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Although, a number of initiatives have been taken after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami to institutionalise disaster risk reduction (DRR), gaps still exist in the Sri Lankan local government sector. Even after ten years, local governments are still struggling to overcome a number of challenges in relation to making resilience in the built environment. DRR has not yet been properly integrated into the local government system and, as a result, poses a significant challenge. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to discover the hindrances for local governments in creating disaster resilient built environment within cities and to propose ways of overcoming the identified limitations.

In total, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted among experts from Sri Lanka who are involved in disaster management, local governments and built environment fields of study. The interviews were conducted with the intention of gaining expert knowledge pertaining to this field of study. The interviews were mainly designed to capture the current practices for instigating DRR initiatives within Sri Lanka, the role of local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment and the associated challenges, and ways of overcoming such challenges to ensure an effective contribution to city resilience.

Primary data discovered 36 challenges along with some associated sub-challenges. The challenges were categorised under eight main themes: legal framework; lack of adequate tools, techniques and guidelines; human resource constraints; funding constraints; weaknesses in the internal systems and processes; weaknesses in the external systems; community engagement; and other challenges. The paper analyses these challenges in detail and proposes a set of recommendations to overcome the challenges in order to create disaster resilient built environments within cities.

The paper provides a descriptive analysis of how the Sri Lankan local government sector could overcome the underpinning challenges of contributing to disaster resilience in the built environment and no comparative studies were conducted with in other tsunami affected regions. Furthermore, the paper analyses partial findings of a broader research, which was aimed at developing a framework to empower local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment.

The paper provides an extensive analysis of the challenges faced by local governments in contributing to the resilience of their built environment and proposes how these challenges could be overcome while making a worthwhile contribution to both theory and practice. Accordingly, the paper recommends major changes in policy and practice with respect to bringing local governments into DRR.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of emerging technology (technology adoption, perceived benefits, technological challenges and ease of use) and the auditing practice of accounting professionals.

The primary method of data collection was a questionnaire directed to newly practicing chartered accountants who are partners of sole proprietorship or partnership firms in India. The data were analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between characteristics of emerging technology (technology adoption, technological challenges and ease of use) and auditing practice, while factors of the perceived benefits had a negative relationship with auditing practice.

The study model would aid technology enabled audit research by giving a platform for a new study to investigate further detailed solutions to emerging information technology determinants.

This study illustrates how tools technique perceived benefit motivates sole proprietorship practicing auditors to adopt emerging technology- enabled auditing software for auditing client's financial statements. Further, this study has added to the information technology auditing literature and might add benefits to the numerous other audit firms to adopt in emerging technology tools their audit firm.

Audit firms, generally sole proprietorship and partnership firms, should be given enough awareness about the latest audit software tools to carry out their audit tasks efficiently.

The study findings highlight benefits of emerging technology-enabled auditing practice among owners/partners of the sole proprietorship or partnership firms, which is not extensively discussed in the prior studies. Furthermore, it broadens knowledge of perceived benefit, technological challenges and ease of use in technology-enabled audit software in the auditing and accounting literature.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate innovations in intellectual property rights (IPR) databases, techniques and software tools, with an emphasis on selected new developments and their contribution towards achieving advantages for IPR management (IPRM) and wider social benefits. Several industry buzzwords are addressed, such as IPR-linked open data (IPR LOD) databases, blockchain and IPR-related techniques, acknowledged for their contribution in moving towards artificial intelligence (AI) in IPRM.

The evaluation, following an original framework developed by the authors, is based on a literature review, web analysis and interviews carried out with some of the top experts from IPR-savvy multinational companies.

The paper presents the patent databases landscape, classifying patent offices according to the format of data provided and depicting the state-of-art in the IPR LOD. An examination of existing IPR tools shows that they are not yet fully developed, with limited usability for IPRM. After reviewing the techniques, it is clear that the current state-of-the-art is insufficient to fully address AI in IPR. Uses of blockchain in IPR show that they are yet to be fully exploited on a larger scale.

A critical analysis of IPR tools, techniques and blockchain allows for the state-of-art to be assessed, and for their current and potential value with regard to the development of the economy and wider society to be considered. The paper also provides a novel classification of patent offices and an original IPR-linked open data landscape.