Analysis of pavement condition survey data for effective implementation of a network level pavement management program for Kazakhstan

Pavement roads and transportation systems are crucial assets for promoting political stability, as well as economic and sustainable growth in developing countries. However, pavement maintenance backlogs and the high capital costs of road rehabilitation require the use of pavement evaluation tools to assure the best value of the investment. This research presents a methodology for analyzing the collected pavement data for the implementation of a network level pavement management program in Kazakhstan. This methodology, which could also be suitable in other developing countries’ road networks, focuses on the survey data processing to determine cost-effective maintenance treatments for each road section. The proposed methodology aims to support a decision-making process for the application of a strategic level business planning analysis, by extracting information from the survey data

Repurposing Food Supply Chain Management for Viability During COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine existing studies on recycled food supply chain management during the COVID-19 epidemic.   Theoretical framework:  The theoretical framework of the study includes research areas, research agendas, and implications for the viability during the crisis.   Design/Methodology/Approach: Mendeley Desktop Software retrieved articles from ScienceDirect.com and Google Scholar. This review included 63 full papers published in 2019–2021.   Findings: This review covers food waste management, food safety, insecurity, crises, wellness, food supply chains and chain management, impact on alternative and local food systems, consumption, evaluation of alternative food provision systems, scaling and food policies, proposed business models, strategies, and mechanisms, logistics, economics, and resilience building. The research agendas include refusing, reducing, reusing, repurposing, recycling, and rescaling abandoned or outmoded goods, and rescaling. Implications include food supply chain management, food network viability, impact evaluation, and nutrition risk management.   Research, practical, and social implications: This study presents research themes and agendas for adaptive management to ensure viability throughout the COVID-19 outbreak and its long-term impacts. It provides insights into food waste management, food safety, security, insecurity, wellness, food supply networks, chain management, etc. Socially, it offers future studies on outbreak viability, food network vitality, effect evaluation, and nutrition risk management.   Originality/Value: In view of the current COVID-19 situation, this study revises food supply chain management. Food supply chain management on a worldwide scale has been impacted by this outbreak. This situation calls for an out-of-the-box solution

The evaluation of information security of hospital information system (his) using cobit 5 framework: case study at Soreang Hospital, Indonesia

Based on the Minister of Health Regulation No.82 of 2013 related to HIS, all hospitals are required to have HIS for healthcare. Even though HIS has a lot of benefits, but on the other hand, it also has several issues of the system such as misuses of data and data loss, due to this flaw HIS has been integrated into several systems in the hospital like administrating the management of patients’ and clinic’s record. In reality, threats do not come only from hackers. The damaged IT systems can be a cause due to developing infrastructures that are not comprehensive yet. Therefore, evaluation is needed to measure the threats and vulnerabilities of the system and also to confirm the effectiveness of current controls. This research proposes to recommend information security strategies based on COBIT 5 to be implemented in HIS. The objectives of the study are to examine the capability level of HIS in term of information security using COBIT 5 framework, to determine the infrastructure of network security which is provided by Soreang hospital and to identify the information security strategies based on COBIT 5 to be implemented in the Hospital Information System. The case study areas are Soreang Hospital, Indonesia. The methodology used is explanatory sequential with two phases in data collection. The first one is quantitative, using a questionnaire. The sampling method used simple random sampling with 89 staff respondents. The second one, is qualitative, using interview, the sampling method used purposive sampling with 3 members of staff. Evaluation results show the capability level in the Soreang Hospital is at level 1 for DSS05 domains with L and level 0 domains for APO13 domains with L The findings demonstrated that HIS system of the Soreang hospital has been used as a firewall to protect the network, filters incoming and outgoing traffic, used an Antivirus, IDS and VN). Recommendations for improvement are prepared to achieve the expected capability level of the target. The research contributes to the knowledge through created recommendation information security and HIS measurement analysis and evaluation using the COBIT 5 framework

Information protection in content-centric networks

Information-centric networks have distinct advantages with regard to securing sensitive content as a result of their new approaches to managing data in potential future internet architectures. These kinds of systems, because of their data-centric perspective, provide the opportunity to embed policy-centric content management components that can address looming problems in information distribution that both companies and federal agencies are beginning to face with respect to sensitive content. This information-centricity facilitates the application of security techniques that are very difficult and in some cases impossible to apply in traditional packetized networks. This work addresses the current state of the art in both these kinds of cross-domain systems and information-centric networking in general. It then covers other related work, outlining why information-centric networks are more powerful than traditional packetized networks with regard to usage management. Then, it introduces a taxonomy of types of policy-centric usage managed information network systems and an associated methodology for evaluating the individual taxonomic elements. It finally delves into experimental evaluation of the various defined architectural options and presents results of comparing experimental evaluation with anticipated outcomes

