Software Engineering Techniques Applied to Agricultural Systems presents cutting-edge software engineering techniques for designing and implementing better agricultural software systems based on the object-oriented paradigm and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The focus is on the presentation of rigorous step-by-step approaches for modeling flexible agricultural and environmental systems, starting with a conceptual diagram representing elements of the system and their relationships. Furthermore, diagrams such as sequential and collaboration diagrams are used to explain the dynamic and static aspects of the software system. This second edition includes: a new chapter on Object Constraint Language (OCL), a new section dedicated to the Model-VIEW-Controller (MVC) design pattern, new chapters presenting details of two MDA-based tools - the Virtual Enterprise and Olivia Nova and a new chapter with exercises on conceptual modeling. It may be highly useful to undergraduate and graduate students as the first edition has proven to be a useful supplementary textbook for courses in mathematical programming in agriculture, ecology, information technology, agricultural operations research methods, agronomy and soil science and applied mathematical modeling. The book has broad appeal for anyone involved in software development projects in agriculture and to researchers in general who are interested in modeling complex systems. From the reviews of the first edition: "The book will be useful for those interested in gaining a quick understanding of current software development techniques and how they are applied in practice... this is a good introductory text on the application of OOAD, UML and design patters to the creation of agricultural systems. It is technically sound and well written." -Computing Reviews, September 2006

In an era of systemic crisis and of global critiques of the unsustainable perpetuation of capitalism, Pervasive Powers: The Politics of Corporate Authority critically questions the conditions for the maintenance and expansion of corporate power. The book explores empirical case studies in the realms of finance, urban policies, automobile safety, environmental risk, agriculture, and food in western democracies. It renews understanding of the power of big business, focusing on how the study of temporalities, of multi-sited influence and of sociotechnical tools is crucial to an analysis of the evolution of corporate authority. Drawing on different literatures, ranging from research on business associations and global governance to that on the social production of ignorance or on corporate crime, this book aims at contributing to existing works on the capacity of corporations to rule the world. Unlike approaches focused on economic elites and on the political activities of firms, it goes beyond analysis of the power of corporations to influence policy-making to depict their unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social world. Operating in numerous social spaces and mobilizing a wide range of strategies, corporate organizations have acquired the pervasive power to act far beyond mere spaces of regulation and government. Based on contributions from historians, science and technology studies scholars, sociologists and political scientists, this book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and students who wish to understand how corporations exert a pervasive influence on public policies, and to NGOs and regulatory agencies.

This book surveys new algorithmic approaches and applications to natural and man-made disasters such as oil spills, hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. Based on the "Third International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters" held in Kalamata, Greece, July 2017, this Work includes contributions in evacuation logistics, disaster communications between first responders, disaster relief, and a case study on humanitarian logistics. Multi-disciplinary theories, tools, techniques and methodologies are linked with disasters from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery. The interdisciplinary approach to problems in economics, optimization, government, management, business, humanities, engineering, medicine, mathematics, computer science, behavioral studies, emergency services, and environmental studies will engage readers from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds.

Through an exclusive focus on public policy advocacy, Dalton and Butler offer practical guidance for determining the fundamental issues that make up a controversy and what expectations public audiences will have for advocacy based on the issues and the burdens of advocates challenging or defending the status quo. Through examples that span a wide range of advocacy situations and subjects of contemporary importance, the authors build a framework for public policy advocacy that is organic to the communication discipline, recover and refresh foundational lessons about the uses of evidence, and provide critical questions that can be used to develop and communicate policy proposals that are sensible and appealing. Written in an accessible, respectful, and motivational style, the book is suitable for students of debate, professionals who function as advocates, and people who wish to voice their opinion.

The tactical organization of resources is a vital component to any industry in modern society. Effectively managing the flow of materials through various networks ensures that the requirements of customers are met. Sustainable Logistics and Strategic Transportation Planning is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on the management of logistics through the lens of sustainability, as well as for emerging procedures that are particularly critical to the transportation sector. Highlighting international perspectives, conceptual frameworks, and targeted investigations, this book is ideally designed for policy makers, professionals, researchers, and upper-level students interested in logistics and transport systems.

This book offers a comprehensive and systematic review of the latest research findings in the area of intuitionistic fuzzy calculus. After introducing the intuitionistic fuzzy numbers' operational laws and their geometrical and algebraic properties, the book defines the concept of intuitionistic fuzzy functions and presents the research on the derivative, differential, indefinite integral and definite integral of intuitionistic fuzzy functions. It also discusses some of the methods that have been successfully used to deal with continuous intuitionistic fuzzy information or data, which are different from the previous aggregation operators focusing on discrete information or data. Mainly intended for engineers and researchers in the fields of fuzzy mathematics, operations research, information science and management science, this book is also a valuable textbook for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students alike.

