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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to review the methodological and empirical underpinnings of transport network screening, or management, as it relates to improving road safety. As jurisdictions around the world are charged with transport network management in order to reduce externalities associated with road crashes, identifying potential blackspots or hotspots is an important if not critical function and responsibility of transport agencies.

Methodology – Key references from within the literature are summarised and discussed, along with a discussion of the evolution of thinking around hotspot identification and management. The theoretical developments that correspond with the evolution in thinking are provided, sprinkled with examples along the way.

Findings – Hotspot identification methodologies have evolved considerably over the past 30 or so years, correcting for methodological deficiencies along the way. Despite vast and significant advancements, identifying hotspots remains a reactive approach to managing road safety – relying on crashes to accrue in order to mitigate their occurrence. The most fruitful directions for future research will be in the establishment of reliable relationships between surrogate measures of road safety – such as ‘near misses’ – and actual crashes – so that safety can be proactively managed without the need for crashes to accrue.

Research implications – Research in hotspot identification will continue; however, it is likely to shift over time to both closer to ‘real-time’ crash risk detection and considering safety improvements using surrogate measures of road safety – described in Chapter 17.

Practical implications – There are two types of errors made in hotspot detection – identifying a ‘risky’ site as ‘safe’ and identifying a ‘safe’ site as ‘risky’. In the former case no investments will be made to improve safety, while in the latter case ineffective or inefficient safety improvements could be made. To minimise these errors, transport network safety managers should be applying the current state of the practice methods for hotspot detection. Moreover, transport network safety managers should be eager to transition to proactive methods of network safety management to avoid the need for crashes to occur. While in its infancy, the use of surrogate measures of safety holds significant promise for the future.

Introduction: Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the economic development of economies by generating job opportunities. Considering their significance, understanding the challenges and skills required in these enterprises becomes essential and timely.

Purpose: This study aims to discuss the limitations and skill gaps faced by SMEs in emerging economies, such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, China, Malaysia, Ghana, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, UAE, Iran, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, Zambia, Romania, and Vietnam.

Methodology: The study adopts a systematic review and meta-synthesis approach, utilising a literature review to comprehensively analyse, synthesise, and map the existing literature by identifying overarching themes.

Findings: The study examines the challenges SMEs encounter in emerging economies, including resource scarcity, limited access to credit, inadequate infrastructure, low technology adoption, restricted global market access, and ineffective marketing strategies. There is a notable shortage of skilled labour and development initiatives within SMEs in India even though the country has a sizeable pool of qualified workers. There is a pressing need for additional technical and managerial skills to remain competitive in the market. The findings of this study will assist HR managers in addressing skill shortages among employees in SMEs operating within emerging economies

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.