How Information System Investment Evaluation Being Initiated: An Actor Network Theory Perspective

Determining whether investments in information technology (IT) have an impact on firm performance has been and continues to be a major problem for information systems researchers and practitioners. To better understand the often far-reaching implications associated with technology investment and interrelated IS evaluation, this study follows actor-network theory (ANT) as a lens and interpretive case study as a methodology to understand how Information System investment ideas being initiated in the developing country context of Jordan.The purpose of applying ANT is to produce an initial functional outline of the different actors—human, nonhuman, technical, social and cultural—that interact in the actor network. With respect to IS investment, examination of the interactions surrounding the idea of IS investment will provide information on many important issues and on the relationships between human and nonhuman actors. This paper seeks to make a contribution through exploring IS system idea initiations from the perspective of actor-network theory. In addressing the above issues the study serves an important objective which is to provide valuable insights regarding the way that investments ideas are initiated, which is currently lacking in both the information systems and the management literature. Keywords: actor-network theory, Information systems, Information technology, IS investment, IS Evaluatio

A review of recent investigations on voltage unbalance management: Further contributions to improvement of IEC/TR 61000-3-13:2008

Voltage unbalance (VU) management in power systems essentially involves two major aspects: VU emission allocation at the pre-connection stage and compliance assessment at the post-connection stage of installations. This is a summary and a review paper on the recent investigations completed in relation to VU emission assessment techniques which provide further contributions to the improvement of IEC Technical Report IEC/TR61000-3-13:2008. Generalised approaches developed for the classification of different sources of unbalance at the point of evaluation (covering both radial and interconnected networks) and the evaluation of their individual contributions giving emphasis to the discrimination between customer and network responsibility on VU emission are summarised. Some of the key aspects used in the IEC VU emission allocation methodology which were reviewed using rigorous outcomes of the proposed VU emission assessment techniques are presented in the paper

Towards a resilient networked service system

Large service systems today are of highly network structures. In this thesis, these large service systems are called networked service systems. The network nature of these systems has no doubt brought mass customized services but has also created challenges in the management of their safety. The safety of service systems is an important issue due to their critical influences on the functioning of society. Traditional safety engineering methods focus on maintaining service systems in a safe state, in particular aiming to maintain systems to be reliable and robust. However, resilience cannot be absent from safety out of many recent disasters that occur in society. The goal of this thesis is to improve the resilience of networked service systems. Four major works have been performed to achieve this goal. First, a unified definition of service systems was proposed and its relationship to other system concepts was unfolded. Upon the new definition, a domain model of service systems was established by a FCBPSS framework, followed by developing a computational model. Second, a definition of resilience for service systems was proposed, based on which the relationship among three safety properties (i.e., reliability, robustness and resilience) was clarified, followed by developing a framework for resilience analysis. Third, a methodology of resilience measurement for service systems was proposed by four measurement axioms along with corresponding mathematical models. The methodology focused on the potential ability of a service system to create optimal rebalancing solutions. Two typical service systems, transportation system and enterprise information system, were employed to validate the methodology. Fourth, a methodology of enhancing resilience for service systems was proposed by integrating three types of reconfigurations of systems, namely design, planning and management, along with the corresponding mathematical model. This methodology was validated by an example of transportation system. Several conclusions can be drawn from the work above: (1) a service system has a unique characteristic that it meets humans' demand directly, and its safety relies on the balance between the supplies and demands; (2) different from reliability and robustness, the resilience of a service system focuses on the rebalancing ability from imbalanced situations; (3) it makes sense to measure the resilience of a service system only for a particular imbalanced situation and based on evaluation of rebalancing solutions; and (4) integration of design, planning and management is an effective approach for improvement of the resilience for a service system. The contributions of this thesis can be summarized. Scientifically, this thesis work has improved our understanding of service systems and their resilience property; furthermore, this work has advanced the state of knowledge of safety science in particular having successfully responded to two questions: is a service system safe and how to make a service system safer? Technologically or methodologically, the work has advanced the knowledge for modeling and optimization of networked service systems in particular with multiple layer models along with the algorithms for integrated decision making on design, planning, and management

Quo vadis? How to measure the quality of local and regional development processes?

