64,577 research outputs found
Building information modelling (BIM) implementation and remote construction projects: issues, challenges, and critiques.
The construction industry has been facing a paradigm shift to (i) increase productivity, efficiency, infrastructure value; quality and sustainability (ii) reduce lifecycle costs, lead times and duplications via effective collaboration and communication of stakeholders in construction projects. This paradigm shift is becoming more critical with remote construction projects, which reveals unique and even more complicated challenging problems in relation to communication and management due to the remoteness of the construction sites. On the other hand, Building Informational Modelling (BIM) is offered by some as the panacea to addressing the interdisciplinary inefficiencies in construction projects. Although in many cases the adoption of BIM has numerous potential benefits, it also raises interesting challenges with regards to how BIM integrates the business processes of individual practices. This paper aims to show how BIM adoption for an architectural company helps to mitigate the management and communication problems in remote construction project. The paper adopts a case study methodology, which is a UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project of BIM adoption between the University of Salford, UK and John McCall Architects (JMA), in which the BIM use between the architectural company and the main contractor for a remote construction project is elaborated and justified. Research showed that the key management and communication problems such as poor quality of construction works, unavailability of materials, and ineffective planning and scheduling can largely be mitigated by adopting BIM at the design stage
Sharing economy vs sharing cultures? Designing for social, economic and environmental good
This paper explores the story behind a crowdfunding service as an example of sharing technology. Research in a small neighborhood of London showed how locally-developed initiatives can differ in tone, scale, ambition and practice to those getting attention in the so-called sharing economy. In local accounts, we see an emphasis on organizing together to create shared spaces for collaborative use of resources and joint ownership of projects and places. Whereas, many global business models feature significant elements of renting, leasing and hiring and focus only on resource management, sometimes at the expense of community growth. The service we discuss is based in the area we studied and has a collective model of sharing, but hopes to be part of the new global movement. We use this hybridity to problematize issues of culture, place and scalability in developing sharing resources and addressing sustainability concerns. We relate this to the motivation, rhetoric and design choices of other local sharing enterprises and other global sharing economy initiatives, arguing, in conclusion, that there is no sharing economy, but a variety of new cultures being fostered
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Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities
This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations
The Revolution of Mobile Phone-Enabled Services for Agricultural Development (m-Agri Services) in Africa: The Challenges for Sustainability
The provision of information through mobile phone-enabled agricultural information services (m-Agri services) has the potential to revolutionise agriculture and significantly improve smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in Africa. Globally, the benefits of m-Agri services include facilitating farmers’ access to financial services and sourcing agricultural information about input use, practices, and market prices. There are very few published literature sources that focus on the potential benefits of m-Agri services in Africa and none of which explore their sustainability. This study, therefore, explores the evolution, provision, and sustainability of these m-Agri services in Africa. An overview of the current landscape of m-Agri services in Africa is provided and this illustrates how varied these services are in design, content, and quality. Key findings from the exploratory literature review reveal that services are highly likely to fail to achieve their intended purpose or be abandoned when implementers ignore the literacy, skills, culture, and demands of the target users. This study recommends that, to enhance the sustainability of m-Agri services, the implementers need to design the services with the users involved, carefully analyse, and understand the target environment, and design for scale and a long-term purpose. While privacy and security of users need to be ensured, the reuse or improvement of existing initiatives should be explored, and projects need to be data-driven and maintained as open source. Thus, the study concludes that policymakers can support the long-term benefit of m-Agri services by ensuring favourable policies for both users and implementers
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Building an alternative social currency: Dematerialising and rematerialising digital money across media
This paper reports on the user experience and design of physical and digital forms of a mixed-media local currency. We reconceive digitally mediated transactions as social interactions and report on the development of conceptual designs informed by user research and interactive workshops. Our findings show that use is strongly tied to conceptions of locality and community, markers of identity, information exchange and the digital and physical forms as tools for shaping interactions. The form of the currency can make the invisible visible, exposing our identities and values, business models, and the details of the transactions themselves. Our analysis stresses the need to provide opportunities for extending social interaction, making more local connections and deriving the best value from those connections, without insulating individuals from each other, or from the wider geographical context. Themes that emerged from the user research were visualized as conceptual designs for digitally augmented media, allowing us to explore the monetary transaction at three levels: the material, as interaction between two parties, and the context of the transaction.The RCUK Digital Economy theme (EP/K012304/1)
Commercialisation of eHealth Innovations in the Market of UK Healthcare Sector: A Framework for Sustainable Business Model.
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Festus Oluseyi Oderanti, and Feng Li, ‘Commercialization of eHealth innovations in the market of the UK healthcare sector: A framework for a sustainable business model’, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 35 (2): 120-137, February 2018, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21074. Under embargo until 10 January 2020. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Demographic trends with extended life expectancy are placing increasing pressures on the UK state-funded healthcare budgets. eHealth innovations are expected to facilitate new avenues for cost-effective and safe methods of care, for enabling elderly people to live independently at their own homes and for assisting governments to cope with the demographic challenges. However, despite heavy investment in these innovations, large-scale deployment of eHealth continues to face significant obstacles, and lack of sustainable business models (BMs) is widely regarded as part of the greatest barriers. Through various empirical methods that include facilitated workshops, case studies of relevant organizations, and user groups, this paper investigates the reasons the private market of eHealth innovations has proved difficult to establish, and therefore it develops a framework for sustainable BMs that could elimiesnate barriers of eHealth innovation commercialization. Results of the study suggest that to achieve sustainable commercialization, BM frameworks and innovation diffusion characteristics should be considered complements but not substitutes.Peer reviewe
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Collective intelligence for OER sustainability
To thrive, the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, or a given initiative, must make sense of a complex, changing environment. Since “sustainability” is a desirable systemic capacity that our community should display, we consider a number of principles that sharpen the concept: resilience, sensemaking and complexity. We outline how these motivate the concept of collective intelligence (CI), we give examples of what OER-CI might look like, and we describe the emerging Cohere CI platform we are developing in response to these requirements
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