Hybrid clustering based on multi-criteria segmentation for higher education marketing

Market segmentation in higher education institutions is still rarely applied although it can assist in defining the right strategies and actions for the targeted market. The problem that often arises in market segmentation is how to exploit the preferences of students as customers. To overcome this, the combination of hybrid clustering method with multiple criteria will be applied to the case of the market segmentation for students in higher education institutions. The integration of geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria from students is used to get more insightful information about student preference. Data result of the integration will be processed using hybrid clustering using K-means and self organizing map (SOM) algorithm. The hybrid clustering conducted to get promising clustering result along with the visualization of segmentation. This study successfully produces five student segments. It received 1,386 as the Davies-Bouldin index (DBI) value and 2,752 as the quantization error (QE) value which indicates a good clustering result for market segmentation. In addition, the visualization of the clustering result can be seen in a hexagonal map

Infection through the farm gate

This thesis is based on studies of movements of livestock, on-farm biosecurity and disease awareness among farmers in Sweden; factors which can affect the spread of contagious livestock diseases. The structure of the cattle and pig movements were analysed using data obtained from the Swedish Board of Agriculture. Most movements were within 100 km, however, there were also long distance movements up to 1200 km for cattle and 1000 km for pigs. This supports an initial total standstill in case of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Network analysis was used to investigate the contact patterns. Many of the farms did not sell or buy animals or had only limited trade, whereas some farms had many contacts. The measure 'ingoing infection chain' was constructed to capture indirect movements, some farms with few direct contacts had many indirect contacts and this measure can potentially be very useful for disease control and risk based surveillance. On-farm biosecurity was investigated through a posted questionnaire study to 1498 farmers and response was retrieved from 34% of them. Among farmers declining participation, the major reason was not having livestock. There was large variation in biosecurity routines among farmers. In general farmers with pigs had higher biosecurity compared to farmers with cattle, sheep/goats or mixed species or hobby farmers. Many farmers and visitors did not have sufficient routines to prevent spread of disease and some reported inconsistent routines, indicating a lack of knowledge of how to prevent spread of disease. A need for improvement of onfarm biosecurity was identified. Disease awareness and information retrieval among pig farmers in relation to an outbreak of PRRS in 2007 was investigated using posted questionnaires to 153 farmers. Farmers with large herds were in general aware of the outbreak and how to protect their farm. However, hobby farmers were identified as a group difficult to reach with information in case of an outbreak. Active search for information was associated with distance from the outbreak. The Swedish Animal Health Service, followed by the veterinary authorities, were considered the most important and reliable source of information

Monitoring The Photovoltaic Industry Financing Challenge in Iran

The global energy crisis has increased the need to use renewable energy such as solar energy instead of fossil fuels. The present study aims to model the financing of the photovoltaic industry which is one of the most fundamental challenges that this industry is facing. To fulfill this aim, this study proposed a model based on the opinions of industry experts collected through interviews in the period from January 2021 to August 2021 and validated it by the structural equation modeling method. Based on the results of the research, issues related to the financing challenge of the photovoltaic industry can be examined in 8 clusters, which are; challenging factors, mediating conditions, consequences, government financing strategies, government incentives for the private sector, personal financing strategies, public financing strategies, guarantees, and insurance. The relationship between each of these variables has also been confirmed as research hypotheses

Intelligent Sales Forecasting Technique Application

The primary objective of this study was to design and implement a machine learning-based sales forecasting system to enhance the production capacity and sales trajectory. The deployed model features a web-based interface that allows users to input parameters to generate predictions. The application of an intelligent forecasting technique, namely a machine learning model, significantly contributed to determining the optimal manufacturing output for a specific product in this study. The data analysis was conducted utilizing statistical software known as Tableau. The machine learning algorithm employed for constructing the model was the multiple linear regression model, which is particularly well-suited for trend analysis. The supplied dataset was utilized to train and test a supervised machine learning model, which was subsequently deployed on a local web server. Furthermore, a database system was effectively implemented to facilitate data storage, retrieval, and manipulation. The model was evaluated using two commonly employed metrics, the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and the Mean Absolute Error (MAE), within the Jupyter notebook environment. The resulting evaluation scores were 2.364858669808942 for RMSE and 1.7610409547966064 for MAE. These metrics were deemed effective in accurately predicting outcomes and efficiently presenting results.&nbsp

Agglomeration or aggregation? Assessing the success of networking strategies within the cultural industries sector

