A service oriented architecture for decision support systems in environmental crisis management

Environmental crises and poverty are usually believed to act as a source of disturbance. Environmental crisis management seeks to minimize the impact of these events. The paper gives an overview of the results of a serious of disturbances between human social economic development and protection of natural resources in the rural poverty-stricken regions of western China. Characteristics of environmental crisis in rural poverty-stricken regions of western China are offered and corresponding principals of crisis management are presented. This paper reveals that government and the local people's sustainable perceptions and actions during development of social economy have a profound effect on environmental crisis management. The article concludes with some recommendations concerning how are the organization and habitants prepared for before, during, and after an environmental crisis situation. The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical basis for Chinese government and the public to enhance the capabilities of managing environmental crisis, and step up precautions against potential natural disasters.

Agent-based Decision Support System for Technology Recommendation

Universals are abstract aspirations that claim to transform the status quo to a better future. They are particulars born in specific cultural, socio-political, and economic settings that aim to generalise across difference as they travel globally. While the contemporary grand schemes under scrutiny in this special issue circulate in Cambodia and Indonesia as part of economic neo-liberalism, rights-based liberalism, or environmental crisis management, they encounter other universals that predate the current era of development. It is thus necessary to carefully consider the influence of previous models to grasp how universals are translated across the region today. Based on the assumption that the universal is multiple, we argue that it is important to focus on these dimensions of its multiplicity and historicity in order to study how processes of (dis)engagement unfold. To grapple this complexity, this special issue brings forth novel forms of translation that will enrich the dynamic reflections on this concept.

ABSTRACTThe current Air Traffic Management (ATM) system in the United States supports a wide variety of users in providing a safe and efficient air transportation system. The ATM system has to be responsive to the changing needs of its users. One of the challenges in the ATM system evolution is to design the evolution of a Decision Support System (DSS)/automation architecture. This paper proposes a framework and a common language for understanding the different aspects of a DSS architecture.

The subject of Integrated Management Systems in terms of quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management has become of increasing interest to researchers and business alike during the last 3 years or so. This paper focuses on a review of the various models of integration found in the academic literature and also those advocated by the standards bodies, such as the British Standards Institution and the International Organization for Standardization. A number of writers advocate alignment of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and present models to facilitate this; however, integration into a single standard is, in general, not favoured. Various models have been developed to overcome these difficulties, but the authors believe that none is completely satisfactory. It is considered that a model of integration based on the EFQM Model for Business Excellence will allow the limitation of the standards to be overcome and the total systems approach to integration to be facilitated.

Organisational behaviour and strategies in the adoption of certified management systems: an analysis of the Spanish hotel industry

Water is essential for human life and its protection and sustainable exploitation are crucial tasks. Specifically, it is necessary to identify the possible water bodies that could be exploited and, according to water demand needs, to define strategies that preserve the water resource from depletion and pollution and that are environmentally sustainable. The aim of this work is to present an architecture of a decision support system for groundwater supply and quality planning and management, able to integrate physical/chemical models (that take into account phenomena typical of agricultural, saltwater intrusion, and mountain aquifers) and decision models (both for long term planning and short term management problems).

The article aims to address the research gap in the field of environmental communication by integrating the advances in emotional influence sciences to understand the mechanisms and pathways via social media by which emotions impact pro-environmental behavior. This research investigates how environmental communication can integrate research's results to design a more effective communication strategy that leads to environmental actions. Hence, the methodology of the article is an exploratory review of previous research on emotion in crisis and environmental communication, particularly on the role of social media and internet memes in promoting pro-environmental behavior through emotions and emotional influence. The findings are organized into three themes. First, we present the theory of emotional influence as a lens that can shed light on the underlying mechanisms in social media that awaken users' sentiments to modify or rectify their environmental behavior as well as entice their engagement in environmental preservation. Next, the main factors affecting emotional contagion in environmental communication are analyzed. Finally, we examine the empirical evidence of pro-environmental communication strategies that were successful under emotional contagion mechanisms. The article concludes that emotional influence by internet memes is a proper strategy, particularly for new generations, in crisis and environmental communication. This research contributes to science by highlighting the significant role of emotional influence and internet memes in environmental communication, emphasizing their potential to influence public attitudes and behaviors towards environmental issues, and providing a comprehensive understanding of how these factors can be leveraged to design effective communication strategies that lead to environmental actions, offering valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in the field of environmental communication and crisis management.

