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Describes the activities, processes and outcomes involved in the development of a searchable Web‐based directory of toolkits to support the evaluation of information communication technologies in the higher education/further education sector. Explains the definitions and terminology used to define the notion of toolkits, evaluation and the tools listed within the directory. Briefly considers those tools and toolkits included in the database relating to performance measures and quality assessment. Concludes that the main outcome of this project has been the realisation that the notion and form of a toolkit and the tools held within has yet to be clearly established

This chapter aims to contextualize smart rural development in Slovenia. It does so by presenting the current state of the art, addressing new interdisciplinary approaches in understanding the problems of rural areas, applying new approaches to smart rural development, and introducing a new concept.

We start our chapter by addressing the main problems of Slovenian rural areas and their inhabitants. We have made a review of initiatives and practices elsewhere and therefore here they are only summarized briefly to emphasize the most important achievements/improvements. Further, the chapter describes the state of the art in Slovenia in connection with smart and sustainable rural development, and analyzes the results contextually. It looks at the solutions and practices that local communities found to answer the existing challenges. Three promising examples are presented, related to different sectors: tourism, mobility, and innovation. The last part of the chapter contextualizes our findings and further explains our approach to smart rural development. Finally, the chapter introduces a new concept – that is, Smart Fab Village. The concept of Fab Village is built upon the concept designed for urban areas and then carefully adapted to the needs and specific requirements of rural areas.

This study aims to focus on asset management of large‐scale information systems supporting infrastructures and especially seeks to address a methodology of their statistical deterioration prediction based on their historical inspection data. Information systems are composed of many devices. Deterioration process i.e. wear‐out failure generation process of those devices is formulated by a Weibull hazard model. Furthermore, in order to consider the heterogeneity of the hazard rate of each device, the random proportional Weibull hazard model, which expresses the heterogeneity of the hazard rate as random variables, is to be proposed.

Large‐scale information systems comprise many components, and different types of components might have different hazard rates. Therefore, when analyzing faults of information systems that comprise various types of devices and components, it is important to consider the heterogeneity of the hazard rates that exist between the different types of components. In this study, with this in consideration, the random proportional Weibull hazard model, whose heterogeneity of hazard rates is subject to a gamma distribution, is formulated and a methodology is proposed which estimates the failure rate of various components comprising an information system.

Through a case study using a traffic control system for expressways, the validity of the proposed model is empirically verified. Concretely, as for HDD, the service life at which the survival probability is 50 percent is estimated as 158 months. However, even for the same HDD, use environment differs according to usage. Actually, among the three different usages (PC, server, others), failures happen earliest in the case of PCs, which have the highest heterogeneity parameter and a survival probability of 50 percent after 135 months of usage. On the other hand, as for others, its survival probability is 50 percent at 303 months.

To operationally express the heterogeneity of failure rates, the Weibull hazard model is employed as a base, and a random proportional Weibull hazard model expressing the proportional heterogeneity of hazard rates with a standard gamma distribution is formulated. By estimating the parameter of the standard proportional Weibull hazard function and the parameter of the probability distribution that expresses the heterogeneity of the proportionality constant between the types, the random proportional Weibull hazard model can easily express the heterogeneity of the hazard rates between types and components.

The purpose of this paper can be encapsulated in the following points: identify the research papers published on the topic: competencies and skills necessary for critical infrastructure (CI) cyber-security (CS) protection; determine main focus areas within the identified literature and evaluate the dependency or lack thereof between them: make recommendations for future research.

This study is based on a systematic literature review conducted to identify scientific papers discussing and evaluating competencies, skills and essential attributes needed by the CI workforce for CS and preparedness to attacks and incidents.

After a comparative analysis of the articles reviewed in this study, a variety of skills and competencies was found to be necessary for CS assurance in CIs. These skills have been grouped into four categories, namely, technical, managerial, implementation and soft skills. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of agreement on which skills are the most critical and further research should be conducted on the relation between specific soft skills and CS assurance.

Investigation of which skills are required by industry for specific CS roles, by conducting interviews and sending questionnaire\surveys, would allow consolidating whether literature and industry requirements are equivalent.

Findings from this literature review suggest that more effort should be taken to conciliate current CS curricula in academia with the skills and competencies required for CS roles in the industry.

This study provides a previously lacking current mapping and review of literature discussing skills and competencies evidenced as critical for CS assurance for CI. The findings of this research are useful for the development of comprehensive solutions for CS awareness and training.

This paper aims to understand how a special library helped firefighters in Illinois navigate the digital revolution by evidencing the elements and forms of work that made its innovative services possible.

The authors examine the history of a special library through a community informatics lens, drawing from sociomaterial perspectives to highlight forms of work often invisible in digital innovation. Data was collected through documentary revision, oral histories and semi-structured interviews. Deductive-inductive coding and constant comparative analysis was used in the analysis.

A historical narrative of the library between 1990 and 2021 highlights three sociotechnical innovations that assisted firefighters through the digital revolution: the facilitated collection, the co-created collection and the inside-out library. To develop these innovations the library drew from institutional relations, personal relations, grants, labor, knowledge of firefighters and technology. Various forms of articulation work brought these elements together to create innovative services.

The role of special libraries in addressing the digital divide has not been sufficiently detailed so far; this paper is a contribution in that direction. It also has practical value for professionals working in specialized libraries and information centers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how clinical handoffs affect clinical information quality (IQ) and medication administration quality.

