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The purpose of this paper is to solve difficult estimation problem on aircraft sudden fault by proposing a new pre-estimating method according to the energy evolution degree of the sensitive parameters to estimate the sudden fault. The sudden fault affects seriously the flight safety of aircraft.

It is based on the dissipative structure theory, and the evolution process of energy parameters is utilized. First, the evolution key points of sudden fault are determined by the time-varying entropy of sensitive parameters and the frequency band energy distribution. Then, we can obtain the evolution degree of sample while the evolution key points import the logistic regression (LR) model, and one can establish the pre-estimation model by means of relevance vector machine (RVM). While the evolution feature vector imports the RVM pre-estimation model, one can pre-estimate the sudden fault of aircraft.

The simulation results showed that this method can not only track the evolution process of aircraft sudden fault but also estimate its evolution degree, and it has a higher pre-estimating accuracy.

It provides a new way to forecast the sudden fault and increase the security of aircraft.

This paper proposes a pre-estimating method on aircraft sudden fault. It is based on the dissipative structure theory and the energy-sensitive parameters of the sudden faults are used. This method can enhance the security of aircraft and increase the protective ability of sudden fault on aircraft.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce to scientific community a new optimization technique and its application to the radiation synthesis case.

The immunity tactic is a new powerful optimization tool inspired by immune system. It was used with success to achieve the conformal antenna radiation synthesis in an acceptable processing time.

Radiation synthesis of conformal antenna arrays based on immunity tactic generates very good results compared with other optimization methods. The comparison is very satisfactory as regards accuracy and processing time.

The improvement of convergence and accuracy will be done certainly by use of other variants of the technique or combination with others.

The paper exposes with details a new optimization technique based on immune system and its behavior. The results, for the special case of conformal antenna arrays radiation synthesis, are very satisfactory and very encouraging. The impact of the new technique will be, without doubt, positive on optimization field.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Optimizing both qualitative and quantitative factors is a key challenge in solving construction finance decisions. The semi‐structured nature of construction finance optimization problems precludes conventional optimization techniques. With a desire to improve the performance of the canonical genetic algorithm (CGA) which is characterized by static crossover and mutation probability, and to provide contractors with a profit‐risk trade‐off curve and cash flow prediction, an adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) model is developed. Ten projects being undertaken by a major construction firm in Hong Kong were used as case studies to evaluate the performance of the genetic algorithm (GA). The results of case study reveal that the AGA outperformed the CGA both in terms of its quality of solutions and the computational time required for a certain level of accuracy. The results also indicate that there is a potential for using the GA for modelling financial decisions should both quantitative and qualitative factors be optimized simultaneously.

This chapter considers scenarios for the development of the Russian economy in the medium term under the “new reality” conditions, with the latter implying a slowdown in China’s economic growth rate, lower commodity prices, rising geopolitical tensions, and the rapid development of digital technologies leading to the fourth scientific and technological revolution. The results of scenario calculations show that the implementation of the economic growth target scenario requires targeted efforts to increase human capital, increase investment in fixed assets and innovation, export diversification, and achieve perfection in the quality of political and economic institutions. Sustainable growth of 3% per year in the medium term is possible only with the restructuring of the economy; otherwise, even with favorable conditions in the commodity markets and higher efficiency of the existing economic system, it is impossible to achieve high rates of economic growth necessary to significantly improve the quality of life.

Discussion of unification was for several decades focused on the costs rather than the benefits for Korea, until reports emphasizing the latter were published by Goldman Sachs (2009) and various Korean think tanks over the past four to five years. Although these studies can be evaluated positively in pointing out the benefits of unification rather than the concerns about the costs, several questions can be raised. This paper tries to evaluate the quality and credibility of existing studies and suggests a new approach for estimating the impact of unification. It proposes a computational general equilibrium (CGE) model to be based on the social accounting matrix (SAM) and input-output (IO) table for the North Korean economy, in order to produce more reliable estimates of the benefits and costs of unification and the impact of various cooperative activities between the two Koreas.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of project management parameters of time, cost, and quality.