Today most activities which seem to be sound, cosy and helpful - or sometimes simply useful - are called ?sustainable'. Of course the requirements for measuring sustainability increased rapidly. Many different systems of indicators and conflicting opinions about the adequate approach characterise the present situation. Nevertheless we add another system with an specific approach to evaluate processes of local and regional development. In our opinion it is able notably to refer to the quality of the concept of sustainability. The basic system is threefold and bears analogy to the model of total quality management. We distinguish between: · The assessment of projects with respect to material, procedural and ethical implications. The conceptual framework is translated into an evaluation checklist to systematise the discussion of the character and general impact of a given project or programme. The methodology of this section has been presented at the 39th ERSA Congress 1999 in Dublin even and until now has been applied in different fields. · The assessment of development processes in terms of organisation, methodology, contents and legal demands. This section will be the main part of our presentation. · And the assessment of the state of the region which actually is a 'work in progress'. It will combine elements of 'top-down indicators, deduced from the international and national discussion of the CSD-scheme, with elements of regional specific indicators based on a bottom-up approach which defines regional specific goals of development according to a transdisciplinary approach of how to experience the local and regional space. Our methodology is based on self-evaluation and it can come into operation at an early stage accompanying the activities over the whole life cycle. The assessment of development processes is to be done from the local and regional actors for themselves, accompanied by scientific experts. It depends on four principles: · The people concerned are the experts. They get involved in learning processes. · The focus of the assessment is on credibility and transparency. · Development processes need a minimum of quality. The standard is fixed. · The quality management can be used in a flexible way to allow the assessment of different processes according to the communities main focus. The whole project of quality management is closely coupled with the regional Agenda 21 in the Lake of Constance- region as it has been shown eat the 40th ERSA Congress 2000 in Barcelona. Together with the network of 13 regional contact points in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Principality of Liechtenstein the different sections has been discussed and field-tested. 437 words Key words: sustainability, Agenda 21, quality management, development processes, transdisciplinarity

Risk management in CRM security management

In an increasing competitive world, marketing survival can be depended simply on timely new information on customers and market trend. One of the most important strategies in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is to capture enough information from customers and using this information carefully [Ryals , Tinsley]. Of course security of this information is very important in CRM data management [Bryan]. Data management is a method for scheduling and controlling data saving, recovering and processing. This activity has been done continually or periodically[Bryan]. Security level of this information depends on the security policy of the organization. CRM security policy is the directives and practices for managing, protecting and distributing assets which are included sensitive information, within an organization and its CRM systems[ISO/IEC TR 13335, ISO/IEC 17799, and BS7799]. CRM security policy is a high level plan that focuses on the strategic security methodology and is not limited to the guideline, standard or control way and plays a critical role in the defense of CRM systems and network [Barman, M.Amanda]. CRM risk evaluation is a method for increasing the efficiency of CRM security policy. In the manner that security threats and vulnerabilities against CRM is identified by its priority [Greenstein, Bryan, and ISO/IEC TR 13335]. First of all in this article, the importance of risk management in CRM is found out and then the suggested method of security risk management is introduced

Methodology for profiling literature in healthcare simulation

The publications that relate to the application of simulation to healthcare have steadily increased over the years. These publications are scattered amongst various journals that belong to several subject categories, including Operational Research, Health Economics and Pharmacokinetics. The simulation techniques that are applied to the study of healthcare problems are also varied. The aim of this study is to present a methodology for profiling literature in healthcare simulation. In our methodology, we have considered papers on healthcare that have been published between 1970 and 2007 in journals with impact factors that belonging to various subject categories reporting on the application of four simulation techniques, namely, Monte Carlo Simulation, Discrete-Event Simulation, System Dynamics and Agent-Based Simulation. The methodology has the following objectives: (a) to categorise the papers under the different simulation techniques and identify the healthcare problems that each technique is employed to investigate; (b) to profile, within our dataset, variables such as authors, article citations, etc.; (c) to identify turning point (strategically important) papers and authors through co-citation analysis of references cited by the papers in our dataset. The focus of the paper is on the literature profiling methodology, and not the results that have been derived through the application of this methodology. The authors hope that the methodology presented here will be used to conduct similar work in not only healthcare but also other research domains