Monitoring changes in South Africa’s surface water extent for reporting Sustainable Development Goal sub-indicator 6.6.1.a

For the first progress reporting on the Sustainable Development Goal sub-indicator 6.6.1a in 2020, the South African and global statistics related to wetlands were compared. Firstly, in terms of the total wetland extent, the South African National Wetland Map version 5 (NWM5) represented 87% more inland, surface aquatic ecosystems than the Global Surface Water (GSW) product. More than half of the lacustrine systems and none of the palustrine and arid systems in NWM5 are represented in the GSW layer. Secondly, in terms of changes in the extent of wetlands, both the global and South African statistics showed a decreasing trend in the spatial extent of surface aquatic ecosystems in South Africa. These trends should be further investigated against systematic assessments of decadal drought periods. The hydroperiod information (permanent, seasonal and ephemeral inundation periods) of the GSW products show that South African lacustrine wetlands do not have a single dominant class (≥70% of the extent of a polygon) of inundation, but consist of a mosaic of these classes.

Undergraduate Students Academic Progress Reporting Using UPReS: A Feed Forward Approach

Academic performance monitoring is traditionally based on feedback approach. A disadvantage of this approach is that any remedial action would be too late to be implemented. Given that higher education institutions are striving towards achieving graduate on time objectives, an innovative feed forward approach is highly needed. Undergraduate Progress Reporting System (UPReS) is an innovative monitoring and reporting system to monitor academic performance among undergraduate students using electronic spreadsheet. UPReS enables users to forecast academic performance and to identify under-performing students which allows for early intervention programs to be implemented. Using qualitative methodology, this research found that UPReS is able to overcome the limitations of current academic progress monitoring system and offers benefits to students, lecturers and higher education institutions.

Project control and forecast assessment of building projects in Pakistan using earned value management

PurposeEarned Value Management (EVM) is widely used as a project performance measurement and forecasting technique. Nonetheless, it has not been fully explored in Pakistani construction industry; where conventional progress reporting methodology (CPRM) is being followed having certain confines. It reports only the financial progress of a project, expresses feeble association between the duration and cost of activities, and forecasts flawed schedule and completion cost. This research implements EVM on under-construction building projects in Pakistan, and compares its upshots with the projects' actual records and with the outcomes of CPRM.Design/methodology/approachTo assess the implementation of EVM on building projects, a set of specific criteria was established. Work Breakdown Structure, Organization Breakdown Structure and Control Points were established. The study has compared the EVM metrics with CPRM outcomes on three under-study building projects, and has deliberated on their mutual differences as well as their relationship with actual cost and schedule performance. Monthly figures of actual spending and completed activities were periodically recorded and compared with planned values for status indication. The graphs were generated to observe the correlation between the results of EVM and CPRM. The data was then extrapolated to forecast the schedule and cost values at completion.FindingsThe study discovered that trends of EVM in quantifying the project's cost and schedule performance were strongly correlated and were closer to the actual progress. It has also verified the EVM's soundness in forecasting the cost and schedule, required for project's completion. Contrarily, CPRM metrics could not precisely visualize the current and future, cost and schedule performance.Originality/valueThe case study concludes that EVM's incorporation in progress reporting regime can revolutionize the assessment procedures in Pakistan by rightly indicating the project's current status as well as visualizing the future performance. The study's methodology can also be extrapolated in other countries having similar work environment and economic conditions.

Project Reporting Management System with AI based Assistive Features for Text Summarization

This paper details a proof-of-concept system called Project Reporting Management System (PRMS) to manage the project reporting process in a typical research centre where the process can be manual for many centres. In fact, it is general enough to be scaled up and deployed for a large department or scaled down for a smaller setup in any organization which needs a simple and efficient project progress reporting system but does not entail the kind of complexity and cost of commercial project management systems. Using a research centre scenario, the progress of the individual projects has to be tracked through the periodic submission of progress reports by the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project. The centre will need to consolidate these individual reports manually into a consolidated report and an executive summary for higher management. PRMS automates the tracking of individual projects and reporting deadlines, sends reminders and allows online submission of reports by the PIs. PRMS also incorporates assistive and automated features exploiting Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to generate the consolidated report and rank sentences of verbose report for assistive text summarization to facilitate the manual process of producing an executive summary.

SISTEM INFORMASI KEGIATAN PEKERJAAN FISIK PROGRAM DMIJ BERBASIS WEB STUDI KASUS DESA SUNGAI PIYAI KEC. KUALA INDRAGIRI

The problem that is often encountered in the reporting progress system is that village employees still often use consultant services to prepare DMIJ project reports, so they require additional costs for consulting services, not to mention the time required to complete so many DMIJ project reports. So that with the progress reporting information system and applications that will be designed, it can help the work process of village employees so that they no longer need consultant services in order to save budget costs and time. Then, the solution that expected for the web-based DMIJ physical work activity information system uses the Development Life System (SDLC) method, could help the employees in order to prepare the project report progress more quickly and precisely.