scholarly journals Evaluating the suitability of documents on the prevention of major risks intended for the general public

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laetitia Ferrer ◽  
Corinne Curt

Abstract. Providing preventive information to the public is one of the major challenges in the prevention of major hazards. In France, the DICRIM (Document d'Information Communal sur les Risques Majeurs; in English "Municipal Information Document on Major Risks") is currently the main regulatory risk communication tool intended for the general public. It has been developed with the aim of contributing to awareness and knowledge of risks and informing on the actions and behaviors to adopt. This raises questions as to its suitability composed of readability and legibility, essential for its appropriation by the population. Answering these questions constitutes the first step in improving its effectiveness. This article presents the development of indicators and a decision support model used to analyze and improve the suitability of a DICRIM. Two types of indicator, considering visual and content characteristics, were developed: System Indicators for the entire document and Substantive and Formal Component Indicators for the fields it contains. They were formalized using five types of source: the literature, expert knowledge, opinions of residents, analysis of a DICRIM database and a questionnaire survey. The aggregation of indicators provides suitability scores and feedback on what should be improved in the DICRIM. Validation sessions were performed with five risk analysis experts. The advantage of the model is that it can be used by the town halls and design offices of any municipality without the need to call on experts or significant human or financial resources.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anat Gesser-Edelsburg ◽  
Nour Abed Elhadi Shahbari ◽  
Ricky Cohen ◽  
Adva Mir Halavi ◽  
Rana Hijazi ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND In the new media age, the public searches for information both online and offline. Many studies have examined how the public reads and understands this information but very few investigate how people assess the quality of journalistic articles as opposed to information generated by health professionals. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine how public health care workers (HCWs) and the general public seek, read, and understand health information and to investigate the criteria by which they assess the quality of journalistic articles. METHODS A Web-based nonprobability sampling questionnaire survey was distributed to Israeli HCWs and members of the public via 3 social media outlets: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. A total of 979 respondents participated in the online survey via the Qualtrics XM platform. RESULTS The findings indicate that HCWs find academic articles more reliable than do members of the general public (44.4% and 28.4%, respectively, P<.001). Within each group, we found disparities between the places where people search for information and the sources they consider reliable. HCWs consider academic articles to be the most reliable, yet these are not their main information sources. In addition, HCWs often use social networks to search for information (18.2%, P<.001), despite considering them very unreliable (only 2.2% found them reliable, P<.001). The same paradoxes were found among the general public, where 37.5% (P<.001) seek information via social networks yet only 8.4% (P<.001) find them reliable. Out of 6 quality criteria, 4 were important both to HCWs and to the general public. CONCLUSIONS In the new media age where information is accessible to all, the quality of articles about health is of critical importance. It is important that the criteria examined in this research become the norm in health writing for all stakeholders who write about health, whether they are professional journalists or citizen journalists writing in the new media.


Author(s):  
Caroline Gregory ◽  
Michael Ogundeji ◽  
Aarti Srivastava ◽  
Bianca Vanier ◽  
Sailly Dave ◽  
...  

The Affordable Medicine Facility – malaria (AMFm) was a pilot project established to subsidize quality-assured artemisinin-based combination therapies (QAACTs) in eight malaria-endemic African regions: Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Madagascar, Tanzania (mainland) and Zanzibar. The objectives of the program were to increase the affordability and availability of artemisimin-based combination therapies (ACT), as well as the market share relative to other less effective antimalarial medicines. Overall, the AMFm program had a greater impact in the private-for-profit sector than the public sector. In general, public services do not work as well as their private counterparts in most countries. Inadequate services in remote areas necessitate prohibitively long journeys to access resources and care. In general, the private sector was able to provide supplies of ACTs, as long as it was profitable. Seven countries showed significant increases in availability in the private sector, six regions had significant decreases in QAACT cost, with declines ranging from $1.28 to $4.82, and all eight regions had increases in market share. Impact in remote regions was substantial, with 60% (Ghana) and 48.5% (Kenya) of facilities in remote areas stocking QAACTs. Negotiations with manufacturers, the involvement of the private sector, and supporting interventions were critical in the success of AMFm. The AMFm pilot project then transitioned into a private sector co-payment mechanism involving only six countries. The AMFm program was not sustainable due to the enormous costs of the program, potentially due to unnecessary and excessive orders of ACTs, with an estimated total of 500 million USD. Fixing this sustainability issue would make a program such as this one more applicable to other malaria-endemic countries, which have limited financial resources.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Fatikhatus Sholikhah ◽  
Diema Hernyka Satyareni ◽  
Chandra Sukma Anugerah

