The unsustainability of the current food system raises food security concerns worldwide due to the population’s increased demand for fresh food and food safety. Unsafe food incidents lead to a high risk of poverty and economic loss. This includes food waste, safety, and security during the sustainable food system process from farm production to consumer. There is a need to implement a fast traceability system like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the sustainable food system to ensure food quality and safety, meet customer demands, and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 1—No poverty, 2—Zero hunger and 13—Climate action for 2030 target. The study objective was to explore the factors that affect the adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the food supply chain. The study adopted the TOE (technology-organization-environment) framework to explore factors that affect RFID adoption in the food supply chain. The study utilized a systematic literature review to examine the TOE factors influencing the adoption of RFID in the food supply chain. The results indicate that technological (complexity, cost, and security), organizational (technical skill and management support), and environmental (maintenance and support, IT policies and regulations) are the major factors that affect the adoption of RFID in the sustainable food system industry. The study recommends organisations intending to adopt RFID allocate enough resources and be prepared to overcome RFID adoption external challenges. The study concludes that technological factors, organizational factors, and environmental factors are important factors for RFID adoption in the food supply chain. However, further empirical studies are necessary to overcome the challenges of systematic literature review based on secondary data and convenience sampling.
Nutrition. Foods and food supply, Food processing and manufacture
Climate change is one of the major challenges of the 21st century for the off shore oil industry, generating fundamental changes in operating conditions and requiring complex technological adaptations. This paper investigates the vulnerability of offshore oil infrastructures to the effects of climate change, analysing the impact of temperature increases, sea level changes and the intensification of extreme weather events on offshore platforms. By analysing the specialized literature and evaluating the data, the study identifies the main risks to which these infrastructures are exposed and proposes integrated optimization and adaptation strategies. The results highlight the need to implement advanced structural monitoring technologies, develop multi-criteria optimization methods and integrate renewable energy solutions to increase the resilience of offshore platforms. The analysis shows that infrastructure in Arctic regions is exposed to risks caused by permafrost instability, and many major European terminals are vulnerable to sea level rise. Our paper proposes a unified conceptual model that integrates structural optimization technologies, continuous monitoring solutions, and modern risk management approaches to maintain the safety and sustainability of offshore operations under conditions of intensifying climate change.
Rapheal Sunday Amadi, A. S. M. Kayes, Eric Pardede
et al.
Blockchain is a decentralised and distributed digital ledger technology that is used to record and store data securely and transparently and has attracted the attention of both academia and industry. It is imperative to ensure the security of this technology and to understand the potential associated risks. However, in the recent past, blockchain-based applications have suffered from series of security breaches ranging from fraud to smart contract vulnerabilities, wallet theft, private key compromise, and non-regulatory compliance. One of the best ways to identify security threats and the associated risks in blockchain applications is to undertake a proper risk assessment. This paper presents a systematic review of the risk assessment frameworks in blockchain-based applications. We first review the general overview of blockchain technology and examine the up-to-date concepts of blockchain risk management, focusing on risk assessment. Although many scholars have worked on blockchain applications and have published surveys on challenges and opportunities, some on security threats, vulnerabilities, and attacks of blockchain technology, very few have researched blockchain risk management and assessment, and none has proposed a framework for assessing risk in blockchain-based applications. Following our proposed survey methodology, the key contributions of this literature review include a comprehensive assessment of various blockchain applications and their adoption challenges, risks in centralised versus decentralised systems, risk assessment and management in blockchain technologies, and three case studies on the risks of blockchain applications and their real-world implications. Applications discussed include blockchain in healthcare, supply chain management, government, and the Internet of Things (IoT). This review serves as a benchmark for researchers to propose an appropriate risk assessment framework for blockchain applications and to gain a deeper understanding of the associated risks.
