015. These workshops aimed at identifying more strategic needs and provide an outlook of future actions. In addition, the JRC organized the first plenary session during the IDRC Davos 2016 conference entitled “Implementing resilience in a world of interconnectedness and emerging challenges” in which the JRC, NIST, Rotterdam city, the Dutch authorities and researchers from Japan presented their views and best practices on resilience implementation. Such an event constitutes an excellent opportunity for positioning JRC among the top institutions in resilience modelling with the capability to influence and steer the work of this community in close collaboration with recognized institutions around the globe.JRC.E.2-Technology Innovation in Securit

Analysis of designed and emergent consequences of mobile banking usage by SME’s in Kenya using ethnographic decision tree modeling

Includes bibliographical references.Evaluating the impact of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) has been a challenge both in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches. It has been pointed out in extant literature that ICT4D impact studies are few compared to those that investigate determinants of adoption. Knowledge of this scarcity and the theoretical and methodological limitations led to the conception of this study. This study set out to investigate the decision criteria evaluated by Kenyan micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) when making the initial mobile banking adoption and usage decisions with a view to unearth the designed and emergent consequences. Ethnographic decision tree modelling (EDTM) which is a cognitive research methodology was feasibly employed to obtain the adoption and usage decision criteria from which quantifiable and non-quantifiable consequences were then inferred. Structuration theory was used as a theoretical lens to view the complex context in which mobile banking is embedded and adopted by MSMEs. The analysis of the empirical data obtained from the MSMEs led to the construction and testing of three decision models from which the study’s theory was developed. The derived theory demonstrates the existence of structurational interactions among decision criteria, antecedents of technology adoption, behavioural intention to adopt, and the designed and emergent consequences of actual usage. The study further reveals that contrary to popular belief and argument that adoption of mobile banking technology lowers financial services cost, Kenyan MSMEs adopt the technology not because of its affordability but because of other factors such as perceived usefulness, accessibility, safe custody of daily income, limited organizational capabilities, perceived ease of use, social capital and trust structures. The derived explanatory-predictive theory provides findings that may have significant implications for fiscal and monetary policymakers, development experts and mobile banking technology designers

An Empirical Investigation into Wicked Operational Problems

This thesis begins by considering the nature of research in Operations Management, the methods that are employed and the types of problems it addresses. We contend that as the discipline matures and it extends its boundaries the research challenges become more complex and the reductionist techniques of Operations Research become less appropriate. To explore this issue we use the concept of wicked problems. Wicked problems were developed by Rittel and Webber during the 1970’s. They suggest the existence of a class of problems which could not be solved using the techniques of Operations Research. They describe Wicked Problems using ten properties or characteristics, which, after a thorough review of their descriptions, we have condensed to six themes. We consider the current state of the “Wicked Problem” literature and have identified the paucity relating to Operations Management. Thus we develop our research question: “what are the characteristics of wicked operational problems?” We investigate this question using a single extended case study of an operation experiencing significant unresolved performance issues. We analyse the case using the tenets of systems thinking, structure and behaviour, and extend the empirical literature on wicked problems to identify the characteristics of wicked operational problems. The research indicates that elements of wicked problems exist at an operational level. The significance of this finding is that reductionist techniques to problem solving e.g. lean and six sigma may not be applicable to the challenges facing operational managers when confronted with the characteristics of a wicked operational problem

Proceedings of the International Conference on Energising the SDGs through Appropriate Technology and Governance

This volume presents the papers presented at the international conference on Energising the SDGs through appropriate technology and governance. Papers were presented in eight sessions. In addition, there was a keynote speech, a panel discussion, a workshop on Sustainability Compass and a lunch-time poster session. This compendium provides a summary of the event and includes original papers and posters delivered at the conference. These covered various themes, including climate action plan in UK and Japanese cities and their alignment with the SDGs; sustainable energy access; contribution of renewable energies, urban design and sustainable development goals, tools for evaluation and monitoring of progress with the SDGs, and innovations and business models for various services