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Mauritius is a Small Island Development State (SIDS) with limited resources, and it has been witnessed that many containers used for storing household and industrial products are made from plastic. When discarded as waste, those plastic containers pose a serious environmental and economic challenge for Mauritius. Moreover, landfill space is getting increasingly scarce, and plastic waste is contaminating both land and water. Therefore, it is of the utmost necessity to develop solutions for Mauritius' plastic wastes. Due to its abundance and accessibility, plastic waste is a promising material for recycling and energy production. One potential solution is the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict household plastic consumption, allowing policymakers to design effective strategies and initiatives to reduce plastic waste. Such information is a critical component to be able to efficiently plan for the collection and routing of trucks when collecting recyclable plastics. The development of new strategies for the recycling of plastic waste and development of new industry can address the import and export potential of the country to achieve self-sustainability as well as contribute to reduction in plastic pollution and amount of waste landfilled. These plastics can thereafter be used effectively for recycling and for the making of 3D printing filaments which fall under the SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and 12 (Responsible consumption and production).

Building information modelling (BIM) is an innovative, collaborative process underpinned by digital technologies introduced to improve project performance in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). Growth in industry demands has necessitated BIM inclusion into the higher education (HE) curricula as both a pedagogic and practical objective to prepare and develop aspiring built environment (BE) professionals with the required competence for contemporary practice. However, comprehension of BIM concepts and subsequent development of the skill set required for its application remains overwhelming for students. In mitigating this challenge, adopting appropriate learner-centred strategies has been advocated. Problem-based learning (PBL) is becoming a widespread strategy to address concerns associated with authentic practices.

This paper evaluates the impact of the PBL strategy on students' accelerated learning of BIM based on a case study of 53 undergraduate students in a BIM module. The network analysis and centrality measures were employed in understudying the most applicable BIM skills.

From the analyses, PBL benefits students' knowledge acquisition (cognitive and affective) of BIM concept and development of transferable skills (academic and disciplinary), equipping them with capabilities to become BIM competent and workplace ready for the AEC industry.

The BIM pedagogy evolves, and new skillsets emerge. Analytical, communications and collaboration skills remain sacrosanct to delivering BIM modules. These skills mentioned above are essential in getting undergraduate students ready to apply BIM in the AEC sector.

Multiple topics often exist on social media platforms that compete for users' attention. To explore how users’ attention transfers in the context of multitopic competition can help us understand the development pattern of the public attention.

This study proposes the prediction model for the attention transfer behavior of social media users in the context of multitopic competition and reveals the important influencing factors of users' attention transfer. Microblogging features are selected from the dimensions of users, time, topics and competitiveness. The microblogging posts on eight topic categories from Sina Weibo, the most popular microblogging platform in China, are used for empirical analysis. A novel indicator named transfer tendency of a feature value is proposed to identify the important factors for attention transfer.

The accuracy of the prediction model based on Light GBM reaches 91%. It is found that user features are the most important for the attention transfer of microblogging users among all the features. The conditions of attention transfer in all aspects are also revealed.

The findings can help governments and enterprises understand the competition mechanism among multiple topics and improve their ability to cope with public opinions in the complex environment.

This study aims to observe the impact of peripheral vision on construction safety. The study further intends to create awareness of eye diseases in construction safety, an important root cause for most construction-related hazards and accidents.

This study focuses on the impact of peripheral vision in terms of construction site safety. Experiments were conducted with construction employees with different qualifications, ages, expertise and previous safety training experience. The experiments were conducted with an experiment set consisting of a tangent screen to measure the peripheral angle of the participants. The study measured peripheral vision, which helped determine the vision field accordingly. In this context, a total of 32 participants were investigated in terms of their peripheral visual angle and the field of vision. The data collected were analyzed in terms of several statistical tests such as One-Sample t-test, multivariate ANOVA and multiple linear regression.

The results of the study indicated that there are significant differences in peripheral vision in terms of age of participants, work qualification, work experience, area of expertise and previous safety training experience. The study further revealed that most of the participants failed to satisfy both OSHA requirements about peripheral vision, and normal limits defined in the previous literature. The study further implies that participants, who reported previous sight problems or eye diseases are more vulnerable to construction site accidents.

Construction site safety remains a major concern for most construction companies despite the latest developments in technology. Several companies are struggling with poor safety performance, occupational injuries and illnesses, and work-related accidents resulting in fatalities. However, the root causes behind several construction accidents are still vague due to different dynamics in the construction industry. Among these root causes, poor sight, vision and or eye diseases constitute an important part. Hence, the study provides empirical evidence with the workers checked for eye health to help policymakers and industry practitioners in terms of developing awareness for eye-related injuries and accidents and review their safety programs accordingly.

This work aims to explore why people review their experienced online shopping in such a manner (promptness), and what is the potential relationship between the users’ review promptness and review motivation as well as reviewed contents.

To evaluate the customers’ responses regarding their shopping experiences, in this paper, the “purchase-review” promptness is studied to explore the temporal characteristics of users’ reviewing behavior online. Then, an aspect mining method was introduced for assessment of review text. Finally, a theoretical model is proposed to analyze how the customers’ reviews were formed.