Umme Rubab, Muhammad Rahies Khan, Muhammad Mutasim Billah Tufai
Achieving sustainable performance is a challenging but useful tool for firms in this competitive environment. The literature highlights several avenues to address sustainable performance, but there is alack of emphasis on common practices and strategies. This study examines the role of green initiatives, specifically eco-design, green purchasing and reverse logistics, in addressing environmental performance. Practice-based view theory is used to evaluate the influence of these common green practices on a firm's environmental performance. A total of 214 participants were approached to participate in this study and data analysis was conducted using AMOS. The findings reveal a significant and positive impact of eco-design, green purchasing and reverse logistics on environmental performance. This study provides implications for practitioners, policymakers and academics regarding environmentally oriented business operations that could better serve manufacturing firms. Additionally, firms are encouraged to focus on easily imitable, easy-to-transfer and easy-to-understand practices to address sustainable performance.
Organizational behaviour, change and effectiveness. Corporate culture, Marketing. Distribution of products
This study adds to knowledge by specifically focusing on the dam spillage-induced floods within a fast-urbanising city with weak law enforcement in a developing country. Employing a sequential mixed-method approach, we first selected and analysed data from 120 respondents through a survey and complemented it with key informants residing in the communities affected by flooding. The findings revealed that dramatic ramifications of dam spillage-induced floods disrupt the livelihoods of many individuals in the form of disruption to income-generating activities and substantial property loss. Notwithstanding the devastating effect of the dam spillage, residents lack advance and adequate preparedness. In coping with such challenges, most flood victims rely on support from nongovernmental sources. The challenge of flooding from the dam spillage is multifaceted and deeply rooted in complex factors which includes growing urbanisation, poor urban planning and weak law enforcement. Residents’ adaptive strategies remain limited, demonstrating a dearth of resilience against such shocks.
Contribution: In light of these challenges, the authors advocate a close collaborative working partnerships among stakeholders to provide flood risk management interventions, strategic planned dam spillage that minimises the effect of dam spillage-induced floods on the local communities, early warning systems and planning and enforcement of building regulations.
Technology cannot be separated from the development of Industry 4.0 in which smart working is the focus. One of the company’s activities that helps the company to achieve its quality goals and objectives is risk management. Based on observations of one SMEs, poor risk management is still found. The risks that occur have not been identified, assessed, and treated appropriately. In addition, documentation that has not been conducted makes the risks that occur later not be handled properly. The aim of this study is to develop a conceptual model of smart risk assessment. The step of this research includes identifying stake holders (as users), identifying functional design, designing context diagram (CD) and data flow diagram (DFD), and designing fidelity prototype. The users involve the production manager, operational manager, and director. The functional design integrates stake holders’ requirements and ISO 31000:2018 risk management process. The design of fidelity prototype focuses on risk assessment, risk treatment, and documentation of risk management. This application is expected to become one of the sustainable development and information systems on Industries.
Thais González-Torres, J. Rodríguez-Sánchez, Eva Pelechano-Barahona
The rapid spatial diffusion of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak has resulted in the total economic disruption of the Tourism Supply Chain (TSC) causing a significant reduction in revenue and creating liquidity issues for all operators. Firms in TSC are linked to each other in complex patterns, leading one risk to another. The purpose of this article is to understand the role of relationship management between hotel chains and their key TSC agents in order to overcome economic disruptions caused by epidemic outbreaks. Among the main contributions of this article are the identification of governments, tour operators, and competitors as the key relationships to be managed by hospitality firms. In addition, key areas for coordination with these actors are explored. Finally, the objectives of relationship management according to the partner are also addressed.
Abstract Green building (GB) projects have attracted wide attention in the construction industry in recent years owing to numerous benefits of green practices for sustainable development. However, existing research efforts on GB project risk management are very limited, and no prior in-depth research has focused on studying the risk interdependencies in GB projects from the perspectives of both the project life cycle and multiple project risks. This paper begins by identifying and distinguishing GB project constraints from multiple GB project risks using a systematic literature review and then investigates, based on the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) method, the risk interdependencies taking into account the identified 16 constraint factors, 22 risk factors and 11 objectives throughout a GB project life cycle. The importance of constraints and risk factors associated with GB project objectives was calculated based on the influence transmission through network paths in the established ISM-based model. In addition, the Matrice d’Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classement (MICMAC) approach was used to analyze the drive and dependence powers of risk interdependency elements. Critical constraints and risk factors in the implementation of GB projects can be obtained from the proposed risk analysis model, which contributes to an in-depth risk perception of GB projects for industry practitioners and facilitates GB project risk management in a more effective way.
