Towards a predictive multi-phase model for alpine mass movements and process cascades

Alpine mass movements can generate process cascades involving different materials including rock, ice, snow, and water. Numerical modelling is an essential tool for the quantification of natural hazards, but state-of-the-art operational models reach their limits when facing unprecedented or complex events. Here, we advance our predictive capabilities for process cascades on the basis of a three-dimensional numerical model, coupling fundamental conservation laws to finite strain elastoplasticity. Through its hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian character, our approach naturally reproduces fractures and collisions, erosion/deposition phenomena, and multi-phase interactions, which finally grant very accurate simulations of complex dynamics. Four benchmark simulations demonstrate the physical detail of the model and its applicability to real-world full-scale events, including various materials and ranging through four orders of magnitude in volume. In the future, our model can support risk-management strategies through predictions of the impact of potentially catastrophic cascading mass movements at vulnerable sites.

Auditing an Agile Development Operations Ecosystem

In an enterprise software development, DevOps is a practice of integrating development and operations to deliver cost-efficient, improved quality solutions to the customer by automating the existing processes to achieve “continuous delivery.” In the current dynamic IT Ecosystem where there is a rising need to prove a competitive edge to maximize profitability, it is pivotal to drive business value with profound emphasis on quality. Agile enables us to take calculated risks during development whereas its affinity to adopting DevOps will promote continuous delivery with reduced friction to improve business efficiency. As this approach requires a change in people, process, technology, culture, usage of right tools and techniques, the early involvement of IT Auditors during the process of transformation could aid to build effective Risk Management strategies to handle organizational challenges. This article aims to present a risk-based audit approach to effectively use audit tools and techniques in an Agile-DevOps transformation environment to achieve maximum business value.

Health Communication Strategies

This chapter focuses on the crisis and risk management strategies as parts of health communication processes applied during the COVID-19 era. For the literature part, risk and crisis communication, social media, information disorders, and infodemic are used, and for the analysis, crisis communication strategies of the Ministry of Health in the Republic of Turkey are examined. The findings reveal that the ministry takes several precautions in order to prevent the spread of the virus (like lockdowns, enclosures, strengthening health services, etc.) and to inform the public regularly via conventional and social media.

Approach to Prioritizing the Commercial Real Estate Development Risk

After 30 years of war in Sri Lanka, the demand for real estate has increased tremendously across the nation. Similarly, numerous real estate sub-sectors have avidly participated in the worldwide boom. However, with failures and poor functioning of many investment projects, the industry's risk management reputation has been put in jeopardy, followed by the coronavirus (COVID-19). Though it is less popular among Sri Lankan property developers, risk management strategies in development projects have become a pressing requirement. This paper's goal is to look at commercial property development risk elements from the perspective of a real estate developer in relation to Social, Economic, Environmental, Technological, Political, and Pandemic Risks. The research first evaluates risk variables using a super decision software model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), then prioritizes the most important risk factors, and lastly examines effective risk management measures for successful real estate developments. The data collection has been carried out using interviews through telephone conversations with the help of a structured questionnaire. Accordingly, 35 risk factors have been assessed altogether. For the three projects, the synthesized values were 1.0000, 0.510763, and 0.604037, respectively. Based on the analysis of superMatrix calculation, project A is regarded as the best alternative project in such circumstances. Pandemic Risk, Economic Risk, and Political Risk have all had a significant impact on the primary risk criteria. Therefore, COVID-19 Pandemic Risk Emergence, Workforce Availability, Duration, Delays in Council Approval/License Approval Process and Natural Disaster Impact were identified as the highest influenced sub-risk factors. Identifying the risk factors on this avenue will also help in making better investment decisions while increasing the unpredictable nature of the real estate field and future satisfaction of loan team investment goals within the country.

Risk Management Strategies in Construction Organizations

Background: Construction projects are among the riskiest businesses due to the number of factors involved that are difficult to control; hence, the popularity of risk management as part of the decision-making process in construction organizations is increasing. Despite the advancements, there are various risks involved that lead to project failure. Aim: Thus, this study aims to assess the risk management strategies in construction organizations in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Methods: Seventy questionnaires were distributed after subjecting them to pretesting and pilot study that confirmed the validity and reliability of the questions. The target respondents included engineers and consultants from the construction organizations, Ministry of Works and Housing, and international agencies. The questionnaire was retrieved with a 65.71% response rate. Results: Results indicated that the most popular method of risk factor determination in the Gaza Strip is the “checklist” (RII=84%). For tools/methods of risk analysis, relying on experience in the direct assessment is the most prominent, with an RII of 78%. For the methods of avoiding risk before the project implementation, dependence on experience in the work for preparing and planning was ranked highest (having RII of 81.6%). Finally, follow-up on the implementation to avoid rework, with an RII of 77.6%, was ranked highest among other factors of avoiding risk during the construction projects implementation. Conclusion: This study highlights the key risk management strategies that will be beneficial for the construction industry stakeholders to resolve the unwanted risk failures in the construction industry.

