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Enhancing community flood resilience is a critical aspect of flood risk management that requires a systematic process of capacity building through incorporating mitigation measures. The inhabitants of South Rishipara, a riverside settlement of Bangladesh, are accommodating themselves in a flood-prone location through modifying their built environment. The purpose of this study is to conduct a detailed investigation regarding the built environment development and find out roles of different actors and contributing factors for enhancing community flood resilience.

This case study-based post-positivist research uses multiple lines of inquiries, which include focus group discussions, transect walks, in-depth semi-structured interviews, pair-wise comparisons and a questionnaire survey, mostly in a participatory appraisal manner to obtain data about community experiences and perceptions.

About 66.7 per cent of respondents identified themselves as severely affected by flood before the recent development with increased elevation of land, flood protection walls, reclaimed land from the river, underground drainage system, a new layout of plots and houses of better quality. In the post-development situation, not a single respondent identified him/ her in that condition. “Coordination and cooperation among GOs, NGOs and donor agency” (GO: governmental organization; NGO: nongovernmental organization) and “awareness about the flood vulnerability” were identified as key factors and the NGO was identified as the key actor for enhancing community flood resilience by the survey participants.

This research, through exploring the nuanced relationship between built environment development and community resilience, will contribute to address uncertainties associated with community capacities to respond to risks.

Bangladesh is one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. A number of research works have identified that the flood scenario will be aggravated with climate change context in Bangladesh. In 2014, Bangladesh had prepared municipal level master plan for 222 municipalities with a view to planned urban development. But climate change-induced flood has not been considered in master plan, which poses a question toward the sustainability of the plan. Ullapara Municipality of Sirajganj district has been selected to conduct the research. This study aims to evaluate how infrastructure in proposed master plan will be exposed to climate change-induced flood.

The methodology of this study follows geographic information system (GIS)-based flood exposure analysis of selected infrastructure. These infrastructures include transport infrastructure, educational infrastructure, health infrastructure and other urban facilities. Climate change-induced flood for the year 2040 has been used for flood exposure analysis.

It is evident from the flood exposure analysis that about 33.99% roads will be exposed to 1.5 m–2 m inundation level; seven primary school, six secondary school and four colleges would be highly exposed to 2.0 m–2.50 m inundation level; four health facilities would be exposed to 1.0 m–2.0 m inundation level because of future climate change. This inundation scenario for long duration will lead to dysfunction of concerned infrastructure and, in turn, undermine the stability of a socioeconomic system of Ullapara Municipality.

As the master plan is not fully implemented till now, there is scope for intervention for considering climate change-induced flood to make the plan sustainable.

Seismic vulnerability evaluation of various public structures, especially school buildings, is very crucial for designing hazard mitigation initiatives in seismic prone areas. The city of Mymensingh is at great risk of earthquake because of its geographical location, geological structure and proximity to active faults. The city is famous for its ancient and renowned educational institutes that need to be evaluated for understanding the seismic performance of the building during an earthquake. This study aims to evaluate the seismic vulnerability of educational buildings of Mymensingh city using rapid visual screening (RVS) and index based approach.

RVS procedure includes field survey and secondary source assessment for evaluating structural vulnerability attributes. Analytical hierarchy process is applied to develop an index focusing on systematic attributes of vulnerability based on expert opinions. Then, a composite vulnerability map is developed combining both structural and systematic vulnerability score providing an equal weight.

This study evaluates the seismic vulnerability of 458 educational buildings of Mymensingh city and the result shows that 23.14% educational building has high, 46.29% has moderate and 26.86% has moderately low and only 3.71% buildings has the low seismic vulnerability. This study expected to be helpful in resource targeting and prioritizing seismic hazard mitigation activities for education buildings of Mymensingh city.

This study endeavors to present a comprehensive vulnerability assessment method by integrating RVS and index based approach that incorporates both structural and systematic dimensions of vulnerability. The result is expected to be helpful in the formulation of disaster prevention policy for vulnerable educational buildings and development of the earthquake-resistant building codes for the new building construction in Mymensingh city.