Under the backdrop of the robust growth of the global economy, the water transport industry is experiencing rapid development, resulting in an increase in ship collisions and a critical water traffic safety situation. This study uses text mining techniques to gather a corpus of data. The corpus includes human factors, ship factors, natural environmental factors, and management factors, which are used as target data to obtain a high-dimensional sparse original feature vector space set comprising eigenvalues and eigenvalue weight attributes. Chi-square statistics are utilised to reduce dimensionality, resulting in a final set of 33-dimensional text feature items that determine the causal factors of ship collision risk. Taking the four steps involved in the collision process as the primary focus, a Bayesian network structure for ship collision risk is constructed based on the “human-ship-environment-management” system. By incorporating existing ship collision accident/danger reports, conditional probability tables are computed for each node in the Bayesian network structure, enabling the modelling of ship collision risk. The model is validated through an example, revealing that, under relevant conditions, the probability of collision exceeds 90 %. This finding demonstrates the validity of the model and allows one to deduce the primary cause of ship collision accidents.
Cash and voucher assistance (CVA) has gained importance as a modality for humanitarian disaster response during the last decade. Research has documented its benefits and listed challenges for implementation. Simultaneously, humanitarian organisations have committed to the localisation agenda to better serve people affected by disasters through local actors. These two ongoing transformations in the humanitarian sector may support or challenge each other. The authors use Kenya as a case study to analyse how CVA influences the localisation agenda in the humanitarian sector. Semi-structured key informant interviews were conducted with national and international organisations to gain insights on how the international organisations and their local implementing partners view and experience the mutual support or potential tensions between CVA implementations and the localisation agenda. The analysis is based on seven dimensions of localisation applied to CVA in Kenya based on existing frameworks. The findings indicate that CVA can support the localisation agenda if properly managed. It provides smaller organisations an opportunity to get involved without expensive structures. International organisations need to redefine their role and withdraw from direct implementation and be willing to give up power. The local organisations benefit from forming national networks that give them a voice within the humanitarian system. These transformations rely on personal leadership and on capacity development focusing on coordination, collaboration and organisational strengthening beyond the technical skills needed for implementation.
Contribution: This study identifies how CVA and the localisation agenda affect each other in Kenya. This contributes to the understanding of the future development of the humanitarian sector.
Mitchell N. Sarkies, Suzanne Robinson, Tom Briffa
et al.
Abstract Background Health and medical research funding agencies are increasingly interested in measuring the impact of funded research. We present a research impact case study for the first four years of an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council funded Centre of Research Excellence in Cardiovascular Outcomes Improvement (2016–2020). The primary aim of this paper was to explore the application of a research impact matrix to assess the impact of cardiovascular outcomes improvement research. Methods We applied a research impact matrix developed from a systematic review of existing methodological frameworks used to measure research impact. This impact matrix was used as a bespoke tool to identify and understand various research impacts over different time frames. Data sources included a review of existing internal documentation from the research centre and publicly available information sources, informal iterative discussions with 10 centre investigators, and confirmation of information from centre grant and scholarship recipients. Results By July 2019, the impact on the short-term research domain category included over 41 direct publications, which were cited over 87 times (median journal impact factor of 2.84). There were over 61 conference presentations, seven PhD candidacies, five new academic collaborations, and six new database linkages conducted. The impact on the mid-term research domain category involved contributions towards the development of a national cardiac registry, cardiovascular guidelines, application for a Medicare Benefits Schedule reimbursement item number, introduction of patient-reported outcome measures into several databases, and the establishment of nine new industry collaborations. Evidence of long-term impacts were described as the development and use of contemporary management for aortic stenosis, a cardiovascular risk prediction model and prevention targets in several data registries, and the establishment of cost-effectiveness for stenting compared to surgery. Conclusions We considered the research impact matrix a feasible tool to identify evidence of academic and policy impact in the short- to midterm; however, we experienced challenges in capturing long-term impacts. Cost containment and broader economic impacts represented another difficult area of impact to measure.
