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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the cause-and-effect relationship and the mutually influential level among information security control items, as well as to provide organizations with a method for analyzing and making systematic decisions for improvement.

This study utilized the Fuzzy DEMATEL to analyze cause-and-effect relationships and mutual influence of the 11 control items of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS), which are discussed by seven experts in Taiwan to identify the core control items for developing the improvement strategies.

The study has found that the three core control items of the ISMS are security policy (SC1), access control (SC7) and human resource security (SC4). This study provides organizations with a direction to develop improvement strategies and effectively manage the ISMS of the organization.

The value of this study is for an organization to effectively dedicate resources to core control items, such that other control items are driven toward positive change by analyzing the cause-and-effect relation and the mutual influential level among information security control items, through a cause-and-effect matrix and a systematic diagram.

This study aims to propose a door detection method based on the door properties in both depth and gray-level images. It can further help blind people (or mobile robots) find the doorway to their destination.

The proposed method uses the hierarchical point–line region principle with majority vote to encode the surface features pixel by pixel, and then dominant scene entities line by line, and finally the prioritized scene entities in the center, left and right of the observed scene.

This approach is very robust for noise and random misclassification in pixel, line and region levels and provides sufficient information for the pathway in the front and on the left and right of a scene. The proposed robot vision-assist system can be worn by visually impaired people or mounted on mobile robots. It provides more complete information about the surrounding environment to guide safely and effectively the user to the destination.

In this study, the proposed robot vision scheme provides detailed configurations of the environment encountered in daily life, including stairs (up and down), curbs/steps (up and down), obstacles, overheads, potholes/gutters, hazards and accessible ground. All these scene entities detected in the environment provide the blind people (or mobile robots) more complete information for better decision-making of their own. This paper also proposes, especially, a door detection method based on the door’s features in both depth and gray-level images. It can further help blind people find the doorway to their destination in an unfamiliar environment.

This study aims to examine a hierarchical framework for sustainable consumption (SC) for cruise ships and identify the causal relationships and decisive attributes of cruise ship operation practices that allow cruise organizations to achieve a higher level of sustainable performance.

This study applies a hybrid of the Delphi method and a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). DEMATEL methodology helps to construct complex causal relations through digraphs, which depict interrelationships among attributes. The fuzzy set theory assesses experts’ perceptions of attributes given in linguistic preferences. The Delphi method has been previously used to validate attributes and determine the validity and reliability of the construct from qualitative information.

A set of three aspects containing 21 criteria were defined based on previous literature and expert consultations. The analysis results show that waste minimization and recycling and recovery are causal aspects that influence efficient resource use. Emission controls on ships, cruise ship alternative energy sources, ballast water treatment systems, water purification systems and nanofiltration systems are also prominent criteria for the improvement of SC during cruise ship operation.

This study contributes to the literature by offering a hierarchical framework for SC literature and confirming the role of this issue in improving the cruise industry sustainability. In practice, as such results provide key attributes for successful performance, the implications are offered for companies developing new activities, either in ensuring compliance with business goals or in decreasing the environmental impact.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the efficiency of loading and discharging operations in container terminals. Accounting for an increase in the size of ships, the yard truck (YT) routing and scheduling problem has become an important issue to terminal operators.

A (binary) integer programming model is developed using the time-space network technique to optimally move YTs between quay cranes (QC) and yard cranes (YC) in the time and space dimensions. The objective of the model is to minimize the total operating cost, and the model employs the M/M/S model in the queuing theory to determine the waiting time of YTs. The developed model can obtain the optimal number of YTs and their scheduling and routing plans simultaneously, as shown by the computational results.

The results also show that the model can be applied to practical operations. In this research, an experimental design of the QC and YC operation networks was considered with the import and export containers carried by YTs. The model can be used to tackle a real world problem in an international port, and the analysis results could be useful references for port operators in actual practice.

The purpose of this research only focusses on YTs routing and scheduling problem, however, the container terminal operation problems are interrelated with berth allocation and yard stacking plan. The managerial application of this study is to analyze the trade-off between truck numbers and truck waiting time can be used for terminal operators to adjust the truck assignment. This research can assist an operator to determine the optimal fleet size and schedule in advance to avoid wasted costs and congestion in the quayside and yard block.

This research solves the YT scheduling and routing problem for container discharging and loading processes with a time-space network model, which has not been previously reported, through an empirical research.