This volume chronicles the high impact research career of Harvey Greenberg (1940-2018), and in particular, it reviews historical contributions, presents current research projects, and suggests future pursuits. This volume addresses several of his most distinguished hallmarks, including model analysis, model generation, infeasibility diagnosis, sensitivity analysis, parametric programming, energy modeling, and computational biology. There is also an overview chapter on the emergence of computational OR, and in particular, how literature venues have changed the course of OR research. He developed Computer-Assisted Analysis in the 1970s and 80s, creating an artificially intelligent environment for analyzing mathematical programming models and their results. This earned him the first INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) Prize for "research excellence in the interfaces between operations research and computer science" in 1986, notably for his software system, ANALYZE. In 1993, he wrote the first book in the Springer OR/CS Series entitled A Computer-Assisted Analysis System for Mathematical Programming Models and Solutions: A User's Guide for ANALYZE. He applied OR methods to CS problems, ranging from using queuing theory for optimal list structure design to using integer programming for bioinformatic database search. He also applied CS to OR problems, ranging from super-sparse information structures to the use of compiler design in ANALYZE. This book can serve as a guide to new researchers, and will report the historical trajectory of OR as it solves current problems and forecasts future applications through the accomplishments of Harvey Greenberg.

This book examines Multi-Criteria Decision Modelling (MCDM) methodologies and facilitates diverse ways for strategic decision-making in a variety of practical applications. This book also provides a pragmatic foundation for solving real-life problems in different scenarios of emerging global markets. Multi-Criteria Decision Modelling: Applicational Techniques and Case Studies depicts the use of sensitivity analysis and modelling and includes case studies to understand and illustrate challenging concepts. It also offers step-by-step comprehensive methodologies for the utilization of MCDM to a variety of situations. The book deliberates ways for companies to use these methods to their advantage in order to achieve sustainability. Furthermore, it also presents an overview of the major streams of thought and provides a holistic view of the latest research and development trends in modelling and optimization. FEATURES Offers a stepwise comprehensive methodology for the application of MCDM to a variety of situations Presents an overview of the major streams of thought present in the MCDM technique Provides a holistic view of the latest research and development trends in the emerging markets in terms of modelling and optimization using MCDM for different industrial sectors Illuminates a practical foundation in order to provide a guide to address the problems of emerging markets Enlightens the ways for companies to use these methods to their advantage to be able to achieve sustainability This book is a guide for those performing decision analysis for academic purposes as well as for researchers aspiring to expand their knowledge on MCDM problem solving.

This book highlights some of the latest research advances and cutting-edge analyses of real-world case studies on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management from diverse international contexts, while also identifying business applications for the latest findings and innovations in operations management and the decision sciences. It gathers a selection of the best papers presented at the XXII International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management, which was promoted by ADINGOR (Asociacion para el Desarrollo de la Ingenieria de Organizacion) and held at the Escola Politecnica Superior of the Universitat de Girona, Spain, on July 12th and 13th, 2018.

This book investigates several duality approaches for vector optimization problems, while also comparing them. Special attention is paid to duality for linear vector optimization problems, for which a vector dual that avoids the shortcomings of the classical ones is proposed. Moreover, the book addresses different efficiency concepts for vector optimization problems. Among the problems that appear when the framework is generalized by considering set-valued functions, an increasing interest is generated by those involving monotone operators, especially now that new methods for approaching them by means of convex analysis have been developed. Following this path, the book provides several results on different properties of sums of monotone operators.

With the beginning of the twentieth century, American corporations in the chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research laboratories. Some went on to become world-famous not only for their scientific and technological breakthroughs but also for the new union of science and industry they represented. Innovative ideas do not simply appear out of the blue and spread on their own merit. Rather, the laboratory's diffusion takes place in a cultural context that goes beyond corporate capital and technological change. Using discourse analysis as a method to comprehensively capture the organizational field of the early American R&D laboratories from 1870 to 1930, this book uncovers the collective meanings associated with the industrial laboratory. Meanings such as what and where a laboratory is supposed to be, who the scientist is, and what it means to practice science provided cultural resources that made the transfer of the laboratory from academic science into an industrial setting possible by rendering such meanings understandable and operable to big business and organizational entrepreneurs fighting for hegemony in a rapidly evolving market. It analyzes not only the corporations that established laboratories in the United States but also their contexts - economic, political, and especially scientific - showing how "the industrial laboratory" was transformed from an organizational novelty into an expected institution in less than two decades. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, historians, and students in the fields of organizational change, discourse studies, the management of technology and innovation, as well as business and management history.

