A support methodology for EAI and BPM projects in SMEs

This paper presents a support methodology that facilitates the analysis of shared information between applications. The contemporary needs of information systems within companies rely on the integration of different applications. As a consequence, integration projects called EAI (enterprise application integration) and BPM (business process management) have arisen. These projects need support methodologies to facilitate the process of information integration. The aforementioned methodology also helps companies to align management applications with their business processes and to define the integration of the company's information systems.     

Research on e-commerce transaction networks using multi-agent modelling and open application programming interface

We provide a formal definition of an e-commerce transaction network. Agent-based modelling is used to simulate e-commerce transaction networks. For real-world analysis, we studied the open application programming interfaces (APIs) from eBay and Taobao e-commerce websites and captured real transaction data. Pajek is used to visualise the agent relationships in the transaction network. We derived one-mode networks from the transaction network and analysed them using degree and betweenness centrality. Integrating multi-agent modelling, open APIs and social network analysis, we propose a new way to study large-scale e-commerce systems.     

Industry-oriented enterprise resource planning

General purpose enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have problems such as complex configuration processes, low adaptation to specific industries, and an extensive implementation time period. In order to alleviate these issues, this paper proposes the concept of industry-oriented ERP (IERP) and a component-based approach to IERP development. This paper also presents the framework of developing IERP in which business process modelling and software reuse are employed as primary methods to improve the operability of component-based IERP. The framework consists of five layers including server layer, team work supporting layer, IERP construction and customisation layer, reusable assets and toolset layer, and the IERP system instance layer. These layers as well as their relationship with each other are also discussed.     

Enhancing capacity planning through forecasting: An integrated tool for maintenance of complex product systems

Despite the extensive amount of data generated and stored during the maintenance capacity planning process, Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) organizations have yet to explore their full potential in forecasting the required capacity to face future and unprecedented maintenance interventions. This paper explores the integration of time series forecasting capabilities in a tool for maintenance capacity planning of complex product systems (CoPS), intended to value data that is routinely generated and stored, but often disregarded by MROs. State space formulations with multiplicative errors for the simple exponential smoothing (SES), Holt’s linear method (HLM), additive Holt-Winters (AHW), and multiplicative Holt-Winters (MHW) are assessed using real data, comprised of 171 maintenance projects collected from a major Portuguese aircraft MRO. A state space formulation of the MHW, selected using the bias-corrected Akaike information criterion (AICc), is integrated in a Decision Support System (DSS) for capacity planning with probabilistic inference capabilities and used to forecast the workload probability distribution of a future and unprecedent maintenance intervention. The developed tool is validated by comparing forecasted values with workloads of a particular maintenance intervention and with a model simulating current forecasting practices employed by MROs.     

The impact of climate and price risks on agricultural land use and crop management decisions

This article aims to investigate the impacts of climate change and of lower and more volatile crop price levels as currently observed in the European Union (EU) on optimal management decisions, average income and income risks in crop production in Western Switzerland. To this end, a bioeconomic whole-farm model has been developed that non-parametrically combines the crop growth model CropSyst with an economic decision model using a genetic algorithm. The analysis focuses on the farm level, which enables us to integrate a wide set of potential adaptation responses, comprising changes in agricultural land use as well as crop-specific fertilization and irrigation strategies. Furthermore, the farmer's certainty equivalent is employed as objective function, which enables the consideration of not only impacts on average income but also impacts on income variability.The study shows that that the effects of EU crop prices on the optimal management decisions as well as on the farmer's certainty equivalent are much stronger than the effects of climate change. Furthermore, our results indicate that the impacts of income risks on the crop farm's optimal management schemes are of rather low importance. This is due to two major reasons: first, direct payments make up a large percentage of the agricultural income in Switzerland which makes Swiss farmers less vulnerable to market and climate volatility. Second, arable crop farms in Switzerland have by law to cultivate at least four different crops. Due to these diverse cropping systems and high government direct payments risk does neither under climate change, market liberalization nor combinations thereof, play a very decisive role in arable farming in Switzerland.     