A case study was conducted in a US hospital. The authors applied a business process management (BPM) perspective to analyze an end‐to‐end medication administration process and related handoffs, and accounting control theory (ACT) to examine the impact of handoffs on IQ and medication errors.

The study reveals how handoffs can lead to medication errors (by passing information that is not complete, accurate, timely or valid) and can help reduce errors (by preventing, detecting and correcting information quality flaws or prior clinical mistakes).

The paper reports on one case study on one hospital unit. Future studies can investigate the impact of clinical IQ on patient safety across the multitude of health information technologies (e.g. computerized provider order entry (CPOE), electronic medication administration records (EMAR), and barcode medication administration systems (BCMA)) and approaches to process design and support (e.g. use of clinical pathways and checklists).

The findings can contribute to more successful design, implementation and evaluation of medication administration and other clinical processes, ultimately improving patient safety.

The paper's main contribution is the use of accounting control theory to systematically focus on IQ to evaluate and improve end‐to‐end medical administration processes.

This study aims to investigate the effect of fear sentiment with a novel data set on Bitcoin’s (BTC) return, volatility and transaction volume. The authors divide the sample into two subperiods to capture the changing dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors retrieve the novel fear sentiment data from Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices (TRMI). The authors denote the subperiods as pre- and post-COVID-19 considering January 13, 2020, when the first COVID-19 confirmed case was reported outside China. The authors use bivariate vector autoregressive models given below with lag-length k, to investigate the dynamics between BTC variables and fear sentiment.

BTC market measures have dissimilar dynamics before and after the Coronavirus outbreak. The results reveal that due to the excessive uncertainty led by the outbreak, an increase in fear sentiment negatively affects the BTC returns more persistently and significantly. For the post-COVID-19 period, an increase in fear also results in more fluctuations in transaction volume while its initial and cumulative effects are both negative. Due to extreme uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, investors may trade more aggressively in the initial phases of the shock.

The authors are convinced that the results in this paper have more far-reaching implications for other markets regulated by the states. BTC provides a natural benchmark to understand how fear sentiment drives and impacts the markets isolated from any interventions. Hence, the results show that in the absence of regulatory frameworks, market dynamics are likely to be more volatile and the fear sentiment has more persistent impacts. The authors also highlight the importance of using micro, asset-specific sentiment measures to capture market dynamics better.

BTC is not associated with any regulatory authority and is not produced by the governments and central banks. COVID-19 as a natural experiment provides an opportunity to explore the pure effects of market sentiment on BTC considering its decentralized and unregulated features. The paper has two main contributions. First, the authors use BTC-specific fear sentiment novel data set of TRMI instead of more general market sentiments used in the existing studies. Next, this is the first study to examine the association between fear and BTC before and after COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research that evaluates the perceived willingness of potential bidders to adopt public e-procurement for the supply of goods and services to the government of Nepal. The authors have identified anti-corruption attributes through an extensive literature review and developed a theoretical model representing the impact of four latent variables, monopoly of power, information asymmetry, trust and transparency and accountability on the dependent variable, the intent-to-adopt e-procurement (ITA).

Data for this research were obtained by the use of a questionnaire survey of bidders who were officially registered with the Government of Nepal. As part of the fieldwork for this research, the first author collected the perceptions of 220 bidders regarding the potential of public e-procurement to reduce corruption in public procurement processes.

The findings suggest that a high level of the ITA has a positive and significant relationship with the independent variables that might inform the developed and emerging countries to make a decision to adoption of e-procurement to combat corruption in public procurement.

This study has some limitations that should be taken into consideration. The evaluation of anti-corruption factors, as they affect the willingness of users to adopt e-procurement on the bidder’s perception research model is relatively new to e-procurement research. A limitation of the research was that it gathered and analyzed data from a single country with a limited number of respondents. More research is needed to identify the anti-corruption factors of e-procurement in reducing corruption, and also need strong empirical test to valid the factors that influence the adoption of e-procurement.

This study aimed to contribute to the academic scholar, government agencies and public procurement practitioner in enhancing their understanding of the perceived anti-corruption factors of public e-procurement to reduce corruption.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between market pricing and design quality within the development industry. Currently, there is a lack of research that examines real estate at the property level. Development quality is widely believed to have diminished over the past decades, while many investors seem uninterested in the design process. The study aims to address these issues through a pricing model that integrates design attributes. It is hoped that empirical findings will invite broader stakeholder interest in the design process.

The research establishes a framework for assessing spatial compliance across residential developments within London. Compliance is assessed across ten boroughs, with technical space guidelines used as a proxy for design quality. Transaction prices and spatial assessments are aligned within a hedonic pricing model. Empirical findings are used to establish whether undermining spatial standards presents a significant development risk.

Findings suggest a relationship between sale time and unit size, with “compliant” units typically transacting earlier than “non-compliant” units. Almost half of the 1,600 apartments surveyed appear to undermine technical guidelines.

It is suggested that an array of design attributes be explored that extend beyond unit size. Additionally, future studies may consider the long-term implications of design quality via secondary transaction prices.

Practical implications include the development of a more scientific approach to design valuation. This may enhance the position of product design management within the development industry and architectural services.

Social implications may include improvement in residential design.

An innovative approach combines a thorough understanding of both design and economic principles.