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The purpose of this paper is to highlight state-of-the-art digital human modeling applications in aviation and aerospace industry, generate research interest and promote application of digital human modeling technology among audience of diverse background including researchers, students, trainees, etc. in academia and industry; designers; engineers; and ergonomists associated with aviation and aerospace sectors.

Comprehensive literature search was performed and, subsequently, all publications identified were studied thoroughly at least by abstracts. Available information has been segregated under different headings and depicted systematically for easy understanding by readers.

Virtual human modeling technology has been used in assessing reach and accessibility in aircraft cockpits, creating accurate posture libraries, performing vision analysis for pilots, determining design modifications to accommodate female users, predicting probable pilot behavior in proposed cockpit design, simulating air flow and heat transfer in fighter plane’s cockpit, assessing comfort of airplane passenger seats, maintenance studies, human spaceflight training, verifying component accessibility, investigating impact of space suit parts and harnesses, etc. Traditional approach for ergonomic investigations (involving costly physical mockups and trials with real humans) can be effectively replaced by evaluations facilitated by digital mockups and digital humans.

Being a review paper, the present manuscript is purely academic in nature.

The present paper represents critical review (with up to date references), leading to a comprehensive knowledge body about application of digital human modeling in aviation and aerospace industry. Avenues still to be explored have been identified and future research directions have been given aiming at aviation and aerospace completely human centric.

Aerospace is a demanding technological and industrial sector. Several regulations and policies via innovative digital transformation have been integrated to impact production systems and supply chains, including safety measures. Studies demonstrated that the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies could enhance productivity growth and safety measures. The 4IR role in influencing airlines’ growth is yet to receive in-depth studies in South Africa. Thus, this study aims to investigate the role of 4IR technologies in influencing airlines’ growth in South Africa.

This research used a qualitative research method. Primary data were compiled via 56 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with major stakeholders. The study achieved saturation. A thematic method was used to analyse the collected data.

Findings reveal the nine major factors influencing South African airlines’ growth in the 4IR era. This includes investment in ergonomics applications and research, governance is driven by 4IR, collaboration and incorporation of 4IR concepts, partnership with drone technology and high precision and efficiency with 4IR. Others are reskilling and upskilling, investment in 4IR software, policies to promote 4IR usage in the industry and policies to reduce human interface.

Understanding the relative significance of 4IR technologies’ role in airlines’ growth can assist critical stakeholders in promoting innovative policies and regulations tailored towards digitalised aerospace. Thus, the study contributes to strategies to improve digital innovation, airline growth and safety as components of the air travel demands in South Africa.

Dynamic governance practices are key in the administration of 21st-century airlines. Knowledge transfer via the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is germane in governance practices. Studies have proven that the 4IR technologies could enhance airline governance and improve safety measures and productivity. The 4IR role in improving airline governance is yet to receive in-depth studies in South Africa. Thus, this study aims to investigate the governance challenges facing South African airlines in the era of 4IR.

This research used a qualitative research method. The main data were collected via 56 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. The research achieved saturation. A thematic technique was used to analyse the collected data.

Findings reveal 12 challenges and are grouped into six governance barriers facing South African airlines in the era of 4IR. Also, findings suggest measures to mitigate governance barriers and promote 4IR technologies usage in the airline sector.

The study assesses critical governance challenges facing South African airlines in the era of 4IR. Understanding the importance of vital governance challenges can assist critical stakeholders in promoting innovative policies and regulations tailored towards digitalised aerospace. Thus, the study contributes strategies to improve digital innovation and reduce airline risks in South Africa. Also, it contributes to the paucity of academic literature on developing countries’ airline governance in the 4IR era and the South African aviation sector.

This paper aims to present a state-of-the-art review in various fields of interest, leading to a new concept of bio-inspired control of small aircraft. The main goal is to improve controllability and safety in flying at low speeds.

The review part of the paper gives an overview of artificial and natural flow sensors and haptic feedback actuators and applications. This background leads to a discussion part where the topics are synthesized and the trend in control of small aircraft is estimated.

The gap in recent aircraft control is identified in the pilot–aircraft interaction. A pilot’s sensory load is discussed and several recommendations for improved control system architecture are laid out in the paper.

The paper points out an opportunity for a following research of suggested bio-inspired aircraft control. The control is based on the artificial feeling of aerodynamic forces acting on a wing by means of haptic feedback.

The paper merges two research fields – aircraft control and human–machine interaction. This combination reveals new possibilities of aircraft control.

The purpose of this paper is to explore various in-flight crew escape options of a prototype transport aircraft and finalize the option offering safest crew egress for different combinations of contingencies and flight conditions.