Rock-fall incidents have the characteristics of multiple, sudden and random, which threaten the surrounding buildings and traffic lines. This paper studied the monitoring and prediction of rock falls with a new synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology. One of the most important factors in rock-fall target detection is the signal-to-clutter-plus noise ratio (SCNR) after clutter suppression, which should be maximized before rock-fall target detection. Through analysing the remainder characteristics of rock-fall targets after clutter suppression, a method of removing the quadratic frequency-modulated (FM) component associated with the azimuth velocity and along-track velocity of a rock-fall target is proposed. After removing the quadratic FM component using dechirp technology, focus is placed on the remainder signal of a rock-fall target in a Doppler domain image, and the SCNR of the signal is maximized. This method provides effective rock-fall target detection. To resolve the contradiction between the computational accuracy and the accuracy of the along-track velocity, this paper adopts gradual approach technology. Finally, by analysing the focused signal characteristics, a method of rock-fall target parameter estimation is proposed. The effectiveness of the presented method is demonstrated by both theoretic analysis and simulations.
The correlation between market movements and returns is an important issue in risk management and investment portfolio strategies. Investors who try to diversify their assets in regional markets pay special attention to communications between financial markets. In this study, we have tried to study the contagion of risk tail from the financial sector to other economic sectors and the specific characteristics of each industry that affect this phenomenon. For this purpose, we introduce a new index for risk tail contagion from financial market to industries or in other words, conditional coexcee dance (CCX) in the TSE. We investigate risk tail contagion between the market and industry, using 26 TSE industries data for the period 2011 to 2017 by estimating the Poisson's regression. The results show that the risk tail contagion is lower among industries that have a higher relative value index and higher investment. Contagion also occurs more for industries that use external debt.
With it being considered as a value-added activity, the Internal Audit function (IAF) of a firm is one of the most important functions in an organization. During the last decade, the role of this particular function has become very useful, especially in creating awareness regarding the Prevention, Detection and Assessment (PD&A) of fraudulent activities. In many countries, carrying out an Internal Audit is a legal compulsion for public companies, in order to establish an effective, and efficient IAF. This study aims to explore the relationship between the various attributes of IAF (effectiveness, independence, staff training, qualification and experience), and the PD&A of fraudulent activities in Pakistan. For this purpose, the convenient sampling technique, for data collection, is used and the questionnaires are collected from the respondents belonging to Pakistan. The questionnaire has been prepared in the form of a Likert scale. Respondents for this study include (1) staff members working in the Internal Audit (IA), finance and accounting departments of the companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), and (2) staff members of firms that are engaged in external statutory audit in Pakistan. Descriptive statistics show the details regarding the demographic questions, IAF and PD&A of the fraudulent activities that take place in the companies. Moreover, in order to get to the effective and relevant results, the regression analysis is performed in order to find out if there exists any relationship between these variables. The results show that all five independent variables positively affect the PD&A of fraudulent activities. However, three of the independent variables (IAE, IAT, and IAQ) are statistically significant, whereas two of the variables taken into account (IAI, and IAE) are statistically insignificant. It is recommended that the IAF should be more independent, and effective so as to attain the required results. Moreover, firms should also focus on the qualifications and proper training of the staff that are responsible for executing the IAF.
Organizational behaviour, change and effectiveness. Corporate culture, Marketing. Distribution of products
Funmilayo Iyabo BODUNDE, Ebunoluwa Akinrata, Ayodeji Emmanuel Oke
et al.
