Driving Speed Estimation and Trapped Drivers’ Detection inside Tunnels Using Distributed MIMO Bluetooth Devices

Accidents in highway tunnels involving trucks carrying flammable cargoes can be dangerous, needing immediate confrontation to detect and safely evacuate the trapped people to lead them to the safety exits. Unfortunately, existing sensing technologies fail to detect and track trapped persons or moving vehicles inside tunnels in such an environment. This paper presents a distributed Bluetooth system architecture that uses detection equipment following a MIMO approach. The proposed equipment uses two long-range Bluetooth and one BLE transponder to locate vehicles and trapped people in motorway tunnels. Moreover, the detector’s parts and distributed architecture are analytically described, along with interfacing with the authors’ resources management system implementation. Furthermore, the authors also propose a speed detection process, based on classifier training, using RSSI input and speed calculations from the tunnel inductive loops as output, instead of the Friis equation with Kalman filtering steps. The proposed detector was experimentally placed at the Votonosi tunnel of the EGNATIA motorway in Greece, and its detection functionality was validated. Finally, the detector classification process accuracy is evaluated using feedback from the existing tunnel inductive loop detectors. According to the evaluation process, classifiers based on decision trees or random forests achieve the highest accuracy.

Human Resources Strategies in Times of Crisis

The year 2020 came with new challenges for individuals,enterprise sand public institutions.The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a change in the way of thinking, management and action at local and global level, in order to overcome obstacles of financial, legislative, procedural ororganizational nature.The economic crisis felt by the business environment only started in 2020, andc ompanies mustunderstand the need to formulate and implement specific strategies related to management,human resources,supply chain,source of financing ,etc.This paper aims to present solutions for efficient management of human resources within companies in order to cope with the problems generated by COVID-19,based on the analysis of the current situation in Romania,presenting an analysis of the human resources management during the crisis. At the end, proposals are made to support the activity of human resources specialists in crisis situations, especially the type generated by COVID-19 context, when the mobility and interaction of human resources is limited.

Changes in Terrestrial Evaporation across Poland over the Past Four Decades Dominated by Increases in Summer Months

Given the importance of terrestrial evaporation (ET) for the water cycle, a fundamental understanding of the water quantity involved in this process is required. As recent observations reveal a widespread ET intensification across the world, it is important to evaluate regional ET variability. The specific objectives of this study are the following: (1) to assess annual and monthly ET trends across Poland, and (2) to reveal seasons and regions with significant ET changes. This study uses the ET estimates acquired from the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) dataset allowing for multi-year analysis (1980–2020). The Mann–Kendall test and the Sen’s slope were applied to estimate the significance and magnitude of the trends. The results show that a rising temperature, along with small precipitation increase, led to the accelerated ET of 1.36 mm/y. This was revealed by increased transpiration and interception loss not compensated by a decrease in bare soil evaporation and sublimation. The wide-spread higher water consumption especially occurred during the summer months of June, July, and August. Comparing the two subperiods of 1980–2020, it was found that in 2007–2020, the annual ET increased by 7% compared to the reference period of 1980–2006. These results can serve as an important reference for formulating a water resources management strategy in Poland.

Developing an Evaluation Model for Maternity Care: A Mixed-Method Study from Iran

Background: Maternity care is an integral part of primary health care (PHC) systems worldwide. This study aimed to develop a new model for evaluating the maternity health program (MHP) in Iran. Methods: In this mixed-methods study, first, the challenges of MHP were surveyed through systematic review and expert interviews. Next, to identify the existing shortcomings in MHP evaluation system, the SWOT technique, cross-sectional study and comparative analyses were used. Finally, the Delphi technique was used to reach consensus on developed evaluation standards. Results: The final developed evaluation model contains five dimensions including reproductive health/family planning, maternity health, health records, evaluation, and resources management. Overall, this model has 32 standards and 289 measures. The scores obtained for the sum of the measures in two importance and applicability criteria were 8.24 and 7.85, which these scores are estimated to be equal to 91.55 and 87.22 percent of the highest possible scores, respectively. Conclusion: Considering the comprehensiveness of the obtained model, it is hoped that it could lead to performance improvement of the PHC centers in the area of maternity health.

