Sustainability of Smart Cities

The issue of sustainability of smart cities is approached in this chapter from two different angles: dimensions sector-specific and city governance. Following a short review of smart city sectors, emphasis is placed on the concept of smart governance of cities. The concept of smart governance is reviewed especially regarding cooperation with city governments of other cities within the region or country and empowering citizens. Different levels are presented with focus on four main conditions for smart governance, namely participation in decision-making, public and social services, transparent governance, and political strategies and perspectives. The chapter presents sustainability of smart governance through a paradigm of sustainability as an effectual model based on sustainability, wellbeing, productivity, and resilience. Finally, the chapter addresses the success criteria of sustainable smart cities regarding different aspects, such open data, agility to new technologies, cross-sectoral harmonization, and careful policy, strategy, and program alignment.

Project Success Criteria, Critical Success Factors (CSF), and Agile Projects

There have been major developments in project management over the years; however, the success rates of projects are still far from the desired levels. The number of studies focusing on project success has been increasing over the last decades. This chapter reviews the concept of project success, project success criteria, and CSF by narrowing the focus from generic projects to IT and then agile projects. The review revealed that client satisfaction has a critical role in the perceived success of the project, along with iron triangle (cost, budget, scope). It is widely accepted that some CSF are dependent on the context of the project. Top management support, communication, clear and linked project objectives, user involvement, teamwork, and effective planning are critical factors in IT projects. There are two differences in the evaluation of the success between agile and traditional software projects: frequency of the evaluation and a stronger emphasis on ensuring customer satisfaction. There is higher importance on people-related factors and customer involvement in agile projects.

Think-Pair-Share for Novice English Readers: Engaging Seventh Graders to Explore Narrative Text

Many studies have discussed the Think-Pair-Share strategy to increase students' learning motivation in various scientific fields, especially in learning English. However, it still requires more exploration concerning TPS implementation for seventh-grader students to improve their proficiency when engaged in narrative reading. This research departs from the student's opinion about the struggle to read and understand the narrative text, and the class was so boring. Therefore, it is assumed that the use of TPS can increase the student’s motivation in reading narrative text. The design chosen is classroom action research (CAR) implemented at MTs. Darul Hikmah Jabon. The participants were 26 students. This research is done with one pre-cycle for need analysis and two cycles to see the increase of the student's score. In the pre-cycle, only three students reached the success criteria. In the first cycle, the scores did not significantly increase; only eleven students succeeded. In the second cycle, twenty-three students showed improvement. It resumed that the TPS technique is very effective for increasing student motivation on reading narrative text. Keywords: Think-Pair-Share, Narrative Text, Classroom Action Research.

Acceleration of Novel Technology Development for Stabilized Emulsion Treatment in EOR Applications

Separation of stable emulsions produced from chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) in a brownfield production system using conventional 3-phase separators is almost impossible, requiring large quantities of chemical demulsifiers to meet oil production specifications. A new and novel high-voltage high-frequency (HVHF) electro-coalescence (EC) technology has been identified as potential method to enhance separation of EOR produced fluid for improving CEOR implementation feasibility. This paper aims to present results and findings from the recent EC technology development against success criteria and parameters associated for fast-track field application. Electrostatic coalescers are used as an emulsion breaker, crude dehydrator or desalter in production systems and refineries. However, significant developments are required to use this EC technology as a potential treatment technology for tight emulsions/rag layers in CEOR applications. A new prototype of Inline EC was developed and tested in a batch test setup to evaluate the separation efficiency using real crude-brine samples and a cocktail of alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) chemicals. The sensitivities of separation efficiency to different water cut, demulsifier concentration, EC voltage/exposure time, concentrations of alkaline, surfactant and polymer in the brine were measured and optimal process conditions were assessed. The results and findings were evaluated based on defined success criteria and parameters associated with separation efficiency such as volume fractions of the emulsion, oil-in-water (OIW) and water-in-oil concentrations (WIO), respectively. On one of PETRONAS CEOR field case study, the test results show that EC reduced 90% of the tight emulsion. In conclusion, EC leads to a substantial improvement in separation efficiency relative to the case without EC for water cuts below the inversion point. It is also found that the EC treatment without added demulsifier is equally effective in breaking the emulsion as adding a demulsifier without EC treatment, and that EC can potentially minimise or eliminate the application of demulsifiers in the production system.