In societies with strong presence of Islam, Islamic instruments with more scope for fairness and equity can be innovatively harnessed to play an increasing role in the development process and poverty alleviation schemes. Poor smallholder farmers dominate agricultural production in many developing countries and contribute a significant portion of global food production. This paper aims to develop a scheme to improve poor smallholder farmers’ vulnerable financial situation through the application of Zakah and Salam contract, using Bangladesh as a case study. Secondary goals are to show the effect of the scheme on food security and relevance to Nigeria.

The authors explore the existing traditional modes of financing available to poor smallholders, identify their challenges and propose an appropriate Islamic financing scheme.

With the Zakah-based Salam forward contract, the proposed scheme would procure food through Institutional Demand to offer interest free financing, fair price and access to new marketing channels and reduce income uncertainty for the rural smallholders. The discussions indicate that the local food security will be enhanced through incentivized farming activities and disbursement of food from the food bank to the Zakah-eligible food insecure local people.

This proposal brings forth a potentially powerful idea that needs further empirical validation.

The religion-based Institutional Demand initiative to promote smallholder agricultural development and social protection is a novel one. The attempt to apply the framework to Nigeria context shows the potential of the framework to generalize for other Muslim developing countries with similar characteristics, especially the poorer agriculture-based countries.

Access to patent-related information is facilitated in large part by repositories of patents. Additionally, patent repositories support transparency and knowledge exchange, both of which can spark new alliances and collaborations. In addition to serving as a source of inspiration for future inventions, they allow companies, researchers and inventors to look up current patents and prevent infringement. Globally, the scientific and academic communities are becoming increasingly interested in open-access repositories. Countries throughout the world have kept up their repositories because of their significance. A directory of open access repositories (OpenDOAR) is a reliable source with minimally inaccurate or dubious content, having been meticulously chosen and validated. It acts as a global registration hub, enabling the visibility and accessibility of research contributions. Hence, this study aims to look into the current status of open-access repositories for archiving “Patents”, at the global level in OpenDOAR by analysing the different characteristic features of repositories.

The advanced search strategy of the directory of open-access repositories (www.opendoar.org/) is used to extract the data. The data extraction process was carried out on 28th March 2023. The study limited its search to “Patents” only, among the different content types listed in it. A total of 253 repositories were retrieved that contained the selected content type. However, the advanced search feature was combined one by one with other available parameters to retrieve the data. The gathered data was saved in MS Excel for further analysis. Moreover, the open access policies, open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) and language interface of repositories were manually looked up from each repository/record information. To present the findings, charts and tables were used to visualize the gathered data effectively.

The study shows that repositories have increased over the years, with the highest number established in 2022. The UK has emerged as the most prominent country contributing to the development of repositories for archiving patents. The majority of the repositories are institutional, and DSpace is the most commonly used software for their creation. While Web 2.0 tools are not widely used, however, a significant number of repositories have incorporated RSS feeds, Atom and social media. Open access policies play a vital role in managing the content archived in the repositories, and only a small percentage of the repositories were found to be following them. However, the majority of the repositories have shown OAI-PMH compliance. English is the most commonly preferred interface language by repositories for archiving patents. These findings suggest that there is still significant room for improvement in the development and management of repositories, and adherence to open-access policies could play a crucial role in ensuring their sustainability and usefulness in the future.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the study is the first of its type that examines the global landscape of open-access patent repositories.

This study aims to empirically investigate the effects of supportive, innovative and information technology (IT)-driven organisational culture on the optimisation of knowledge-sharing behaviour capability (KSBC) among sales executives. The authors propose that such effects are mediated by the sense of well-being (SWB) and IT-driven absorptive capacity (ITAC) among sales executives.

A conceptual model was developed. Survey data were based on a sample of 323 sales executives of different manufacturing and service-intensive (i.e. business to consumers) firms. The data analyses were conducted by structural equation modelling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methods.

Results from SEM support all the direct relationships. Supportive and innovative organisational culture has a significant and positive influence on the optimisation of KSBC among sales executives, and these effects are mediated by their SWB. Moreover, the ITAC of sales executives mediated the relationships between IT-driven organisational culture and optimisation of KSBC among them. Results from fsQCA with the same data show that ITAC and SWB among sales executives are necessary conditions for the optimisation of KSBC. In addition, ten combinations of these variables were explored, where three sufficient conditions significantly influenced the outcome variable.