The Water Yield Pattern for Annual and Monthly Scales Through a Unifying Catchment Water Balance Model

Long-term scheduling and short-term decision-making for water resources management often require understanding the relationship of water yield pattern between the annual and monthly scales. As the water yield pattern mainly depends on land cover/use and climate, a unifying catchment water balance model with factors has been adopted to derive a theoretical water yield pattern with annual and monthly scales. Two critical values at the parameters ε=1-√2/2 and ϕ=1.0 are identified. The parameter ε referring to the water storage (land use/cover) and evaporation (climate) changes can make more contribution than ϕ for water yield when ϕ>1.0, especially with ε<1-√2/2. But there is less contribution made by ε when ϕ<1.0. The derived theoretical water yield patterns have also been validated by the observed data or the simulated data through the hydrological model. Due to the bias of the soil moisture data, a lot of the estimated parameter ε values are over its theoretical range, especially for the monthly scale in humid basins. The performance of the derived theoretical water yield pattern at annual scale is much better than that at monthly scale while there are only a few data sets from the arid basin at every months fall within their theoretical ranges. Even the relative contributions of ε is found to be bigger than those of ϕ due to ε<1-√2/2 and ϕ>1.0, there are no significant linear relationships between annual and monthly parameters ε and ϕ. Our results not only validate the derived theoretical water yield pattern with the estimated parameter directly by the observed or simulated data rather than the calibrated parameter, but also can guide for further understanding physical of water balance to conversion time scales for the combing long-term and short-term water resources management.

A Narrative-Driven Role-Playing Game for Raising Flood Awareness

In the framework of a water resources management class in the Technical University of Crete, a narrative-driven role-playing game (RPG) was planned and tested in the classroom, with the intent to raise awareness among the students on how floods can have an impact on the everyday lives of different citizens. During this game, the students had the opportunity to act as different stakeholders. In order to assess the impact of this game on participants’ thoughts of who might be affected by a flood event, two questionnaires were used, one before and one after the game. The results show that there was very positive feedback from the participants on how this RPG helped them realize the different implications a flood event might have on citizens and decision makers. The community-based aspect that was chosen for this RPG implementation showed the difficulties the specific roles would face as single individuals and as a community in general. Using a similar approach can help any stakeholder understand the challenges in a more direct way than with traditional lecturing and presentations.

Digital Transformation and Its Impact on Strategic Supremacy Mediating Role of Digital HRM: an Evidence From Palestine

This study aims to identify the impact of digital transformation in achieving strategic sovereignty in a world that is intensely competitive and in a digitalized era. In the study, the human resource management variable serves as an intermediary variable in the relationship between digital transformation and strategic leadership. The study population consists of (420 top and middle) managers in two mobile telecommunications companies in Palestine, namely: Jawwal and Ooredoo. The study is based on the quantitative approach using a proportional stratified sample, as a 201- item questionnaire is developed using the Seven-Point Likert Scale to study the three variables. The independent variable is digital transformation and its dimensions (Business Model, Customer Experience, Digital Processes, and Impact on People), while the dependent variable is Strategic Supremacy including its three dimensions (Scope of Influence, Competitive Configuration, and Competitive Compression), while digital human resources management serves as an intermediate variable. The data contained herein is analyzed by the Smart PLS Program - structural equation modelling (Second Order). The study shows a positive and good impact of digital transformation on strategic supremacy. The same applies to the impact of digital human resources management thereon. The study concludes that even though digital transformation has a very good impact on human resource management, digital human resources management is a mediating variable in the relationship between digital transformation and strategic supremacy, or even a partial mediator.