Changes in the effect of credence cues on restaurant delivery service under different health risks

Purpose Due to increased health concerns, restaurant customers rely more on credible cues that indirectly represent health-related credence quality. To comprehensively understand the dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery with different infection risks, this study aims to investigate changes in cue utilization during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach Data on delivery sales, brand and review rating between 2019 and the first half of 2020 were obtained from Meituan. Fixed-effects estimation was used to investigate 579,858 restaurant observations across 338 cities in China. Findings Health concerns significantly increased the use of restaurant delivery and the increased delivery sales remained steady even after infection risk was reduced. However, cue utilization in restaurant delivery substantially changed depending on inflection risk. In the pandemic-spreading period, the sales effect of the brand increased while that of review rating decreased. The decreased effect of review rating was recovered in the pandemic-flattening period, whereas the abnormal brand effect continued only when branded restaurants had a high rating. Research limitations/implications The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective. Practical implications The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective. Further, this study re-conceptualizes credence quality and cues, considering their roles in risk management. The findings help develop risk management strategies based on customers’ usage patterns of credence cues in health crises. Originality/value The dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery has not been comprehensively investigated, especially when infection risk changes. This study delivers theoretical and practical contributions about how to use credence cues in the restaurant business amid health crises.

Application of a commercial Salmonella real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay for the detection and quantitation of Salmonellaenterica in poultry ceca

Foodborne Salmonellosis is commonly associated with poultry and poultry products necessitating continued development of pre- and post-harvest food safety interventions and risk management strategies. Evaluating technologies and strategies is limited by availability of cost-effective, rapid laboratory methods. The objective of this work was to evaluate a commercial, qualitative PCR assay and its novel quantitative application to detect and enumerate Salmonella in poultry ceca as an analytical matrix. Ceca were collected at harvest, contents homogenized, and paired samples evaluated with Buffered Peptone Water (BPW) and BAX® MP + Supplement (MPS) pre-enrichment broths followed by PCR screening on BAX® System Q7 (PCR) and by isolation. Additional ceca were inoculated with Salmonella to develop a standard curve for the BAX® System SalQuant™ quantitative PCR application (QA), then estimates were obtained by the QA and Most Probable Number (MPN) methods. For pre-enrichment media, PCR outcomes performed equivalently to culture isolation for detecting Salmonella in ceca with 95.65% and 87.88% sensitivity and 82.00% and 100.00% specificity (P=0.074) for BPW and MPS, respectively. However, at the sample-level, BPW performed significantly worse (47.92%) than MPS (68.75%) for overall isolation of Salmonella (P<0.0001). Post-standard curve development, the mean QA estimates obtained for the inoculated samples were 1.14 (95% CI; 0.62 - 1.66), 1.79 (95% CI; 1.50- 2.08), 2.91 (95% CI; 2.65 - 3.17) and 3.76 (95% CI; 3.26 - 4.25), respectively for each targeted inoculation of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 Log10 CFU/mL and within or comparable to 95% confidence intervals of paired MPN estimates. These data demonstrate performance of MPS for the detection and isolation of Salmonella enterica from poultry ceca when screening with PCR and indicate the QA may be useful as an alternative tool to estimate Salmonella concentrations in ceca, which may support pre-harvest food safety activities.

EVALUATING KEY RISK FACTORS AFFECTING CARGO DAMAGES ON EXPORT OPERATIONS FOR CONTAINER CARRIERS IN TAIWAN

The main purpose of this article is to apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to analyse key risk factors affecting cargo damages on export operations for container shipping carriers in Taiwan. Based on the literature and experts’ opinions, a hierarchical structure with three risk aspects and eleven risk factors was constructed. We then applied the AHP procedure and AHP experts’ questionnaires to evaluate the key risk factors. The empirical results showed that: (1) ‘Shipping proxy phase’ is the most important aspect affecting cargo damages on export operations for container shipping carriers in Taiwan. (2) In order of relative importance, the top four key risk factors are “shipper’s concealed items have not been reported,” “inappropriate cargo packaging,” “insecure fixation between the container and ship deck,” and “error in printed documents.” Furthermore, some recommendations concerning effective risk management strategies and advices are provided for container shipping carriers.

Proposed Model of Business Retail Continuity Process during Pandemic Covid-19 Based on Risk identification and Response

Recognizing competitive strategies, the retail industry must anticipate business risks. Business risk is related to managerial risk, and it depends on its ability to adapt its policies to unforeseen events and changes. Currently, the whole world is facing the Covid-19 outbreak. In facing the challenges and risks from Covid-19, retail businesses must manage and respond to these risks so that their business can recover and business continuity is realized. This study seeks to identify the risks experienced by retail businesses in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic and what risk management strategies are appropriate for business continuity and retail business recovery. Previous studies have explained the impact of Covid-19 on the retail industry. However, there is still a lack of research that tries to identify the risks and how to overcome them. This research will try to fill that gap. Semi-systematic or narrative review techniques were conducted in this study. The study’s result is a framework related to risk management in retail industries. This study contributes to knowledge and practical implication regarding the risk that the retail industry is experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Information transmission between bitcoin derivatives and spot markets: high-frequency causality analysis with Fourier approximation

This paper examines information transmission between Bitcoin derivatives and spot exchanges using 15-minutes interval data over May 2016 - September 2020. We employ a novel econometric framework with Fourier approximation, taking structural shifts in causal linkages, on the prices, returns, and volatilities of BitMEX, the derivatives market, and five other major spot exchanges, Coinbase, Bitstamp, Kraken, CEX.io, and Poloniex. Overall, the results provide robust evidence of information flow between the derivatives and spot exchanges, implying the markets react to new information simultaneously. The results are of importance for investors conducting portfolio allocation exercises and risk management strategies.