This shortform book presents key peer-reviewed research selected by expert series editors and contextualised by new analysis from each author on the subject of knowledge management in industrial history. With contributions on knowledge management, knowledge transfer, knowledge loss, knowledge creation, competition and co-operation in producing skilled employees, and ownership structures and their relation to knowledge management, this volume provides an array of fascinating insights into industrial history. Of interest to business and economic historians, this shortform book also provides analysis and illustrative case-studies that will be valuable reading across the social sciences.

This book gathers selected peer-reviewed papers from the 14th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM), which was held in Singapore on 28-31 July 2019, as well as papers presented during the 1st WCEAMOnline event which focused on the ramifications of Covid-19 on infrastructure systems. This book covers a wide range of topics in engineering asset management, including: asset management services provisioning; servitization; decision-making; asset management systems; industrial Internet of things; and vulnerability and resilience of infrastructure systems. The breadth and depth of these state-of-the-art, comprehensive proceedings make them an excellent resource for asset management practitioners, researchers and academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.

This cross-disciplinary business book develops insight into the management of businesses operating in various economic sectors that take a proactive approach to the triple dimension of sustainability (economic, social and environmental), positioning itself as a key reference for both academics and practitioners in the wide area of business management. The concept of sustainability is today at the heart of international policies and debate, and plays a key role in deep changes to the organizational models of companies operating in a wide range of sectors of economic activity. In particular, this book aims to gain a deeper understanding of how stakeholder engagement can contribute to value co-creation both in the company and along the supply chain, and what distinguishes the differing involvement of stakeholders, in particular between public involvement and stakeholder participation. Each chapter of this book presents different modalities of stakeholder involvement and develops the concept of value co-creation from organizational and marketing perspectives. This book is recommended reading for those interested in the fields of stakeholder engagement and theory, sustainability, business studies, and sustainable development.

This book offers a new understanding of innovation in the built environment. The ways meaning of innovation is constructed has important implications for policymakers, project managers, academics and students. Through a longitudinal research study into innovation in firms and projects, the book addresses some key themes, challenges and concerns that practitioners face when managing innovation in the built environment. It examines the key drivers for innovation in the construction, engineering and infrastructure firms and projects. In particular, the questions of how and why innovation becomes recognised and sustained over time are explored. Different theoretical perspectives are considered to explain different aspects of innovation. This includes sensemaking, organisational and individual identity, storytelling and narration. The book has practical implications for how organisational activities become labelled as 'innovation' and for what purpose. It shares some lived stories of innovation as mobilised by practising managers. The connectivity between the formal narratives of innovation at the policy level and the lived narratives of innovation articulated by practitioners is explored. Combining the theory with practice, this book presents an insightful view on the implications of innovation in the business world today.

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Concise expert guide to important business research topic Summarises the state of the art in available and emerging research Includes references to key research publications in the field

This book discusses recent theoretical developments in agglomerative hierarchical clustering. The general understanding of agglomerative hierarchical clustering is that its theory was completed long ago and there is no room for further methodological studies, at least in its fundamental structure. This book has been planned counter to that view: it will show that there are possibilities for further theoretical studies and they will be not only for methodological interests but also for usefulness in real applications. When compared with traditional textbooks, the present book has several notable features. First, standard linkage methods and agglomerative procedure are described by a general algorithm in which dendrogram output is expressed by a recursive subprogram. That subprogram describes an abstract tree structure, which is used for a two-stage linkage method for a greater number of objects. A fundamental theorem for single linkage using a fuzzy graph is proved, which uncovers several theoretical features of single linkage. Other theoretical properties such as dendrogram reversals are discussed. New methods using positive-definite kernels are considered, and some properties of the Ward method using kernels are studied. Overall, theoretical features are discussed, but the results are useful as well for application-oriented users of agglomerative clustering.

This book is based on ethnographic research from 2001-2, during Bank of Scotland's first year of merger with Halifax to form HBOS. The research is revisited from the present perspective in the wake of the global banking and financial crisis that undermined HBOS in 2008. This historical perspective on the ethnographic data is used to explore: people's responses to the pressures of heightened competition and organisational change; mutual and sometimes antagonistic perceptions of Scottish and English identities across the two merged banks; conflicting evaluations of national and organisational cultures; and the challenges of integrating ethnographic and historical perspectives in a single study. As an historical ethnography it 'salvages' a disappearing culture of Scottish and UK banking, disintegrated by neoliberal processes. -- .

