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AbstractEffective management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) and the urgent need to improve epidemic prevention require rapid response and immediate solutions, deploying appropriate knowledge management procedures and facilitating effective decision‐making and managerial efforts. The increased adoption of smart cities (SC) technologies offers various technologies that can support knowledge capturing, acquisition, sharing, and transferring. However, knowledge management practitioners and decision‐makers face various challenges to manage huge data generated from the various SC platforms. Managing COVID‐19‐related knowledge necessitates filtering, cleaning, keeping, and sharing only useful data. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate managing knowledge related to COVID‐19 from a SC perspective. The methodological approach for this study is a systematic literature review. The findings indicate that SC technologies, through the advanced deployment of information communications technology (ICT) applications, have a crucial role in knowledge capturing and sharing. Smart cities strategies enable knowledge extraction through facilitating data collection and analysis over various disparate databases, as well as facilitating quick and accurate handling and analysis of huge and unpredicted amount of data. Managing knowledge related to COVID‐19 pandemic has the potential to improve the planning, treatment and controlling the pandemic, enhance decision‐making, and enable disaster management. However, the managing of a huge amount of complex, unstructured data and information remains a big challenge for COVID‐19 knowledge management (KM) initiatives. The paper proposes a conceptual model and illustrates the various components and links between SC strategies, KM and COVID‐19, and how this can inform, facilitate, and enhance decision‐making to take steps for the path of recovery.

International Conference on Construction Futures 2018, 19 - 20 December at the University of Wolverhampton, UK ; The construction industry is currently suffering from a lack of skilled workers, from builders and plumbers, to quantity surveyors and architects. Reasons for this include the recession and that the retiring workforce is not being replaced by younger generations. This is having a huge impact on the country's ability to keep up with the demand for houses that need building; consequently meaning there is a shortage in homes in the country also. The research question addressed in the paper is: What can be done to encourage young adults (14-16 years old) to join the construction industry? The research question is answered through a critical literature review and analysis of questionnaire responses. The results show that there is little education on the construction industry to encourage young adults, and that it is perceived to be a dirty and low status industry to work in. On this basis, it is recommended that the Government and professional bodies need to do more to educate children in schools on what the construction industry truly is, and what opportunities it has for a good career. An initiative that was introduced in 2017 was the apprenticeship levy, which persuades companies to employ apprentices and up skill current employees subsequently encouraging school children to move directly into the construction industry. By schools, universities, colleges and businesses supporting each other it allows longevity and sustainability of the construction industry to be strengthened. ; University of Wolverhampton

Subcontracting is noted for its adverse health and safety (H&S) influence in construction. Using interviews with five of the top 20 UK contractors and one medium-sized contractor, this study explored how main contractors manage the H&S influence of subcontracting with a focus on their in-house measures. Some in-house measures found are: restricting the layers of subcontractors on projects; working with a regular chain of subcontractors; implementing a H&S reward scheme for subcontractors; and insisting on non-working subcontractor foremen who have direct responsibility for the safety of workers in their trade. These measures appear to be influenced by clients, industry peer groups, and the moral justification for occupational H&S, and they offer inter-organisational learning opportunities for contractors in devising measures to mitigate the H&S influence of subcontracting. These findings should also allay concerns that removing some of the legislative hurdles in connection with on-going red tape debate will result in poorer H&S.

Smart governance is a key factor when considering the successful implementation of smart cities strategies. Smart cities create an extensive variety of issues and challenges that often poorly organised to deal with by their respective governments as they grow in size and complexity. Therefore, developed countries are creating their infrastructure on the basis of smart governance and sustainable development to improve the quality of life for more than a decade now. This paper explores through a systematic review of the key challenges and issues that governance of smart cities is facing on this network performance by focusing on the governance models, with a particular interest on how these can contribute to successful smart city network governance. However, the government departments seem not to engage the public in every activity they do. Sometimes due to security and political reasons they try to maintain a distance from the public; this shows the issues within the existing smart cities governance model. This paper concludes that although there are considerable smart city dossiers in literature, their governance model and structural variations development across regions is lacking.