Abstract: It is the living conditions in the cities that determine the future of our livelihood. “To change life, we must first change space"- Henri Lefebvre. Sustainable development is a utopian aspiration for South African cities (especially the case study of the Gauteng City Region), which are currently characterized by unplanned growth and increasing urban sprawl. While the reasons for poor environmental quality and living conditions are undoubtedly diverse and complex, having political, economical and social dimensions, it is argued that the prevailing approach to layout planning in South Africa is part of the problem. This article seeks a solution to the problem of sustainability, from a spatial planning perspective. The spatial planning tool, the urban development boundary, is introduced as the concept that will ensure empty talk being translated into a sustainable vision. The urban development boundary is a spatial planning tool that can be used and implemented to direct urban growth towards a more sustainable form. The urban development boundary aims to ensure planned urban areas, in contrast to the current unplanned areas characterized by urban sprawl and insufficient infrastructure. However, the success of the urban development boundary concept is subject to effective implementation measures, as well as adequate and efficient management. The concept of sustainable development can function as a driving force underlying societal change and transformation, but the interface between spatial planning and environmental management needs to be established (as this is the core aspects underlying sustainable development), and authorities needs to understand and implement this interface consecutively. This interface can, however, realize in terms of the objectives of the planning tool – the urban development boundary. The case study, the Gauteng City Region, is depicted as a site of economic growth and innovation, but there is a lack of good urban and regional governance, impacting on the design (layout) and function of urban areas and land use, as current authorities make uninformed decisions in terms of development applications, leading to unsustainable urban forms and unsustainable nodes. Place and space concepts are thus critical matters applicable to planning of the Gauteng City Region. The urban development boundary are thus explored as a planning tool to guide decision-making, and create a sustainable urban form, leading to better environmental and living conditions, and continuous sustainability.
Abstract: The State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will hold two important events in the nearby future. In 2014 it will have the final game of the Football World Cup, and in 2016 it will be holding the Olympic Games. Therefore, the public transportation system (mainly buses) is of a major concern to the Rio de Janeiro State authorities-. The main objective of this work is to compare the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the cities of ItaperunaandCampos, both cities situated in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The outcome of thiscomparison, based on the opinion of the bus users, has shownthemdispleased with the quality of the service provided by the bus companies operating in both cities. It is urgent the need to find possible practical alternatives to minimize the consequences of the main problems detected in this work. With these practical alternatives available, we will be able to offer to the Rio de Janeiro State authorities- suggestions about possible solutions to the main problems identified in this survey, as well as the time of implantation and costs of these solutions.
Abstract: Road authorities have confronted problems to
maintaining the serviceability of road infrastructure systems by using
various traditional methods of contracting. As a solution to these
problems, many road authorities have started contracting out road
maintenance works to the private sector based on performance
measures. This contracting method is named Performance-Based
Maintenance Contracting (PBMC). It is considered more costeffective
than other traditional methods of contracting. It has a
substantial success records in many developed and developing
countries over the last two decades. This paper discusses and
analyses the potential issues to be considered before the introduction
of PBMC in a country.
Abstract: The events of October 2010, where terrorists managed to get explosive devices onboard of three passenger aircrafts and two air freighters, demonstrated weaknesses of the international air cargo and airmail security. Ever since, postal security has gained interest among policymakers and authorities. This study augments the limited body of academic literature on the topic bydemarcating areas of postal security, identifying relevant stakeholders in each area, and investigating why these stakeholders engage in postal security. Research is based on a case study on Swiss Post’s mail service.
Abstract: Within the realm of e-government, the development has moved towards testing new means for democratic decisionmaking, like e-panels, electronic discussion forums, and polls. Although such new developments seem promising, they are not problem-free, and the outcomes are seldom used in the subsequent formal political procedures. Nevertheless, process models offer promising potential when it comes to structuring and supporting transparency of decision processes in order to facilitate the integration of the public into decision-making procedures in a reasonable and manageable way. Based on real-life cases of urban planning processes in Sweden, we present an outline for an integrated framework for public decision making to: a) provide tools for citizens to organize discussion and create opinions; b) enable governments, authorities, and institutions to better analyse these opinions; and c) enable governments to account for this information in planning and societal decision making by employing a process model for structured public decision making.