Abstrak Persaingan merupakan hal yang biasa terjadi terutama dalam dunia bisnis, tidak terkecuali yang telah dialami oleh Bravo Supermarket Jombang. Bravo bukanlah satu-satunya supermarket di kota Jombang, sehingga Bravo harus bersaing dengan para kompetitornya agar Bravo bisa bersaing dan tetap produktif. Salah satu cara yang dapat digunakan dalam meningkatkan penjualan dan loyalitas pelanggan adalah dengan memberikan reward kepada para pelanggan terbaik. Oleh karena itu perlu dibuatlah sebuah perancangan sistem pendukung keputusan dalam pemilihan pelanggan terbaik pada Bravo. Dalam perancangan sistem yang dibuat nantinya berbasis web dengan metode SAW(Simple Additive Weighting)sebagai proses perhitungan pemilihan pelanggan terbaik. Hasil dari perancangan sistem pemilihan pelanggan terbaik pada Bravo Supermarket Jombang diharapkan dapat membantu pihak manajemen Bravo dalam pemilihan pelanggan terbaik yang akan menerima reward dan akhirnya akan mampu meningkatkan loyalitas pelanggan dan profit Bravo. Kata kunci: Bravo, sistem pendukung keputusan, pelanggan, SAW. Abstract Competition is a common thing, especially in the business world, is no exception has been experienced by Bravo Supermarket Jombang. Bravo is not the only supermarket in the town of Jombang, so that Bravo had to compete with its competitors in order Bravo to compete and remain productive. One way that can be used to increase sales and customer loyalty is to give rewards to the best customers. Therefore, it needs to be made to a design decision support system in the selection of the best customers on Bravo. In designing the system made later on a web-based method of SAW (Simple Additive weighting) as the process of calculating the best customer selection. The results of the election system design best customers at Bravo Supermarket Jombang expected to assist management in selecting the best customer Bravo who will receive rewards and will eventually be able to increase customer loyalty and profit Bravo. Key word: Bravo, decision support system, customers, SAW.


Author(s):  
Eddy Suwito

The development of technology that continues to grow, the public increasingly facilitates socialization through technology. Opinion on free and uncontrolled social media causes harm to others. The law sees this phenomenon subsequently changing. Legal Information Known as Information and Electronic Transaction Law or ITE Law. However, the ITE Law cannot protect the entire general public. Because it is an Article in the ITE Law that is contrary to Article in the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia.


Author(s):  
Madaniyo I. Mutabazi ◽  
Eugene R. Russell ◽  
Robert W. Stokes

Traditionally, highway improvement project evaluation is done without incorporating highway users’ views. The Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) wants drivers to be satisfied and have “good feelings” about its passing lanes program. KDOT needs input to decide whether passing lanes are efficient, safe, and acceptable to the public. Drivers’ views were solicited via a questionnaire survey which was part of a comprehensive study on passing lanes in Kansas. Generally, drivers support the passing lane program and suggest construction of more passing lanes. Drivers think that passing lanes are more beneficial for improving safety than for saving time. They are equally divided on the length of passing lanes between “too short” and “just right,” although the provided lengths are within the recommended optimum lengths found in the literature. The “too short” responses could be due to existing passing lane spacings, preference of four-lane highways over two-lane highways, and difference in local conditions from those used to determine lengths. Drivers cited fellow drivers’ failure to follow signs and markings properly, and failure to use the lanes properly; this seems to indicate that improvements in signing and pavement markings should be considered. A smaller proportion of drivers, satisfied with a lower frequency of local travel on a route closer to the state’s borders (i.e., more unfamiliar drivers), suggests the importance of standardizing highway operating and design practices throughout the country.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Fernandes ◽  
M. C. Almeida ◽  
A. G. Henriques

