An overview on charging tariff schemes and incentives: the eCharge4Drivers project

El agua, conocida como oro azul, es uno de los recursos naturales con mayor importancia en el mundo, ya que en el planeta solo el 3% del agua es dulce y de esta solo es accesible el 1% para el consumo humano. Es por esto que los países establecen políticas públicas y mecanismos de control para generar consciencia y lograr que cada vez sean más los que aportan en el ahorro y uso eficiente del recurso y a su vez en la reducción de estrés hídrico. Colombia, a pesar de ser un país sin escasez hídrica, promueve y establece políticas de control y eficiencia en el manejo y uso del agua; es por esto que en el año 2014 se expide la Resolución CRA 688 como lineamiento de un nuevo esquema tarifario, donde se establece un estándar de eficiencia para gestión de pérdidas de agua (comerciales y técnicas). En el 2017, Colombia pierde el 43.6% del agua que produce y con el nuevo marco tarifario se describen los programas de recuperación de pérdidas implementados por las ESP y se concluye con los pasos a seguir de un país que desea gestionar el ahorro y uso eficiente del recurso.

Competition is rife within BPO-IT service providers as outsourcing clients opt for providers’ that will add significant value to their operations. Thus, providers perceive DevOps as one way of improving the quality of clients’ services through in-house development of reliable software. Research findings indicate that DevOps involves internal reorganisation that could provide the best possible option to combine people, process and software development tools. The approach has been widely applied in software development companies purposely for continuous delivery of reliable software, and to add value to client’s services within provider’s domain. This paper presents the findings from a multi case study of DevOps implementation in BPO-IT service provider organisations. The findings suggest the inclusion of DevOps as an element of strategic IT planning to improve competitiveness by reducing costs and quality of services. The developed DevOps framework proposes a team of coordinating teams working together to improving client and providers’ performances combining IT management, software development and processing teams respectively. To illustrate the concept of the framework, a flowchart depicting a stepwise role of each team is developed, allowing for implementation of agility and flexibility into the process and continuous software delivery, reduced time of service delivery, and improved quality of services.

Interorganisational new service development capability in the mobile communications ecosystem

Due to the technological advancement in cellular networks, massive data traffic appends to the existing digital technologies. These emerging digital technologies face quality of service (QoS) challenges, particularly when it comes to maintaining the tradeoffs between customers and service providers. The cellular service providers are trying to meet the needs of end users by handling four substantially different types of data, i.e., Real Time, Video, Audio, and Text, with each type having its own requirements. To achieves an efficient QoS, different incentive-based algorithms were proposed. However, these schemes do not ensure a fair distribution of profit among the mobile network operator and access points. Furthermore, these schemes do not provide efficient QoS to the end user and cannot ensure a fair distribution of channels in crowning time. We propose an incentive-based scheme using game theory and two-stage Stackelberg approach for integrated data, offloading the decision-making process in a heterogeneous network. A single mobile base station and some integrated access points in a crowded metropolitan area are modeled in our proposed scheme. This station offers an economic incentive based on traffic types, and access points compete with each other to earn incentives for offload traffic. A mathematical game is derived to analyze the real-world scenario through simulation. The experimental method is applied to validate the numerical outcomes by comparing the results with other models.

In the new wave of the 5G Era, greater use of innovative Internet and IOT services has created tremendous data values, as the same time, people fears are growing that personal information could be handled irresponsibly as a result. The study aims to improve the user experience for the e-mobility services in the future and establish a virtuous relationship between service providers and users in security and privacy aspects and think about how to design the user experience for trust and persuasion to build user confidence. The study explores Chinese’s data-privacy-related perceptions and behaviors and places them in the context of various online services. The findings are based on a Chinese citizens questionnaire survey (N = 1003) and six focus groups (N = 48). The results show that users’ attitude toward ‘Exchanging Information for Service’ is positively correlated with service demands, information sensitivity, cost-effectiveness and trust in service providers. Transparency of interactive interface such as understandable privacy policy visualized user interface, and control of the data produce positive effects on the willingness to share personal information.

PurposeWal‐Mart is the largest retailer in the world, and one of its drivers of financial success is its focus on efficient and effective supply chain management (SCM). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate what service providers could learn from these SCM best practices.Design/methodology/approachWal‐Mart's best practices in SCM were investigated through a literature review of secondary data.FindingsWal‐Mart's best practices in SCM were categorized into four segments: strategic concepts, logistics and distribution, information technology, and supplier collaboration. These practices were then applied to the healthcare industry.Research limitations/implicationsWal‐Mart's best practices were only applied to one service industry (the healthcare industry). Future research could apply these practices to other service industries such as higher education and the airline industry.Practical implicationsMost service providers can add value to their services by learning from some, if not all, of Wal‐Mart's best practices in SCM.Originality/valueVery little past research has focused on applying the best practices in SCM of a traditional retailer or product provider to service providers. Insight into Wal‐Mart's best practices can add value to many service providers.

Over the last few years, we have seen the transformation of the traditional monolithic enterprise, in which all operations were performed in-house, to the extended enterprise, which consists of a network of collaborating entities. Global operations, outsourcing, and increasing specialization have all contributed to this trend. One challenge facing the extended enterprise is how to reconnect the information flows and business processes that were disconnected as the enterprise disaggregated. The emergence of web services, service-oriented architectures, and business process modeling and execution standards are helping to address this challenge. Our contention is that the next phase of evolution is the rise of the intelligent enterprise, which is characterized by being able to adapt quickly to changes in its operating environment. The intelligent enterprise monitors its own business processes and its interactions with customers, partners, suppliers, and collaborators; it understands how this information relates to its business objectives; and it acts to control and optimize its operations to meet its business objectives. Decisions are made quickly and accurately to modify business processes on the fly, dynamically allocate resources, or change business partners (e.g., suppliers, service providers) and partnerships (e.g., establish new service level agreements). This talk will describe challenges in managing the business operations of an intelligent enterprise. While a plethora of tools exist for managing the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, and network resources) of the enterprise, there is little systematic support today for the closed loop management and control of business operations. We will describe technology approaches to intelligent business operations management that we are pursuing at HP Labs., the progress we have made, and some open research questions.