An exploratory study was conducted in India, wherein 41 conservation professionals were interviewed. The method adopted for the study was unstructured interviews, wherein the respondents were asked open-ended questions about the issues faced in such projects and factors affecting project performance.

The interview recordings and notes, made during the exploratory study, have been manually coded to identify the most frequently mentioned problems, group them into categories, and assess their relative importance.

This paper has presented a broad overview of the challenges faced by heritage conservation projects in general. Further research is necessary to analyse if the challenges depend on factors like type of heritage, project delivery model, and stakeholders involved, and to develop mitigation strategies for these challenges.

The findings from this study can be used by practitioners to improve performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of time, cost, and quality.

The findings of the exploratory study help to better understand the reasons of poor performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of time, cost, and quality. The paper has identified major challenges of the sector, and assessed their relative importance, which can help in developing project management strategy for future projects.

The amalgamation of integrated project delivery (IPD) and building information modelling (BIM) is highly recommended for successful project delivery. However, IPD lacks an accurate cost estimation methodology at the “front-end” of projects, when little project information is available. This study aims to tackle this issue, through presenting analytical aspects, theoretical grounds and practical steps/procedures for integrating target value design (TVD), activity-based costing (ABC) and Monte Carlo simulation into the IPD cost structure, within a BIM-enabled platform.

A critical review was conducted to study the status of cost estimation within IPD, as well as exploring methods and tools that can enhance the cost estimation process for IPD. Thereafter, a framework is developed to present the proposed methodology of cost estimation for IPD throughout its entire stages. A case project is used to validate the practicality of the developed solution through comparing the profit-at-risk percentage for each party, using both traditional cost estimation and the proposed solution.

After applying the proposed IPD's cost estimation framework, on a real-life case project, the findings demonstrated significant deviations in the profit-at-risk value for various work packages of the project (approximately 100% of the finishing package and 22% of openings package). By providing a precise allocation of overhead costs, the solution can be used in real-life projects to change the entire IPD cost structure and ensure a fair sharing of risk–rewards among the involved parties in IPD projects.

Using the proposed methodology of cost estimation for IPD can enhance the relationship among IPD's core team members; all revealed financial deficiencies will be considered (i.e. compensation structure, profit pooling), hence enhancing the IPD performance.

This paper presents a comprehensive solution for integrating BIM and IPD in terms of cost estimation, offering three main contributions: (1) an innovate approach to utilise five-dimensional (5D) BIM capabilities with Monte Carlo simulation, hence providing reliable cost estimating during the conceptual TVD stage; (2) mathematical models that are developed through integrating ABC into the detailed 5D BIM to determine the three IPD's cost structure limbs; and (3) a novel mechanism of managing cost saving (rewards) through distinguishing between saved resources from organisation level, to daily task level, to increase trust among parties.

Business processing organizations are continuously focusing on customer knowledge management (CKM) due to the competitive business environment. CKM is being recognized as an essential source for improving organizational performance (OP). This study focuses on understanding CKM and its impact on OP. It also explores the moderating role of big data analytics capability (BDAC) on OP. Moreover, the mediating role of operational and strategic agility on OP was empirically tested.

Positivist research doctrine has been deployed and data was collected using structured survey using cross-sectional approach. The data were collected from 392 employees working in business processing software houses in the emerging market of Pakistan. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was deployed for the estimation of theoretical model.

The study's findings indicate that CKM has no significant impact on OP; although the presence of BDAC moderates the relationship significantly. Moreover, the study recommends that CKM and BDAC to be tested in the project environment, considering organization's operational and technical capabilities.

The study proclaims that BDAC can be helpful for organizations to improve their capabilities and output. Likewise, enhancing BDAC reduces failure rates of the projects.

This study provides a critical theoretical and practical contribution to project management in business processing organizations. Big data analytics can be of value for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analysis in the project management context.