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Building construction is considered a complex, dynamic and highly hazardous process, which embraces many factors that are potentially dangerous to workers. Many studies proved that the improvement of preventive and proactive measures – dynamically included in the building design, planning and construction – could reduce site accidents as well as increase the site productivity. In this context, process management models and information visualization techniques such as building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) seem to be devoted to strongly contribute to the advancement of the current safety management practices. For these reasons, the presented contribution is based on the assumption that a more nuanced approach for construction worker's safety training is warranted and the authors propose a safety training protocol based on BIM-enabled VR activity simulations.

The methodology comprised a safety training protocol based on BIM-enabled VR activity simulations. The protocol addresses three methodological issues: (1) Planning in terms of training typologies and related health and safety contents to be implemented in the VR construction site scenarios; (2) Management regarding the solution to integrate BIM and game technologies to deliver VR training experiences; (3) Administration in terms of definition of standardized rules to define a safety training schedule in a given construction project.

This work contributes to provide a standardized protocol for a viable integration of BIM and VR technologies for construction safety training in real projects.

The VR training protocol was applied to a construction project based in Italy that served as case study for the development of the training sessions' contents and their implementation. This case demonstrated the feasibility of the protocol's implementation and pointed out the drawbacks and limitations on which further efforts need to be spent in order to take the proposed protocol from a prototypical stage to a maturity for its larger-scale adoption from the practitioners involved in construction safety training.

The research gives a contribution to reduce the currently existing knowledge gap regarding how BIM and VR can be simultaneously integrated in real projects for construction safety training by using standardized rules to be extensively reproduced in different construction projects. It uses a customized toolkit with a mobile smartphone solution to administer Safety Training Scenarios which increases its portability in construction site compared to PC-based VR solutions.

Health and safety training via immersive virtual reality (VR) in the construction sector is still limited to few early adopters despite the benefits it could provide in terms of training effectiveness. To foster its adoption, in this work, the authors address the lack of an organized asset of digital contents dedicated to the production of VR site scenarios that emerged as one of the most limiting factors for the implementation of building information modeling (BIM) and VR for construction workers’ safety training. To improve this critically time-consuming process, a dedicated site object library is proposed.

The development of the site object library for the production of BIM-based VR safety training experiences followed a four-step process: definition of the object list and categories from the analysis of heterogeneous knowledge sources – construction sectors’ regulations, case studies and site scenarios’ imagery; definition of the object requirements (e.g. information, graphics, sounds, animations and more); design of an object information sheet as a library implementation support tool; and library implementation and validation via collaborative VR sessions.

This work provides the definition of a structured library of construction site objects dedicated to the production of VR scenarios for safety training comprising 168 items, implemented and validated.

The research contributes to facilitate and standardize the time-consuming contents’ production and modeling process of site scenarios for VR safety training, addressing the lack of a dedicated site object library. Furthermore, the novel library framework could serve as a base for future extensions dedicated to other applications of VR site simulations (e.g. constructability analysis).

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on all facets of education. This led to educational institutions deploying blended and online systems for teaching and learning. The purpose of this study was to assess the role of blended learning in promoting quality education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The qualitative research design was deployed in this study and enabled the researcher to collect data via in-depth interviews. Twenty-five (25) tertiary institutions accredited by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) were randomly selected to participate in this study. The registrars of the institutions were purposively selected and served as the participants for the study. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the data collected via the interview. Ethical considerations were adhered to during the study.

The study established that COVID-19 had a devastating effect on tertiary institutions; multiple technological and open-sourced systems were deployed for teaching and learning; blended learning was adopted to augment the traditional face-to-face mode of teaching and learning due to its ease of use, usefulness and accessibility as it was used for quizzes and assignments, accessing lecture notes, among others. Despite these, the deployment of technological and blended systems was met with challenges that somehow affected effective teaching, learning.

The study was limited to 25 tertiary educational institutions in Ghana. It was again limited to the COVID-19 era.