Various egress options were explored through simulation in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software using aircraft 3D CAD model and scalable digital mannequins. For this, certain important contingencies which best describe the extreme aircraft behaviour were identified. Crew escape options, which have least external interference in expected egress trajectory, were selected. Several test simulations representing each feasible combination of contingency, escape option and flight condition were simulated. The option which offers safe crew escape in each test case is deemed to be the safest egress option for the test aircraft.

Among five options explored, crew escape through forward ventral hatch provided the safest crew escape for all test cases. The selected option was validated for robustness with additional test cases modelling different anthropometric characteristics of 5th and 50th percentile pilot populations with different postures.

In-flight validation of safe crew escape option is infeasible by actual trial. Exploration of safe crew options for required number of test cases by any analytical method or by wind tunnels tests is tedious, time consuming and extremely expensive. On the other hand, exploration of safest crew option by CFD, besides being first of its kind, provides convenient option to configure, test and validate different test cases with unmatched benefits in time, cost and simplicity.

Robotics and automation are successful in construction, health and safety, but costs and expertise hinder their use in developing nations. This study examined mobile apps as a more accessible and affordable alternative.

This descriptive study explored the use of mobile apps in construction, health and safety management. It used a literature review to identify their availability, accessibility, and capabilities. The study consisted of four five stages: searching for relevant apps, selecting them based on versatility, examining their specific functions, removing untested apps and discussing their functions based on empirical studies.

A comprehensive literature review identified 35 mobile apps that are relevant to health and safety management during construction. After rigorous analysis, eight apps were selected for further study based on their relevance, user friendliness and compliance with safety standards. These apps collectively serve 28 distinct functions, including first-aid training and administration, safety compliance and danger awareness, safety education and training, hazard detection and warnings.

This study suggests that mobile apps can provide a cost-effective and readily accessible alternative to robotics and automation in health and safety management in construction. Further research is needed to accurately assess the efficacy of these apps in real-world conditions.

This study explored the use of apps in health and safety management, highlighting their diverse capabilities and providing a framework for project managers, contractors and safety officers to select suitable apps.

The purpose of this paper is to build a holistic theoretical framework of enabling factors contributing to the development of enterprise in nanotechnology-related industries, in a French context.

A systematic literature review methodology was adopted. The review used three gauges to identify enabling factors contributing to the development of enterprise in nanotechnology-related industries in a French context: first, it analysed the literature related to the development of nanotechnologies in a perspective of sustainability in a multidisciplinary stance (“Green view”). Second, it took a disciplinary stance by exploring academic journals in the field of entrepreneurship (“Entrepreneurship view”). Third, it studied the perspective of France (“French view”).

The main finding is that in spite of different approaches and sometimes seemingly conflicting stances, the three views converge on three enabling factors: the importance of knowledge sharing across boundaries, access to university scientists and facilities, and government intervention. However, each view also has its particularities: the “Green view” emphasizes the need for civil society inclusion, the “Entrepreneurship view” underlines the importance of early stage capital and entrepreneurial behaviour and the “French view” concentrates on the role of clusters.

The paper provides a theoretical framework and a starting point for further work on entrepreneurial nanotechnology facilitation. Its findings constitute a benchmark which may be tested in empirical cases. The focus on the French context may be seen as a limitation but also as a source of interesting comparative work focussing on other national or regional contexts.

The paper shows that public policy is an important element in the nascent field of enterprise development for nano-based materials. It outlines how different contexts create different barriers to entrepreneurship, and it proposes recommendations to overcome some of these barriers.

In this paper, findings result from an exploration of the nanotechnology literature that focusses solely on nanotechnology data sets and not on mixed data sets. The use of three different gauges leads to the construction of a holistic theoretical framework that includes enabling factors as well as the types of barriers that entrepreneurs have to overcome to succeed.

The rise of social media has led to the emergence of influencers and influencer marketing (IM) domains, which have become important areas of academic inquiry. However, despite its prominence as an area for study, several significant challenges must be addressed. One significant challenge involves identifying, assessing and recommending social media influencers (SMIs). This study proposes a semantic network model capable of measuring an influencer's performance on specific topics or subjects to address this issue. This study can assist managers in identifying suitable SMIs based on their estimated reach.

Data from popular YouTube influencers and publicly available performance measures (views and likes) are extracted. Second, the titles of the past videos made by the influencer are used to develop a semantic network connecting all the videos to other videos based on similarity measures. Third, the nearest neighbor approach extracts the neighbors of the target title video. Finally, based on the set of neighbors, a range prediction is made for the views and likes of the target video with the influencer.

