The role of the global network of cities in the development of peripheral cities and regions

This study seeks to understand the implications of the global network of cities for the development of peripheral cities in peripheral regions (D cities) such as Lagos through the growth and expansion of their firms, by comparing the geography of this network with the geography of Lagos firms’ global interactions. A first phase drew a sample of corporate location data spanning 1,625 cities to construct a graph of the global network, subdivided into seven regions and 11 industrial sectors. This was analysed with both visual and computational methods. A second phase involved fieldwork in which senior staff at 20 Lagos firms were interviewed about their firms’ global and regional interactions. The location data thus obtained were used to construct a graph of the network centred on Lagos and spanning 219 cities, analysed in the same way. While intrafirm ties remain important for describing the geography of the global network towards its core, interfirm ties may be increasingly important for describing its geography towards its periphery. Lagos’ interfirm ties reveal that core cities in peripheral regions such as Johannesburg (C cities) play a weaker role than Friedmann’s (1986) “world city hypothesis” suggests, while peripheral cities in core regions (B cities) play a stronger role. Lagos acts like a funnel, taking the products and knowledge developed in B cities and bringing them to market in other D cities. A theoretical framework is constructed, which suggests that rather than seek further ties to the existing core of the network, firms in D cities such as Lagos should broaden their connections amongst other peripheral cities (both B and D cities). This effectively puts their cities at the core of new components within the wider global network, a proposition which resonates with sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1984) theories of “economic worlds” and with urbanist Jane Jacob’s (1984) argument that “backward cities need one another”

Assessment of flood hazard over large geographical areas using data-driven approaches

The mapping of flood hazard can be time and resource consuming, but it is essential for assessing flood risk and for designing strategies to avoid consequences and recover faster in the event of flooding. This generally involves setting up complex numerical hydrologic/hydrodynamic models to simulate the flow of water in river channels and over the floodplains. Although such approach is considered standard, it is not always feasible. For example, it is challenging to simulate floods over large areas, produce a number of scenarios, represent flood mechanisms in a detailed way, and make use of all the data that is increasingly available in the field of water resources. Clearly, flood managers could use more options. Machine learning (i.e., algorithms that learn from data, in contrast to physically-based equations) has been seldomly used until now, but is a good candidate because of simplicity, typically faster runtimes and ability to handle large amounts of data. In combination with geographic information systems attractive tools can potentially be created. The combination of nearly instantaneous results with a web-GIS provides the possibility of near-real time analysis using any modern web browser. This thesis seek for additional clues that can help in the answering of the following questions: can data-driven models live to their expectations in flood hazard assessment? to what extent they offer viable alternatives to standard approaches and what are the concrete advantages and limitations? Several aspects of flood hazard assessment are addressed by developing and employing different state-of-the-art data-driven approaches, namely for the estimation and mapping of areas that may be subject to flooding across geographic scales, their downscaling, their extrapolation and regionalisation, or the transfer between catchments based on physical similarity. In each part of the thesis, the viability of selected methods are demonstrated and possible ways to overcome limitations are highlight

Emerg Infect Dis

Emerging Infectious Diseases is providing access to these abstracts on behalf of the ICEID 2022 program committee (http://www.iceid.org), which performed peer review. ICEID is organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Task Force for Global Health, Inc.Emerging Infectious Diseases has not edited or proofread these materials and is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions. All information is subject to change. Comments and corrections should be brought to the attention of the authors.Suggested citation: Authors. Title [abstract]. International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases 2022 poster and oral presentation abstracts. Emerg Infect Dis. 2022 Sep [date cited]. http://www.cdc.gov/EID/pdfs/ICEID2022.pdf2022PMC94238981187

Sustainable Assessment in Supply Chain and Infrastructure Management

In the competitive business environment or public domain, the sustainability assessment in supply chain and infrastructure management are important for any organization. Organizations are currently striving to improve their sustainable strategies through preparedness, response, and recovery because of increasing competitiveness, community, and regulatory pressure. Thus, it is necessary to develop a meaningful and more focused understanding of sustainability in supply chain management and infrastructure management practices. In the context of a supply chain, sustainability implies that companies identify, assess, and manage impacts and risks in all the echelons of the supply chain, considering downstream and upstream activities. Similarly, the sustainable infrastructure management indicates the ability of infrastructure to meet the requirements of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to address their needs. The complexities regarding sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management have driven managers and professionals to seek different solutions. This Special Issue aims to provide readers with the most recent research results on the aforementioned subjects. In addition, it offers some solutions and also raises some questions for further research and development toward sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management

The Role of Innovation Intermediaries in Developing Healthcare Innovation Ecosystems: Value Co-Creation through Platforms

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2021.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Creating sustainable agile innovative environments is a persistent challenge, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. The disruption in services has highlighted the need to foster innovation, build resilient health systems, operationalise technology banks and build more domestic capacity whilst harnessing global cooperation. These are the mandates of the 3rd, 9th and 17th Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One organisation cannot maintain and develop these systemic dynamics alone, hence ecosystems of actors ranging in structure and size are formed. These are the foundational precepts of this dissertation as it explores how to manage innovation ecosystems. Though such concerns are across diverse industries, this study was in healthcare. The aim was to inform under-resourced countries on how to ensure sustainability on projects often funded by foreign funders, which is rampant in the Global South. This study contributed to the discourse of ecosystems research by developing an Ecosystem Evolution and Emergence Framework that assists in the management of the innovation ecosystem. Ecosystems research has mainly focussed on the structure of ecosystems and less attention has been devoted to the emergence of ecosystems. Thus,this study contributes to shedding some light on ecosystem emergence.The framework has two pillars for the innovation intermediary: outlining the key tasks to undertake at each ecosystem stage and the key aspects that are important to identify, monitor or cultivate in the ecosystem for the ecosystem actors. A constructivist perspective was used to better understand the relationship between innovation intermediation and innovation ecosystems. Conceptually, the framework development process was guided by Soft Systems Methodology with an emphasis on learning from the history of past projects addressing the same issues. These theoretical tools were deduced from established theories in innovation systems and complexity science embedded in a narrative explanation-Event Structure Analysis. This analysis was utilised through applying event colligation and displaying through Causal Loop Diagrams Empirically, a comparison of the emergence sequences from three healthcare innovation ecosystems was undertaken. These are the Maternal Alliance for Mobile Action (MAMA), Mom Connect and the District Health Information System (DHIS2). The activities and functions were mapped in the study across the innovation ecosystem development stages of birth, expansion and self-renewal using the framework. This resulted in the identification of 39 core ecosystem events deemed leverage points–each with a myriad of activities. The evaluated framework culminated in five distinct leverage categories of structural, technological, social, knowledge and political leverage. This is presented as an ecosystem management tool that enables: 1) building of innovation ecosystems; 2) facilitating improvement and sustainability of existing innovation ecosystems; and 3) providing the ecosystem manager with tools to address commonly experienced challenges. The tool’s main aim is to provide guidelines on how ecosystems emerge and are governed. The systematic approach followed in the study lends itself to future development and expansion with various other computerised tools.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Raadpleeg teks vir opsommingDoctorat

Emerg Infect Dis

PMC4550154611