Do structured methods help eco-innovation: An evaluation of the product ideas tree diagram

This paper reports on the first test of the Product Ideas Tree diagram (PIT): a structured method aimed to help Eco-innovation. The PIT diagram structures ideas output from chaotic idea generating sessions. This study compared four ways of conducting an Eco-innovation workshop. The results show that structured methods help Eco-innovation by improving the constructive communication between the participants. Further development of the PIT diagram promises to contribute several new approaches to sustainable product and process design

The Development of an Evaluation Framework for eGovernment Systems

This paper is a positioning paper which outlines a proposal for engaging in the evaluation of eGovernment systems. The primary purpose of our proposed research is to develop, apply, test, and disseminate an evaluation framework which can support continuous, adaptable, and reflective evaluation of eGovernment systems. The theoretical bases for the methodology will be the Information Systems (IS), Soft Systems Methodology, SSM (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) which provides the platform for the analyses of the ‘soft’ aspects (e.g. human, political, cultural and organisational factors) and the Hard Systems Methodology (HSM) which provides methods and tools for quantitative measures and analyses of the system. A further three interrelated bases are: Reflective Practice, Organisational Learning (OL), and Information and Knowledge Management (IKM). Some of the key underlying principles to a successful evaluation framework are good data collection and analyses methods, an evaluative reflective practice approach whichentails the complete process of identification and analysis of strengths and problems, followed by rigorous testing, implementation, and revision of solutions. Such a cycle encourages organisational learning and promotes continuous improvement to both the evaluation framework and system. Additionally, it aims to cultivate an organisational culture that supports evaluation through reflection, continuous learning, and knowledge management which facilitates knowledge creation, capture, sharing, application and dissemination

Service quality monitoring in confined spaces through mining Twitter data

Promoting public transport depends on adapting effective tools for concurrent monitoring of perceived service quality. Social media feeds, in general, provide an opportunity to ubiquitously look for service quality events, but when applied to confined geographic area such as a transport node, the sparsity of concurrent social media data leads to two major challenges. Both the limited number of social media messages--leading to biased machine-learning--and the capturing of bursty events in the study period considerably reduce the effectiveness of general event detection methods. In contrast to previous work and to face these challenges, this paper presents a hybrid solution based on a novel fine-tuned BERT language model and aspect-based sentiment analysis. BERT enables extracting aspects from a limited context, where traditional methods such as topic modeling and word embedding fail. Moreover, leveraging aspect-based sentiment analysis improves the sensitivity of event detection. Finally, the efficacy of event detection is further improved by proposing a statistical approach to combine frequency-based and sentiment-based solutions. Experiments on a real-world case study demonstrate that the proposed solution improves the effectiveness of event detection compared to state-of-the-art approaches

The elicitation of key performance indicators of e-government providers: A bottom-up approach

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.Delivering an adequate e-Government service (e-service) is becoming more of a necessity in today's digital world. In order to improve e-services and increase the engagement of both users' and providers' side, studies on the performance evaluation of such provided e-services are taking places. However a clear identification of the key performance indicators from the e-Government providers’ side is not well explored. This shortcoming hampers the conduct of a holistic evaluation of an e-service provision from the perspective of its stakeholders in order to improve e-services as well as to increase e-services take-ups. In this paper, a systematic process to identify indicators is implemented based on a bottom-up approach. The process used three focus-group meetings with providers, users, and academics in Qatar, Lebanon and UK to collect, identify and validate key indicators from the perspective of e-services’ providers. The approach resulted in the identification of five factors levels (service, technology, employees, policy and management and social responsibilities) with fifteen sub-categories of SMART variables. Hence, leading to the development of a new model, STEPS, that can fully explain and predict e-government success from the providers’ point of view. It will work as a strategic management tool to align various stakeholders on common goal and values based on evidence based evaluation of e-services using smart measurable indicators for the improvement of an e-service at the engagement level in the field of e-government. In addition, other fields can benefit from the outcome of this work, such as logistics service providers, who make their services available across new and existing relationships between the Internet commerce firms, their customers, and their vendors

Journal of teacher education for sustainability after The un decade of education for sustainable development : Exploring for The future

Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Anita Pipere, published by Sciendo.This study aims to explore The research orientation of The papers published in The Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability (JTES) immediately after The UN Decade of ESD (2015-2018). Through following The guidelines of bibliometric study and literature review, and by grounding on The deductive qualitative and quantitative content analysis, The paper presents The analysis of The main bibliometric indicators and research paradigms in The papers published in JTES. Moreover, The changes in these indicators and paradigms in comparison with those encountered in JTES from 2005 to 2014 were recorded and critically inspected. In general, The study shows The gradual improvement and development of main bibliometric indicators and research paradigms in last four years of JTES. The main recommendations and suggestions provided in The previous study have been implemented and considered in The Journal's general features and published papers, though, The current exploration indicates also some unrealized potential for improvement. At The end of paper The author states The main conclusions, limitations, suggestions for The further research and prospective development of The Journal, as well as some implications for The potential authors of JTES.publishersversionPeer reviewe

The Relationship Between Knowledge, Attitudes, And Behaviors Regarding Eco-Justice Issues Among Middle And High School Students In Eco-Schools In Puerto Rico

The conservation, preservation, and protection of the environment are responsibilities that must be globally shared by human beings to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987, p. 43). When citizens acquire the knowledge and skills needed to become agents of change, the lack of interconnectedness – a relationship to nature as one of dominion and control – that presently exists between humans and nature might subside (Winograd, 2016). Through the re-orientation of the present educational system and the development of curricula that addresses the present day environmental crisis, citizens can become aware of the need to work together towards sustainability (The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD, 2005-2014)

Probabilistic seismic risk evaluation of reinforced concrete buildings

The main objective of this article is to propose a simplified methodology to assess the expected seismic damage in reinforced concrete buildings from a probabilistic point of view by using Monte Carlo simulation. In order to do so, the seismic behaviour of the building was studied by using random capacity obtained by considering the mechanical properties of the materials as random variables. From the capacity curves, the damage states and fragility curves can be obtained, and curves describing the expected seismic damage to the structure as a function of a seismic hazard characteristic can be developed. The latter can be calculated using the capacity spectrum and the demand spectrum according to the methodology proposed by the Risk-UE project. In order to define the seismic demand as a random variable, a set of real accelerograms were obtained from European and Spanish databases in such a way that the mean of their elastic response spectra was similar to an elastic response spectrum selected from Eurocode 8. In order to combine the uncertainties associated with the seismic action and the mechanical properties of materials, two procedures are considered to obtain functions relating the peak ground acceleration to the maximum spectral displacements. The first method is based on a series of non-linear dynamic analyses, while the second is based on the well-known ATC-40 procedure called equal displacement approximation. After applying both procedures, the probability density functions of the maximum displacement at the roof of the building are gathered and compared. The expected structural damage is finally obtained by replacing the spectral displacement calculated using ATC-40 and the incremental dynamic procedure. In the damage functions, the results obtained from incremental static and dynamic analyses are compared and discussed from a probabilistic point of view

Hard macrocells for DC/DC converter in automotive embedded mechatronic systems

A novel configurable DC/DC converter architecture, to be integrated as hard macrocell in automotive embedded systems, is proposed in the paper. It aims at realizing an intelligent voltage regulator. With respect to the state of the art, the challenge is the integration into an automotive-qualified chip of several advanced features like dithering of switching frequency, nested control loops with both current and voltage feedback, asynchronous hysteretic control for low power mode, slope control of the power FET gate driver, and diagnostic block against out-of-range current or voltage or temperature conditions. Moreover, the converter macrocell can be connected to the in-vehicle digital network, exchanging with the main vehicle control unit status/diagnostic flags and commands. The proposed design can be configured to work both in step-up and step-down modes, to face a very wide operating input voltage range from 2.5 to 60 V and absolute range from −0.3 to 70 V. The main target is regulating all voltages required in the emerging hybrid/electric vehicles where, besides the conventional 12 V DC bus, also a 48 V DC bus is present. The proposed design supports also digital configurability of the output regulated voltage, through a programmable divider, and of the coefficients of the proportional-integrative controller inside the nested control loops. Fabricated in 0.35 μm CMOS technology, experimental measurements prove that the IC can operate in harsh automotive environments since it meets stringent requirements in terms of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, operating temperature range, out-of-range current, or voltage condition