This research aids in understanding the extent of the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and learning and how blended learning is currently deployed and used in tertiary institutions in Ghana. The findings are relevant to policymakers and management of educational institutions as it informs them of the right method and tools to deploy for teaching and learning during pandemics.

As educational institutions globally are dealing with the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is prudent to look into how tertiary institutions in Ghana deploy blended learning to facilitate teaching and learning. Thus, this paper is original as it fills the relevant literature gap in terms of scope, setting, methodology and findings.

Due to the weaknesses of the traditional methods and advances in science, using currently new technologies such as building information modeling (BIM) for the restoration and revival of historical monuments is considered a novel solution. This study addresses how computer science in BIM can contribute significantly to the restoration and improvement of the cultural heritage.

This study addresses how computer science in BIM can contribute significantly to the restoration and improvement of the cultural heritage.

Also, it assesses through this application, the capabilities of current software's in developing with the use of photogrammetry an accurate geometrical models for the minaret with its elements are linked to databases carrying information related to the minaret texture, historical identity and decoration. Finally, it shows the importance of this model to support experts in case of future restoration and conservation to the minaret.

The research describes the process of regenerating and documenting the motifs of the historical Choli minaret in Erbil. It explains the steps followed for full application of the historical buildings information modeling (HBIM) to this minaret.

This study aims at analyzing the impact of green restaurants' sustainable practices (food safety, food sustainability practices, food quality, and environmental sensitivity) on consumer satisfaction and revisit intention.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 417 participants who had recently experienced the services of leading green restaurants. The study draws upon the prevailing literature to test a series of research hypotheses through structural equation modeling.

The findings of the study have confirmed that sustainable practices such as food safety, food sustainability practices, environmental sensitivity, and food quality significantly influence consumers' satisfaction and revisit intentions. The willingness to pay has been found as a sensitive issue as it moderates the relationship between consumer satisfaction and revisit intention.

This study provides important insights for the businesses operating in foodservice industry. The study suggests important strategies to the restaurant business owners for improving their consumers' satisfaction and revisit intentions. These strategies may help foodservice businesses in building strong brand reputation and a competitive edge over others.

This study contributes to the food service literature by examining the restaurants' environmental legitimacy (food safety, food sustainability practices, food quality, and environmental sensitivity) from consumers' perspective. Moreover, the current study also fills the gap in literature by expanding the knowledge of consumers' pro-environmental behavior in the context of developing nations. Besides, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is among very few studies, which have emphasized on analyzing consumer satisfaction and revisit intention based on their experience in a green restaurant on particular sustainable parameters.

This article describes the third part of a three-stage study investigating the information behaviour of fans and fan communities, the first stage of which is described in the study by Price and Robinson (2017).

Using tag analysis as a method, a comparative case study was undertaken to explore three aspects of fan information behaviour: information gatekeeping; classifying and tagging and entrepreneurship and economic activity. The case studies took place on three sites used by fans–Tumblr, Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Etsy. Supplementary semi-structured interviews with site users were used to augment the findings with qualitative data.

These showed that fans used tags in a variety of ways quite apart from classification purposes. These included tags being used on Tumblr as meta-commentary and a means of dialogue between users, as well as expressors of emotion and affect towards posts. On AO3 in particular, fans had developed a practice called “tag wrangling” to mitigate the inherent “messiness” of tagging. Evidence was also found of a “hybrid market economy” on Etsy fan stores. From the study findings, a taxonomy of fan-related tags was developed.

Findings are limited to the tagging practices on only three sites used by fans during Spring 2016, and further research on other similar sites are recommended. Longitudinal studies of these sites would be beneficial in understanding how or whether tagging practices change over time. Testing of the fan-tag taxonomy developed in this paper is also recommended.

This research develops a method for using tag analysis to describe information behaviour. It also develops a fan-tag taxonomy, which may be used in future research on the tagging practices of fans, which heretofore have been a little-studied section of serious leisure information users.