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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of e-channel resources with market coverage of small local retailers.

This survey-based study collects data from 147 North American florists who use web sites as e-channels. The data are analysed through a set of multi-nomial logistic regressions, and multiple analysis of covariance. Measurement validation is conducted before data analysis.

Considering two resources, e-IT competence and e-service agility − both critical for providing e-services − this study finds that e-service agility is significantly associated with market coverage. This paper also verifies that small local retailers who have wider market coverage than their competitors achieve higher performance from an e-channel. However, the retailers with wider market coverage do not have higher total retail sales.

Practitioners should carefully consider the imbalance between the cost of resource development to enable market extension and the eventual performance return. Market extension requires a high level of e-service agility, but the corresponding performance return may be inadequate. This finding advises the owners or managers of small local retailers to have a complete resource plan for the effective use of an e-channel.

This is the first survey-based study on the relationship between resources and market coverage for small internet retailing. The study uses cross-disciplinary perspectives to examine the practices of internet retailing and the resources required, based on insights on marketing, operations management, and management information systems.

This paper examines the health care experiences of older adults over a five-year period, including continuity in care, changes in health insurance coverage, and satisfaction with care.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted annually with 415 older adults (mean age = 84, range = 72–105), 100 of whom were originally health maintenance organization (HMO) subscribers and 315 of whom were receiving fee-for-service care. Several predictors of health care experiences were examined, including personal characteristics, health status and health care variables. Coverage type (HMO or fee-for-service) was the most consistent predictor. HMO subscribers were more likely than fee-for-service recipients to experience changes in insurance (both negative and positive changes) and discontinuity in physician care, although satisfaction with care did not vary among HMO and non-HMO members. Two-thirds of HMO subscribers and nearly one-third of fee-for-service recipients reported changes in insurance coverage over the five-year study period. In terms of perspectives on HMO care, the most frequently mentioned advantage of HMO care among those in HMOs was diminished costs, while fee-for-service subscribers did not believe there were any advantages to being in an HMO. Those not in HMOs viewed loss of physician choice and poor quality care as major disadvantages of HMOs. Results of this study demonstrate that older adults commonly experience changes in their health care coverage and physician care. They adapt to these changes through positive appraisals of the type of case they receive.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of children diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically, especially over the past decade. Most recently, the CDC estimates that an average of one in 88 children have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In terms of numbers, this translates into approximately 730,000 people between the ages of 0 and 21 who have ASD. While the primary cause(s) of increases in the identification of autistic students continue to generate debate school officials across the nation need to be prepared for the changing legal landscape associated with children diagnosed with ASD. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide a detailed legal/policy update of the leading legal considerations and concerns involving K-12 students with autism. The chapter will discuss four specific legal topics involving the identification and eligibility of K-12 students with autism. These four legal topics include: Changes in the New DSM-5 Diagnostic Manuel and its Impact on Legal Definitions of Autism; Insurance Reform and Autism Coverage: A Comparison of the States; Developing Legally Compliant Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for High-Functioning Students with Autism, and; Recent Legal Developments in Case Law Involving K-12 students who are autistic. The chapter will conclude with a detailed discussion of how today’s school officials can become more legally literate and better serve the legal needs of students with autism in their schools.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the coverage of publications is represented in information services. Academic citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar) and scientific social media (Mendeley, CiteULike, BibSonomy) were analyzed by applying a new method: the use of personal publication lists of scientists.

Personal publication lists of scientists of the field of information science were analyzed. All data were taken in collaboration with the scientists in order to guarantee complete publication lists.

The demonstrated calibration parameter shows the coverage of information services in the field of information science. None of the investigated databases reached a coverage of 100 percent. However Google Scholar covers a greater amount of publications than other academic citation databases and scientific social media.

Results were limited to the publications of scientists working at an information science department from 2003 to 2012 at German-speaking universities.

Scientists of the field of information science are encouraged to review their publication strategy in case of quality and quantity.

The paper confirms the usefulness of personal publication lists as a calibration parameter for measuring coverage of information services.

The lack of studies about the response time of emergency medical service during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in a dense city of a developing country has triggered this study to explore the factors contributing to a high response time of ambulance service to reach patients in need. An evaluation of contributing factors to the response time is necessary to guide decision-makers in keeping a high service level of emergency medical service.

This research employed an agent-based modeling approach with input parameters from interviews with emergency medical service staff in Bandung city, Indonesia. The agent-based model is established to evaluate the relevant contribution of the factors to response time reduction using several scenarios.

According to agent-based simulation, four factors contribute to the response time: the process of preparing crew and ambulance during the pandemic, coverage area, traffic density and crew responsiveness. Among these factors, the preparation process during the pandemic and coverage area significantly contributed to the response time, while the traffic density and crew responsiveness were less significant. The preparation process is closely related to the safety procedure in handling patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and normal time. The recommended coverage area for maintaining a low response time is 5 km, equivalent to six local subdistricts.

This study has explored the factors contributing to emergency medical response time. The insignificant contribution of the traffic density showed that citizens, in general, have high awareness and compliance to traffic priority regulation, so crew responsiveness in handling ambulances is an irrelevant factor. This study might have different contributing factors for less dense population areas and focuses on public emergency medical services provided by the local government.

The local government must provide additional funding to cover additional investment for ambulance, crew and administration for the new emergency service deployment point. Exercising an efficient process in ambulance and crew preparation is mandatory for each emergency deployment point.

