COVID-19 and Environment: Impacts of a Global Pandemic

This is a reprint of the MDPI IJERPH Special Issue entitled "COVID-19 and Environment: Impacts of a Global Pandemic". The reprint consists of 17 papers with different topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and environmental impacts using data from different countries all over the globe

ASA 2021 Statistics and Information Systems for Policy Evaluation

This book includes 40 peer-reviewed short papers submitted to the Scientific Conference titled Statistics and Information Systems for Policy Evaluation, aimed at promoting new statistical methods and applications for the evaluation of policies and organized by the Association for Applied Statistics (ASA) and the Dept. of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications DiSIA “G. Parenti” of the University of Florence, jointly with the partners AICQ (Italian Association for Quality Culture), AICQ-CN (Italian Association for Quality Culture North and Centre of Italy), AISS (Italian Academy for Six Sigma), ASSIRM (Italian Association for Marketing, Social and Opinion Research), Comune di Firenze, the SIS – Italian Statistical Society, Regione Toscana and Valmon – Evaluation & Monitoring

Coping with Trouble: How Science Reacts to Political Disturbances of Research Conditions

Manifold political interventions, such as resource cutbacks, political regulation and societal instrumentalization of research, are frequently viewed by today's scientists and research institutes as trouble which must be coped with. Approaching the sociology of science from an institutionalist perspective, the editors introduce the concept of "Coping with Trouble". The case studies examine scientists' efforts to cope, emphasizing the complexity of actor constellations and the mutual interference between coping reactions. Finally, in a comparative analysis of its undesirable and unintended results, the editors explain why coping is often ineffective and insufficient.Coping with Trouble as a Complex Constellation of Political and Research Actors: Introducing a Theoretical Perspective Uwe Schimank and Andreas Stucke How German Professors Handled Increasing Scarcity of Resources for Their Research: A Three-Level Actor Constellation Uwe Schimank Political Disturbances of Biomedical Research in Great Britain and the United States: How Political Choice Is Translated into Scientific Behavior Dietmar Braun Conflict Avoidance within a System of Centralized State-Science Relations: The Agricultural Research Sector in France Gerhard Krauss Interference between Scientists and Research Policy in a French Research Institution: The Case of the CNRS Christine Musselin and Catherine Vilkas Academy of Sciences in Crisis: A Case Study of a Fruitless Struggle for Survival Renate Mayntz German Unification as a Steamroller? The Institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in the Period of Transformation Hans-Georg Wolf German National Research Centers under Political Pressure: Interference between Different Levels of Actors Andreas Stucke Biotechnological Research in Germany: Problems of Political Regulation and Public Acceptance Raimund Hasse and Bernhard Gill If People Become Afraid of Your Research Methods: Conflicts over Research Reactors in Berlin and Munich Jochen Glaser, Bettina Becker, Anne Goedicke, Thomas Hager, Marion Hoppner, Astrid Karl and Grit Laudel Space Policy in West Germany 1945-1965: Strategic Action and Actor Network Dynamics Johannes Weyer A Theoretical Examination of the Cases: Why Coping Is Often Difficult and Defective Uwe Schimank and Andreas Stucke Contributor

Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

The Humanities and the Modern Politics of Knowledge

This book addresses the shifting status of the humanities through a national case study spanning two centuries. The societal function of the humanities is considered from the flexible perspective of knowledge politics in order to historicize notions of impact and intellectual organization that tend to be taken for granted. The focus on modern Sweden enables an extended but still empirically coherent historical analysis, inviting critical comparisons with the growing literature on the history of the humanities from around the world. In the Swedish case, the humanities were instrumental to the construction of modern societal institutions, political movements, and professional education in the second half of the 19th century, while in the 20th century, the sense of future-making shifted towards science and medicine, and later technology and economy. The very rationale of the humanities was thus put under pressure as their social contract required novel negotiations. Their state and connections to society were nevertheless of a complex and ambiguous character, as is demonstrated by this volume whose contributions explore the many faces and places of the modern humanities

Addressing the project implementation challenges in the Saudi Arabian power supply industry: an investigative approach towards improving project delivery