Agriculture and the city: A method for sustainable planning of new forms of agriculture in urban contexts

Contemporary cities are threatened by urban development decreasing the overall environmental quality and fragmenting natural and agricultural landscapes. As a result of this fragmentation the number of Non Urbanized Areas (NUAs) present in urban contexts is dramatically decreasing. These areas include cultivated land, Abandoned Farmlands, Grassland, Woods and Shrubs that are often located at the peri-urban cities’ fringes. Among NUAs, farmlands and other forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture provide all three major categories of ecosystem services, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Recently, New Forms of Urban Agriculture (NFUA) have gained increasing attention from researchers for their promising multifunctionality. Incorporating NFUA into the urban environment will thus improve the sustainability of cities, taking advantage of the multiple benefits and services they can provide.This paper presents a method for the characterisation of NUAs in terms of their physical, ecological and social features. These areas are analysed with different criteria and related indicators structured according to a GIS-based Multi Criteria Suitability Model. The proposed model checks the suitability of transformation of the NUAs toward NFUA, thereby enhancing their ecological and social function as well as accessibility and overall connectivity. Different scenarios of spatial configurations for NFUA have been explored with a sensitivity analysis on the values of used indicators. The method was tested for the municipality of Catania, south Italy, an urban context characterised by a relevant shortage of public green spaces and services.     

Econometric modelling in the presence of evolutionary change

A methodology is offered which can be used to construct an econometricmodel in the presence of structural change of an evolutionarytype. The theoretical basis for such modelling is drawn fromthe self-organisation approach and operationalised in the contextof the logistic diffusion growth model. The latter is augmentedto allow for the impact of exogenous effects upon both the diffusionrate and boundary limit. We show how the hypothesis of augmentedlogistic diffusion can be falsified using econometric methods.An illustrative case study is used, namely the growth and declineof Australian Building Society Deposits. With the aid of thisexample, it is shown how the approach could be of use to botheconomic forecasters and regulators in conditions of structuralchange where conventional econometric methods are often inappropriate.     

Trade‐led growth hypothesis in Cuban commercial regimes since 19601,2

This study examines the impact of trade on Cuban growth during different commercial policy regimes spanning the period from 1960 up to 2004, encompassing two essential economic structural transformations: the Cuban revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For this purpose, the Granger causality is used by means of the modified Wald test for augmented‐level vector autoregressive model with integrated and cointegrated processes introduced by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Dolado and Lutekepohl (1996) . We show an import‐led growth hypothesis during the Soviet‐oriented pattern that is rejected after 1990, when exports are not only responsive to growth expansion but also to imports’ behaviour.     

The Learning Tourism Destination: The potential of a learning organisation approach for improving the sustainability of tourism destinations

Globalisation, increasing complexity, and the need to address triple-bottom line sustainability have seen the proliferation of Learning Organisations (LO) who, by definition, have the capacity to anticipate environmental changes and economic opportunities and adapt accordingly. Such organisations use system dynamics modelling (SDM) for both strategic planning and the promotion of organisational learning. Although SDM has been applied in the context of tourism destination management for predictive reasons, the current literature does not analyse or recognise how this could be used as a foundation for an LO. This study introduces the concept of the Learning Tourism Destinations (LTD) and discusses, on the basis of a review of six case studies, the potential of SDM as a tool for the implementation and enhancement of collective learning processes. The results reveal that SDM is capable of promoting communication between stakeholders and stimulating organisational learning. It is suggested that the LTD approach be further utilised and explored.     

An environmental performance index for products reflecting damage costs

Several studies have demonstrated how to use DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) based techniques to estimate environmental performance indices. None of these studies, however, are taking information on the environmental damage costs of the pressure types considered into account. This study is bridging a gap between environmental indices founded in physical pressures and damage costs founded in welfare economics. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to demonstrate how to implement the information on environmental damage costs within a DEA based environmental performance index, and second, to estimate these indices at product level by using Danish input-output data and environmental data from 1997.