First, the length of time elapsed between purchase and review was found to follow a power-law distribution, which characterizes an important number of human behaviors. Within online review behaviors, this meant that a high frequency population of reviewers tended to publish relatively quick reviews online. This showed that the customers’ reviewing behaviors on e-commerce websites may have been affected by extrinsic motivations, intrinsic motivations or both. Second, the proposed review-to-feature mapping technique is a feasible method for exploring reviewers’ opinions in both massive and sparse reviews. Finally, the customers’ reviewing behaviors were found to be mostly consistent with reviewers’ motivations.

First, the authors propose that the “promptness” of users in posting online reviews is an important external manifestation of their motivation, product experience and service experience. Second, a semi-supervised method of review-to-aspect mapping is used to solve the data quality problem in mining information from massive text data, which vary in length, detail and quality. Finally, a huge amount of e-commerce customers’ purchase-review promptness are studied and the results indicate that not all product features are responsible for the “prompt” posting of users’ reviews, and that the platform’s strategy to encourage users to post reviews will not work in the long term.

Implementing building information modeling (BIM) in construction projects offers many benefits. However, the use of BIM in project cost management is still limited. This study aims to review the current trends in the application of BIM in project cost management.

This study systematically reviews the literature on the application of BIM in project cost management. A total of 46 related articles were identified and analyzed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses method.

Eighteen approaches to applying BIM in project cost management were identified. The approaches can be grouped into cost control and cost estimation. Also, BIM can be applied independently or integrated with other techniques. The integrated approaches for cost control include integration with genetic algorithms, Monte Carlo simulation, lean construction, integrated project delivery, neural network and value engineering. On the contrary, integrated approaches for cost estimation include integration with cost-plus pricing, discrepancy analysis, construction progress curves, estimation standards, algorithms, declarative mappings, life cycle sustainability assessment, ontology, Web-based frameworks and structured query language.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically review prior literature on the application of BIM in project cost management. As a result, the study provides a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the art and fills the literature gap. Researchers and industry professionals can use the study findings to increase the benefits of implementing BIM in construction projects.

Food markets have gathered a growing attention by tourism researchers and practitioners in recent years. Many destinations have placed food markets as a tourism attraction which allows visitors to discover a territory through its food. Drawing on the understanding of markets as identity and tourism icons, this paper aims to analyze the role of urban food markets in the different stages of the tourist experience from a visitor perspective.

To achieve this, a qualitative design was implemented to interview 18 tourists who visited for the first time the city of Palermo, the capital of the Mediterranean island of Sicily, Italy.

The results of this study show the factors that drive the motivations, the experiences and the satisfaction of visitors to food markets and provide relevant perspectives into the management and marketing of food tourism in urban environments.

The originality of this paper lies on the understanding of the relationships between visitor experiences and urban food markets.

To predict the real behavior of the full-scale model using a scale model, optimized simulation should be achieved. In reinforced concrete (RC) models, scaling can be substantially more critical than in single-material models because of multiple reasons such as insufficient bonding strength between small-diameter steel bars and concrete, and excessive aggregate size. Overall, there is a shortfall of laboratory and field-testing studies on the behavior of secant pile walls under lateral and axial loads. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate the validity and the performance of the 1/10th scaled RC secant pile wall under the influence of different types of loading.

The structural performance of the examined models was evaluated using two types of tests: bending and axial compression. A self-compacting concrete mix was suggested, which provided the best concrete mix workability and appropriate compressive strength.

Under axial and bending loads, the failure modes were typical. Where the plain and reinforced concrete piles worked in tandem to support the load throughout the loading process, even when they failed. The experimental results were relatively consistent with some empirical equations for calculating the modulus of elasticity and critical buckling load. This confirmed the validity of the proposed model.

According to the analysis and verification of experimental tests, the proposed 1/10th scaled RC secant pile model can be used for future laboratory purposes, especially in the field of geotechnical engineering.

This study aims to explore the influence of health-care service quality on customers’ perceived value, satisfaction, effectiveness and behavioural intention concerning district health centres (DHCs) in Hong Kong. This research also intends to assess customers’ perception of the subsidy scheme and its influence on the relationships amongst the aforementioned constructs.

The convenience and snowball sampling approaches were adopted, and the self-administered questionnaire was sent to 309 customers of DHCs.

Service quality attributes in terms of staffing and procedures positively increased customers’ perceived value and staffing, procedures and operations. Physical facilities positively promoted customers’ satisfaction, consequently improving DHCs’ effectiveness and behavioural intention. However, core treatments and services of DHCs did not impact customers’ perceived value and satisfaction. Furthermore, customers receiving subsidies exhibited a more positive perception than those without subsidies.

Health-care organisations are advised to strategically allocate resources (staffing, facilities and procedures and operations management) to optimise overall performance outcomes. DHC operators could reinforce the core services of DHCs and health-care voucher subsidies to local citizens so as to enhance the effectiveness of DHCs and behavioural intention of customers.

This study integrates the input–process–output approach in measuring the effectiveness of and customers’ behavioural intention towards newly established DHCs.