Construction firms over the world involve in Strategy Alliance (SA) in order to achieve efficient time-cost-quality relationship during construction process through knowledge sharing, team culture and risk management with one another. Despite the numerous benefits gained, there are still various barriers facing it in the developing world. This paper is aimed at analysing the current level of awareness and barrier facing SA procurement method in the building industry in an emerging market (EM) using Nigeria as a case study, to profound future steps in avoiding these barriers and to encourage maximum implementation in the construction industry. A survey design was employed in evaluating the level of awareness of SA and barriers facing its adoption in building industry. Construction professionals in Nigeria were examined through a well-structured questionnaire. Mean Item Score and Factor Analysis were utilized in evaluating data gathered on the current barriers to SA procurement method in the construction industry. It was revealed from the study that the awareness level of SA procurement method within the industry amongst construction professionals is moderately high. This indicates that the barrier facing SA procurement method is not the issue of awareness but of willingness to adopt it. It was also established from the study that fear and trust issue, lack of strategic planning toward alliance, inadequate knowledge about alliance and, different in cultural values were the major component barriers facing strategic alliance procurement method. The study shows the true reflection of the current barriers facing the adoption of SA procurement methods in the developing country and notable points in this study can be largely recommended to promote strategic alliance partnership among construction firms the Nigerian construction industry and other emerging economy countries were building projects are carried out in the same approach, style and method.
The paper determines that the need in financial monitoring of Ukrainian companies of the port sector is caused by financial consequences related to the need to protect the environment, the existence of a dominant part of payments in foreign currency (foreign exchange risk associated with currency fluctuations), the possibility of cash outflows into the shadow sector of the economy and the possibility to use transport for smuggling. In addition, in the recent years there is a tendency of diminished financial stability of the seaports of Ukraine, which is a signal to determine the factors that have an impact on this situation, the consequences of risky operations and the optimal structure of sources for the formation of assets. An important aspect of financial monitoring is the necessity to identify the data about the objecton the basis of insignificant and relevant information, which makes it possible to avoid non-essential features and parameters and to speed up the decision making process at the lowest cost of expenditures and time. The study offers a methodical approach to financial monitoring of the port industry companies on the basis of the risk-based approach that takes into account the conditions for the functioning of port companies and their business characteristics, making it possible to implement the appropriate measures to prevent and avoid risky financial transactions and, consequently, to increase/preserve the competitiveness of the port sector companies. Regarding the need in further studies of the practical realization of financial monitoring of the port sector companies, there is a choice and substantiation of aggregate indicators of the financial monitoring system, their listing with a view to specific features, types and scale of activities.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been used in a variety of fields in the last decade. In forestry, they have been used to estimate tree heights and crowns with different sensors. This approach, with a consumer-grade onboard system camera, is becoming popular because it is cheaper and faster than traditional photogrammetric methods and UAV-light detecting and ranging systems (UAV-LiDAR). In this study, UAV-based imagery reconstruction, processing, and local maximum filter methods are used to obtain individual tree heights from a coniferous urban forest. A low-cost onboard camera and a UAV with a 96-cm wingspan made it possible to acquire high resolution aerial images (6.41 cm average ground sampling distance), ortho-images, digital elevation models, and point clouds in one flight. Canopy height model, obtained by extracting the digital surface model from the digital terrain model, was filtered locally based on the pixel-based window size using the provided algorithm. For accuracy assessment, ground-based tree height measurements were made. There was a high 94% correlation and a root-mean-square error of 28 cm. This study highlights the accuracy of the method and compares favourably to more expensive methods.
The article analyses the results of electric power industry reformation. At most, two key tasks are not completed: creating a competitive market of electric power prices of which are not controlled by the state, but formed on the basis of demand and supply of its participants; and raising private investments to renew generating powers. The reform only laid legal, economic, technological and infrastructural basis for creating efficient, reliable and compatible industry, it is needed to develop competitive relationships, perfect rate regulation and provide equality of all industry participants.