Increased potential for shell competition among hermit crabs (Pagurus beringanus and Pagurus granosimanus) in the rocky intertidal

We examined the prevalence and shell use of two species of hermit crabs (Pagurus granosimanus and Pagurus beringanus) in exposed and protected microhabitats at five sites in the rocky temperate intertidal on San Juan Island, Washington, to compare present habitat partitioning and potential interspecific competition to that reported nearly 50 years ago. We found that, in contrast to previous findings, the two species of hermit crabs overlapped extensively at some sites, typically those with less wave action. While the hermit crabs typically inhabited certain types of shells significantly more than others, and that use was congruent across microhabitats and species of hermit crabs at the same site, the dominant domicile differed substantially across sites. We provide a more complete ranking of shell use than previous authors and note site-specific dominant shell use. We conclude that previous habitat partitioning by depth may have weakened at protected sites. We hypothesize that increasing temperatures have caused P. granosimanus to expand its range deeper into the intertidal, which may increase the degree of interspecific competition for shells at the edge of the species’ tidal height range, where they overlap. Whether the habitat shift by this hermit crab is due to recent alterations in climate (particularly elevated temperatures, ocean acidification and lower local open ocean salinity) is unknown, but warrants further study.

Review of PROMETHEE method in transportation

In recent decades, decision support system has been constantly growing in the field of transportation planning. PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluation) method is an efficient decision-making support deployed in case of a finite number of criteria. It provides a partial ranking through PROMETHEE I and a complete ranking with PROMETHEE II. This outranking methodology is characterized by the elimination of scale effects between criteria and managing incomparability with the comprehensive ranking. However, PROMETHEE does not provide guidance to assign weights to criteria and assumes that decision makers are able to allocate weights. This review presents an overview of PROMETHEE models applied in transportation and points out the found gaps in literature.

Evaluation of the operational viability of forensic units in Brazil: A hybrid approach based on the BWM and R-TOPSIS

Public security is an area of increasing importance in Brazil, as society requires that public resources are managed more efficiently and effectively. Criminalistics is an integral and vital part of the Brazilian public security system and requires new management tools to optimize human resources, equipment, and facilities allocation. Faced with a challenging scenario of budgetary constraints in several areas in public administration, the search for innovative methods should be a priority for the forensic service sector managers. The current article presents a multicriteria decision model to evaluate the operational viability of 23 forensic units within the Federal Police of Brazil (PF). The framework used the hybrid approach BWM and R-TOPSIS. The proposed model led to the complete ranking of 23 local forensic units. Amongst the last positions in the ranking, it was possible to recommend merging or shutting down some units. The sensitivity analysis performed did not show abrupt variations in the original positions, confirming the robustness of the proposed solution. It was concluded that the model allowed resources optimization whilst not compromising the quality of the services provided to society.

Safety Climate in Project-Based Organizations: Multi-Criteria Analysis

Research Question: The aim of this paper is to determine the factors influencing safety climate in different industrial sectors in project-based organizations. Motivation: Systematic research on occupational safety is not so frequent in the Republic of Serbia. The lack of research that deals with safety climate in project-based organizations exploring the attitudes of employees in different industrial sectors is evident. In the research conducted by Milijic et al., (2013) a model for measuring safety climate factors was proposed and the following step is to identify the most important safety climate issues for each industrial sector as a key to fostering better safety performance. Chen et al. (2018a) concluded that engagement at all levels of the company is essential to fostering better safety performances as well as that safety awareness is the most important factor influencing workers' safety efficiency. The authors of the present paper seek those particular factors that adequately describe safety climate in project-based organizations by examining the attitudes of workers in different industrial sectors. Idea: The main idea of this paper is to evaluate and rank safety climate in different industrial sectors and different workplaces considering the following five factors of safety climate: Safety and competence awareness, Occupational safety management commitment, Safety training and tools, Safety practices and procedures and Organizational environment. Data: Safety climate analysis was conducted on a set of data collected as a part of a survey carried out in eleven project-oriented organizations operating in different industrial sectors on the territory of Serbia. Tools: This paper proposes a multi-criteria analysis of the data collected from a national survey using the Entropy-PROMETHEE-GAIA method. Findings: A complete ranking of safety climate in project-oriented organizations based on the opinions of employees in different industrial sectors resulted in Energy as the best-ranked sector. On the other hand, the worst-ranked sector is High-rise construction. The results of the complete ranking of safety climate in project-oriented organizations based on the opinions of employees at different workplaces in different industrial sectors showed that the best-ranked alternatives were manager working places. When it comes to production workers on projects, the most favorable safety climate is in energy workplaces and for non-productive workers, while the most favorable safety climate is on projects in the field of mechanical engineering. Contribution: Adopting the conclusions from the paper can, in practice, improve safety climate along with safety at work in project-based organizations.

Sustainability assessment of healthcare waste treatment systems using surrogate weights and PROMETHEE method

This study aims to assess the sustainability of healthcare waste treatment systems using surrogate weights and the Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE). For this purpose, ten treatment systems, including land disposal, incineration and non-incineration systems, were evaluated in terms of environmental, financial, social, and technical criteria. Firstly, fifteen reputed experts assigned their preferred rankings for the groups of criteria and the sub-criteria. The conversion of these rankings into numerical weights was performed using the SR function, which is an additive combination of Sum and Reciprocal weight functions. Secondly, the alternatives’ performance with regards to each criterion allowed PROMETHEE to generate the outranking flows for each alternative. The complete ranking revealed that the rotary kiln (A4) is the most sustainable system followed by steam disinfection (A8), dry heat disinfection and microwave disinfection. However, the municipal landfill is the least sustainable system, while chemical disinfection is ranked in the penultimate position of sustainability. The partial ranking indicated that A4 and A8 are incomparable and both were ranked as most sustainable. Therefore, the sustainability of a system cannot be assessed properly without the exact specification of the system itself. In addition, it is preferable to act on the criteria that affect negatively the system to improve its performance.