The article delves into the crucial role of the state in substantiating the conceptual foundations of the economic security of agricultural sector enterprises at the state level. It underscores that in a developed market system, the state’s role is pivotal in ensuring the institutional and legal structure of the economy and in bridging ‘market gaps’, which directly influence economic and food security. The article further emphasizes that creating favorable conditions for attracting investments in agriculture is a pressing task to ensure its economic security. It provides a comprehensive set of measures preceding this process, including establishing a mechanism of interaction with investors, continuous improvement of legislation, and application of innovations in agriculture and product processing. The article also highlights the importance of implementing constant monitoring of investment activity as a necessary stage for in-depth analysis and improvement of state influence strategies on the agro-industrial sector’s economic security. It substantiates the need to define and implement complex strategies to ensure the state’s practical influence on the agro-industrial complex’s economic security through creating favorable conditions and investment support. The article concludes by analyzing the internal causes of the economic threat to agricultural enterprises, classifying threats to the economy of the agrarian sector, and studying their manifestation in Ukraine. It underscores that ensuring financial efficiency, technological independence, and effective management of agricultural enterprises should be defined among the main functional goals of state policy in this context. The article summarizes that the primary goal of state policy in this context is to ensure the stability and effective functioning of agricultural sector enterprises, and its main tasks include the support of financial, technological, and managerial stability, as well as the development of the qualification potential of personnel. It further emphasizes that the overall effectiveness of state policy is determined by a comprehensive summary of such aspects as financial efficiency, investment policy, legislative and regulatory, innovative activity, ensuring environmental safety, social aspects, risks, and crisis management; efficiency of land and resource use; personnel qualification, which considers the relationship and mutual influence of various spheres of activity of the agricultural enterprise. Keywords: security, economic security, state regulation, agrarian sector of the economy, agrarian enterprises.

The economic benefits of higher public health outlays have been overlooked. Growth alone does not improve health outcomes. India aspires to make full use of its demographic advantage, with 31 percent of its population under the age of 15. However, a key worry is the poor health status of its population. The Industrial revolution in the 19th century saw the large scale use of fossil fuels for industrial activities. These industries created jobs and over the years, people moved from rural to the cities, the trend which is continuing even today. Natural resources are being used extensively for construction, industries, transport and consumption. All this has contributed to rise in green house gases in the atmosphere thus leading to climate change, a major problem caused by the increase of human activities leading to several direct and indirect impacts on health. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice are on diminishing trend, sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have increased causing detrimental effect on the distribution of precipitation. All this happened with the intervention of human activities either for survival or for the attainment of luxurious comfort. The GHGs are responsible for the depletion of stratospheric ozone resulting in higher exposure to ultra violet rays of the sun, leading to an increase in the incidents of skin cancer, spread of disease spreading insects and increase in air pollution problems. A number of toxic metals are present in the environment like Lead, Mercury cadmium etc. whose poisoning is a matter of serious concern. Thus, major environmental issues are forest and agricultural degradation of land, resource depletion (water, mineral, forest, sand, rocks etc.), environmental degradation, public health, loss of biodiversity, loss of resilience in ecosystems and livelihood security for the poor. The ever increasing population and increasing pressure on food production to meet the current demand require high agricultural productivity, concurrent with adequate protection of crops from damage by insects and pests. The use of pesticides is therefore necessary and inevitable which enter the body through intake of grains, vegetables, fruits, edible oils, dairy products and meat. Their continuous use has resulted in wide spread contamination of food commodities. The crisis caused by the impact of human activities on nature calls for governance which includes responses by international institutions, governments and citizens, who should meet this by pooling the experience and knowledge of each of the agents and institutions concerned. Global, continental, national and local governments have employed a variety of approaches to environmental governance. The fields of crisis management and sustainable development have maintained separate research paths. However, these fields are closely linked. Crisis events can deplete resources needed by future generations, ultimately hindering efforts at sustainable development. Thus only the path of sustainable development can lead us to the bright future by meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The Urban Freight Fleet Composition (UFFC) problem addresses the need of a logistics service provider to define the optimal fleet mix in terms of types and number of vehicles to serve the demand for goods delivery in an urban area. Urban areas can be subject to access restrictions (e.g. based upon the time of the day or vehicles’ characteristics) that could affect the performance of transport assets. In this paper, we consider time-window access restrictions based upon the characteristics of the vehicles, and we propose a human-in-the-loop decision support system (HIL-DSS) architecture using optimisation and simulation models to address the trade-off between vehicles characteristics, revenues, costs, and performance. We formulate both a deterministic and a stochastic optimisation decision model addressing the problem in the context of the HIL-DSS. In doing this, we emphasise the role of the human decision maker in tackling a complex problem affected by variability and uncertainty, and to overcome the rigidity of optimisation models thanks to the possibility to include qualitative information into the process.