The results show that the model can predict an accurate range of views and likes based on the suggested video titles and the content creator, with 69–78% accuracy across different influencers on YouTube.

The current study introduces a novel and innovative approach that exploits the textual association between a SMI's previous content to forecast the outcome of their future content. Although the findings are encouraging, this research recognizes various constraints that upcoming researchers may tackle. Forecasting views of posts concerning novel subjects and precisely adjusting video view counts based on their age constitute two primary limitations of this study.

Managers interested in hiring influencers can employ the suggested approach to evaluate an influencer's potential performance on a specific topic. This research aids managers in making informed decisions regarding influencer selection, utilizing data-based metrics that are simple to comprehend and explain.

The study contributes to outreach evaluation and better estimating the impact of SMIs using a novel semantic network approach.

The use of modeling and statistics for the design and development of pricing strategy is prevalent in academia as well as the industry. One of the more commonly used tools by researchers and managers alike for the estimation of linear demand models is the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Unfortunately, a majority of data sets to which such models are applied suffer from nonstationarity ‐ that is, the dependence of a variable on its prior values ‐ thereby violating the assumptions of a basic (naïve) regression model. Estimates of variables under these conditions are known commonly to be inflated and inaccurate. While this problem is well‐known and can be corrected for among statisticians and econometricians, a simple and effective tool has not yet been designed for managers ‐ the actual users of such models. Studies some of the problems encountered when using a naïve model and proposes a simple method to check for nonstationarity and redesign the model to account for the same. Using scanner data on soup, shows that the redesigned model predicts better, fits better and offers more meaningful results. Finally, looks at the implications of estimating such models for pricing strategies and issues. Surface response analysis shows how a manager can use such models for conducting insightful studies on price sensitivity.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to develop a conceptual model using the push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework to understand the switching behavior of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) of batik from adopting traditional marketing to e-commerce; and, second, to test whether the PPM variables prevent or lead to the switching behavior of SMEs of batik to adopt e-commerce.

This study uses a hypothesis which is drawn from related literature, quantifiable measures variables with a 1–5 Likert scale, hypothesis testing and draws the inference about a phenomenon of switching the behavior of SMEs from traditional marketing to e-commerce from the sample of 100 owners of batik SMEs, which are located in Yogyakarta, Solo and Pekalongan. The study used partial least square with the aid of the SmartPLS software program to test the hypothesis.

The result of hypothesis testing indicates that two factors significantly influence the switching behavior of batik SMEs from physical store retailing to e-commerce. The first factor is the desire of SMEs to support the information searching behavior of their customers, and the second factor is the perception that adopting e-commerce can provide value for the SMEs. However, this study fails to prove that the attractiveness of e-commerce can significantly pull the switching behavior of batik SMEs from physical store retailing to e-commerce. Moreover, related to mooring factors, the results show that the computer self-efficacy of the SME owners as a moderating effect is not supported.

This study has several limitations. First, the samples were restricted to the SMEs of batik in three cities (Yogyakarta, Solo and Pekalongan). It is significant to conduct cross-sector, cross countries, cross-region or even cross-cultural investigations on this subject for better explanations of the results from a global perspective. Studies on cultural differences in switching behavior are supposed to accommodate to different individuals from the SME owner. Second, the study does not differentiate the sizes of enterprises; that is, no test was conducted for small-, medium- and large-size enterprises. The study only focuses on SMEs. Different empirical results may be obtained for different sizes because each enterprise size can have a different condition in e-commerce adoption. Second, this study pays more attention to the product categories of stamped batik and hand-drawn batik. Consumers can have dissimilar favorite channels to purchase other types of batik. Future research should also consider this issue.

Within all the opportunities available through e-commerce (support the information searching behavior, save the travel time and travel cost, better service quality to their customer, a lower price to their customer as well, and increase their sales), the SMEs need to enhance e-commerce activities and put it in their strategy for moving forward. On the other side, the government should have a strong interest in helping and supporting the SME through several activities.

The research confirms that e-commerce adoption may benefit SMEs. It may encourage more SMEs to move from the traditional physical store retailing to e-commerce.

Although this study uses the conceptual model from the study of Chang et al. (2017), significant differences exist between the two studies. This study uses the PPM framework in the context of the seller migratory decision, whereas in most studies, the PPM framework is used in the context of the consumer migratory decision. Moreover, most studies about the adoption of e-commerce by owners of SMEs use the theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, technology acceptance model, technology, organization and environment, and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology as the framework.