This study evaluates the contributing factors of emergency medical response time in the pandemic and normal situation by qualitative analysis and agent-based simulation. The performance comparison in terms of medical response time before and after COVID-19 through agent-based simulation is valuable for decision-makers to reduce the impact of COVID-19.

In this section the different types of information source which constitute the management literature are allocated to categories according to their broad function. Within the four categories — tertiary, secondary and primary sources and research in progress, each type of information source will be looked at in terms of the information it supplies and the role it can play in literature searching.

Continuous exposure and over‐utilization of sensors in harsh environments can lead some sensors to fail, and thereby not covering the service area effectively and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to propose a two‐level coverage restoration scheme for the failing sensors by the existing sensors deployed in the immediate neighborhood of the failing sensors. The restoration scheme extends the search process to the set of failed sensors' corner neighbors at a second stage, with non‐available immediate active neighboring sensors at its first stage. Thus, the coverage restoration scheme attempts to sustain a maximum area of coverage with failed sensors.

The authors have considered a wireless sensor network (WSN), comprised of sensors deployed in a grid‐based arrangement in an inaccessible arena. The authors have formulated the coverage restoration problem as an optimization problem, to find the nearest and most apt neighbor sensors to reach solutions of maximizing the coverage area with failed sensors, while minimizing the energy consumption. Simulated annealing has been utilized as a search algorithm to find out the neighboring sensors with maximal energy in the vicinity of the failed node to cover its area.

The experimental results within the optimization algorithm have demonstrated that the restoration scheme shows a better trade‐off in maximizing the coverage area up to 90 per cent with a decrease of 26 per cent lifespan. The performance of the algorithm is further improved with extended search space including the corner neighbors in addition to the immediate neighbors.

The proposed coverage restoration can be embedded within applications using WSN to restore the coverage and maintain its functionality with optimized energy consumption.

The paper employs a novel framework to restore the coverage of the failed sensors by doubling the sensing area of the neighborhood sensors, and it utilizes an optimization scheme to search for neighborhood sensors with maximal energy to extend the lifespan of WSN.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between market competition and distribution strategy for logistics service providers (LSPs), including freight price, service level (delivery speed), and service coverage.

The authors consider two risk-neutral LSPs in which one is an existing company and the other is a new entrant. The existing LSP has a sound distribution network and provides service in both local and remote areas. The new entrant LSP should determine the freight price and service coverage to compete for business. The authors use a Stackelberg game to model the competition between two LSPs with assumptions of consumers’ utility and demand distribution. Numerical examples are used to validate the findings.

The findings show that the distribution strategy for LSPs depends on the ratio of the cost difference and shipping speed difference and demand structure. The LSP with higher shipping speeds only need to meet demands in local areas and may stay out of the market in some cases. To compete for business in the whole areas is more profitable for the LSP with lower shipping speeds when either unit service cost or the potential demand in remote areas is low enough. Otherwise, the LSP with lower speeds should stay out the market of remote areas.

This study is a preliminary research on the relationship between market competition and distribution strategy for LSPs and contributes to service operations management literature and strategic management for LSPs.

The rapid development of urban areas in Sleman District, Indonesia, has created new challenges for firefighting response services. One of the primary challenges is to identify the optimal locations for new fire stations, to improve service quality and maximize service coverage within the specified time.

This paper proposes a method for precisely calculating travel time that integrates delay time caused by traffic lights, intersections and congestion. The study highlights the importance of precise calculation of travel time in order to provide a more accurate understanding of the service area covered by the fire stations. The proposed method utilizes network analysis in ArcGIS, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and simple additive weighting (SAW) to accurately calculate travel time and to identify the best locations for new fire stations. The identification of new site was based on service safety, service quality, service costs and demographic factors and applied to the Sleman district in Indonesia.

The results showed that the total area covered by old and new fire stations decreased from 61% to 31.8% of the study area when the adjusted default speed scenario was implemented.

The results indicated that the default speed scenario could provide misleading information about the service area, while the adjusted default speed scenario improved service quality and maximized service coverage.

The proposed method provides decision-makers with an effective tool to make informed decisions on optimal locations for new fire stations and thus enhance emergency response and public safety.

In emergency services, maximizing population coverage with the lowest cost at the peak of the demand is important. In addition, due to the nature of services in emergency centers, including hospitals, the number of servers and beds is actually considered as the capacity of the system. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-objective maximal covering facility location model for emergency service centers within an M _(t)/M/m/m queuing system considering different levels of service and periodic demand rate.

The process of serving patients is modeled according to queuing theory and mathematical programming. To cope with multi-objectiveness of the proposed model, an augmented ε-constraint method has been used within GAMS software. Since the computational time ascends exponentially as the problem size increases, the GAMS software is not able to solve large-scale problems. Thus, a NSGA-II algorithm has been proposed to solve this category of problems and results have been compared with GAMS through random generated sample problems. In addition, the applicability of the proposed model in real situations has been examined within a case study in Iran.

Results obtained from the random generated sample problems illustrated while both the GAMS software and NSGA-II almost share the same quality of solution, the CPU execution time of the proposed NSGA-II algorithm is lower than GAMS significantly. Furthermore, the results of solving the model for case study approve that the model is able to determine the location of the required facilities and allocate demand areas to them appropriately.

In the most of previous works on emergency services, maximal coverage with the minimum cost were the main objectives. Hereby, it seems that minimizing the number of waiting patients for receiving services have been neglected. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a maximal covering problem is formulated within an M _(t)/M/m/m queuing system. This novel formulation will lead to more satisfaction for injured people by minimizing the average number of injured people who are waiting in the queue for receiving services.