Desalination technologies provide an alternative for potable water production, having significant potential for application where fresh water scarcity exists. Potential benefits have to be balanced with other factors, such as high costs, high energy consumption, and significant environmental impacts, for the understanding of real risks and gains of desalination within the context of integrated water resources management. Multiple factors can be considered when analysing the viability of a desalination project but often a limited approach is used. The complexity in the analysis lies in finding the alternatives that obey to multiple objectives (e.g. reduced environmental impact, social acceptance, less cost associated). In this paper, development of a methodology based on multiple criteria decision support system for the evaluation and ranking the potential of desalination technologies is described and applied to a Portuguese case study. Relevant factors to the selection of desalination technologies were identified using SWOT analysis and the MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique) approach was applied. Technical alternatives considered include reverse osmosis and multi-effect desalination (MED), together with energy production by fossil fuels or solar energy. Production of water by conventional approaches was also considered. Results, for non-economic benefits, show higher score for MED solar but, in the cost-benefit analysis, conventional methods of water production have higher ranking since costs of renewable energies are not yet competitive. However, even if not preferred in economic terms, desalination is ranked significantly above the conventional approaches for non-economic criteria.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
D. Inman ◽  
D. Simidchiev ◽  
P. Jeffrey

This paper examines the use of influence diagrams (IDs) in water demand management (WDM) strategy planning with the specific objective of exploring how IDs can be used in developing computer-based decision support tools (DSTs) to complement and support existing WDM decision processes. We report the results of an expert consultation carried out in collaboration with water industry specialists in Sofia, Bulgaria. The elicited information is presented as influence diagrams and the discussion looks at their usefulness in WDM strategy design and the specification of suitable modelling techniques. The paper concludes that IDs themselves are useful in developing model structures for use in evidence-based reasoning models such as Bayesian Networks, and this is in keeping with the objectives set out in the introduction of integrating DSTs into existing decision processes. The paper will be of interest to modellers, decision-makers and scientists involved in designing tools to support resource conservation strategy implementation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-290
Author(s):  
Tingzhu Chen ◽  
Yaoyao Qian ◽  
Jingyu Pei ◽  
Shaoteng Wu ◽  
Jiang Wu ◽  
...  

Oracle bone script recognition (OBSR) has been a fundamental problem in research on oracle bone scripts for decades. Despite being intensively studied, existing OBSR methods are still subject to limitations regarding recognition accuracy, speed and robustness. Furthermore, the dependency of these methods on expert knowledge hinders the adoption of OBSR systems by the general public and also discourages social outreach of research outputs. Addressing these issues, this study proposes an encoding-based OBSR system that applies image pre-processing techniques to encode oracle images into small matrices and recognize oracle characters in the encoding space. We tested our methods on a collection of oracle bones from the Yin Ruins in XiaoTun village, and achieved a high accuracy rate of 99% within a time range of milliseconds.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105566562199530
Author(s):  
İlkem Kara ◽  
Aydan Baştuğ Dumbak ◽  
Maviş Emel Kulak Kayıkcı

Introduction: Factors such as teachers’ appropriate support and social interactions have an impact on the academic performance of children with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P). This study was designed to investigate the perceptions of the teachers and the general public about the academic and cognitive performance of individuals with CL/P. Methods: This study was included 360 (male/female = 102/258) teachers and 640 (male/female = 259/381) participants that represent the general public. Anonymized web-based and paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaire that included multiple-choice and yes/no questions were administered. Within-group differences and intergroup differences were analyzed in terms of academic and cognitive performance. Results: Most of the teachers and the general public indicated that the academic and cognitive performance of individuals with CL/P is the same as their unaffected peers. A significantly higher proportion of the teachers indicated that the academic performance of children with CL/P is the same as their unaffected peers than the general public. Conclusion: Considering that the general public’s attitudes and appropriate teacher support are crucial to prevent adverse impacts on the lives of individuals with CL/P, it is important to support teachers with the appropriate information and to encourage the public to recognize that everybody with a facial difference should be treated as an individual rather than a disability.


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