<i>Background</i>: The systematic literature review with additional descriptive analysis at hand focuses on analysing returns management in e-commerce, which is an increasingly critical issue as the volume of online shopping is rising. <i>Methods</i>: Drawing from a comprehensive search of academic databases and a manual review of Google Scholar, 54 articles dating from 2007 onwards were collected and fully read. <i>Results</i>: The review reveals a main research effort emerging mainly from Germany and other countries, with a notable focus on fashion retail. The bulk of these studies aim to understand and reduce the frequency of customer returns, addressing a substantial operational challenge for online retailers. The findings provide multiple research streams extracted from the collected literature and combined to an overview. <i>Conclusions</i>: Through this, there are tendencies which can be interpreted to derive the evolution of the research field. The illustrated results in this review paint a detailed picture of the existing research landscape. This highlights the importance of ongoing research, which, e.g., holds potential benefits for customer satisfaction and environmental sustainability. The review also lists future research directions, recommending the continued investigation of areas such as predictive analytics and customer behaviour to further refine returns management practices.
Transportation and communication, Management. Industrial management
Otsason Riina, Hilmola Olli-Pekka, Tapaninen Ulla
et al.
The need to decarbonise and reduce pollutant emissions from maritime transport is facilitating the studies of ground effect vehicles. Technical development in recent decade concerning unmanned flights in drones has supported this development. These vehicles could have much higher speed than sea vessels and they are estimated to be less costly compared to air transport. Unmanned operations without passengers enable wider range of transport connections (even in difficult conditions). In this research we analyse prototype vehicle called Airship and its possible use in different routes of intra Canary Islands’ transport. We suggest the most lucrative routes and cargo groups. Initial cost and revenue considerations are made over the life-cycle of Airship. As a result, we can point that there are three main factors determine the success of the transport operations. They are: the number of journeys per day, business days operating per year and freight price.
Hisatoshi Naganawa, Enna Hirata, Nailah Firdausiyah
et al.
<i>Background:</i> The global logistics industry is facing looming challenges related to labor shortages and low-efficiency problems due to the lack of logistics facilities and resources, resulting in increased logistics delays. The Physical Internet is seen as a way to take logistics into the next generation of transformation. This research proposes a Physical Internet-enabled system that allows multiple companies to efficiently share warehouses and trucks to achieve operational efficiency and reduce CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. <i>Methods:</i> We propose a novel demography-weighted combinatorial optimization model utilizing a genetic algorithm and the Lin–Kernighan heuristic. The model is tested with real data simulations to evaluate its performance. <i>Results:</i> The results show that compared to the existing model presented in a previous study, our proposed model improves location optimality and distributive routing efficiency and reduces CO<sub>2</sub> emissions by 54%. <i>Conclusions:</i> By providing a well-founded novel model, this research makes an important contribution to the implementation of the Physical Internet by computing optimal logistics hubs and routes as well as providing a solution to cut CO<sub>2</sub> emissions by half.
Transportation and communication, Management. Industrial management
<i>Background</i>: The sustainable development of mountain areas, which have fragile ecosystems, has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers and practitioners. Logistics systems are crucial in supporting these regions and addressing mountainous terrain’s unique challenges. While many studies have examined aspects of mountain logistics, a comprehensive and systematic review of the field is still lacking. <i>Design/Methodology/Approach</i>: This paper aims to fill the gap by systematically reviewing the existing literature on mountain logistics using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) methodology. <i>Results/Conclusions</i>: We identify four main research foci: design of logistics infrastructure or vector, optimization of logistics systems, safety in logistics systems, and impact of logistics systems on mountain communities. In addition to categorizing these themes, we conduct a detailed descriptive analysis of published studies in this domain. Our findings highlight significant research gaps, particularly in integrating digital technologies, sustainable mass transportation solutions, and logistics systems’ socioeconomic and environmental impacts. We propose targeted directions for future research to advance sustainable logistics practices in mountain regions.
Transportation and communication, Management. Industrial management
The underwater Internet of Things (UIoT) and remote sensing are significant for biodiversity preservation, environmental protection, national security, disaster assistance, and technological innovation. Assigning tasks to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is a fundamental challenge in underwater technology and exploration. Remote sensing and AUVs are vital for pollution detection, disaster prevention, marine observation, and ocean monitoring. This work presents an optimized network connectivity using a multi-attribute decision-making approach for underwater IoT deployment. A feature engineering approach highlights the significant characteristics of underwater things, incorporating remote sensing data, and a multi-objective optimization method is used to select optimal UIoT for effective task allocation in deep-sea environments. A balance between data transmission, energy economy, and operational performance is necessary for efficient task distribution. Effective communication algorithms and protocols are needed to maintain environmental sustainability, protect marine ecosystems, and improve underwater monitoring enhanced by remote sensing technologies. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is beneficial for addressing various challenges in underwater technology, considering factors such as mission objectives, energy efficiency, environmental conditions, vehicle performance, safety, and much more. The proposed criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) methodology will assess technical competencies like communication, resilience, navigation, and safety in an underwater environment, leveraging remote sensing and aiding decision-makers in selecting appropriate undersea devices and vehicles for enhancing communication and transportation. This method prioritizes characteristics and aligns them with specific objectives, improving decision-making quality in the marine environment.
