Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has the potential to provide substantial opportunities for organizations to improve their information technology without cost and management concerns. However, organizations have not utilized it to the desired level because it is very challenging for them to completely transform their basic conventional methods of running software into SaaS as a high-tech method. On the other hand, organizations have doubt which factors should be mostly considered if they want to move to SaaS. Therefore, investigating the adoption of SaaS can contribute organizations to benefit from this technology. The purpose of this paper is to provide a good insight into SaaS technology adoption.


Design/methodology/approach
– Considering Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE) framework and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory as the basis, 22 university experts expressed their idea about the proposed model of SaaS adoption. Then, 30 IT professional in 15 IT enterprises that had adopted SaaS were asked to fill the questionnaire related to fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on linguistic preference relations (LinPreRa) in order to rank the submitted criteria.


Findings
– The findings demonstrate that all attributes of Technology (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability and security and privacy), Organization (IT resource, sharing and collaboration culture) and environment (competitive pressure, social influence) are influential in the adoption of SaaS. Moreover, the top five influential factors are relative advantage, competitive pressure, security and privacy, sharing and collaboration culture and social influence based on adopter's opinions.


Research limitations/implications
– For researchers, this study provides a useful literature, which can help them in related subject. In addition, it applies IT adoption theories in SaaS context that can be extended in future studies. For organizations, this study derives priority of factors by which they can make strong decisions about adoption of SaaS.


Originality/value
– This study contributes to the adoption of SaaS technology using well-known IT adoption theories. A version of Fuzzy AHP based on LinPreRa was used in order to cover the limitations of previous methodologies of ranking the criteria.

Abstract. Rapid urbanisation, climate change and unsustainable developments are increasing the risk of floods. Flood is a frequent natural hazard that has significant financial consequences for Australia. The emergency response system in Australia is very successful and has saved many lives over the years. However, the preparedness for natural disaster impacts in terms of loss reduction and damage mitigation has been less successful. In this paper, a newly derived flood loss function for Australian residential structures (FLFArs) has been presented and calibrated by using historic data collected from an extreme event in Queensland, Australia, that occurred in 2013. Afterwards, the performance of the method developed in this work (contrasted to one Australian model and one model from USA) has been compared with the observed damage data collected from a 2012 flood event in Maranoa, Queensland. Based on this analysis, validation of the selected methodologies has been performed in terms of Australian geographical conditions. Results obtained from the new empirically based function (FLFArs) and the other models indicate that it is apparent that the precision of flood damage models is strongly dependent on selected stage damage curves, and flood damage estimation without model calibration might result in inaccurate predictions of losses. Therefore, it is very important to be aware of the associated uncertainties in flood risk assessment, especially if models have not been calibrated with real damage data.

Abstract. The damage triggered by different flood events costs the Italian economy millions of euros each year. This cost is likely to increase in the future due to climate variability and economic development. In order to avoid or reduce such significant financial losses, risk management requires tools which can provide a reliable estimate of potential flood impacts across the country. Flood loss functions are an internationally accepted method for estimating physical flood damage in urban areas. In this study, we derived a new flood loss function for Italian residential structures (FLF-IT), on the basis of empirical damage data collected from a recent flood event in the region of Emilia-Romagna. The function was developed based on a new Australian approach (FLFA), which represents the confidence limits that exist around the parameterized functional depth–damage relationship. After model calibration, the performance of the model was validated for the prediction of loss ratios and absolute damage values. It was also contrasted with an uncalibrated relative model with frequent usage in Europe. In this regard, a three-fold cross-validation procedure was carried out over the empirical sample to measure the range of uncertainty from the actual damage data. The predictive capability has also been studied for some sub-classes of water depth. The validation procedure shows that the newly derived function performs well (no bias and only 10 % mean absolute error), especially when the water depth is high. Results of these validation tests illustrate the importance of model calibration. The advantages of the FLF-IT model over other Italian models include calibration with empirical data, consideration of the epistemic uncertainty of data, and the ability to change parameters based on building practices across Italy.