Abstract: State tax revenues in most countries started to decrease during the recession. Government of Latvia decided to compensate the decline by increasing rates of several taxes including excise tax on strong alcohol. The total increase in 2009 constituted 42% and the rate increased from 896€ to 1 266€ for 100l of absolute alcohol. Since then this has had a negative impact on consumption volumes and the split between legal and illegal market. The legal alcohol sales decreased by almost 50% (by volume), consequentially having negative effect on the State revenues from VAT and excise tax. Estimated results for 2010 are indicating 54 million € decrease in VAT, excise tax and other taxes versus 2008 (excise tax -19 million €, VAT -30 million €, other taxes -5 million €). The paper aims to analyze impact of the increase in excise tax on consumption patterns, State revenues and competitiveness of the local companies to draw up proposals for the state authorities regarding more effective tax policies. The analysis reveals a relationship between excise tax rate, illegal alcohol market and State revenues. The results can be used to improve excise tax system and effectiveness in Latvia.
Abstract: Public housing is a vital factor in community
development. Successful city, housing and eco system regeneration
design is essential in providing positive community development.
This concerns work places, nice dwellings, providing premises for
child care, care of the elderly, providing qualitative premises for
different kinds of commercial service, providing a nice built
environment and housing areas and not the least activating tenants.
The public housing companies give value to society by stimulating
people, renovating socially and economically sustainable as well as
being partners to local business and authorities. By their activities the
housing companies contribute to sustainable local and regional
growth and the identity and reputation of cities. A Social, Economic
and Ecological Reputation Effect (SEERE) model for actions to
promote housing and community reputation is presented. The model
emphasizes regenerative actions to restore natural eco systems as part
of housing renewal strategies and to strengthen municipality
reputation.
Abstract: Several recent studies have shown that the
transparency of financial reporting have a significant influence on investor-s decisions. Thus, regulation authorities and professional
organizations (IFAC) have emphasized the role of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) and interactive data as a means of
promoting transparency and monitoring corporate reporting. In this
context, this paper has as objective the analysis of interactive reporting through XBRL and its use as a support in the process of
taking decisions in corporate governance, namely the potential of interactive reports in XBRL to increase the transparency and
monitoring process of corporate governance.
Abstract: A low cost Short Message System (SMS) based Home security system equipped with motion, smoke, temperature, humidity and light sensors has been studied and tested. The sensors are controlled by a microprocessor PIC 18F4520 through the SMS having password protection code for the secure operation. The user is able to switch light and the appliances and get instant feedback. Also in cases of emergencies such as fire or robbery the system will send alert message to occupant and relevant civil authorities. The operation of the home security has been tested on Vodafone- Fiji network and Digicel Fiji Network for emergency and feedback responses for 25 samples. The experiment showed that it takes about 8-10s for the security system to respond in case of emergency. It takes about 18-22s for the occupant to switch and monitor lights and appliances and then get feedback depending upon the network traffic.
Abstract: More and more natural disasters are happening every
year: floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. In order to reduce
the risk of possible damages, governments all around the world are
investing into development of Early Warning Systems (EWS) for
environmental applications. The most important task of the EWS is
identification of the onset of critical situations affecting environment
and population, early enough to inform the authorities and general
public. This paper describes an approach for monitoring of flood
protections systems based on machine learning methods. An
Artificial Intelligence (AI) component has been developed for
detection of abnormal dike behaviour. The AI module has been
integrated into an EWS platform of the UrbanFlood project (EU
Seventh Framework Programme) and validated on real-time
measurements from the sensors installed in a dike.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to explore the role of actors at the local level in managing the Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system in Thailand. The research method was done through documentary research, individual interviews, and one forum conducted in each province. This paper uses the case of three provinces located in three regions in Thailand including; Ubon Ratchathani (North-eastern region), Lampang (Northern Region), and Songkhla (Southern Region). The result shows that, recently, the role of the local government in being the service provider for their local people is increasingly concerned. In identifying the key success factors towards the EMS system, it includes; (i) the local executives- vision and influence that the decisions made by them, for both PAO (Provincial Administration Organisation (PAO) and TAO (Tambon Administration Organisation), is vital to address the overall challenges in EMS development, (ii) the administrative system through reforming their working style create the flexibility in running the EMS task, (iii) the network-based management among different agencies at the local level leads to the better EMS practices, and (iv) the development in human resource is very vital in delivering the effective services.
