scholarly journals An Economic Analysis Algorithm for Urban Forestry Projects

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Nesticò ◽  
Maria Rosaria Guarini ◽  
Pierluigi Morano ◽  
Francesco Sica

The second half of the 20th century was characterized by rapid growth of the urban population and lack of attention to environmental quality in the urbanizes territories. Thus, the development of many cities during that period took place through policies which, over time, resulted in a disaggregated landscape, both in morphological and functional terms. In some cases, these policies have caused the creation of land portions without a specific characterization, and the generation of urban voids that negatively affect the city’s development. To solve this problem, the public administration sectors of many countries are looking for new intervention strategies that are feasible from a social and economic point of view which are able to guarantee sustainable development. From this perspective, the execution of urban regeneration initiatives, including forestation, allows for the improvement of both environmental quality and citizens’ well-being, and promotes economic development. Considering the multiple effects that these initiatives can generate and the limited availability of public and private resources, it is appropriate to use multi-criteria decision support tools through which it is possible to evaluate the interventions’ complexity and best identify the city areas that lend themselves to be recovered and improved through the forestation. The aim of this work is to develop a support tool for public administrations aimed at identifying the optimal forestry projects’ location according to criteria that not only refer to financial type, but also their social, cultural, and environmental nature. Using Discrete Linear Programming algorithms, the model has been tested through a theoretical case study and reveals the advantages and limitations of the model, as well as future research prospects.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Lucia Bednárová ◽  
Silvia Michalková ◽  
Stanislav Vandžura

Public finances are a term used to denote specific financial relations and operations taking place within the economic system between public administration institutions, on the one hand, and other entities, on the other. From an economic point of view, a public contract means an efficient allocation of resources with the aim of material and material provision of public administration bodies with such services that these bodies cannot or do not want to secure themselves. Through public procurement, a relatively high volume of public spending is realized in each developed country. Public procurement of goods, services and works by public institutions currently accounts for a relatively high percentage of GDP, estimated at more than 15% in the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. The area of procurement is one of the key areas where the public and private sectors interact financially with each other. As part of the paper, we primarily deal with below-limit and above-limit contracts in public procurement in the Slovak Republic. As part of the research, we focused on the period from 2016 to 2019. The paper provides an overview of the number of procedures in public procurement for the period from 2016 to 2019. In this comparison of data, we try to demonstrate the strength of public procurement in the public sector as well as the volume of financial flows spent on procurement. Within the issue of our research, the acquisition of relevant documents as well as verified procedures is very problematic, as we do not have a significant number of sources of professional and science publications related to these topics in the Slovak Republic.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Luiz F. P. Oliveira ◽  
António P. Moreira ◽  
Manuel F. Silva

The development of robotic systems to operate in forest environments is of great relevance for the public and private sectors. In this sense, this article reviews several scientific papers, research projects and commercial products related to robotic applications for environmental preservation, monitoring, wildfire firefighting, inventory operations, planting, pruning and harvesting. After conducting critical analysis, the main characteristics observed were: (a) the locomotion system is directly affected by the type of environmental monitoring to be performed; (b) different reasons for pruning result in different locomotion and cutting systems; (c) each type of forest, in each season and each type of soil can directly interfere with the navigation technique used; and (d) the integration of the concept of swarm of robots with robots of different types of locomotion systems (land, air or sea) can compensate for the time of executing tasks in unstructured environments. Two major areas are proposed for future research works: Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart forest and navigation systems. It is expected that, with the various characteristics exposed in this paper, the current robotic forest systems will be improved, so that forest exploitation becomes more efficient and sustainable.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando Duran ◽  
Irene Roda ◽  
Marco Macchi

Purpose: This manuscript explores the link between Spare Parts Management and Total Costs of Ownership or Life Cycle Costs (LCC).Design/methodology/approach: First, this work enumerates the different managerial decisions instances in spare parts management that are present during the life cycle of a physical asset. Second, we analyse how those decision instances could affect the TCO of a physical asset (from the economic point of view). Finally, we propose a conceptual framework for incorporating the spare parts management into a TCO model.Findings: The recent literature lacks discussions on the integration of spare parts management with the Total Costs of Ownership (TCO). Based in an extensive literature revision we can declare that the computation of costs related to spare parts management has been neglected by TCO models.Originality/value: The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, a literature review and identification of a series of spare parts management decision instances and its relationship with TCOs is presented in this paper. Second, a conceptual framework is suggested for linking those decisions instances to a total cost of ownership perspective. Some research questions and future research challenges are presented at the end of this work.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-486
Author(s):  
Laura Peutere ◽  
Antti Saloniemi ◽  
Simo Aho ◽  
Jouko Nätti ◽  
Tapio Nummi

The connection between high-involvement management (HIM), entailing heavy employee involvement, and employee well-being is a controversial and widely discussed topic. Clarifying how job satisfaction and stress are connected to HIM and job control (the control employees have over their work), this study is based on data from two Finnish sources: an employer survey investigating the extent of HIM within an organisation, and employee assessments of job control, stress and job satisfaction. Logistic regression models were used as the study method. In contrast to previous Finnish studies, our findings show that HIM seems hardly to benefit employee well-being. Especially in the public sector, the correlation between extensive HIM and employee well-being turned out to be negative. However, HIM in the private sector was positively related to job satisfaction. As expected, a high level of job control was regularly associated with greater well-being.