This thesis investigates the development of territorially defined networks of innovative small and medium sized enterprises within the cultural industry sector (CIS). It considers whether these networks provide the basis for enhanced local economic competitiveness, whether they improve the innovative capacity of a locality and whether they stimulate local job creation. Promoted by the local authority under the assumption that a dense clustering of cultural industries are linked together through complex networking patterns, this thesis examines the locational and organisational characteristics of Sheffield's CIS. Theoretically this investigation is set within the context of three inter-related academic debates, drawn upon either implicitly or explicitly within Sheffield's cultural industry policy. Firstly, neo-Schumpeterian theorists propose that driving economic growth are those industries that are the most innovative in their technological and organisational dimensions. Secondly, the notion of flexible specialisation is deployed to illustrate how small firms frequently offer the most adaptable responses to specialised patterns of production and consumption. Thirdly, the concept of new industrial districts is evoked to characterise how innovative and flexible enterprises frequently aggregate in distinct spatial clusters (Piore and Sabel, 1984). Proponents of the new industrial district thesis proclaim that sustaining such industrial clusters is a set of complex organisational networks between inter-related firms. Firms utilise their close spatial proximity to one another to reduce transaction costs, to exchange information and to share common support structures. This thesis analyses whether strategic interventions in Sheffield's CIS have been correct to draw upon the theoretically grounded assumption that the creation of a cluster of associated industries will lead to inter-firm networking. It asks whether the networking hypothesis actually applies to the cultural industries or whether the attraction of cultural industries has merely produced an aggregation of relatively unconnected businesses, or businesses that are connected to quite different networks. While the former outcome suggests that networking strategies offer a realistic approach of encouraging local economic development, the latter outcome suggests that business activity in the cultural industries is more of a chaotic concept than proponents of networked production have proposed. I conclude that although networking patterns in Sheffield's CIS are pronounced these networks operate only at the lower level of the industrial system and are rarely used to enhance the innovative capacity of individual firms

A Comprehensive Survey on Enterprise Financial Risk Analysis: Problems, Methods, Spotlights and Applications

Enterprise financial risk analysis aims at predicting the enterprises' future financial risk.Due to the wide application, enterprise financial risk analysis has always been a core research issue in finance. Although there are already some valuable and impressive surveys on risk management, these surveys introduce approaches in a relatively isolated way and lack the recent advances in enterprise financial risk analysis. Due to the rapid expansion of the enterprise financial risk analysis, especially from the computer science and big data perspective, it is both necessary and challenging to comprehensively review the relevant studies. This survey attempts to connect and systematize the existing enterprise financial risk researches, as well as to summarize and interpret the mechanisms and the strategies of enterprise financial risk analysis in a comprehensive way, which may help readers have a better understanding of the current research status and ideas. This paper provides a systematic literature review of over 300 articles published on enterprise risk analysis modelling over a 50-year period, 1968 to 2022. We first introduce the formal definition of enterprise risk as well as the related concepts. Then, we categorized the representative works in terms of risk type and summarized the three aspects of risk analysis. Finally, we compared the analysis methods used to model the enterprise financial risk. Our goal is to clarify current cutting-edge research and its possible future directions to model enterprise risk, aiming to fully understand the mechanisms of enterprise risk communication and influence and its application on corporate governance, financial institution and government regulation

Salford postgraduate annual research conference (SPARC) 2012 proceedings

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2012 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC). They reflect the breadth and diversity of research interests showcased at the conference, at which over 130 researchers from Salford, the North West and other UK universities presented their work. 21 papers are collated here from the humanities, arts, social sciences, health, engineering, environment and life sciences, built environment and business

The Knowledge City Concept—The Ideal Conditions of a Knowledge City

The purpose of this thesis is to look into the knowledge city concept and the preferences and requirements of companies on such a city. Furthermore, suggestions of ideal conditions in a knowledge city are proposed. The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative approach where a deductive procedure has been implemented. In order to examine knowledge cities, Barcelona has sketchily been looked at as an early example of a knowledge city, whereas a more exhaustive observation of Copenhagen was conducted. Since the concept of knowledge cities is a rather new phenomenon, models from several disciplines constitute the theoretical framework. Such areas are knowledge management, sociology, intellectual capital, and organizational theories. The empirical data was gathered through personal interviews as well as telephone and electronic mail interviews with respondents having expert knowledge of the phenomenon or having affiliation to companies and municipalities. The majority of the participants in the empirical context had most comments and opinions on the societal key success factor. All respondents did in a credible way label the human resources as the main requirement characterizing a prominent knowledge city. This is possibly because human resources in an exceptionally direct manner influence the performance of knowledge-intensive firms—the creative and innovative power embedded in humans is essential to these firms