Science, General. Including nature conservation, geographical distribution
HongYu Pan, Mahmonir Bayanati, Masoud Vaseei
et al.
In a world where renewable energy solutions are in high demand, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are at the forefront, emphasizing the need for efficient and eco-friendly logistics. This coincides with the rise of blockchain technology as a game-changer in PV system management. Additionally, cloud computing is playing a pivotal role in transforming the IT landscape, providing seamless access to shared computing resources via the Internet. This research introduces a novel framework that utilizes cloud computing to enhance blockchain-based PV logistics. It employs a sophisticated mathematical model to optimize logistics components such as transportation, storage, inventory management, and supply chain coordination, with the goal of minimizing costs and improving overall efficiency. At the heart of this transformative paradigm lies a visionary cloud-based system, endowing PV logistic planners with the power of real-time access to mission-critical data. This infusion of data-driven decision-making capabilities fosters a seamless symphony of communication and enriches collaboration among stakeholders, setting the stage for monumental shifts in efficiency and management, ushering in a new era of sustainability and scalability within the photovoltaic industry. This technological synergy is not just about immediate gains. It is a testament to our commitment to improved energy sustainability and a testament to our shared vision of a greener future. In lockstep with the global pursuit of renewable energy solutions, this research lights the way toward a brighter, more sustainable tomorrow.
M. Ubaidillah Ridwanulloh, Arifah Dwi Wahyu Wulandari
Human life in today's modern era has developed rapidly with the emergence of sophisticated transportation, information, and communication technologies. However, it also has a negative impact, especially on human characters who are currently affected by technology and are becoming a serious problem. Among the negative impacts of technology that appear and affect the human character, especially young people, are on the morality, spirituality, and emotional side. This study aims to describe the role of religious education in the modernization era as an effort to build good character. The research method used is qualitative with the type of case study research. Sources of data obtained from interviews, observation, and documentation. Interviews were conducted with principals, teachers and parents, and guardians. Observations were made in schools during learning, and documentation was obtained on curriculum documents, lesson plans, syllabus, learning photos, and others. The result of the research is that the role of religious education has an important position in character building applied to the students of SDN Segodobancang. Forms of religious education activities both inside and outside the classroom are planting and habituation of being polite to teachers, parents, and others, praying together, praying dhuha, reciting/BTQ, followed by KBM, and praying dhuhur in the congregation. Furthermore, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the habit of planting characters will continue in their respective homes. Teachers always control the implementation of religious activities at home through photos, video calls, contact books, and home visits conducted by homeroom teachers every week. The teacher visits each student's house to see and control the development of student character planting as well as communication with students' parents. This has a positive effect, the community, especially parents and guardians, feels happy and happy with the implementation of the religious education even though the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing.
<i>Background:</i> Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) has revolutionized the operations, technologies, logistics and supply chain. To align with industry 4.0, the conventional logistics processes need to upgrade into digital logistics (logistics 4.0). This study aims to analyse the critical success factors of logistics 4.0. <i>Methods:</i> To accomplish this objective a comprehensive literature review is conducted for the identification of the critical success factors of logistics 4.0 with the expert’s input. These critical success factors are interrelated, and this interrelationship is explored through the DEMATEL approach. The applied methodology is categorised the critical success factors into cause-and-effect groups. Six factors belong to the cause group and the remaining four belong to the effect group. <i>Results:</i> The ‘top management commitment and support’, ‘aligning the initiatives of logistic 4.0 with organizational strategy’ and ‘technological infrastructure’ are the most influential critical success factors. This analysis also recognized the most influential and influenced factor amongst all identified critical success factors that will help the practitioners to optimal utilization of the resources. <i>Conclusions:</i> The findings of the study support the managers and practitioners in strategizing their effort for logistics 4.0 adoption.
Transportation and communication, Management. Industrial management
Pietro Miele, Mariano Di Napoli, Luigi Guerriero
et al.
