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Public investment programming is a complex exercise and involves a number of factors. These include social, economical, environmental, technological and political factors. In addition, each of the factors depends on many subfactors. For example, the economic factor depends on project impact on local and national economy, number of beneficiaries, and opportunity cost of work lost. The Public Projects Programming System (3PS) is mainly a decision support system aimed at helping senior decision makers in the public sector to program the implementation of public investment projects. A multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach was used based on the weighted average multi‐criteria analysis (WAMA) model. The structure (database, model base, and user interface) of the 3PS is presented. A case study, in the northern suburbs of Beirut, shows the implementation of the system in a real post conflict reconstruction environment in Lebanon.

The technique for hiding confidential data in specific digital media by enhancing the graphical contents is known as watermarking. The dissemination of information over a secure channel is essential for multimedia applications. The purpose of this study is to develop a secure communication approach for OFDM system.

This paper exploits a secure communication in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system using wavelet-based video watermarking technique. In this work, the Chronological-MS algorithm is used for securing the data communication in the OFDM system. Here, the secret message is embedded in video frames using wavelet transform for hiding sensitive information and the hidden information is transmitted over the OFDM system. The Chronological-MS algorithm is used for selecting the optimal regions in the video for embedding secret message. In embedding phase, wavelet coefficients are obtained by applying wavelet transform on the frame for embedding the secret message. Meanwhile, in extraction phase, the inverse wavelet transform is applied to extract the secret message.

Considering number of frames, the maximum Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value is attained by proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS method for Video 2 with value 73.643 dB, respectively. Meanwhile, the minimum mean squared error (MSE) attained by the proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS method is when considering number of frames with MSE values as 0.001 for both Videos 1 and 2. The minimum bit error rate (BER) value is attained by the proposed method with value 0.00009 considering random noise with Video 1. Thus, the proposed Wavelet + Chronological MS have shown better results than the existing techniques.

This work proposes a wavelet-based watermarking method using Chronological-MS, for initiating secured communication over an OFDM. One of the main advantages of wavelets is that they offer a simultaneous localization in time and frequency domain. Hence, the proposed method offers the highly secured data transmission over the OFDM.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the role of the bottlenecks in the dynamic software development supply chains. The paper examines the effects of the task priorities in the software development and investigates the possible strategies to manage them effectively.

In this paper, a software development supply chain has been simulated. This includes modeling of the various sizes of software requirement, different priorities, variations in development times, quality defects, etc. The model assumes a fixed set of resources of various skills. The model is studied for the bottlenecks, throughput, work in progress (WIP), etc. under various work preemption scenarios.

The results indicate that job priorities impact the bottleneck formulation, throughput and WIP of the software development. The work interruption policies to accommodate priority jobs adversely impact the throughput. Selective introduction of interruptions by leaving the bottlenecks from interruptions helps balancing the throughput and priorities.

The impact of the learning curve and knowledge acquisition time needed by the resources to restart the interrupted work has not been considered in this paper, which can be a future area of research.

The paper helps the practicing managers evaluate the dynamics of the bottlenecks with various task management approaches and comprehend the possible tradeoffs between priority and throughout.

The paper looks at software development from a perspective of workflow dynamics. This is a pioneer effort, as it utilizes simulation and modeling approach in understanding the software supply chains better.

This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

Tourism is sensitive to many factors related to security, such as terrorism and armed conflict. This scenario can be considered for Colombia and its National Natural Parks. The signing of the peace agreement with the revolutionary armed forces (FARC-EP) of Colombia that would end the armed conflict in 2016 offers economic possibilities for the country where tourism represents an important option, especially in natural areas where the government has regained control. This has had an impact on the sustained growth of tourism demand. The objective of this study is to determine the sensitivity of the tourism market in Colombia and natural parks and its relationship with the evolutionary dynamics of tourism, in a context of armed conflict. Variables related to visitors and the armed conflict were associated by autoregressive vectors, Pearson correlation test and Granger causality. A correlation of −0.5474 was found for the accumulated period from 1995 to 2018. It was also determined that the number of victims of the armed conflict is the Granger cause of the number of visitors to natural parks. The study concludes that the sensitivity of tourism in natural parks in Colombia is a consequence of State policy for the partial termination of the internal armed conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the environmental performance of intensive farming and estimate agrochemical waste in physical and monetary terms. The intensive farming provides adverse impacts including health and environmental quality associated with the use of agrochemicals.

