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This chapter surveyed how the Daily Monitor and New Vision newspapers in Uganda framed discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic was given massive media coverage in Uganda, as around the globe. It is of interest to examine the coverage and draw lessons for future reference. We considered Uganda as an interesting case due to its initial success in managing the spread of the pandemic (Sarki, Ezeh, & Stranges, 2020). This chapter aimed to analyse the coverage of the pandemic through the lens of framing theory. The chapter presents a content analysis of selected published material from their online sites in the two newspapers between 10 March and 2 June 2020. The dates start with lockdown in Uganda and end with lockdown’s partial lifting. The study revealed several interesting news frames that included a western versus national frame, preparedness frame, economic frame, religious frame and other emerging news frames like solidarity, police enforcement and self-reflection. The main conclusion is that the two major dailies actively informed the public about COVID-19 and made some attempts to cover issues around the impact of COVID-19 on society.

This paper aims to describe the challenges and potential benefits of moving a mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers to an online mode of delivery in response to the South African Government’s efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19.

A descriptive account incorporating reflections from staff responsible for the move to e-mentoring and from South African and UK researchers undertaking an exploratory study of mentoring vulnerable youth at the time when COVID-19 restrictions were imposed.

E-mentoring can provide an effective means to maintaining the essential elements of a well-established mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers under government enforced “lock-down”. E-mentoring presents particular challenges and benefits in the South African context. Youth in care and care leavers have unequal access to a digital infrastructure, but this can be overcome by investment in resourcing, equipping and training carers, mentors and mentees. The geographical reach offered by online platforms gives young people access to a more diverse pool of mentors.

Both care leaving services and the use of e-mentoring to meet the needs of vulnerable young people are emerging areas of practice and research interest. This paper brings the two areas together in the context of South Africa under COVID-19 “lock-down” through describing the response of one mentoring programme and highlighting the benefits and challenges.

In most economies, there are rules from the market regulators or government to sell at an equal wholesale price (EWP). But when one upstream channel is facing a negative demand disruption and another positive, EWP can create extra pressure on the disadvantageous supply chain partner, which faces negative disruption. The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of EWP and the scope of the discriminatory wholesale price (DWP) during disruptions.

For the study, the authors used a dual-channel supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, online retailer (OR) and traditional brick-and-mortar (BM) retailer. Stackelberg game is used to model the interaction between the upstream and downstream channel partners, and the horizontal Nash game to analyse the interaction within downstream channel partners. For modelling asymmetric disruption, the authors took instances from the lock-down and post-lock-down periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, where consumers flow from BM retailer to OR store.

By analysing the disruption period, the authors found that this asymmetric disruption is detrimental to the BM channel, favourable to OR and has no impact on the manufacturer. But with DWP, the authors found that the profit of the BM channel and manufacturer can be increased during disruption. Though the profit of the OR decreased, it was found to be higher than in the pre-disruption period. Under DWP, the consumer surplus increased during disruption, making it favourable for the customers also. Thus, DWP can aid in creating a win-win strategy for all the supply chain partners during asymmetric disruption. Later as an extension to the study, the authors analysed the impact of the consumer transfer factor and found that it plays a crucial role in the optimal decisions of the channel partner during DWP.

Very scant literature analyses the intersection of DWP and disruptions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study, for the first time uses DWP as a tool to help the disadvantageous supply chain partner during asymmetric disruptions. The study findings will assist the government, market regulators and manufacturers in revamping the wholesale pricing policies and strategies to help the disadvantageous supply chain partner during asymmetric disruption.

Work participation and work facilitation represent basic human rights for everyone. Work represents an important platform for welfare and well-being, but compared to the general workforce in Norway, persons with cognitive disabilities are severely under-represented. When workplaces locked down under the first COVID-19 outbreak spring 2020, some people were made redundant whilst many continued their work from home. The lockdown affected persons with cognitive disabilities through lockdown of workplaces, vocational training centres and even day activity centres. The scheme of working from home was not as obvious or facilitated for this group, as for other employees. When also visits were banned and common areas for socialisation were locked down, the consequences of these lockdowns were exacerbated. In this chapter we have examined and discussed the COVID-19 restrictions in Norway and how they affected the basic human rights of persons with cognitive disabilities, and also how such rights can be promoted through legislation, governance and service provision.

This paper aims to review the information management aspects of the early months of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) coronavirus 19 outbreak. It shows that the transition from epidemic to the pandemic was caused partly by poor management of information that was publicly available in January 2020.

The approach combines public domain epidemic data with economic, demographic, health, social and political data and investigates how information was managed by governments. It includes case studies of early-stage information management, from countries with high and low coronavirus disease 2019 impacts (as measured by deaths per million).