Power demand on average is increasing with time on a global scale. This becomes a challenge to meet because of negative impacts like global warming due to increased emission of greenhouse gases and increased operating costs of the fossil fuel-based generation. Of late, a lot of research has been conducted on Demand Side Management (DSM) programs, which try to adjust quantities from the load-side in order to curtail or shift demand. Using DSM, controllable loads can also become providers of ancillary services, in which case the consumers become "prosumers". This paper introduces an algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to optimize the operation of water heaters (WHs) to provide synchronous reserve. The developed algorithm is applied to two test systems including WHs and the results show substantial savings in terms of operating costs from the independent system operator (ISO) point of view, without affecting the consumers' satisfaction. The developed approach will not only ensure an inexpensive mean of providing synchronous reserve but will also be environmentally friendly.

This paper explains an online platform for teaching and tutoring undergraduate English majors to design, write, and defend their required graduation theses. It has been constructed under the principles of assistance, independence, transparency, participation, and collaboration. An array of algorithms and efficiency techniques have been employed to ensure the following website features: high performance, a reliable supporting tool, a management system, and a social network for any information exchange that is related to thesis writing. Students, teachers, and administrators are working together, playing roles of both service receivers and service providers. It is argued that technology has expanded opportunities for all parties involved, not the other way around, that plagiarism can be voluntarily avoided, actively contained, or successfully eliminated, and that the purposes of language enhancement and lifelong learning can be accomplished.

National Leadership Summit Promotes Consumer-Driven Options in LTC


 
 
 Phewa watershed, the second largest natural lake system in Nepal, is considered vital for the well being and economy at local, provincial and national level. Phewa watershed offers multiple benefits to the downstream dwellers involved in tourism, hotel, boating, fishing, irrigation, hydropower, etc. The constant degradation of watershed has become a serious challenge to sustain the watershed. Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) can be an effective environmental management tool for sustaining ecological and economic benefits, especially in an urban watershed like Phewa. This study has assessed the opportunities for the potentialityof PES in Phewa watershed. It first identified and ranked the tradable ecosystem services along with service providers and beneficiaries using Likert scale. Then, 137 households were surveyed to evaluate their perceptions of payment for ecosystem services and sustainable management of Phewa Lake. The results identified tourism as the major ecosystem service in the watershed followed by biodiversity and sediment retention to control flooding and erosion. Protected and community forests users groups within the watershed area, landowners, and farmers were identified as upstream users or service providers whereas the business owners like boat agencies, hotels and restaurants, drinking water users, and Nepal electricity authority were identifiedas the service beneficiaries of the identified ecosystem service. The challenges associated with implementing PES scheme were the lack of financial resource, lack of institutional organization and marketing for ecosystem services, population growth, lack of coordination between stakeholders, and lack of public participation. Thus, this study showed that education-based activities should be organized to enhance participation of beneficiaries and upstream dwellers. Also, PES policy mechanism with clear guidelines should be formulated for assuring the participation of the community people forthe implementation of PES.
 
 

Individuals with serious mental illness often are unable to access consumer- and family-oriented community care, resulting in repeated hospitalizations, incarceration, and homelessness. The "medical home" concept was developed in primary care to provide accessible and accountable services for individuals with chronic medical conditions. Building on the work done in primary care, the authors propose a "mental health home." The model of care incorporates medical home characteristics, such as access to and coordination of services, integration of primary and preventive care, adoption of recovery orientation and evidence-based practices, and family and community outreach. Barriers to and strategies for implementation of mental health homes are discussed.

A New Kind of Homelessness for Individuals With Serious Mental Illness? The Need for a "Mental Health Home"

Hybrid electrical vehicles (HEVs) are able to improve the fuel economy with reduced emissions due to their effective power management and regenerative power utilization. However, developing an optimal supervisory control strategy to distribute power is quite challenging due to the high degrees of freedom introduced by the multiple power sources in HEVs. Conventional approach uses so-called power follower scheme, and the power management can also be achieved by minimizing the equivalent fuel consumption at each given instant without guaranteeing that the battery state of charge (SOC) maintains at its target level. This paper proposes a model predictive control (MPC) strategy based on the linear quadratic tracking (LQT) control to follow the predicted driver power demand over a given horizon while keeping the battery SOC operated at its target level. The LQT controller is developed based upon the linearized control-oriented model and used to optimally track the predicted desired torque trajectory by minimizing the total equivalent fuel consumption of the internal combustion (IC) engine and electric motor (EM) over a given finite prediction horizon at each operational point. The performance of the MPC based LQT controller is validated in simulations under four typical driving cycles. The simulation results show that the fuel economy is greatly improved over the baseline power follower control strategy especially under FTP and IM240 driving cycles, and at the same time the battery state of charge is maintained at the desired level.

In the field of general management, academic research rarely examines the practical phenomena associated with academia-industry collaborations, despite the fact that such research is the most likely to integrate the values associated with teaching, research, and service activities. Taking a value co-creation perspective, this reflective article attempts to explore how business school faculty members can conduct academia-industry cooperative research programs proceeding from real phenomena. The article also illustrates how faculty members might effectively integrate teaching, research, and service activities in order to generate synergies between industry and academia. Finally, by highlighting the author's systematic taxi research program, this article offers reflections on how academic professionals might achieve a balance between three key roles: a teachers, researchers, and service providers.