Search results

Within Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) research, funding is sourced from a wide range of NZ and international governments, industries, and philanthropic organisations. This chapter primarily focusses on NZ government public sector funding of research and innovation and the impact this has on research management and administration (RMA) in NZ.

Along with an increase in the number and range of NZ organisations that compete for research funding, there has also been an increase in the complexity and range of roles that need to be undertaken by those involved in RMA. The Future Pathways green paper, released by the Ministry of Environment, Innovation & Employment in October 2021, has signalled a redesign of the ‘public’ research system, which could lead to further changes in the roles and responsibilities of RMA.

This study aims to identify the drivers for adopting the circular economy (CE) in a born-sustainable business of the fashion sector.

An exploratory case study was carried out with a unique and relevant case: the only Brazilian company implementing circularity practices defined through a sectoral commitment, the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment.

From an analysis of the literature, a theoretical scheme composed of internal and external drivers is proposed. In the case studied, there is a prevalence of internal drivers that led the company to implement the CE. Most of the internal drivers described by the literature were identified in this research, except for two: profitability and available technology. Regarding the external drivers, of the 12 listed, only laws and regulations were identified. Thus, the results suggest that internal drivers are more numerous and may be more prominent than external ones for CE adoption in the born-sustainable business.

Due to its exploratory design and unique case study, the research does not allow generalizations, suggesting replication with a larger number of companies and carrying out quantitative research with born-sustainable companies and incumbent companies, for comparison. Considering that there is a difference between companies that decide for sustainable practices and companies that were already born sustainable, it can be questioned if the drivers for implementing CE for both companies are also different.

This study proposes a theoretical scheme that indicates the main internal and external drivers for companies' CE implementation. Developed from a literature review and applied in an empirical case, this scheme is comprehensive and can be adopted to analyze companies of different sizes and industries. Hence, this paper generates new perspectives for CE literature.

Research management is slowly being recognised as a profession in Iceland as demands from funders and quality assurance have increased. The Icelandic research community is very small and funding for research is limited. The development of the profession in Iceland is tightly connected to international cooperation in research and participation in international programmes, in particular, the EU framework programmes. This participation has increased the administrative burden on researchers and shown the need for a specific profession that manages all other aspects of the research enterprise. This has slowly developed from being mostly financial management of grants into complete research management from idea to impact. A pivotal moment for research management in Iceland was the founding of ICEARMA in 2012, which has put a spotlight on the role of research managers within institutions, and led to most major research institutions hiring a designated research manager. This has also increased cooperation within the community.

In recent years, railway systems worldwide have faced challenges such as the modernization of engineering projects, efficient management of intelligent digital railway equipment, rapid growth in passenger and freight transport demands, customized transport services and ubiquitous transport safety. The transformation toward intelligent digital transformation in railways has emerged as an effective response to the formidable challenges confronting the railway industry, thereby becoming an inevitable global trend in railway development.

This paper, therefore, conducts a comprehensive analysis of the current state of global railway intelligent digital transformation, focusing on the characteristics and applications of intelligent digital transformation technology. It summarizes and analyzes relevant technologies and applicable scenarios in the realm of railway intelligent digital transformation, theoretically elucidating the development process of global railway intelligent digital transformation and, in practice, providing guidance and empirical examples for railway intelligence and digital transformation.

Digital and intelligent technologies follow a wave-like pattern of continuous iterative evolution, progressing from the early stages, to a period of increasing attention and popularity, then to a phase of declining interest, followed by a resurgence and ultimately reaching a mature stage.

The results offer reference and guidance to fully leverage the opportunities presented by the latest wave of the digitalization revolution, accelerate the overall upgrade of the railway industry and promote global collaborative development in railway intelligent digital transformation.

Access to culture is a fundamental right of people with disabilities and a significant aspect in the development of accessible tourism. A visit to a monument provides an authentic experience which cannot be substituted by any representation. However, any interventions to improve accessibility should be made carefully, so as not to alter the monument’s character, or damage it visually or structurally. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A theoretical approach model was defined in the PROSPELASIS project for the improvement of accessibility in monuments which was applied in Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki. This approach contains the following steps: evaluation of existing accessibility level; definition of alternative solutions; creation of final studies, approval by archaeological authorities and implementation of interventions.

In six major Byzantine monuments significant improvements were realized which include: installation of two lifts and creation of a new staircase at Acheiropoietos; creation of a metal bridge, a new staircase and installation of a lift at Rotunda; opening of the secondary gate and creation of a ramp at the Heptapyrgion fortress; creation of an accessible toilet at the Saint Demetrios church; installation in the six monuments of a WiFi system providing text and audible information as well as information in Greek and International Sign Language; creation of two tactile models; creation of a “cultural route” connecting three major Byzantine monuments.

For the first time, to the knowledge, a set of interventions has been realized in Byzantine monuments focusing on various categories of people with disabilities, i.e. motor, visual, hearing and cognitive.

This modeling facilitates the determination of control responses (or possibly reconfiguration) upon such events and the identification of which segments of the pipeline can continue to function uninterrupted. Based on this modeling, an algorithm is presented to implement the control responses and to establish this determination. In this work, the authors propose using Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), which is an integrated method to perform the system-wide control based on message exchanging among local node controllers (agents) and the global controller (broker).

Complex manufacturing lines in industrial plants are designed to accomplish an overall task in an incremental mode. This typically consists of a sequence of smaller tasks organized as cascaded processing nodes with local controls, which must be coordinated and aided by a system-wide (global) controller. This work presents a logic modeling technique for such pipelines and a method for using its logic to determine the consequent effects of events where a node halts/fails on the overall operation.

The method uses a protocol for establishing communication of node events and the algorithm to determine the consequences of node events in order to produce global control directives, which are communicated back to node controllers over MQTT. The algorithm is simulated using a complex manufacturing line with arbitrary events to illustrate the sequence of events and the agents–broker message exchanging.

This approach (MQTT) is a relatively new concept in Cyber-Physical Systems. The proposed example of feed-forward is not new; however, for illustration purposes, it was suggested that a feed-forward be used. Future works will consider practical examples that are at the core of the manufacturing processes.