For many decades, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been widely known for being a reliable oil exporter. This fact, however, has not exempted it from facing significant domestic energy challenges. One of the most pressing of these challenges involves bridging the widening electricity supply-demand gap where, currently, the demand is growing at a very fast rate. One crucial means to address this challenge is through delivering power supply projects with maximum efficiency. Project delivery delay, however, is not uncommon in this highly capital-intensive industry, indicating electricity supplies are not coping with the demand increases. To provide a deeper insight into the challenges of project implementation and efficient practice, this research adopts a pragmatic approach by triangulating literature, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The research was conducted in the Saudi Arabian power supply industry – Western Operating Area. A total of 105 usable questionnaires were collected, and 28 recorded, semi-structured interviews were conducted, analysed and synthesised to produce a conceptual model of what constitutes the project implementation challenges in the investigated industry. This was achieved by conducting a comprehensive ranking analysis applied to all 58 identified and surveyed factors which, according to project practitioners in the investigated industry, contribute to project delay. 28 of these project delay factors were selected as the "most important" ones. Factor Analysis was employed to structure these 28 most important project delay factors into the following meaningful set of 7 project implementation challenges: Saudi Electricity Company's contractual commitments, Saudi Electricity Company's communication and coordination effectiveness, contractors' project planning and project control effectiveness, consultant-related aspects, manpower challenges and material uncertainties, Saudi Electricity Company's tendering system, and lack of project requirements clarity. The study has implications for industry policy in that it provides a coherent assessment of the key project stakeholders' central problems. From this analysis, pragmatic recommendations are proposed that, if enacted, will minimise the significance of the identified problems on future project outcomes, thus helping to ensure the electricity supply-demand gap is diminished

U-TRACER® - o uso das tecnologias da comunicação no ensino superior - uma ferramenta de visualização de informação para o contexto do ensino superior público português

Doutoramento em Multimédia em EducaçãoInformation Visualization is gradually emerging to assist the representation and comprehension of large datasets about Higher Education Institutions, making the data more easily understood. The importance of gaining insights and knowledge regarding higher education institutions is little disputed. Within this knowledge, the emerging and urging area in need of a systematic understanding is the use of communication technologies, area that is having a transformative impact on educational practices worldwide. This study focused on the need to visually represent a dataset about how Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions are using Communication Technologies as a support to teaching and learning processes. Project TRACER identified this need, regarding the Portuguese public higher education context, and carried out a national data collection. This study was developed within project TRACER, and worked with the dataset collected in order to conceptualize an information visualization tool U-TRACER®. The main goals of this study related to: conceptualization of the information visualization tool U-TRACER®, to represent the data collected by project TRACER; understand higher education decision makers perception of usefulness regarding the tool. The goals allowed us to contextualize the phenomenon of information visualization tools regarding higher education data, realizing the existing trends. The research undertaken was of qualitative nature, and followed the method of case study with four moments of data collection.The first moment regarded the conceptualization of the U-TRACER®, with two focus group sessions with Higher Education professionals, with the aim of defining the interaction features the U-TRACER® should offer. The second data collection moment involved the proposal of the graphical displays that would represent the dataset, which reading effectiveness was tested by end-users. The third moment involved the development of a usability test to the UTRACER ® performed by higher education professionals and which resulted in the proposal of improvements to the final prototype of the tool. The fourth moment of data collection involved conducting exploratory, semi-structured interviews, to the institutional decision makers regarding their perceived usefulness of the U-TRACER®. We consider that the results of this study contribute towards two moments of reflection. The challenges of involving end-users in the conceptualization of an information visualization tool; the relevance of effective visual displays for an effective communication of the data and information. The second relates to the reflection about how the higher education decision makers, stakeholders of the U-TRACER® tool, perceive usefulness of the tool, both for communicating their institutions data and for benchmarking exercises, as well as a support for decision processes. Also to reflect on the main concerns about opening up data about higher education institutions in a global market.A Visualização de Informação emerge gradualmente como uma área que assiste a representação e a compreensão de dados sobre as instituições de Ensino Superior. Esta compreensão e conhecimento aprofundado sobre as instituições de Ensino Superior tem uma importância internacional reconhecida. Uma das áreas emergentes do Ensino Superior, com um impacte transformador das práticas educativas em todo o mundo e que urge conhecer e compreender de forma sistematizada, relaciona-se com o uso das Tecnologias da Comunicação no suporte às práticas pedagógicas. No foco deste trabalho está a necessidade de representar visualmente um conjunto de dados recolhido no âmbito do projeto TRACER, sobre e o uso que as Instituições de Ensino Superior Público Português fazem das Tecnologias da Comunicação como suporte aos processos de ensino e aprendizagem. O projeto TRACER identificou esta necessidade e fez uma recolha de dados a nível nacional. Este estudo desenvolveu-se no âmbito deste projeto, e utilizou os dados recolhidos com o objetivo de conceptualizar uma ferramenta de visualização de informação - U-TRACER® - que daria visibilidade a esses dados. Os principais objetivos deste estudo prendem-se com: a conceptualização da ferramenta de visualização de informação denominada U-TRACER®, para o contexto do Ensino Superior Português; a compreensão sobre a utilidade desta plataforma para decisores das instituições de Ensino Superior Português, no suporte a processos de tomada de decisão. Os objetivos permitiram contextualizar o fenómeno das ferramentas de visualização da informação com dados sobre instituições de Ensino Superior, perceber as tendências de uso da visualização de informação nesse contexto.A investigação de natureza qualitativa, seguiu princípios de Investigação & Desenvolvimento adotando o método de estudo de caso desenvolvido em quatro fases de recolha de dados. A primeira fase prendeu-se com a conceptualização da plataforma U-TRACER®, tendo-se desenvolvido duas sessões de focus group com profissionais do ensino superior, com o objetivo de conhecer de definir os requisitos de interação da ferramenta. A segunda fase deu origem à proposta de representação gráfica dos dados recolhidos no Âmbito do projeto TRACER “O uso das Tecnologias da Comunicação no Ensino Superior Público Português”, e um teste à eficácia de leitura dos gráficos propostos. A terceira fase envolveu um teste de usabilidade à ferramenta U-TRACER®, por profissionais do Ensino Superior enquanto utilizadores finais, tendo resultado na proposta de melhorias ao protótipo final. A quarta fase de recolha de dados envolveu a realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas, realizadas a decisores de Instituições de Ensino Superior Público Português, com o objetivo de compreender a sua perceção relativamente à utilidade da U-TRACER®. Considera-se que os resultados deste estudo contribuíram para a área da visualização de informação como suporte à representação de dados sobre o Ensino Superior; refletir sobre a necessidade de envolvimento dos utilizadores finais no processo de conceptualização da ferramenta; a importância da representação gráfica na comunicação eficaz da informação; e conhecer a perceção dos decisores das instituições do ensino superior sobre a utilidade desta ferramenta utilizada como meio para a comunicação de informação sobre a sua instituição, como exercício de benchmarking, e a sua utilidade como suporte a processos informação e decisão que envolvem o uso das Tecnologias da Comunicação. Este estudo contribui ainda para a reflexão sobre a abertura de dados de instituições de Ensino Superior num mercado global