Structural transformation trajectories: Evidence from successful exporting countries

This paper identifies and examines several success criteria for the structural transformation of exports. Some detailed facts for the leading countries in structural transformation are presented, and the paper is the first in social sciences literature to calculate the Fréchet distances between the structural transformation trajectories according to various criteria. The paper introduces the concept of structural transformation trajectory that is defined as the path in the two coordinates — per capita income and one of the success criteria for the structural transformation of exports. Based on the brief review of the literature, four criteria for the empirical research are selected: (i) an increase in the ratio of exports of capital to consumer products, (ii) an enhancement of the export share of high-tech products, (iii) a decrease in export concentration, and (iv) an expansion of export complexity. In most cases, countries leading structural transformation succeed due to a limited number of specific factors, such as foreign direct investment in a limited number of sectors, participation in the assembly of telecom products, automobiles or similar consumer products, and re-export of products from other countries. However, high per capita income growth rates are typically observed in countries with high coherence of the success criteria for the structural transformation of exports, that is, in countries that made progress on a whole range of criteria.

Structural transformation trajectories: Evidence from successful exporting countries

This paper identifies and examines several success criteria for the structural transformation of exports. Some detailed facts for the leading countries in structural transformation are presented, and the paper is the first in social sciences literature to calculate the Fréchet distances between the structural transformation trajectories according to various criteria. The paper introduces the concept of structural transformation trajectory that is defined as the path in the two coordinates — per capita income and one of the success criteria for the structural transformation of exports. Based on the brief review of the literature, four criteria for the empirical research are selected: (i) an increase in the ratio of exports of capital to consumer products, (ii) an enhancement of the export share of high-tech products, (iii) a decrease in export concentration, and (iv) an expansion of export complexity. In most cases, countries leading structural transformation succeed due to a limited number of specific factors, such as foreign direct investment in a limited number of sectors, participation in the assembly of telecom products, automobiles or similar consumer products, and re-export of products from other countries. However, high per capita income growth rates are typically observed in countries with high coherence of the success criteria for the structural transformation of exports, that is, in countries that made progress on a whole range of criteria.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CRITICAL SUCCESS CRITERIA ON SUSTAINABLE HOUSING; A CASE OF - LOW INCOME HOUSING, SRI LANKA

Sustainable housing is a popular topic with regard to the SDG, sustainable communities and Sustainable cities. Although different researches have come up with regard to different CSC of specific contexts there are very limited studies on CSC on Sustainable low-income housing. This research aims to compare the CSC on Sustainable low-income Housing in designing stage in Sri Lankan Context. 18 CSC were derived from comprehensive literature review and re-examined through the 27 professionals and ranked from community on three locations. Relative Importance Index- RII, Min Max Normalization and Gap analyses were employed in the ranking process of Critical Success Criteria. The highest importance has been ranked with Efficiency use of water and energy, Users Satisfaction and Quality of Housing while least importance is ranked with Maintainability, Public Consultation and community participation and cater for Disables and by Literature, Experts and Community respectively. Anyway, Public Consultation and Community Participation, newly derived CSC which is highly ranked among community is to be concentrated among the professionals for the attention and applications in practices. The findings of the research would support to the designers, architectures, planners specialized in this field to ensure the successful delivery of sustainable housing.

Client side and Server Side Load Balancing

In the microservice architecture it is vital to distribute loads across replicated instances of microservices. Load distribution such that no single instance is overloaded is called as load balancing. Often the instances of microservices are replicated across different racks, different data centers or even different geographies. Modern cloud based platforms offer deployment of microservices across different server instances which are geographically disperse. Having a system that will balance the load across service instances becomes a key success criteria for accurate functioning of distributed software architecture Keywords: Load Balancing, Microservices, Distributed software system