MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION MAKING ANALYSIS OF THE PORT OF ŠVENTOJI DEVELOPMENT

Port of Šventoji is a maritime facility in the settlement of Šventoji, located within the country Lithuania, near the seaside resort town of Palanga. In this paper five Port of Šventoji development alternatives are overviewed using a multi-criteria decisionmaking (MCDM) method. The results will be compared with the ones found in “Port of Šventoji reconstruction feasibility study” (liet. Šventosios jūrų uosto atstatymo galimybių studija). Criteria weights of the analysed alternatives are determined using the entropy method. Alternative analysis is carried out using the TOPSIS multicriteria method.

A Decision-Making Model of Technological-Focused Government Agency Selection of Technological Start-Up Businesses

In developing countries, the government has played an important role in supporting startup businesses in various aspects, primarily through tech-focused government agencies. With a limited budget, the government agencies are critical to select plenty of tech startups for funding, leaving only promising tech startups. Consequently, government agencies inevitably face decision-making problems under uncertain circumstances, like private equity investment situations. Reviewing the relevant decision-making frameworks has identified that a classical multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is currently used, assuming decision-makers acquire complete information that is not realistic. Moreover, both qualitative and quantitative criteria used in evaluating startup businesses cannot represent the uncertainty which is the fundamental nature of the decision-making circumstance. Thus, this article presents a decision-making framework of tech-focused government agencies for selecting startup businesses based on a fuzzy MCDM of Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Besides, it identifies selection criteria with mixed research methodologies and determines weights of importance criteria by the Delphi method. Finally, the proposed framework results are fairness, transparency, and eliminating bias in decision-making, including more efficiency when the framework’s ranking orders significantly correspond with actual performances. HIGHLIGHTS Criteria for selecting start-up businesses in technological-focused government agencies A decision-making framework of tech-focused government agencies for selecting startup businesses based on a fuzzy MCDM of Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) The performance of the decision-making framework in selecting startup businesses to acquire high potential tech startups to drive the national economy GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Evaluation of a Scenario-Based Socratic Style of Teaching and Learning Practice

This chapter presents the central features of a knowledge-based system, evaluation method, which is deeply rooted to the principle of the Socratic style learning in law school. Software system evaluation is placed in the context of a hybrid legal intelligent tutoring system, Guidance for Business Merger and Acquisition (GBMA) process. The legal knowledge for GBMA is presented in two forms, as rules and previously decided cases. Besides distinguishing the two different forms of knowledge representation, the chapter outlines the actual use of these forms in a computational framework designed to generate a plausible solution for a given case by using rule-based reasoning (RBR) and case-based reasoning (CBR) in an integrated environment. The nature of the suitability assessment of a solution has been considered as a multiple-criteria decision-making process in GBMA evaluation. The evaluation was performed by a combination of discussions and questionnaires with different user groups in a scenario-based teaching and learning practice.

Planning rice cultivation in a large plot agricultural system

This research aimed to study the approach of the community toward the decision to grow rice and economic crops, including appropriate resource allocation for use on a farm under a large plot agricultural system. The study areas were in Phan district, Chiang Rai province, Thailand, and the data were collected from a sampling of 400 field agriculturalists. The method used was to develop a mathematical model for growing crops with multi-objectives and in multi-periods, together with an agriculturist representative and experts in multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM). This was to prioritize the importance of alternative crops and find the appropriate allocation of the resources to achieve the targeted goal. The results showed that agriculturists prioritized most toward the criteria for growing Japanese rice with a weight of 0.179 Kg., followed by transplanted rice, transplanted glutinous rice, garlic, sown paddy rice, and sown glutinous paddy rice, respectively. The study’s results also showed that the price fluctuation of the crop products resulted in more use of land and labor in order to increase the production to compensate for the low price, and this also resulted in the higher opportunity cost of growing transplanted rice. Therefore, growing transplanted rice during in season planting was considered the most effective way, while during the off season, either garlic or Japanese rice could be grown. A collective pattern for planning for using resources together in large plot agricultural areas, together with a clear marketing target would bring about effective use of the resources and reduce the risk in revenue from the fluctuation in prices and uncertainty of yields from drought. Moreover, technology development to solve the problem of the lack of labor would be deemed an important approach toward the enhancement of the competitiveness of agriculturists in the future as well.

Investigating the leading drivers of organic farming: A survival analysis

ABSTRACT: This research evaluated farmers’ decisions to adopt organic farming. It was first introduced by developed countries to minimize environmental impacts originated by intensive use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to enhance production yield. Although, organic farming offers environmentally sound methodologies for crop production, but Asian farmers are reluctant to adopt organic farming. In this study, a survival analysis (SA) was employed to determine the reasons for and the time is taken by farmers to adopt organic agriculture. This research studied the farmers’ goals, agricultural policies, and attitude towards risk, as covariates in the survival analysis. A multiple criteria decision-making method based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process was used to evaluate the farmers’ goals. Data were collected from agricultural farms located in three districts in Punjab, Pakistan. A questionnaire was used to collect empirical evidence. This study reported that the farmers’ goals were crucial to their acceptance of organic farming; furthermore, young farmers and farmers with risk-inclined attitudes were more prone to adopting organic farming. The study also determined that change in policy and introduce special package for organic agriculture can encouraged the adoption of organic methods.