Proceedings of the SUPTM 2022 conference

This book includes the proceedings of the 1st international Conference on Future Challenges in Sustainable Urban Planning & Territorial Management celebrated on January 17-19, 2022. Urban planning is an essential tool in our global society's journey towards sustainability. This tool is as important as the territorial management to execute the plans. Both, planning and management, must be efficient to achieve the goal of sustainability inside the general framework of Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. It does not exist any B planet so, identify urban & territorial challenges in our territories such reaching sustainable mobility, diagnose natural hazards and control land resource consumption is mandatory for our XXI century generation. Planning land uses compatibles with the ecosystem services of territory and manage them by public-private cooperation systems is a greatly challenge for our global society. Human activities do not have very frequently among their objectives to maintain ecosystem services of territory. Therefore, this field of research must help to guarantee the maintenance of natural resources, also called Natural Capital, necessary for social and economic activities of our global society. This conference aims to be a space to share research works, ideas, experiences, projects, etc. in this field of knowledge. We want to put in value that planning and management are subjects that include technological and social matters and their own methodologies. Laws, rules and cultures of different countries around the world are or can be very diverse. But the planet is only one. Technologies are shared, methodologies to analyze territories are also communal to share experiences about the global goal of sustainability, so these events are a necessary way to build our joint future. We trust that the success of this first edition of the SUPTM conference (which has been attended by more than 200 researchers from the five continents) will be an opening step towards international collaboration and the dissemination of knowledge that is so important in this field of urban planning and territorial management

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Discursive Knowledge

This open access book addresses three themes which have been central to Leydesdorff's research: (1) the dynamics of science, technology, and innovation; (2) the scientometric operationalization of these concept; and (3) the elaboration in terms of a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations. In this study, I discuss the relations among these themes. Using Luhmann's social-systems theory for modelling meaning processing and Shannon's theory for information processing, I show that synergy can add new options to an innovation system as redundancy. The capacity to develop new options is more important for innovation than past performance. Entertaining a model of possible future states makes a knowledge-based system increasingly anticipatory. The trade-off between the incursion of future states on the historical developments can be measured using the Triple-Helix synergy indicator. This is shown, for example, for the Italian national and regional systems of innovation