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an extraordinary inflection point that caught airlines worldwide unprepared, causing CEOs to recalibrate their business models. This book explains why this unprecedented pandemic is different from the past disruptions experienced by the airline industry during the past 50 years, and what airlines and related businesses now can do to adapt to the dramatically changed marketplace. This book presents two future scenarios: continuous improvements and elastic supply. These are considered in three specific contexts for the rebuilding of the airline business. These contexts, in the order of urgency with respect to change from the status quo, are the following. The first context is for airlines to become better prepared to deal with frequent and deeper disruptions that could be localized or globalized relating to such areas as climate change, geopolitics, and cybersecurity. The second context is to collaborate and integrate within the much broader travel ecosystem, possibly using platforms to innovate on new value systems. The third context, which has always been the case and drives the first two, is for airlines to offer real solutions to people's travel needs, solutions developed with imagination and turbocharged innovation, even as we contemplate new technology airplanes and mobility as a service solutions. This book is recommended reading for all senior-level practitioners of airlines and related businesses, as well as aviation policy makers worldwide.

This book gathers extended versions of the best papers presented at the Global Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Its Application Areas (GJCIE), organized virtually on August 14-15, 2020, by Istanbul Technical University. It covers a wide range of topics, including decision analysis, supply chain management, systems modelling and quality control. Further, special emphasis is placed on cutting-edge applications of industrial Internet-of-Things. Technological, economic and business challenges are discussed in detail, presenting effective strategies that can be used to modernize current structures, eliminating the barriers that are keeping industries from taking full advantage of IoT technologies. The book offers an important link between technological research and industry best practices, and covers various disciplinary areas such as manufacturing, healthcare and service engineering, among others.

The book provides an encompassing overview of all aspects relating to the sharing economy paradigm in different fields of study, and shows the ongoing research efforts in filling previously identified gaps in understanding in this area. Control and optimization analytics for the sharing economy explores bespoke analytics, tools, and business models that can be used to help design collaborative consumption services (the shared economy). It provides case studies of collaborative consumption in the areas of energy and mobility. The contributors review successful examples of sharing systems, and explore the theory for designing effective and stable shared-economy models. They discuss recent innovations in and uses of shared economy models in niche areas, such as energy and mobility. Readers learn the scientific challenging issues associated with the realization of a sharing economy. Conceptual and practical matters are examined, and the state-of-the-art tools and techniques to address such applications are explained. The contributors also show readers how topical problems in engineering, such as energy consumption in power grids, or bike sharing in transportation networks, can be formulated and solved from a general collaborative consumption perspective. Since the book takes a mathematical perspective to the topic, researchers in business, computer science, optimization and control find it useful. Practitioners also use the book as a point of reference, as it explores and investigates the analytics behind economy sharing.

This book aims to revisit the "traditional" interaction between channel strategies and the marketing mix in a connected world. In particular, it focuses on the following four dimensions in this context: Consumers, Products, Value Proposition and Sustainability. Keeping in mind the growing digitalization of business processes in the retail world and the move towards omni-channel retailing, the book introduces the state-of-the-art academic and practitioner studies along these dimensions that could enhance the understanding of the potential impact that new technologies and strategies can have on practice in the near future. When launching a new product/service to market, firms usually consider various components of the marketing mix to influence consumers' purchase behaviors, such as product design, convenience, value proposition, promotions, sustainability initiatives, etc. This mix varies depending on the specific channel and consumer niche that the firm is targeting. But this book shows how channel strategy also influences the effectiveness in utilizing the marketing mix to attract potential customers.

Causal analytics methods can revolutionize the use of data to make effective decisions by revealing how different choices affect probabilities of various outcomes. This book presents and illustrates models, algorithms, principles, and software for deriving causal models from data and for using them to optimize decisions with uncertain outcomes. It discusses how to describe and summarize situations; detect changes; evaluate effects of policies or interventions; learn what works best under different conditions; predict values of as-yet unobserved quantities from available data; and identify the most likely explanations for observed outcomes, including surprises and anomalies. The book resents practical techniques for causal modeling and analytics that practitioners can apply to improve understanding of how choices affect probabilities of consequences and, based on this understanding, to recommend choices that are more likely to accomplish their intended objectives.The book begins with a survey of modern analytics methods, focusing mainly on techniques useful for decision, risk, and policy analysis. Chapter 2 introduces free in-browser software, including the Causal Analytics Toolkit (CAT) software, to enable readers to perform the analyses described and to apply modern analytics methods easily to their own data sets. Chapters 3 through 11 show how to apply causal analytics and risk analytics to practical risk analysis challenges, mainly related to public and occupational health risks from pathogens in food or from pollutants in air. Chapters 12 through 15 turn to broader questions of how to improve risk management decision-making by individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, and multi-generation societies with different cultures and norms for cooperation. These chapters examine organizational learning, community resilience, societal risk management, and intergenerational collaboration and justice in managing risks.