Innovation in construction eBusiness

The use of e-Business within the construction industry has steadily grown over the last decade. However, despite the successes being widely publicized, it is perceived that progress is limited and constrained within the industry. Thus, there are still drivers to be harnessed and barriers to be overcome. The successes achieved in other industries could be transposed and implemented within the construction industry. Many models have been suggested to successfully implement, integrate and embed e-Business within the construction industry. The aim of this special issue is closely aligned with that of a special session on ‘Innovation in Construction e-Business’ at the 6th International Conference on Innovation in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) on June 9-11, 2010. A selection of papers submitted to the conference special session in Innovation in Construction e-Business has been reviewed along with additional papers for publication in this ITcon special issue

A multiplicity result for a nonlinear degenerate problem arising in the theory of electrorheological fluids

We study a Dirichlet boundary value problem associated to an anisotropic differential operator on a smooth bounded of $\Bbb R^N$. Our main result establishes the existence of at least two different non-negative solutions, provided a certain parameter lies in a certain range. Our approach relies on the variable exponent theory of generalized Lebesgue-Sobolev spaces, combined with adequate variational methods and a variant of Mountain Pass lemma.Comment: Proceedings A of the Royal Society of London, in pres

Marketing forest-based ecotourism in Sri Lanka: predicting the ecotourism behavior and defining the market segment through a behavioral approach

Tourism industry is one of the main drivers of the global economy and plays a key role in regional development. As negative environmental and socio-cultural impacts of mass tourism became apparent, the appeal of alternative forms of tourism, especially ecotourism, continued to gain a broad recognition. As a result, ecotourism became one of the fastest growing sectors in global tourism during the past decade. Being a fast-developing country with ample natural resources, Sri Lanka can benefit from adopting and promoting ecotourism. At present, Sri Lanka’s ecotourism resources remain largely under-utilized. With rising demand, ecotourism operators are under pressure to meet expectations of diverse consumers of their products. In this background, the need to define and distinguish ecotourists from other types of tourists has become important. The importance of using a behavioral approach to distinguish true ecotourists from other types of tourists is widely emphasized by tourism scholars. This study developed distinct motivational and behavioral profiles of visitors to forest-based attractions in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, understanding and predicting ecotourist behavior is important for ecotourism operators to better cater their target markets. Many authors have attempted to explain the recreational behavior through various behavioral theories. Based on Ajzen\u27s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior, this study proposed an ecotourism behavioral model of forest-based recreational areas in Sri Lanka, and incorporated knowledge and satisfaction in predicting ecotourism behavior. The role of previous visits in predicting future behavioral intentions in an ecotourism setting was modeled separately. The results identified four different types of tourists based on their behavioral and motivational characteristics i.e. ecotourists, picnickers, egoistic tourists, and adventure tourists. A typical ecotourist in Sri Lanka represents a relatively young recent high-school or university graduate, or a university student. The segment identified as “egoistic tourists” seems to be the most lucrative market segment to target from both environmental sustainability and business perspectives. The proposed ecotourism model suggests that knowledge and satisfaction are important determinants of ecotourism behavior. In addition, previous experiences of participating in ecotourism proved to be an important precursor of future behavioral intentions. Broad implications of visitor profiling and behavior modeling are also discussed

Estimating return values of significant sea wave heights in Colombo, Sri Lanka

In coastal science and offshore engineering estimating the return values of significant extreme sea wave heights plays a vital role. This paper discusses two methods, Block Maxima (BM) approach and Peak-Over- Threshold (POT) method to estimate the 50 and 100 year return levels of extreme sea wave heights in Colombo. Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution and Generalized Pareto (GP) distribution were fitted to the BM data and POT data respectively. Parameters of GEV and GPD were estimated with Maximum Likelihood estimation method. Gumbel distribution fitted well with the BM approach and GP distribution fitted well with the POT approach.BM method and POT method gives much more comparable results on estimating return values