This study uses a theory of environmental efficiency that measures how efficient the farm uses agrochemical inputs. The efficiency was estimated using a set of farm-level data of intensive farming that use agrochemicals. Data were compiled from a survey of randomly selected 240 farmers who operated intensive farming in three regions of Java in 2014.

The results show that the performance of intensive farming was low. This condition caused agrochemical waste leading to the externality. Taking the external costs into account resulted in the improvement in efficiency of agrochemicals. The actual level of agrochemicals was about a hundred times higher than the most efficient level.

This study is beyond the exogenous external costs. There is a need for a further comprehensive study to include more exogenous external costs associated with agrochemicals to have the potential value of such costs and the most socially efficient use of agrochemicals. The long-term effects of external cost to the environment and socio-economic livelihood of the farmers and other communities are considerable. Advocating for alternatives to decrease the use of detrimental agro-inputs, in the long run, will provide sound quality of the environment. Socially, both producers and consumers get the environmental and health benefits.

To reduce the agrochemical waste that caused environmental problems, a policy should be formulated to make farming more efficient, particularly for agrochemical use. It can be done by introducing agronomic technologies and enhancing farmers’ knowledge on environmentally friendly agriculture.

Environmental efficiency is able to estimate the quantity of agrochemical waste. The waste is a kind of non-point source pollution whose source and quantity are very difficult to identify and measure. As there are many definitions and measurement of environmental performance, this concept of environmental efficiency can be one of the alternatives.

There is no industry in the world where a crisis caused by terrorism has such a strong impact as in tourism. Providing security for visitors before and during a trip can be a critical success factor for the competitiveness of a particular destination or organization or for business tourism when tourists consider multiple alternatives. Information about political instability, violence, crime or terrorist attacks could cause a substitution effect by tourists. International terrorism and tourism share some characteristics, as both cross national borders, involve citizens from different countries and use the new travel and communications technologies. In recent decades, terrorism organizations have been using tourism targets to gain global visibility. Based on a broad analysis of literature and data, the main goal of this research is to update the work of Seabra (2019) and help to analyse the main connections between terrorism and tourism, specifically by presenting the main terrorist events targeting tourism activity and destinations in the last 35 years and their main consequences for tourism industry.

This introductory chapter synthesises an extensive and hot debate revolving around the role of precautionary doctrine in tourism fields. Although the industry faces serious risks and dangers, terrorism – just after 9/11 – situates as the most dangerous hazard and as a challenge for policymakers and practitioners. We have reviewed the pros and cons of the most important academic schools that focused on tourism security and risk perception theory. The urgency is given in creating a bridge between theory and practice in order to articulate the policies to the nature of each risk. Today risk perception theory lacks a robust methodological background that invariably led to a gridlock. Whether the demographic school advances in the multivariable correlation between class, ideology, income or education with risk perception, the sociological school lays the foundations towards a much deeper understanding of the impacts of risks in society. Rather, the radical turn – coming from a Marxist tradition – focuses on the limitations of risk perception theory. Finally, authors who form the psychological tradition, as stated in this chapter, highlight on the complexity of emotions and the inner world. All chapters in this book aim to provide fresh practical cases that reflect the socio-cultural background of the four continents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of terrorism in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on the return and volatility of world price of oil.

GARCH models and daily data from 1987 till 2015 will be used.

The empirical results reveal that terrorism in the OPEC affects positively oil returns and negatively its volatility. Results also show that the different characteristics of the attacks are likely to have different impact on the return and volatility of oil prices. In overall terms, terrorism has a much larger positive impact on the return of oil prices and negative impact on its volatility if it targets the oil industry in the OPEC. This marginal effect is even greater if those attacks were successful.

The distinguishing feature of this paper is that the authors use a framework that takes into account different attributes for terrorism the success of the attacks, the intensity of the attacks and the associated targets.