Abstract: In Mauritius, much emphasis is put on measures to
combat the high prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
Health promotion campaigns for the adoption of healthy behaviors
and screening programs are done regularly by local authorities and
NCD surveys are carried out at intervals. However, the health
behaviors of the poor have not been investigated so far. This study
aims to give an insight on the perceptions of health status and
lifestyle health behaviors of poor people in Mauritius. A crosssectional
study among 83 persons benefiting from social aid in a
selected urban district was carried out. Results showed that 51.8% of
respondents perceived that they had good health status. 57.8% had no
known NCD whilst 25.3% had hypertension, followed by diabetes
(16.9%), asthma (9.6%) and heart disease (7.2%).They had low
smoking (10.8%) and alcohol consumption (6.0%) as well as high
physical activity prevalence (54.2%). These results were significantly
different from the NCD survey carried out in the general population.
Consumption of vegetables in the study was high. Overweight and
obesity trends were however similar to the NCD survey report 2009.
These findings contrast with other international studies showing poor
people having poor perceptions of health status and unhealthy
behavioral choices. Whether these positive health behaviors of poor
people in Mauritius arise out of choice or whether it is because the
alternative behavior is too costly remains to be investigated further.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a methodology for finding
authoritative researchers by analyzing academic Web sites. We show
a case study in which we concentrate on a set of Czech computer
science departments- Web sites. We analyze the relations between
them via hyperlinks and find the most important ones using several
common ranking algorithms. We then examine the contents of the
research papers present on these sites and determine the most
authoritative Czech authors.
Abstract: Protecting is the sources of drinking water is the first
barrier of contamination of drinking water. The Feitsui Reservoir
watershed of Taiwan supplies domestic water for around 5 million
people in the Taipei metropolitan area. Understanding the spatial
patterns of water quality trends in this watershed is an important
agenda for management authorities. This study examined 7 sites in the
watershed for water quality parameters regulated in the standard for
drinking water source. The non-parametric seasonal Mann-Kendall-s
test was used to determine significant trends for each parameter.
Significant trends of increasing pH occurred at the sampling station in
the uppermost stream watershed, and in total phosphorus at 4 sampling
stations in the middle and downstream watershed. Additionally, the
multi-scale land cover assessment and average land slope were used to
explore the influence on the water quality in the watershed. Regression
models for predicting water quality were also developed.
Abstract: With the advance of information technology in the
new era the applications of Internet to access data resources has
steadily increased and huge amount of data have become accessible
in various forms. Obviously, the network providers and agencies,
look after to prevent electronic attacks that may be harmful or may
be related to terrorist applications. Thus, these have facilitated the
authorities to under take a variety of methods to protect the special
regions from harmful data. One of the most important approaches is
to use firewall in the network facilities. The main objectives of
firewalls are to stop the transfer of suspicious packets in several
ways. However because of its blind packet stopping, high process
power requirements and expensive prices some of the providers are
reluctant to use the firewall. In this paper we proposed a method to
find a discriminate function to distinguish between usual packets and
harmful ones by the statistical processing on the network router logs.
By discriminating these data, an administrator may take an approach
action against the user. This method is very fast and can be used
simply in adjacent with the Internet routers.
Abstract: This paper presents a watermarking protocol able to
solve the well-known “customer-s right problem" and “unbinding
problem". In particular, the protocol has been purposely designed
to be adopted in a web context, where users wanting to buy digital
contents are usually neither provided with digital certificates issued
by certification authorities (CAs) nor able to autonomously perform
specific security actions. Furthermore, the protocol enables users to
keep their identities unexposed during web transactions as well as
allows guilty buyers, i.e. who are responsible distributors of illegal
replicas, to be unambiguously identified. Finally, the protocol has
been designed so that web content providers (CPs) can exploit
copyright protection services supplied by web service providers (SPs)
in a security context. Thus, CPs can take advantage of complex
services without having to directly implement them.