The reasons why the information was not acted upon appropriately include “dark side” information behaviours (Stone et al., 2019). Many errors and misjudgements could have been avoided by using learnings from previous epidemics, particularly the 1918-1919 flu epidemic when international travel (mainly of troops in First World War) was a prime mode of spreading. It concludes that if similar outbreaks are not to turn into pandemics, much earlier action is needed, mainly closing borders and locking-down.

The research is based on what was known at the time of writing, when the pandemic’s exact origin was uncertain, when some statistics about actions and results were unavailable and when final results were unknown.

Governments faced with early warning signs or pandemics must act much faster.

If the next virus is as infectious as SARS-CoV-2 but much more fatal, the world faces disastrous consequences if most governments act as slowly as this time.

This is one of the first analyses of information management practices relating to the pandemic’s early stages.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a replicable model that ensures Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage as well as water treatment facilities at the community level by providing total service coverage at community scale. An intervention was implemented in one of the low-lying areas of Basirhat Municipality (West Bengal, India) that included a number of action programs in order to address household- and community-level water-induced challenges.

A research study was undertaken to identify the root causes of the problems that are generally spawned from geomorphological, hydro-fluvial, climatic factors and processes and the situation becomes complicated when many other cumulative problem-contexts layovers the existing ones. A number of social and technological innovations were tested in the field and this paper critically examined the intervention processes and outcomes. It was implemented through participatory process by involving related stakeholders working at that scale so that necessary public acceptance is received for scaling up, at least, in the similar physical, social, economic and institutional contexts.

The problem conceptualization process, spatial assessment for contextualizing the problem, design of interventions for different scales, development of project deployment strategies from field-based learnings contributed in developing a total solution based on fusing of household-level technical solutions, social innovations and actions for community engagements towards sustainability. Mobilized community members in addressing local inundation and waterlogging crisis. Satellite image-based maps shown to make them understand the upper-lower connection of drainage. People also developed their own action plans and engaged themselves in resuscitation of an old canal, removed the garbage that resulted in improved drainage conditions in the area.

Pandemic due to COVID 19 and its related prolonged lock down, West Bengal State Assembly Election, closure of municipal governance system due to the forthcoming municipal election, closure of educational institutions, closure of Anganwadi Centre in the field area were the limitations. Due to the lock down, it was difficult for the team to maintain the time frame as well as the budget. As per the Election’s Code of Conduct gets released no public meeting was allowed without permission, people in the vicinity became suspicious, hence movement of the team members got restricted.

Due to the COVID protocols, the team could not organise mass training programs. It was difficult for the team members to commute in public/private transport, hence filed work got impacted. As the team could not access data from the health department, they developed a strategy of generation data on body mass index, mid-upper arm circumferences and waist-to-hip ratios to understand the status of health and nutrition of the community. It was difficult to access the Public Health Engineering Department’s laboratory situated in the municipality for water sample test. Cost escalated due to extension of the project time.

During the second phase (wave) when people lost access to health facilities they requested the team to stop field visit. Women’s empowerment through acquiring knowledge and skill on treatment and safe storage of drinking water at home. Men appreciated and recognized this, which improved the status of women in the society. Children after expressing their willingness to learn the new technology of water purification were given handholding training by their mothers and knowledge transfer has taken place in the next generation. Mobilized community members in addressing local inundation and waterlogging crisis. Satellite image-based maps to understand the upper-lower connection of drainage helped them develop their own action plans and engaged themselves in resuscitation of an old canal, removed the garbage that resulted in improved drainage conditions in the area.

Household-level solutions include supply of low cost, easy operable, sustainable water purifiers, community-level solution focused on securing water-related challenges at social/public gathering places and wider catchment area level solutions include the engagement of local communities to drain out stagnant waters by clearing drains, creating/digging small canals through collective actions. Geo-spatial techniques (topographical mapping, spatial survey, water quality tests) along with social methods such as participatory appraisals for gathering information on human health, public awareness campaigns and partnership development with local government agencies were the major activities performed as part of the implementation of interventions. It is imperative to mention that water-related challenges in the low-lying settlement areas of Basirhat Municipality have effectively been addressed by relying on necessary theoretical underpinnings (Disaster risk reduction/humanitarian principles) transmitted through application of scientific techniques and mediated through local people and their agencies.

The purpose of this research work is to design and apply LabVIEW in the area of traffic maintenance and flow, by introducing improvements in the smart city. The objective is to introduce the automated human–machine interface (HMI) – a computer-based graphical user interface (GUI) – for measuring the traffic flow and detecting faults in poles.

This research paper is based on the use of LabVIEW for designing the HMI for a traffic system in a smart city. This includes considerable measures that are: smart flow of traffic, violation detection on the signal, fault measurement in the traffic pole, locking down of cars for emergency and measuring parameters inside the cars.

In this paper, the GUIs and the required circuitry for making improvements in the infrastructure of traffic systems have been designed and proposed, with their respective required hardware. Several measured conditions have been discussed in detail.

