Towards A regional resources strategy consultation

Report produced for emda to inform the agency's input into regional Waste and Resources Strategies. Reviews policy context, available data and views from key stakeholders

Linking participatory poverty assessments to policy and policymaking - experience from Vietnam

The year 1999 was important for poverty-related research, and policy development in Vietnam. The General Statistics Office had collected household data in the second Vietnam Living Standards Survey in 1998, and made it available for analysis in 1999. And four participatory poverty assessments (PPAs) were implemented during 1999. The author's case study describes how government agencies, donors, and nongovernmental organizations collaborated in implementing the PPAs. The considerable amount of qualitative information about poverty produced in Vietnam over the past eight to ten years has rarely grabbed the attention of policymakers, who tend to view such information as"unscientific"and lacking in credibility. By contrast, the PPAs implemented in 1999 have been widely circulated, used, and quoted. What was different about those PPAs that led their findings to be brought into local, and national policy debates, as previous findings had not been? Working partnerships among donors, and nongovernmental organizations were important, and helped build consensus on the research findings, but more crucial was the active engagement of government partners from the very early stages. Establishing a Poverty Working Group provided a structure for implementing the PPAs, for feeding analysis through to the poverty assessment, and for keeping government fully involved. The Poverty Working Group now supports the government in drafting its poverty reduction strategy. Strong World Bank leadership, financial support from the U.K. Department for International Development, the technical expertise, and commitment of the PPA partners agencies, and the availability of recent high-quality household survey data, played an important part in ensuring the PPAs'credibility.Poverty Assessment,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,ICT Policy and Strategies,Poverty Reduction Strategies

An Investigation into Mobile Based Approach for Healthcare Activities, Occupational Therapy System

This research is to design and optimize the high quality of mobile apps, especially for iOS. The objective of this research is to develop a mobile system for Occupational therapy specialists to access and retrieval information. The investigation identifies the key points of using mobile-D agile methodology in mobile application development. It considers current applications within a different platform. It achieves new apps (OTS) for the health care activities

Reducing the delivery lead time in a food distribution SME through the implementation of six sigma methodology

Purpose – Six sigma is a systematic data driven approach to reduce the defect and improve the quality in any type of business. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from the application of six sigma in a food service “small to medium sized enterprise” (SME) in a lean environment to reduce the waste in this field. Design/methodology/approach – A simplified version of six sigma is adopted through the application of appropriate statistical tools in order to focus on customer's requirements to identify the defect, the cause of the defect and improve the delivery process by implementing the optimum solution. Findings – The result suggests that modification in layout utilization reduced the number of causes of defect by 40 percent resulting in jumping from 1.44 sigma level to 2.09 Sigma level which is substantial improvement in SME. Research limitations/implications – Simplicity of six sigma is important to enabling any SME to identify the problem and minimize its cause through a systematic approach. Practical implications – Integrating of supply chain objectives with any quality initiatives such as lean and six sigma has a substantial effect on achieving to the targets. Originality/value – This paper represents a potential area in which six sigma methodology along side the lean management can promote supply chain management objectives for a food distribution SME

An exploratory randomised controlled trial of a premises-level intervention to reduce alcohol-related harm including violence in the United Kingdom

<b>Background</b><p></p> To assess the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial of a licensed premises intervention to reduce severe intoxication and disorder; to establish effect sizes and identify appropriate approaches to the development and maintenance of a rigorous research design and intervention implementation.<p></p> <b>Methods</b><p></p> An exploratory two-armed parallel randomised controlled trial with a nested process evaluation. An audit of risk factors and a tailored action plan for high risk premises, with three month follow up audit and feedback. Thirty-two premises that had experienced at least one assault in the year prior to the intervention were recruited, match paired and randomly allocated to control or intervention group. Police violence data and data from a street survey of study premises’ customers, including measures of breath alcohol concentration and surveyor rated customer intoxication, were used to assess effect sizes for a future definitive trial. A nested process evaluation explored implementation barriers and the fidelity of the intervention with key stakeholders and senior staff in intervention premises using semi-structured interviews.<p></p> <b>Results</b><p></p> The process evaluation indicated implementation barriers and low fidelity, with a reluctance to implement the intervention and to submit to a formal risk audit. Power calculations suggest the intervention effect on violence and subjective intoxication would be raised to significance with a study size of 517 premises.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b><p></p> It is methodologically feasible to conduct randomised controlled trials where licensed premises are the unit of allocation. However, lack of enthusiasm in senior premises staff indicates the need for intervention enforcement, rather than voluntary agreements, and on-going strategies to promote sustainability

Robust Query Optimization Methods With Respect to Estimation Errors: A Survey

International audienceThe quality of a query execution plan chosen by a Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) depends greatly on the estimation accuracy of input parameter values. Many research results have been produced on improving the estimation accuracy, but they do not work for every situation. Therefore, "robust query optimization" was introduced, in an effort to minimize the sub-optimality risk by accepting the fact that estimates could be inaccurate. In this survey, we aim to provide an overview of robust query optimization methods by classifying them into different categories, explaining the essential ideas, listing their advantages and limitations, and comparing them with multiple criteria