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The potential increase in aerodynamic efficiency whilst operating in close proximity to the ground has stimulated substantial interests in the design and applications of Wing‐In‐Ground (WIG) craft. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the aerodynamic and stability characteristics, such as the Aerodynamic Center of Height (ACH) and the Aerodynamic Center of Pitch (ACP) of a NACA4412 airfoil in ground effect and give clear physical and mathematical definitions of ACH and ACP

Both a panel method and a Finite Volume Method (FVM) have been employed to analyze the aerodynamic and stability characteristics numerically in this paper.

It is found that for the range of heights and pitch angles investigated, ACH of a NACA 4412 airfoil is only a function of pitch angle while ACP is only a function of height. The ACH of a NACA4412 airfoil lies behind the ACP. When viscous effects are taken into account, the ACH of the NACA4412 airfoil moves further forwards due to boundary layer de‐cambering effects.

These findings are important for preliminary WIG‐craft design and analysis in term of airfoil selection.

The 1997-98 financial crisis has had a profound effect on how East Asian economies the role of the IMF and its strategic interests relative to those of the United States in the international financial regime. It has prompted them to create a regional mechanism for financial and monetary cooperation, ranging from deeper policy dialogue and surveillance, to a system of financial cooperation, and common exchange rate arrangements. This paper analyses the economic and strategic motivations behind this and outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in East Asia to provide possible directions for the future.

A network of bilateral swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative(CMI) needs stronger policy dialogue and surveillance to develop into a regional financing facility, a sort of East Asian IMF. The facility plays a role as an regional lender of last resort, providing short-term funds to a member country facing a temporary liquidity shortage and for market intervention to stabilize foreign exchange rate. East Asian countries need to achieve regional exchange rate stability. In the long run, the region may develop a common currency arrangement, but it cannot be expected in the very near future because there is no convergence of macroeconomic conditions, economic structure and systems. A realistic approach would be for East Asian developing countries to adopt a currency basket system to minimize the impact of dollar/yen exchange rate volatility on their economies. Strong political will and a vision for regional integration will be required to introduce it.

The rising proportion of internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa and the lack of analytical techniques, as decision support systems, in choosing among alternative internet service providers (ISPs) by consumers underpin this study. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for evaluating high-speed internet service offered by ISPs in a sub-Saharan African country.

Using a sample size of 150, pairwise comparisons of two ISPs along five criteria of cost, usability, support, reliability and speed were performed by ten person groups of university students working in various organizations in Ghana and undertaking an online Six Sigma Course. Geometric means were employed to aggregate the scores in 15 groups, and these scores were then normalized and used as input into an analytical hierarchy process grid.

The results show that consumers of internet services highly emphasize the cost attribute of internet provision in their decision making. On the other hand, it was realized that consumers least emphasize the support provided by ISPs in their decision making among alternative ISPs.

This study has sought to provide an analytical framework for assessing the quality of service provided by alternative ISPs in a developing economy’s context. The evaluating criteria in this framework also reveal the key consumer requirements in internet service provision in a developing economy’s environment. This, to a large extent, will inform the marketing strategies of existing ISPs in Ghana as well as prospective ones intending to enter the Ghanaian market. Besides, the National Communication Authority, a regulator of communication services provision in Ghana, will be informed about the performances of the ISPs along five performance criteria. This is expected to aid in their regulatory functions.

The present study is an attempt of identifying the human capital skills and HR-related challenges faced by top management in the perspective of industry 4.0 in emerging economies. In addition, the importance or key resources related to human assets that help in attaining competitive advantages while adopting newer digital technologies are also identified.

For identifying the dimensions of human capital skills in the perspective of industry 4.0, an extensive review of literature was performed. Along with that, feedback from the expert was used to conceptualize the importance and relationship of the skills in the context of industry 4.0. After that, a qualitative survey was launched and triangulate method was applied for identifying the skills. AHP and DEMATEL was used to analyze the relationship among the skills and subskills and to rank them based on their importance.