Spatial conservation prioritization does not necessarily lead to effective conservation plans, and good plans do not necessarily lead to action. These “science-action” gaps are pernicious and need to be narrowed, especially if the international goal of conserving 30% of the planet by 2030 is to be realized. We present the Earthwise Framework, a flexible and customizable spatial decision support system (SDSS) architecture and social process to address the challenges of these science-action gaps. Utilizing case study experience from regions within California, South Africa, and British Columbia, we outline the framework and provide the Little Karoo, South Africa SDSS data, code and results to illustrate five design strategies of the framework. The first is to employ an “open science” strategy for collaborative conservation planning and action. Another is that marginal value functions allow for the continuous accounting of element (e.g., habitat) representation in prioritization algorithms, allowing for an SDSS that is more automated and saves valuable time for stakeholders and scientists. Thirdly, we program connectivity modeling integrated within the SDSS, with an algorithm that not only automatically calculates all the least cost corridors of a region, but prioritizes among them and removes the ones that do not make ecological sense. Fourth, we highlight innovations in multi-criteria decision analysis that allow for both cost-efficient plan development, like representative solution sets, but also land-use planning requirements, like site specific valuation, in what appears to be a more transparent, understandable, and usable manner than traditional approaches. Finally, strategic attention to communicating uncertainty is also advocated. The Earthwise Framework is an open science endeavor that can be implemented via a variety of software tools and languages, has several frontiers for further research and development, and shows promise in finding a better way to meet the needs of both humans and biodiversity.

In this paper authors have proposed a VAS for Personal Video Recorder (PVR) enabled iSTB. The proposed solution can recognize the regions in the frames where the recipe and ingredients are shown and can save them in image/text format for further use. We have used a hybrid approach where the text regions are localized using the compress domain features of the streaming video in real time and then some pixel domain processing is performed on that reduced region of interest to recognize the text. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in using the compressed domain features of H.264 video in text localization and applying some pixel domain post processing on the ROI to perform the entire recognition process in real time. The system is tested over a video upto CIF resolution and can recognize the text successfully with an accuracy of nearly 80%.

Disaster Management, a strategy or an activity that involves risk reduction planning and effective preparations for all stages of a crisis cycle, faces challenges in synchronization of the flow of information resulting in constant communication problems. This coordination imbalance leads to vulnerabilities in communities and makes them unprepared to respond and recover effectively. To fill these gaps, a new integrated inclusive, and accessible AI-driven platform, Surakshit Bharat has been introduced to mitigate the existing gap as mentioned above. It would integrate government agencies, NGOs, volunteers, and citizens, ensuring those who are most at risk can receive assistance and aid relief as fast as possible. Equipped with multiple technologies, the platform would be capable of sending out alerts in real time, remote assistance, a voice interface, and gamified educational training to improve self-efficacy and efficiency during preparation and rescue efforts. Elders and people with low literacy levels can easily access the platform through a simple navigated interface and multilingual guides. Utilizing cutting-edge technologies with a focus on inclusivity, the platform portrays itself as a comprehensive, integrated, and innovative solution in the crisis management system.

With the rapid development of e-commerce over Internet, web services have attracted much attention in recent years. Nowadays, enterprises are able to outsource their internal business processes as services and make them accessible via the Web. Then they can dynamically combine individual services to provide new value-added services. With the increasing number of web services having equivalent functionality, the binding procedure is driven by some non-functional, Quality of Service (QoS) criteria, such as the money cost, response time, reputation, reliability or a trade-off between them. Thus, an important problem is, given QoS constraints, how to aggregate and leverage individual service’s QoS information to derive the optimal QoS of the composite service. In this paper, we propose a novel QoS model for performing flexible service selection. The key idea of the model is to relax users’ QoS constraints and try to find the most possible services satisfying users’ QoS requirements. Based on the proposed QoS framework, we develop various algorithms for making service selection on individual and composite services. We also introduce a top-k ranking strategy to reflect a user’s personalized requirements. Experimental evaluation shows the proposed QoS model is efficient and practical.