In most countries, landslides have caused severe socioeconomic impacts on people, cities, industrial establishments, and lifelines, such as highways, railways, and communication network systems. Socioeconomic losses due to slope failures are very high and they have been growing as the built environment expands into unstable hillside areas under the pressures of growing populations. Human activities as the construction of buildings, transportation routes, dams, and artificial canals have often been a major factor for the increasing damage due to slope failures. When recovery actions are not durable from an economic point of view, increasing the population’s awareness is the key strategy to reduce the effects of natural and anthropogenic events. Starting from the case study of the Pan-American Highway (the Ecuadorian part), this article shows a multi-approach strategy for infrastructure monitoring. The combined use of (i) DInSAR technique for detection of slow ground deformations, (ii) field survey activities, and (iii) the QPROTO tool for analysis of slopes potentially prone to collapse allowed us to obtain a first cognitive map to better characterize 22 km of the highway between the cities of Cuenca and Azogues. This study is the primary step in the development of a landslide awareness perspective to manage risk related to landslides along infrastructure corridors, increasing user safety and providing stakeholders with a management system to plan the most urgent interventions and to ensure the correct functionality of the infrastructure.
Showkat Ahmad Bhat, Nen-Fu Huang, Ishfaq Bashir Sofi
et al.
Modern-day agriculture supply chains have evolved from sovereign and autonomous local stakeholders to a worldwide interconnected system of multiple participants linked by complicated interactions, impacting the production, processing, transportation, and delivery of food to end consumers. Regular instances of fraudulent acts reveal a lack of openness in agriculture supply chains, raising worries about financial losses, eroding customer trust, and lowering corporate brand value. To develop an efficient and reliable trading environment, several fundamental modifications in the present supply chain architecture are required. There is broad consensus that blockchain can improve transparency in agriculture-food supply chains (agri-food SCs). Consumers now demand safe, sustainable, and equitable food production processes, and businesses are using blockchains and the internet of things to meet these needs. For enhanced responsiveness in agri-food SCs, new concepts have evolved that combine blockchains with various Industry 5.0 technologies (e.g., blockchain technology, big data, internet of things (IoT), radio frequency identification (RFID), near field communication (NFC), etc.). It is critical to cut through the hype and examine the technology’s limits, which might stymie its acceptance, implementation, and scalability in agri-food supply chains. This study presents Agri-SCM-BIoT (Agriculture Supply Chain Management using Blockchain and Internet of things) architecture to address the storage and scalability optimization, interoperability, security and privacy issues security, and privacy of personal data along with storage concerns with present single-chain agriculture supply chain systems. We also discussed the classification of security threats with IoT infrastructure and possible available blockchain-based defense mechanisms. Finally, we discussed the features of the proposed supply chain architecture, followed by a conclusion and future work.
In the past few years, automotive Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have become one of the most significant IoT application areas in the shape of vehicular communication to connect vehicles and such the so-called Internet of Vehicles (IoV) to be used in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) environments. With an increasing level of cooperation, ITS could facilitate smart city operations by providing cooperative intelligent traffic solutions. Modern Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) solutions have started to be implemented in the whole world with various deployment models and significant improvements in the integration of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication and IoT solutions. To highlight the current V2X technology evolution towards an IoT/IoV era, this paper presents a comprehensive survey about the convergence between IoT and V2X use-cases together with their supporting technologies in the cooperative ITS ecosystem worldwide. We show how IoT could enable advanced V2X applications to get widespread and increase ITS efficiency.
Rajaa Vikhram Yohanandhan, Rajvikram Madurai Elavarasan, Premkumar Manoharan
et al.
Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a new kind of digital technology that increases its attention across academia, government, and industry sectors and covers a wide range of applications like agriculture, energy, medical, transportation, etc. The traditional power systems with physical equipment as a core element are more integrated with information and communication technology, which evolves into the Cyber-Physical Power System (CPPS). The CPPS consists of a physical system tightly integrated with cyber systems (control, computing, and communication functions) and allows the two-way flows of electricity and information for enabling smart grid technologies. Even though the digital technologies monitoring and controlling the electric power grid more efficiently and reliably, the power grid is vulnerable to cybersecurity risk and involves the complex interdependency between cyber and physical systems. Analyzing and resolving the problems in CPPS needs the modelling methods and systematic investigation of a complex interaction between cyber and physical systems. The conventional way of modelling, simulation, and analysis involves the separation of physical domain and cyber domain, which is not suitable for the modern CPPS. Therefore, an integrated framework needed to analyze the practical scenario of the unification of physical and cyber systems. A comprehensive review of different modelling, simulation, and analysis methods and different types of cyber-attacks, cybersecurity measures for modern CPPS is explored in this paper. A review of different types of cyber-attack detection and mitigation control schemes for the practical power system is presented in this paper. The status of the research in CPPS around the world and a new path for recommendations and research directions for the researchers working in the CPPS are finally presented.
Saša Malešević, Michael Lustenberger, Florian Spychiger
Improving current supply chains by using distributed ledger technology (DLT) has been a highly researched topic during the last years. Currently, there are numerous articles elaborating on how such technologies can theoretically improve supply chains. However, case studies of such concepts and their economic value are scarce. In order to bridge this gap, we collaborated with a regional label company to clarify how a distributed ledger technology would benefit their ecosystem. This work answers the question of how such a prototype would look and whether it adds value. By following design science research practices, we design two artifacts based on requirements gathered in 14 interviews and discuss the artifacts’ elements within an evaluation panel. Our findings show that a distributed ledger application for the regional label ecosystem should have an open and decentralized architecture giving all participants full access to the shared data while still providing security and privacy for sensitive data. Additionally, data capturing should be simple. However, such an application does not add sufficient economic value and is currently of no practical interest in the regional label ecosystem as the expenditure likely exceeds the benefit.
Transportation and communication, Management. Industrial management
The globalization phenomenon marked by the flow of people movements, the advancement of informational technology, and the shrinking price of transportation has brought people around the world into one global community. Comprised by people from diverse linguistic backgrounds, this community sees the need to use a common language to bridge the communication gap. With a long-established economic and political power, English comes to the forefront as a global lingua franca. With its growing and pervasive influence, the need to learn English has never become more apparent. This need is often translated by government into language-in-education policy. This paper, to start with, will observe how language policy and globalization build a causal relationship. In the section that follows, language-in-education policy in Indonesian context will be presented. The following part will move on to discuss the use of EMI in Sekolah Berstandar Internasional (SBI)-International Standard School in Indonesia. In the end, a reflection and conclusion of EMI in Indonesia context will be discussed. In doing so, this paper employs literature study approach to explore the EMI practice in Indonesian schools. All relevant information was collected from several sources such as books and journal articles. The information was then utilised to build on discussions on existing theoretical framings, language policy and globalization, and on language-in-education policy and practice in Indonesia.
Sanchai Jaktheerangkoon, Kulit Na Nakorn, Kultida Rojviboonchai
Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) has been developed to enhance quality of road transportation. The development of safety applications could reduce number of road accidents. IEEE 802.11p is a promising standard for intervehicular communication, which would enable the connected-vehicle applications. However, in the well-known network simulators such as NS3 and Omnet, there is no propagation model that can simulate the IEEE 802.11p communication at blind corner realistically. Thus, in this paper, we conducted the real-world experiments of IEEE 802.11p in order to construct the model to describe the characteristics of the IEEE 802.11p communication at the blind corners. According to the experimental results, we observe that the minimum distance between the vehicle and the corner can effectively be represented as the key parameter in the model. Moreover, we have a variable parameter for adjusting the impact of the obstruction which could be different at each type of blind corners. The simulation results using our proposed model are compared with those using the existing obstacle model. The results showed that our proposed model is much more closely aligned with the real experimental results.
Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos, Parthasarathy Guturu
Smart Healthcare is envisioned as the combination of traditional healthcare augmented by smart bio-sensors, wearable devices, and a plethora of on-body sensors that communicate with smart hospitals, smart emergency response systems, and ambulances, through advanced information and communication technologies. The vision of smart healthcare as part of a smart city relies on the framework of the Internet of Things (IoT) as the underlying core technology that enables the design and operation of a city, whereby smart technology, energy grids, transportation, buildings, communication, and information technology, are all interconnected. This paper addresses some of the challenges faced in the IoT infrastructure, specifically secure communication and user authentication in the context of automated analysis of biomedical images and communication of the analysis results and related metadata in a smart healthcare framework. A hardware architecture for a secure digital camera integrated with the secure better portable graphics (SBPG) compression algorithm, suitable for applications in the IoT, is proposed in this paper. The focus of this paper is on patient data protection and authentication. The proposed SBPG architecture offers two layers of protection, concurrent encryption and watermarking, which address all issues related to security, privacy, and digital rights management. The experimental results demonstrate that the new compression technique BPG outperforms JPEG in terms of compression quality and compressed file size while providing increased image quality. High performance requirements of BPG have been met by employing two techniques: 1) insertion of an encrypted signature in the center portion of the image and 2) frequency-domain watermarking using blockwise DCT of size 8 × 8 pixels. These approaches optimize the proposed architecture by decreasing computational complexity while maintaining strong protection, with concomitant increase of the speed of the watermarking and compression processes. A Simulink® prototype for the proposed architecture has been built and tested. To the best of our knowledge, the hardware architecture for BPG compression with built-in image authentication capability for integration with a secure digital camera is the first one ever proposed.