PJRC Teensy 3.1 has been used because it contains enough general-purpose input–output (GPIO) pins required for monitoring parameters that are used for maintaining the necessary flow of traffic and monitor the proposed study case. A combination of sensors such as infrared, accelerometer, magnetic compass, temperature sensor, current sensors, ultrasonic sensor, fingerprint readers, etc. are used to create a monitoring environment for the application. Using Teensy and LabVIEW, the system costs less and is effective in terms of performance.

The microprocessor board shields for placing actuators and sensors and for attaching the input/output (I/O) to the LED indicators and display have been designed. A circuitry for scaling voltage, i.e. making sensor readings to read limits, has been designed. A combination of certain sensors, at different signals, will lead to a secure and more durable control of traffic. The proposed applications with its hardware and software cost less, are effective and can be easily used for making the city’s traffic services smart. For alarm levels, the desired alarm level can be set from the front panel for certain conditions from the monitoring station. For this, virtual channels can be created for allowing the operator to set any random value for limits. If the sensor value crosses the alarm value, then the corresponding alarm displays an alert. The system works by using efficient decision-making techniques and stores the data along with the corresponding time of operation, for future decisions.

This study is an advanced research of its category because it combines the field of electrical engineering, computer science and traffic systems by using LabVIEW.

While the customer brand engagement (CBE) research has advanced important insight, most studies to date explore CBE under regular, free-market conditions, yielding an important knowledge gap regarding its manifestation under less regular conditions, including disaster/pandemics. This study, therefore, aims to explore CBE with essential/non-essential service during COVID-19-prompted citizen lockdown.

Based on a review, the authors develop a framework of lockdown-based CBE with essential/non-essential service interactions, which are conceptualized by their respective capacity to meet differing needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. The authors view lockdown-based essential/non-essential service interactions to differentially impact CBE, as summarized in a set of propositions.

The framework depicts lockdown-based essential/non-essential service interactions and their respective impact on CBE. The authors propose two essential service modes (i.e. socially distant/platform-mediated interactions) and two non-essential service modes (i.e. service closure/platform-mediated interactions), which the authors hypothesize to differently affect CBE. Moreover, the authors view the associations between our lockdown-based service modes and CBE to be moderated by customers’ regulatory focus (i.e. promotion/prevention), as formalized in the propositions.

Given the authors’ focus on lockdown-based CBE, this paper adds unique insight to the literature. It also raises ample opportunities for further study, as outlined.

This study yields important managerial implications, including the suggested adoption of differing tactics/strategies to leverage promotion/prevention-focused customers’ brand engagement during lockdown.

By exploring the effects of lockdown-based essential/non-essential service modes on promotion/prevention-focused customers’ brand engagement, this paper adds novel insight.

A BAC One‐Eleven aircraft departed Stansted for Gatwick on its first flight subsequent to a B2 Maintenance Check. On selection of landing gear up after take‐off, the red gear‐unsafe light remained on, indicating that the landing gear was not fully retracted. In addition, an abnormal vibration from the nose landing gear area was noted. The landing gear lever was lowered and the annunciator lights then indicated that both main gears had locked down, but that the nose gear had not, which latter was confirmed by the nose gear mechanical indicator. Standsted Air Traffic Control informed the crew, after a fly‐past with landing lights on, that the nose landing gear appeared to be down. The landing gear free‐fall lever was then operated and as there was no change in indications the lever was returned to its normal position in order to retract the main landing gear doors and prevent possible damage by runway contact should the nose landing gear collapse on landing. Checklists cautioned against returning the lever to normal in flight, but did not cater for the situation where free‐fall lever operation did not achieve full gear extension. It was noted that the Checklist caution was at odds with a placard adjacent to the free‐fall lever warning only that the ‘lever must not be reset until normal gear lever is selected down’ and thus implying that an in‐flight reset was acceptable.

Lockdowns are generally characterised by financial depletion, loneliness, stress, depression, loss of jobs and businesses, among others. The effect of the recent lockdown in Ghana as a result of COVID-19 pandemic has not been different. The primary question this study seeks to answer is: are lockdowns only characterised by negativity, or could there be a positive side that has not yet been harnessed?

To answer this question, the authors rely on a dataset of 879 observations obtained through an online survey administered from 25 April to 3 May 2020. Using a regression approach, the authors applied an ordered probit econometric technique with its associated predicted margins.

The authors show evidence that in the midst of the negativity surrounding the lockdown, social connectedness is evident, especially in relatively less busy cities. The authors recommend that instead of losing oneself through social isolation and loneliness during lockdowns, people should use lockdowns as an opportunity to build and exhibit social capital and harness the opportunities associated with it. The authors also recommend that during lockdowns, channels of social connectedness should be made easily accessible and cheaper through a well-targeted government subsidy programme for the poor.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is a novel study that provides the first empirical evidence on the relationship between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic lockdown and social connectedness.