This study is cross-sectional in nature and is conducted among sales executives by combining the data from manufacturing and service-intensive firms. To examine the proposed model, this study can be supplemented by future research using a longitudinal data collection method separately.

This research shows an effective role to optimise KSBC among sales executives in the field of knowledge management practice literature. Supportive, innovative and harmonious culture, IT-driven communication platform and well-established IT learning plans implemented by the firms can sophisticate to optimise KSBC among sales executives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is a pioneer study conducted to explain the KSBC among sales executives by using mixed methods research. This research discusses the antecedent of knowledge-sharing capability among sales executives from the viewpoint of sales executive’s psychology and identifies the different roles of SWB and ITAC on individual’s KSBC.

This study aims to highlight the many distinguishing characteristics of open-access repositories that archive “Patents” in the Directory of Open-Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provided by Asian nations.

The OpenDOAR was chosen as a data collection tool that provides a quality-assured list of repositories indexed globally. The data was extracted on 28 March 2023.

The study found that only eight Asian countries contributed to open-access repositories on OpenDOAR, with China being the highest contributor. These countries mainly focused on institutional repositories, primarily using DSpace and English as the main language interface. Web 2.0 tools, especially RSS and Atom, were commonly used, along with some presence of social media platforms on the sites, although to a lesser extent. While many repositories followed the OAI-PMH protocol, a considerable portion did not adopt open-access policies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that brings to light the different features of repositories archiving one of the important content types, i.e. “Patents” in the OpenDOAR by Asian countries.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between organization image, awareness effort, customer demandingness, self-efficacy and self-rated performance among salespersons of Islamic banking products in the UAE. It also explores the mediating role of awareness effort and self-efficacy, using a theoretical framework derived from social cognitive theory.

Data are collected by surveying salespersons in a mixed bank (a conventional bank with an Islamic banking department) in the UAE. The researcher uses structural equation modeling to analyze the data.

The research concludes that customer demandingness positively affects awareness effort, awareness effort positively affects self-efficacy, self-efficacy positively affects performance and image positively affects salespersons’ self-efficacy and performance. Furthermore, the study highlights the mediating role of awareness effort and self-efficacy in the model.

The sample consists of 217 salespersons working in the same bank, covering three cities in the UAE. Hence, the rest of the country is not included.

The study shows the importance of awareness efforts in achieving better performance. It also demonstrates the importance of addressing customer requirements in the banking environment. Furthermore, it illuminates the role of organization image in enforcing salespersons’ self-efficacy and performance.

The paper sheds a light on salespersons’ personalities and the factors that reinforce their performance and self-efficacy.

The research is an empirical study that addresses the relationship between performance, self-efficacy, image, awareness effort and customer demandingness in Islamic banking in the UAE.

This paper seeks to explore the influential role of religion in developing a nations brand and discusses the possibility of re-positioning the brand Pakistan as a “Sufi country” that is coherent with the cultural values and social realities of the country.

The paper follows a case study approach in delineating the image problem encountered by Pakistan and describing how governments in Pakistan related country branding efforts with the religious sentiments to foster their motives. This paper also follows an inductive approach in making a theoretical explanation about promoting Pakistan's image as a “Sufi country”.

The negative image of Pakistan is gaining worldwide currency due to the absence of proactive management by government and relevant stakeholders. Pakistan as a Sufi brand has a potential to grow into a strong country brand. Branding Pakistan as a Sufi country would not only pave the way for forming a different set of associations that would be positively contradictory to the current militancy and extremism oriented perceptions associated with Pakistan, but it would also benefit her as a tourism destination.

This paper is basically a policy recommendation regarding the reconstruction of brand Pakistan around the Sufi theme that is fairly consistent with the prevailing disposition of Pakistani society, in contrast to the current image of Pakistan cultivated in the World's media as a country with the terrorist roots. With thousands of Sufi Khanqahs, tombs and shrines spread throughout the country conforming to the ancient Islamic architecture with shades of Mughal artifacts presents with a significant ‘spiritual tourism’ opportunity provided with proper management and planning.

The present study makes significant contribution to the theory of nation's branding by discussing the potential role of religion in developing a nation's brand, a topic that hasn't been profoundly inquired. Moreover it discusses the reputation management of a country brand in a crisis, a topic that hasn't been adequately studied.