The qualitative survey resulted in skills such as “Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioural skills” and subskills of them. AHP results indicated that “Cognitive skills” was found as the most important skill followed by “Emotional skills” and “Behavioural skills”. In addition to this, DEMATEL was applied for seeking the inter-relationship and identifying the “Cause” and “Effect” relationship of skills and sub-skills.

This study prioritizes factors in a coordinated manner and also finds the relative importance in the context of industry 4.0. It will help further in identifying and deploying human capital with the right skills and will play a significant role at the time of formulating organizational and HR level strategies.

Credit risk evaluation is a crucial task for banks and non-bank financial institutions to support decision-making on granting loans. Most of the current credit risk methods rely solely on expert knowledge or large amounts of data, which causes some problems like variable interactions hard to be identified, models lack interpretability, etc. To address these issues, the authors propose a new approach.

First, the authors improve interpretive structural model (ISM) to better capture and utilize expert knowledge, then combine expert knowledge with big data and the proposed fuzzy interpretive structural model (FISM) and K2 are used for expert knowledge acquisition and big data learning, respectively. The Bayesian network (BN) obtained is used for forward inference and backward inference. Data from Lending Club demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Compared with the mainstream risk evaluation methods, the authors’ approach not only has higher accuracy and better presents the interaction between risk variables but also provide decision-makers with the best possible interventions in advance to avoid defaults in the financial field. The credit risk assessment framework based on the proposed method can serve as an effective tool for relevant policymakers.

The authors propose a novel credit risk evaluation approach, namely FISM-K2. It is a decision support method that can improve the ability of decision makers to predict risks and intervene in advance. As an attempt to combine expert knowledge and big data, the authors’ work enriches the research on financial risk.

This study aims to apply a new forecasting approach to improve predictions in the hospitality industry. To do so, the authors developed a multivariate setting that allows the incorporation of the cross-correlations in the evolution of tourist arrivals from visitor markets to a specific destination in neural network models.

This multiple-input-multiple-output approach allows the generation of predictions for all visitor markets simultaneously. Official data of tourist arrivals to Catalonia (Spain) from 2001 to 2012 were used to generate forecasts for one, three and six months ahead with three different networks.

The study revealed that multivariate architectures that take into account the connections between different markets may improve the predictive performance of neural networks. Additionally, the authors developed a new forecasting accuracy measure and found that radial basis function networks outperform the rest of the models.

This research contributes to the hospitality literature by developing an innovative framework to improve the forecasting performance of artificial intelligence techniques and by providing a new forecasting accuracy measure.

The proposed forecasting approach may prove very useful for planning purposes, helping managers to anticipate the evolution of variables related to the daily activity of the industry.

A multivariate neural network framework has been developed to improve forecasting accuracy, providing professionals with an innovative and practical forecasting approach.

This paper explores the workforce development issues that arose in the course of an Australian repeat pilot study. The aim of the pilot study was to introduce, within a different setting, a planned approach to the assessment of, and interventions in, emotional states of service users that may lead to episodes of behavioural disturbance within psychiatric units. The pilot study necessitated training of staff in the use of an assessment tool. During the course of the study, a novel element was encountered with regard to staff understanding of service user involvement in treatment. This element, presented here as 'integral self‐intervention', emerged in conjunction with the development of two wall charts: an acute arousal management process chart for staff, and a patient safety chart for service users. The paper will outline the collaborative process towards the partial realisation of this element of integral self‐intervention, and associated workforce development issues.

This paper is based on an empirical study undertaken between April 2014 to December 2014 that aims to investigate the Open Government Initiative in the Kenyan Judiciary and its contribution to Judiciary transformation for enhanced justice delivery.

The paper draws from both literature and data collected from representative professionals in the Kenyan Judiciary through interviews and questionnaires.

The findings indicated that the Kenyan Judiciary was at its initial stages of implementing its Open Government Initiative, and several strategies for the implementation were identified. Further, the findings revealed the benefits of opening up the Judiciary for public participation which pointed toward an improved justice delivery.

This paper presents findings of the investigation of Open Government Initiative in the Kenyan Judiciary as a contributory factor to the then on-going Judiciary transformation aimed at enhanced justice delivery. The paper provides a nexus between open government and records management and demonstrates the importance of sound records management for successful Open Government Initiative.