ABSTRACTPurposeTo assess the effects of speech therapy on the acoustic characteristics of speech in a group of cleft lip and palate patients.Materials and methodsIn this experimental pilot study, eight patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate participated in the 13‐month period of speech therapy. They had some exercises in the class and at home to reduce the hypernasality of speech. Using an acoustic software named Praat, three formants (F1, F2, F3) of speech sounds /b /, /p /, /f /, /v /, /k /, and /g / were obtained pre and post speech therapy. We used paired samples t‐test to compare the acoustic variables of each consonant before and after the therapy.ResultsNo significant differences were found between the pre‐ and posttherapy acoustic measures for fricative consonants /f /, /v / and stop consonants /k / and /g/. However, a statistically significant improvement in hypernasality of labial consonants /b / and /p / was observed after the speech therapy.ConclusionsThe present study underlines the role of a speech therapist in a complete cleft care team, in order to take care of the speech improvement of the patient and to motivate the parents to help the speech development of their child.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a European option using the fractional version of the Black-Scholes model.


Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors employ the block-pulse operational matrix algorithm to approximate the solution of the fractional Black-Scholes equation with the initial condition for a European option pricing problem.


Findings
The fractional derivative will be described in the Caputo sense in this paper. The authors show the accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm through some numerical examples.


Originality/value
This is the first paper that considers an alternative algorithm for pricing a European option using the fractional Black-Scholes model.

This paper contributes to identify systematic problems in NIS using Thinking Process (TOC-TP) and to eliminate the bottlenecks, which results in improving the innovation process and efficiency of NIS. The Case study in this research is the NIS of Iran. The national documents of the innovation system were studied and all problems of NIS mentioned in documents were gathered. The causal relationships between the systematic problems were identified by the survey and grouped into 6 components by Exploratory Factor Analysis: weakness in technology diffusion mechanisms, the lack of centralized governance on science and technology policy, the government's pivotal role as an executor in education and research, weak laws and regulations in the field of research and technology, the lack of adequate financial resources in R&D and the lack of any perspective on the creation of wealth and entrepreneurship among the actors of research and technology. Finally the bottleneck of Iran's NIS was recognized by Thinking Process tools: the small participation of private sector in research and education system as the result of government's pivotal role as an executor of Iran's national innovation system. So the researchers could diagnose the policy gaps related to the identified bottlenecks. First published online:11 Aug 2014

This paper contributes to identify systematic problems in NIS using Thinking Process (TOC-TP) and to eliminate the bottlenecks, which results in improving the innovation process and efficiency of NIS. The Case study in this research is the NIS of Iran. The national documents of the innovation system were studied and all problems of NIS mentioned in documents were gathered. The causal relationships between the systematic problems were identified by the survey and grouped into 6 components by Exploratory Factor Analysis: weakness in technology diffusion mechanisms, the lack of centralized governance on science and technology policy, the government's pivotal role as an executor in education and research, weak laws and regulations in the field of research and technology, the lack of adequate financial resources in R&D and the lack of any perspective on the creation of wealth and entrepreneurship among the actors of research and technology. Finally the bottleneck of Iran's NIS was recognized by Thinking Process tools: the small participation of private sector in research and education system as the result of government's pivotal role as an executor of Iran's national innovation system. So the researchers could diagnose the policy gaps related to the identified bottlenecks. First published online:11 Aug 2014

Despite the emergence of virtual spaces as arenas for public participation, the geographies of digital participation have gained relatively little attention. Besides considering who participates and why, there is an evident gap in research considering the spatial relationships between the participants of digital urban planning processes and the spaces that are the subject of their participation. This paper proposes a working concept of the spatiality of participation that distinguishes between the spaces in which participation occurs, the spatial realities of the participants, and the spaces as objects of participatory planning. Relationships between these dimensions are investigated empirically with a Public Participation GIS study set in Espoo, Finland, involving 1,731 citizens and over 6,800 future planning and development ideas mapped across the city. The results of the study support prior research observing that e-participation has the potential to spatially expand participation processes both in terms of the involved public and the spatial knowledge they produce. However, our results also show that online participation may capture spatial ties between people and places that differ from those of traditional participation modes, ranging from place-protective behaviors close to the residential location to more casual spatial attachments.