Work ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Annick Parent-Lamarche ◽  
Maude Boulet

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health. Many employees have had to pivot suddenly to teleworking to prevent the virus from spreading. While teleworking may have some negative consequences, it may also represent a human resources practice that may improve employee well-being. OBJECTIVE: The study main objective was to determine if teleworking played a moderating role in the relation between potential stressors and employee well-being during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic when working from home. This was based on the theory of conservation of resources. METHODS: Multivariate regression analyses were conducted with Stata 13 software to determine the contribution of potential stressors on employee well-being, as well as the moderating role of teleworking on a sample of 480 Canadian employees. Data were collected once for white and blue collar from both public (67.08%) and private (32.92%) business sectors. RESULTS: Results indicated that work-life imbalances, workload, and marital tension were associated with lower levels of well-being. On the other hand, teleworking and household income were associated with higher levels of well-being. Teleworking also moderated the differences in well-being between the public and private sectors. Teleworking in the public sector seems to increase employee well-being. Conversely, working on-site in the public sector seems to decrease well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Employers need to proactively address work-life imbalances, workloads, and teleworking to maintain employee well-being. Specific recommendations are offered to ensure that teleworking remains positive for employee well-being both during a pandemic and afterward.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1287-1291
Author(s):  
John Promise Chiparo ◽  
◽  
Marian Tukuta ◽  
Michael Musanzikwa ◽  
◽  
...  

The purpose of this paper reviews the influence of Vehicle Fleet Management Practices, (VFMP). A systematic review of papers was performed analysing 56 articles from year 2014 to 2021. Vehicle Fleet Management Practices research has garnered interest from both academics and industrialists in both the public and private sector. This is demonstrated by the increasing number of academic papers published in recent years. The article discusses interesting findings, suggests and lays down a number of directions for future research. In addition, limitations of this work are presented. The conclusion of this study provides sufficient evidence on the need for further research addressing the interaction between vehicle fleet management practices and service delivery in public entities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 00056 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Neverova-Dziopak

Eutrophication is one of the consequences of the negative anthropogenic impact on aquatic ecosystems. It leads to the degradation of both sweet and marine ecosystems, constituting a kind of secondary pollution of waters, which disturbs all types of their use. Undertakings related to preventing the negative effects of eutrophication are mainly conducted towards reducing the loads of nutrients introduced into surface waters and controlling the entire conditions in aquatic ecosystems in order to limit the development of aquatic vegetation. The increasingly restrictive legal requirement regarding the content of nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater discharged into recipients enforces the application of expensive treatment technologies, and the public is becoming more aware of the rising costs of water and wastewater fees. In addition, wastewater treatment is a factor which has a negative impact on air quality due to greenhouse gas emissions and generates other environmental problems. The challenge for facilities, however, is determining which treatment alternatives will best meet their needs, both technically and financially, and to choose the most sustainable path. The problem of establishing a reasonable level of nutrient removal from wastewater, justified from an ecological and economic point of view is discussed in the paper.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Jacek Stasiak

The existence of the public and private sectors in the modern economy is justified from the point of view of economic policy, especially with regard to its stabilising function (regulatory sphere) and allocative and redistributive function (real sphere).


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Osama Khaled Alkhlaifat

The aim of this study has been to investigate and provide a deeper understanding of the motives of silence towards the participation in the work-related decisions, in both the public and private schools in the Jordanian capital (Amman). ‘100’ teachers were interviewed using the semi-structured interviews through the available communication means. The pre-set questions were directed to the sample of the study to identify both the situations related to the decisions and motives leading to silence and non-participation from the respondents' point of view. The motives were classified according to the factors to which they belong, as well as the situations were classified according to each stage of the decision-making process, where some specialists in the field of human resources management had been asked to help in accomplishing the classification. The results showed that the largest percentage of respondents faced at least one situation in which they chose to remain silent. Most of the situations mentioned were related to the first and last stage of decision-making process (identifying the problem and following up the decision). The results also showed that most of the motives were related to the organizational practices by the officials, where the total iteration is twice as the personal motives.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 415
Author(s):  
Paulo Santos

In the Portuguese National Health Service, little attention has been paid to oral health care. The almost nonexistence of a dentistry network raises concern about accessibility to services, and justifies the need to call on a predominantly private provision of services. The coexistence between the public and private settings is not always easy, especially when services need to interact and actively collaborate in order to find answers to the patient’s problems. Dental implant procedures and the need to perform a previous maxillofacial computerized tomography to study the bone bed where osseointegrated dental implants are placed are a common situation. The current governmental regulation, blinded to the clinical context, may limit the accessibility to the tests. Based on this scenario, we discuss the possible options from an ethical point of view, framing the patient’s and the physician’s perspective and the relation between both.We conclude that the medical decision can’t be disregarded from the clinical evaluation, in the intimacy of the medical consultation. This is an ethical duty that overrules the administrative and bureaucratic constraints. A good management of this apparent dichotomy may enhance better health and greater empowerment for the patient.


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