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of current municipal
solid waste management in Khoram Abad city.
According to data collected by the local authorities, the waste
generation rate is estimated to be 800 g/cap.d with density of 243
kg/m3. Solid waste is stored in different types of containers at the
source of generation in different areas of the city.
Local Authority is responsible for waste collection, transportation.
Municipality is responsible for waste collection, using private sector
contracts.
At present, both mechanical and manual methods are used to
collect residential waste. Manual methods of collection are the most
commonly used for waste collection in most parts of the city.
Land filling is the main disposal method in this city. But it has
some obvious problem and deficiencies
The current state of solid waste management has been improved
slightly in the last decade. By more actions can reduce the human and
environmental risks.
Abstract: Road crashes not only claim lives and inflict injuries but also create economic burden to the society due to loss of productivity. The problem of deaths and injuries as a result of road traffic crashes is now acknowledged to be a global phenomenon with authorities in virtually all countries of the world concerned about the growth in the number of people killed and seriously injured on their roads. However, the road crash scenario of a developing country like Bangladesh is much worse comparing with this of developed countries. For developing proper countermeasures it is necessary to identify the factors affecting crash occurrences. The objectives of the study is to examine the effect of district wise road infrastructure, socioeconomic and demographic features on crash occurrence .The unit of analysis will be taken as individual district which has not been explored much in the past. Reported crash data obtained from Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) from the year 2004 to 2010 are utilized to develop negative binomial model. The model result will reveal the effect of road length (both paved and unpaved), road infrastructure and several socio economic characteristics on district level crash frequency in Bangladesh.
Abstract: The world economic crises and budget constraints
have caused authorities, especially those in developing countries, to
rationalize water quality monitoring activities. Rationalization
consists of reducing the number of monitoring sites, the number of
samples, and/or the number of water quality variables measured. The
reduction in water quality variables is usually based on correlation. If
two variables exhibit high correlation, it is an indication that some of
the information produced may be redundant. Consequently, one
variable can be discontinued, and the other continues to be measured.
Later, the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression technique is
employed to reconstitute information about discontinued variable by
using the continuously measured one as an explanatory variable. In
this paper, two record extension techniques are employed to
reconstitute information about discontinued water quality variables,
the OLS and the Line of Organic Correlation (LOC). An empirical
experiment is conducted using water quality records from the Nile
Delta water quality monitoring network in Egypt. The record
extension techniques are compared for their ability to predict
different statistical parameters of the discontinued variables. Results
show that the OLS is better at estimating individual water quality
records. However, results indicate an underestimation of the variance
in the extended records. The LOC technique is superior in preserving
characteristics of the entire distribution and avoids underestimation
of the variance. It is concluded from this study that the OLS can be
used for the substitution of missing values, while LOC is preferable
for inferring statements about the probability distribution.
Abstract: The focus of this research is in the area of the soviet period and the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan in the XIX century. There was close connection of national customs and traditions with religious practices, outlooks and attitudes. In particular, such an approach has alleged estimation by Kazakh historians of the process of Christianization of the local population. Some of them are inclined to consider the small number of Christening Kazakhs as evidence that the Russian Orthodox Church didn’t achieve its mission. The number of historians who think that the church didn’t achieve its mission has thousand over the last centuries, however our calculations of the number of Kazakhs who became Orthodox Christian is much more than other historians think. Such Christians can be divided into 3 groups: Some remained Christian until their deaths, others had two faiths and the third hid their true religions, having returned to their former belief. Therefore, to define the exact amount of Christening Kazakhs represented a challenge. Some data does not create a clear picture of the level of Christianization, constant and accurate was not collected. The data appearing in reports of spiritual attendants and civil authorities is not always authentic. Article purpose is illumination and the analysis missionary activity of Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan.