To investigate the optimal retail price and service level in a supply chain under consumer returns, a consumer returns model under the retailer＇s service provision is built. The optimal decision results and optimal p...To investigate the optimal retail price and service level in a supply chain under consumer returns, a consumer returns model under the retailer＇s service provision is built. The optimal decision results and optimal profits are obtained in the vertical integration game and the manufacturer Stackelberg game, respectively. Through comparing the optimal profits with service provision with those of no service provision, the boundary conditions that the retailer＇s service should be provided are derived. The results show that in the manufacturer Stackelberg game, the optimal profit of the retailer and the manufacturer with service is always superior to that of a no service provision. However, in the vertical integration game, the supply chain can only benefit from the service under certain conditions. Finally, through numerical examples, the impacts of the cost for providing services and the consumer return rate on the optimal decisions are analyzed.展开更多
The decision-making and optimization of two-echelon inventory coordination were analyzed with service level constraint and controllable lead time sensitive to order quantity.First,the basic model of this problem was e...The decision-making and optimization of two-echelon inventory coordination were analyzed with service level constraint and controllable lead time sensitive to order quantity.First,the basic model of this problem was established and based on relevant analysis,the original model could be transformed by minimax method.Then,the optimal order quantity and production quantity influenced by service level constraint were analyzed and the boundary of optimal order quantity and production quantity was given.According to this boundary,the effective method and tactics were put forward to solve the transformed model.In case analysis,the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory can be obtained and it was analyzed how service level constraint and safety factor influence the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory.The results show that the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory is constrained by the higher constraint between service level constraint and safety factor.展开更多
Public services provide convenient conditions for urban residents to study,work and live,and have important significance for improving the life quality of residents and improving the level of welfare.However,while Ch...Public services provide convenient conditions for urban residents to study,work and live,and have important significance for improving the life quality of residents and improving the level of welfare.However,while China’s spatial economic is heading towards agglomeration development,a large number of cities have shrunk,which has made unbalanced supply of public services between regions increasingly prominent.Based on the existing literature and the development reality,this paper analyzes the impact of urban shrinkage on the public service level from the public service supply mechanism,and discusses the heterogeneous effects of different labor shrinkage on public services.The results of the study show that urban shrinkage will inhibit the improvement of public service level,but inter-governmental competition makes the labor shrinkage of industry and service industry promote the improvement of public service level.In addition,this paper takes economic development level as a moderating variable to study the moderating effect of economic development level in the impact of urban shrinkage on public service levels.It is found that the reduction of economic development level will promote government competition and provide more public services.展开更多
The cloud service level agreement(SLA)manage the relationship between service providers and consumers in cloud computing.SLA is an integral and critical part of modern era IT vendors and communication contracts.Due to...The cloud service level agreement(SLA)manage the relationship between service providers and consumers in cloud computing.SLA is an integral and critical part of modern era IT vendors and communication contracts.Due to low cost and flexibility more and more consumers delegate their tasks to cloud providers,the SLA emerges as a key aspect between the consumers and providers.Continuous monitoring of Quality of Service(QoS)attributes is required to implement SLAs because of the complex nature of cloud communication.Many other factors,such as user reliability,satisfaction,and penalty on violations are also taken into account.Currently,there is no such policy of cloud SLA monitoring to minimize SLA violations.In this work,we have proposed a cloud SLA monitoring policy by dividing a monitoring session into two parts,for critical and non-critical parameters.The critical and non-critical parameters will be decided on the interest of the consumer during SLA negotiation.This will help to shape a new comprehensive SLA based Proactive Resource Allocation Approach(RPAA)which will monitor SLA at runtime,analyze the SLA parameters and try to find the possibility of SLA violations.We also have implemented an adaptive system for allocating cloud IT resources based on SLA violations and detection.We have defined two main components of SLA-PRAA i.e.,(a)Handler and(b)Accounting and Billing Manager.We have also described the function of both components through algorithms.The experimental results validate the performance of our proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art cloud SLA policies.展开更多
We develop a newsvender model with service level constraint for oneproduct and multi-supplier system, where the supplies are susceptible to disruption risks. We prove the convexity of the programming problem,and provi...We develop a newsvender model with service level constraint for oneproduct and multi-supplier system, where the supplies are susceptible to disruption risks. We prove the convexity of the programming problem,and provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimal order quantities. Through analysis or numerical experiments we observe the effects of the disrupt risk and the service level constraint on the optimal policy. We propose some managerial insights in managing the multi-source supply chain with disruption risks.展开更多
Based on the game theory,the service sensitivity coefficient is introduced to construct four marketing game models,which include a single flagship store,a single self-operated store,a direct sales-flagship store,and a...Based on the game theory,the service sensitivity coefficient is introduced to construct four marketing game models,which include a single flagship store,a single self-operated store,a direct sales-flagship store,and a direct sales-self-operated store,in combination with numerical analysis methods to analyze manufacturers and e-commerce platforms in different situations.The study found that the service levels affected the profit of each entity in the supply chain.The service levels of self-operated stores were higher than those of the flagship stores,and the opening of direct sales channels had a stimulating effect on the service levels of e-commerce platforms to a certain extent.In consideration of the service levels and the ability to build direct sales channels,the direct sales-flagship store marketing model is the best choice for manufacturers whereas e-commerce platforms are more inclined to open self-operated stores.However,the opening of manufacturers'direct sales channels is not necessarily beneficial to e-commerce platforms.展开更多
Mostly, cloud agreements are signed between the consumer and the provider using online click-through agreements. Several issues and conflicts exist in the negotiation of cloud agreement terms due to the legal and ambi...Mostly, cloud agreements are signed between the consumer and the provider using online click-through agreements. Several issues and conflicts exist in the negotiation of cloud agreement terms due to the legal and ambiguous terms in Service Level Agreements (SLA). Semantic knowledge applied during the formation and negotiation of SLA can overcome these issues. Cloud SLA negotiation consists of numerous activities such as formation of SLA templates, publishing it in registry, verification and validation of SLA, monitoring for violation, logging and reporting and termination. Though these activities are interleaved with each other, semantic synchronization is still lacking. To overcome this, a novel SLA life cycle using semantic knowledge to automate the cloud negotiation has been formulated. Semantic web platform using ontologies is designed, developed and evaluated. The resultant platform increases the task efficiency of the consumer and the provider during negotiation. Precision and recall scores for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) SLAs were calculated. And it reveals that applying semantic knowledge helps the extraction of meaningful answers from the cloud actors.展开更多
Background: Improving Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in health care settings is a critical prerequisite for achieving national health goals and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The World Health Organization (WHO) ...Background: Improving Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in health care settings is a critical prerequisite for achieving national health goals and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target for each United Nations member state to reach by 2030. Each member state is required to reach by 2022, 2025 and 2030 at least 60%, 80% and 100%, respectively of basic level of service of the five elements which are water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and environmental cleaning. Methods: This study aimed to evaluate and document the current state of basic water, sanitation, and hygiene services in all lower-level health care facilities in the Dar es Salaam region of Tanzania as of July 2022. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 99 public dispensaries in the Dar es Salaam region’s five councils: Ubungo, Kigamboni, Kinondoni and Temeke Municipalities, and Ilala City. The interviewee form and observational checklists were both digitalized using the Kobo tool software. The respondents were health care facility in-charges or nurse in-charges. Data were downloaded, validated, and imported to Stata version 15 for analysis. Results: The basic WASH level per JMP is far below the target in 2022. Each member state by 2022 is required to reach at least 60% of the basic level of service of each element. We found a low coverage of basic WASH in the 99 dispensaries included in this study. The basic WASH coverage was met in only 10 (10.1%) of the dispensaries, while the remaining 89 (89.9%) dispensaries fall on limited WASH services. Conclusion: This study revealed lower coverage of basic WASH services in dispensaries. An urgent need is required to improve the status of WASH in all the dispensaries and facilitate the provision of quality health care services, patient safety and reduce health care associated infections.展开更多
With the increasing scale of information technology(IT)service system,traditional thresholdbased static service level management(SLM)solution appears to be inadequate to meet current increasingly management requiremen...With the increasing scale of information technology(IT)service system,traditional thresholdbased static service level management(SLM)solution appears to be inadequate to meet current increasingly management requirement of SLM.Due to the stochastic service request rate,the random inherent failure and load surge of IT devices during service operating stage of large scaled IT system,service level objective(SLO)maintenance issue has become a realistic and important issue in dynamic SLM.This paper proposes a closed-loop feedback control mechanism to adaptively maintain SLO that service provider(SP)guaranteed at service operation stage.The mechanism can automatically tune the capacity of IT infrastructure according to service performance dispersion and reduce SLO violations.Considering that the tuning operations also affect service performance,fuzzy control is applied to alleviate the negative effect caused by tuning operations.In the dynamic SLM system that is applied with this mechanism compared with the traditional threshold-based solution,it is proved that the amount of SLO violations obviously decreases,the reliability of the service system increases relatively,and the resource utilization of IT infrastructure is optimized.展开更多
From the viewpoint of service level agreements, the transmission accuracy rate is one of critical performance indicators to assess internet quality for system managers and customers. Under the assumption that each arc...From the viewpoint of service level agreements, the transmission accuracy rate is one of critical performance indicators to assess internet quality for system managers and customers. Under the assumption that each arc＇s capacity is deterministic, the quickest path problem is to find a path sending a specific of data such that the transmission time is minimized. However, in many real-life networks such as computer networks, each arc has stochastic capacity, lead time and accuracy rate. Such a network is named a multi-state computer network. Under both assured accuracy rate and time constraints, we extend the quickest path problem to compute the probability that d units of data can be sent through multiple minimal paths simultaneously. Such a probability named system reliability is a performance indicator to provide to managers for understanding the ability of system and improvement. An efficient algorithm is proposed to evaluate the system reliability in terms of the approach of minimal paths.展开更多
An assembly-to-order system, which at the end the buffer distinguishes its assembly stages of the system from the downstream systems, is considered in this paper. The system produces semi-finished products for the dow...An assembly-to-order system, which at the end the buffer distinguishes its assembly stages of the system from the downstream systems, is considered in this paper. The system produces semi-finished products for the downstream system and starts from a basic subassembly, and at each stage a component is assembled into the corresponding subassembly. The basic subassembly, components and buffer all follow a periodic-review, order up-to-level inventory policy. The buffer holds the semi-finished products to serve the specific demand from the downstream system. The service level of the system is determined by aggregate effects of the components held at stockpiles before the buffer and the basic subassembly. In order to measure the service level of the system, some notations and assumptions are made, on which the closed form expression of the service level of the system is achieved.展开更多
Background In the context of China's aging population,meeting consumer demand is an essential way for nursing homes to fulfill social responsibilities and improve competitive advantages.However,since little is kno...Background In the context of China's aging population,meeting consumer demand is an essential way for nursing homes to fulfill social responsibilities and improve competitive advantages.However,since little is known about the elderly's service level and price choices for nursing home care,this study aims to explore the non-disabled elderly's nursing home admission intention,service level,and price choices.Methods A cross-sectional survey of 402 non-disabled respondents was conducted in three different income level cities of Zhejiang Province,in July and August 2018.Multinomial logistic regression and multiple linear regression were used to identify the determinants of admission intention,service level choice,and price choice.Results Education,residence,and number of children were significantly associated with nursing home admission intention.Compared to those with no intention,the elderly with higher income and household wealth were less likely to have conditional intentions,and those living with the family were less likely to have unconditional intentions.Compared to medium-level services,the elderly with higher monthly income(relative risk ratio[RRR]3.07,95%confidence interval[CI]:1.801 to 5.233),household wealth(RRR 5.451,95%CI:2.249 to 13.216),and age(RRR 1.528,95%CI:1.004 to 2.326)were more likely to prefer high-level services,while older adults with higher monthly income(RRR 0.516,95%CI:0.344 to 0.774),and those with pensions(RRR 0.267,95%CI:0.076 to 0.931)were less likely to prefer low-level services.The elderly's price preference increased by 398 CNY as monthly income increased by 1000 CNY,and by 270 CNY as the housing number increased by one.Having pensions increased price preference(468 CNY),whereas having health insurance decreased price preference(–690 CNY).Conclusion The elderly's intention of nursing home admission was primarily affected by sociodemographic factors,while price and service level choices were primarily affected by financial factors.Nursing homes should use the market segmentation method to provide precision nursing home care for different groups of non-disabled elderly.展开更多
On-demand availability and resource elasticity features of Cloud computing have attracted the focus of various research domains.Mobile cloud computing is one of these domains where complex computation tasks are offloa...On-demand availability and resource elasticity features of Cloud computing have attracted the focus of various research domains.Mobile cloud computing is one of these domains where complex computation tasks are offloaded to the cloud resources to augment mobile devices’cognitive capacity.However,the flexible provisioning of cloud resources is hindered by uncertain offloading workloads and significant setup time of cloud virtual machines(VMs).Furthermore,any delays at the cloud end would further aggravate the miseries of real-time tasks.To resolve these issues,this paper proposes an auto-scaling framework(ACF)that strives to maintain the quality of service(QoS)for the end users as per the service level agreement(SLA)negotiated assurance level for service availability.In addition,it also provides an innovative solution for dealing with the VM startup overheads without truncating the running tasks.Unlike the waiting cost and service cost tradeoff-based systems or threshold-rule-based systems,it does not require strict tuning in the waiting costs or in the threshold rules for enhancing the QoS.We explored the design space of the ACF system with the CloudSim simulator.The extensive sets of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the ACF system in terms of good reduction in energy dissipation at the mobile devices and improvement in the QoS.At the same time,the proposed ACF system also reduces the monetary costs of the service providers.展开更多
As the number of motor vehicles increasing rapidly, urban parking has become an intolerable problem in major cities in China. Parking facility service evaluations play an important role in urban transportation plannin...As the number of motor vehicles increasing rapidly, urban parking has become an intolerable problem in major cities in China. Parking facility service evaluations play an important role in urban transportation planning and operation. This paper introduces an LOS （level of service） concept based on a comprehensive parking study in Beijing, China. The LOS methodology is developed by an integrated evaluation model that reflects the user＇s perception of the quality of service. The method combines four important service variables, namely the ratio of peak-hour demand to capacity, average parking space occupying rate, parking cost, and circulation time, into one single index to quantitatively evaluate a parking facility＇s performance. The case studies at the end of the paper demonstrate the applicability of the method.展开更多
Urban forests are confronted with high using pressure because of the increasing demand for recreation and accessibility of these settings. For that purpose, defining and managing recreational carrying capacity is cons...Urban forests are confronted with high using pressure because of the increasing demand for recreation and accessibility of these settings. For that purpose, defining and managing recreational carrying capacity is considered as significant in ensuring ecological value’s and recreational satisfaction’s continuity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the carrying capacity of Erzurum Urban Forest with respect to Level of Service (LOS) as a new management technique that focuses on service quality and visitor satisfaction. The data were obtained by self-administered questionnaire conducted with 166 visitors on weekends and holidays during summer season of the year 2014. Data were analyzed by dimensions/indicators of recreational satisfaction and socio-demographic characteristics with intent to identify tolerance range of visitors. The contribution and relative importance of each of the indicators to the overall satisfaction were analyzed by using Ordinal Logistic Model (OLM). The results indicated that the four indicators were at the greatest degree;“distance from picnic spot to toilets” and “quantity of children’s playground facilities” were decease of overall satisfaction while “distance from picnic spot to parking” and “level of shade at picnic spot” had a positive contribution to the overall satisfaction. The outputs from these analyses were used to calculate LOS. It was revealed that the level of service (0.40) in Erzurum Urban Forest was below the moderate level. Planning and managing strategies for optimizing the LOS were developed and discussed by considering these results.展开更多
In this in-depth exploration, I delve into the complex implications and costs of cybersecurity breaches. Venturing beyond just the immediate repercussions, the research unearths both the overt and concealed long-term ...In this in-depth exploration, I delve into the complex implications and costs of cybersecurity breaches. Venturing beyond just the immediate repercussions, the research unearths both the overt and concealed long-term consequences that businesses encounter. This study integrates findings from various research, including quantitative reports, drawing upon real-world incidents faced by both small and large enterprises. This investigation emphasizes the profound intangible costs, such as trade name devaluation and potential damage to brand reputation, which can persist long after the breach. By collating insights from industry experts and a myriad of research, the study provides a comprehensive perspective on the profound, multi-dimensional impacts of cybersecurity incidents. The overarching aim is to underscore the often-underestimated scope and depth of these breaches, emphasizing the entire timeline post-incident and the urgent need for fortified preventative and reactive measures in the digital domain.展开更多
Personal cloud computing is an emerging trend in the computer industry. For a sustainable service, cloud computing services must control user access. The essential business characteristics of cloud computing are payme...Personal cloud computing is an emerging trend in the computer industry. For a sustainable service, cloud computing services must control user access. The essential business characteristics of cloud computing are payment status and service level agreement. This work proposes a novel access control method for personal cloud service business. The proposed method sets metadata, policy analysis rules, and access denying rules. Metadata define the structure of access control policies and user requirements for cloud services. The policy analysis rules are used to compare conflicts and redundancies between access control policies. The access denying rules apply policies for inhibiting inappropriate access. The ontology is a theoretical foundation of this method. In this work, ontologies for payment status, access permission, service level, and the cloud provide semantic information needed to execute rules. A scenario of personal data backup cloud service is also provided in this work. This work potentially provides cloud service providers with a convenient method of controlling user access according to changeable business and marketing strategies.展开更多
Cloud computing is providing IT services to its customer based on Service level agreements(SLAs).It is important for cloud service providers to provide reliable Quality of service(QoS)and to maintain SLAs accountabili...Cloud computing is providing IT services to its customer based on Service level agreements(SLAs).It is important for cloud service providers to provide reliable Quality of service(QoS)and to maintain SLAs accountability.Cloud service providers need to predict possible service violations before the emergence of an issue to perform remedial actions for it.Cloud users’major concerns;the factors for service reliability are based on response time,accessibility,availability,and speed.In this paper,we,therefore,experiment with the parallel mutant-Particle swarm optimization(PSO)for the detection and predictions of QoS violations in terms of response time,speed,accessibility,and availability.This paper also compares Simple-PSO and Parallel MutantPSO.In simulation results,it is observed that the proposed Parallel MutantPSO solution for cloud QoS violation prediction achieves 94%accuracy which is many accurate results and is computationally the fastest technique in comparison of conventional PSO technique.展开更多
Road Diets are far from a new technique for designers to apply to roadways. Yet after over 50 years of implementation and countless studies into their effectiveness, it is only relatively recently that the process is ...Road Diets are far from a new technique for designers to apply to roadways. Yet after over 50 years of implementation and countless studies into their effectiveness, it is only relatively recently that the process is gaining widespread recognition and implementation. Each year, more states and countries are examining potential road diets and putting them into place. Still, there remains great skepticism and opposition in many corners. In addition, cities and states may be drawing from many of the same sources in how to go about the process of a road diet and evaluate them, yet their methodology, goals, and even terminology can vary from region to region. This study analyzes the implementation of a road diet along a one-way arterial road, in Newark, Delaware. The primary aim of this analysis is to evaluate the feasibility of introducing a dedicated bicycle infrastructure to enhance local accessibility and to quantify its potential impacts on traffic flow, parking availability, and loading logistics within the vicinity. While the reduction of one lane could be perceived as a constraint on traffic management, the investigation revealed that E Main Street, the roadway analyzed, for the most part, can adequately accommodate its traffic load with a single lane. Detailed findings underscore the notable enhancement in level of service and subsequent reduction in delay times across most surveyed approaches.展开更多
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.71171049)the Scientific Innovation Research of College Graduates in Jiangsu Province(No.CXLX_0122)
文摘To investigate the optimal retail price and service level in a supply chain under consumer returns, a consumer returns model under the retailer＇s service provision is built. The optimal decision results and optimal profits are obtained in the vertical integration game and the manufacturer Stackelberg game, respectively. Through comparing the optimal profits with service provision with those of no service provision, the boundary conditions that the retailer＇s service should be provided are derived. The results show that in the manufacturer Stackelberg game, the optimal profit of the retailer and the manufacturer with service is always superior to that of a no service provision. However, in the vertical integration game, the supply chain can only benefit from the service under certain conditions. Finally, through numerical examples, the impacts of the cost for providing services and the consumer return rate on the optimal decisions are analyzed.
基金Project(71102174,71372019)supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaProject(9123028)supported by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation of China+3 种基金Project(20111101120019)supported by the Specialized Research Fund for Doctoral Program of Higher Education of ChinaProject(11JGC106)supported by the Beijing Philosophy&Social Science Foundation of ChinaProjects(NCET-10-0048,NCET-10-0043)supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of ChinaProject(2010YC1307)supported by Excellent Young Teacher in Beijing Institute of Technology of China
文摘The decision-making and optimization of two-echelon inventory coordination were analyzed with service level constraint and controllable lead time sensitive to order quantity.First,the basic model of this problem was established and based on relevant analysis,the original model could be transformed by minimax method.Then,the optimal order quantity and production quantity influenced by service level constraint were analyzed and the boundary of optimal order quantity and production quantity was given.According to this boundary,the effective method and tactics were put forward to solve the transformed model.In case analysis,the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory can be obtained and it was analyzed how service level constraint and safety factor influence the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory.The results show that the optimal expected total cost of two-echelon inventory is constrained by the higher constraint between service level constraint and safety factor.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.71804021)。
文摘Public services provide convenient conditions for urban residents to study,work and live,and have important significance for improving the life quality of residents and improving the level of welfare.However,while China’s spatial economic is heading towards agglomeration development,a large number of cities have shrunk,which has made unbalanced supply of public services between regions increasingly prominent.Based on the existing literature and the development reality,this paper analyzes the impact of urban shrinkage on the public service level from the public service supply mechanism,and discusses the heterogeneous effects of different labor shrinkage on public services.The results of the study show that urban shrinkage will inhibit the improvement of public service level,but inter-governmental competition makes the labor shrinkage of industry and service industry promote the improvement of public service level.In addition,this paper takes economic development level as a moderating variable to study the moderating effect of economic development level in the impact of urban shrinkage on public service levels.It is found that the reduction of economic development level will promote government competition and provide more public services.
文摘The cloud service level agreement(SLA)manage the relationship between service providers and consumers in cloud computing.SLA is an integral and critical part of modern era IT vendors and communication contracts.Due to low cost and flexibility more and more consumers delegate their tasks to cloud providers,the SLA emerges as a key aspect between the consumers and providers.Continuous monitoring of Quality of Service(QoS)attributes is required to implement SLAs because of the complex nature of cloud communication.Many other factors,such as user reliability,satisfaction,and penalty on violations are also taken into account.Currently,there is no such policy of cloud SLA monitoring to minimize SLA violations.In this work,we have proposed a cloud SLA monitoring policy by dividing a monitoring session into two parts,for critical and non-critical parameters.The critical and non-critical parameters will be decided on the interest of the consumer during SLA negotiation.This will help to shape a new comprehensive SLA based Proactive Resource Allocation Approach(RPAA)which will monitor SLA at runtime,analyze the SLA parameters and try to find the possibility of SLA violations.We also have implemented an adaptive system for allocating cloud IT resources based on SLA violations and detection.We have defined two main components of SLA-PRAA i.e.,(a)Handler and(b)Accounting and Billing Manager.We have also described the function of both components through algorithms.The experimental results validate the performance of our proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art cloud SLA policies.
文摘We develop a newsvender model with service level constraint for oneproduct and multi-supplier system, where the supplies are susceptible to disruption risks. We prove the convexity of the programming problem,and provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimal order quantities. Through analysis or numerical experiments we observe the effects of the disrupt risk and the service level constraint on the optimal policy. We propose some managerial insights in managing the multi-source supply chain with disruption risks.
文摘Based on the game theory,the service sensitivity coefficient is introduced to construct four marketing game models,which include a single flagship store,a single self-operated store,a direct sales-flagship store,and a direct sales-self-operated store,in combination with numerical analysis methods to analyze manufacturers and e-commerce platforms in different situations.The study found that the service levels affected the profit of each entity in the supply chain.The service levels of self-operated stores were higher than those of the flagship stores,and the opening of direct sales channels had a stimulating effect on the service levels of e-commerce platforms to a certain extent.In consideration of the service levels and the ability to build direct sales channels,the direct sales-flagship store marketing model is the best choice for manufacturers whereas e-commerce platforms are more inclined to open self-operated stores.However,the opening of manufacturers'direct sales channels is not necessarily beneficial to e-commerce platforms.
文摘Mostly, cloud agreements are signed between the consumer and the provider using online click-through agreements. Several issues and conflicts exist in the negotiation of cloud agreement terms due to the legal and ambiguous terms in Service Level Agreements (SLA). Semantic knowledge applied during the formation and negotiation of SLA can overcome these issues. Cloud SLA negotiation consists of numerous activities such as formation of SLA templates, publishing it in registry, verification and validation of SLA, monitoring for violation, logging and reporting and termination. Though these activities are interleaved with each other, semantic synchronization is still lacking. To overcome this, a novel SLA life cycle using semantic knowledge to automate the cloud negotiation has been formulated. Semantic web platform using ontologies is designed, developed and evaluated. The resultant platform increases the task efficiency of the consumer and the provider during negotiation. Precision and recall scores for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) SLAs were calculated. And it reveals that applying semantic knowledge helps the extraction of meaningful answers from the cloud actors.
文摘Background: Improving Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in health care settings is a critical prerequisite for achieving national health goals and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target for each United Nations member state to reach by 2030. Each member state is required to reach by 2022, 2025 and 2030 at least 60%, 80% and 100%, respectively of basic level of service of the five elements which are water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and environmental cleaning. Methods: This study aimed to evaluate and document the current state of basic water, sanitation, and hygiene services in all lower-level health care facilities in the Dar es Salaam region of Tanzania as of July 2022. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 99 public dispensaries in the Dar es Salaam region’s five councils: Ubungo, Kigamboni, Kinondoni and Temeke Municipalities, and Ilala City. The interviewee form and observational checklists were both digitalized using the Kobo tool software. The respondents were health care facility in-charges or nurse in-charges. Data were downloaded, validated, and imported to Stata version 15 for analysis. Results: The basic WASH level per JMP is far below the target in 2022. Each member state by 2022 is required to reach at least 60% of the basic level of service of each element. We found a low coverage of basic WASH in the 99 dispensaries included in this study. The basic WASH coverage was met in only 10 (10.1%) of the dispensaries, while the remaining 89 (89.9%) dispensaries fall on limited WASH services. Conclusion: This study revealed lower coverage of basic WASH services in dispensaries. An urgent need is required to improve the status of WASH in all the dispensaries and facilitate the provision of quality health care services, patient safety and reduce health care associated infections.
基金Acknowledgements This work was partly supported by the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China(No.2007CB310703)the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.60821001)the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China(No.2008AA01Z201).
文摘With the increasing scale of information technology(IT)service system,traditional thresholdbased static service level management(SLM)solution appears to be inadequate to meet current increasingly management requirement of SLM.Due to the stochastic service request rate,the random inherent failure and load surge of IT devices during service operating stage of large scaled IT system,service level objective(SLO)maintenance issue has become a realistic and important issue in dynamic SLM.This paper proposes a closed-loop feedback control mechanism to adaptively maintain SLO that service provider(SP)guaranteed at service operation stage.The mechanism can automatically tune the capacity of IT infrastructure according to service performance dispersion and reduce SLO violations.Considering that the tuning operations also affect service performance,fuzzy control is applied to alleviate the negative effect caused by tuning operations.In the dynamic SLM system that is applied with this mechanism compared with the traditional threshold-based solution,it is proved that the amount of SLO violations obviously decreases,the reliability of the service system increases relatively,and the resource utilization of IT infrastructure is optimized.
基金supported in part by the National Science Council,Taiwan,China,under Grant No.NSC 101-2628-E-011-005-MY3
文摘From the viewpoint of service level agreements, the transmission accuracy rate is one of critical performance indicators to assess internet quality for system managers and customers. Under the assumption that each arc＇s capacity is deterministic, the quickest path problem is to find a path sending a specific of data such that the transmission time is minimized. However, in many real-life networks such as computer networks, each arc has stochastic capacity, lead time and accuracy rate. Such a network is named a multi-state computer network. Under both assured accuracy rate and time constraints, we extend the quickest path problem to compute the probability that d units of data can be sent through multiple minimal paths simultaneously. Such a probability named system reliability is a performance indicator to provide to managers for understanding the ability of system and improvement. An efficient algorithm is proposed to evaluate the system reliability in terms of the approach of minimal paths.
基金This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 70332001).
文摘An assembly-to-order system, which at the end the buffer distinguishes its assembly stages of the system from the downstream systems, is considered in this paper. The system produces semi-finished products for the downstream system and starts from a basic subassembly, and at each stage a component is assembled into the corresponding subassembly. The basic subassembly, components and buffer all follow a periodic-review, order up-to-level inventory policy. The buffer holds the semi-finished products to serve the specific demand from the downstream system. The service level of the system is determined by aggregate effects of the components held at stockpiles before the buffer and the basic subassembly. In order to measure the service level of the system, some notations and assumptions are made, on which the closed form expression of the service level of the system is achieved.
基金This work was supported by the China Ministry of Education Project of Humanities and Social Sciences(Grant No.18YJC630100)the Project of Philosophy and Social Science of Hangzhou City of China(Grant No.2018JD50).
文摘Background In the context of China's aging population,meeting consumer demand is an essential way for nursing homes to fulfill social responsibilities and improve competitive advantages.However,since little is known about the elderly's service level and price choices for nursing home care,this study aims to explore the non-disabled elderly's nursing home admission intention,service level,and price choices.Methods A cross-sectional survey of 402 non-disabled respondents was conducted in three different income level cities of Zhejiang Province,in July and August 2018.Multinomial logistic regression and multiple linear regression were used to identify the determinants of admission intention,service level choice,and price choice.Results Education,residence,and number of children were significantly associated with nursing home admission intention.Compared to those with no intention,the elderly with higher income and household wealth were less likely to have conditional intentions,and those living with the family were less likely to have unconditional intentions.Compared to medium-level services,the elderly with higher monthly income(relative risk ratio[RRR]3.07,95%confidence interval[CI]:1.801 to 5.233),household wealth(RRR 5.451,95%CI:2.249 to 13.216),and age(RRR 1.528,95%CI:1.004 to 2.326)were more likely to prefer high-level services,while older adults with higher monthly income(RRR 0.516,95%CI:0.344 to 0.774),and those with pensions(RRR 0.267,95%CI:0.076 to 0.931)were less likely to prefer low-level services.The elderly's price preference increased by 398 CNY as monthly income increased by 1000 CNY,and by 270 CNY as the housing number increased by one.Having pensions increased price preference(468 CNY),whereas having health insurance decreased price preference(–690 CNY).Conclusion The elderly's intention of nursing home admission was primarily affected by sociodemographic factors,while price and service level choices were primarily affected by financial factors.Nursing homes should use the market segmentation method to provide precision nursing home care for different groups of non-disabled elderly.
基金This research work is funded by TEQIP-III under Assistantship Head:1.3.2.2 in PFMS dated 29.06.2021.
文摘On-demand availability and resource elasticity features of Cloud computing have attracted the focus of various research domains.Mobile cloud computing is one of these domains where complex computation tasks are offloaded to the cloud resources to augment mobile devices’cognitive capacity.However,the flexible provisioning of cloud resources is hindered by uncertain offloading workloads and significant setup time of cloud virtual machines(VMs).Furthermore,any delays at the cloud end would further aggravate the miseries of real-time tasks.To resolve these issues,this paper proposes an auto-scaling framework(ACF)that strives to maintain the quality of service(QoS)for the end users as per the service level agreement(SLA)negotiated assurance level for service availability.In addition,it also provides an innovative solution for dealing with the VM startup overheads without truncating the running tasks.Unlike the waiting cost and service cost tradeoff-based systems or threshold-rule-based systems,it does not require strict tuning in the waiting costs or in the threshold rules for enhancing the QoS.We explored the design space of the ACF system with the CloudSim simulator.The extensive sets of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the ACF system in terms of good reduction in energy dissipation at the mobile devices and improvement in the QoS.At the same time,the proposed ACF system also reduces the monetary costs of the service providers.
文摘As the number of motor vehicles increasing rapidly, urban parking has become an intolerable problem in major cities in China. Parking facility service evaluations play an important role in urban transportation planning and operation. This paper introduces an LOS （level of service） concept based on a comprehensive parking study in Beijing, China. The LOS methodology is developed by an integrated evaluation model that reflects the user＇s perception of the quality of service. The method combines four important service variables, namely the ratio of peak-hour demand to capacity, average parking space occupying rate, parking cost, and circulation time, into one single index to quantitatively evaluate a parking facility＇s performance. The case studies at the end of the paper demonstrate the applicability of the method.
文摘Urban forests are confronted with high using pressure because of the increasing demand for recreation and accessibility of these settings. For that purpose, defining and managing recreational carrying capacity is considered as significant in ensuring ecological value’s and recreational satisfaction’s continuity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the carrying capacity of Erzurum Urban Forest with respect to Level of Service (LOS) as a new management technique that focuses on service quality and visitor satisfaction. The data were obtained by self-administered questionnaire conducted with 166 visitors on weekends and holidays during summer season of the year 2014. Data were analyzed by dimensions/indicators of recreational satisfaction and socio-demographic characteristics with intent to identify tolerance range of visitors. The contribution and relative importance of each of the indicators to the overall satisfaction were analyzed by using Ordinal Logistic Model (OLM). The results indicated that the four indicators were at the greatest degree;“distance from picnic spot to toilets” and “quantity of children’s playground facilities” were decease of overall satisfaction while “distance from picnic spot to parking” and “level of shade at picnic spot” had a positive contribution to the overall satisfaction. The outputs from these analyses were used to calculate LOS. It was revealed that the level of service (0.40) in Erzurum Urban Forest was below the moderate level. Planning and managing strategies for optimizing the LOS were developed and discussed by considering these results.
文摘In this in-depth exploration, I delve into the complex implications and costs of cybersecurity breaches. Venturing beyond just the immediate repercussions, the research unearths both the overt and concealed long-term consequences that businesses encounter. This study integrates findings from various research, including quantitative reports, drawing upon real-world incidents faced by both small and large enterprises. This investigation emphasizes the profound intangible costs, such as trade name devaluation and potential damage to brand reputation, which can persist long after the breach. By collating insights from industry experts and a myriad of research, the study provides a comprehensive perspective on the profound, multi-dimensional impacts of cybersecurity incidents. The overarching aim is to underscore the often-underestimated scope and depth of these breaches, emphasizing the entire timeline post-incident and the urgent need for fortified preventative and reactive measures in the digital domain.
文摘Personal cloud computing is an emerging trend in the computer industry. For a sustainable service, cloud computing services must control user access. The essential business characteristics of cloud computing are payment status and service level agreement. This work proposes a novel access control method for personal cloud service business. The proposed method sets metadata, policy analysis rules, and access denying rules. Metadata define the structure of access control policies and user requirements for cloud services. The policy analysis rules are used to compare conflicts and redundancies between access control policies. The access denying rules apply policies for inhibiting inappropriate access. The ontology is a theoretical foundation of this method. In this work, ontologies for payment status, access permission, service level, and the cloud provide semantic information needed to execute rules. A scenario of personal data backup cloud service is also provided in this work. This work potentially provides cloud service providers with a convenient method of controlling user access according to changeable business and marketing strategies.
文摘Cloud computing is providing IT services to its customer based on Service level agreements(SLAs).It is important for cloud service providers to provide reliable Quality of service(QoS)and to maintain SLAs accountability.Cloud service providers need to predict possible service violations before the emergence of an issue to perform remedial actions for it.Cloud users’major concerns;the factors for service reliability are based on response time,accessibility,availability,and speed.In this paper,we,therefore,experiment with the parallel mutant-Particle swarm optimization(PSO)for the detection and predictions of QoS violations in terms of response time,speed,accessibility,and availability.This paper also compares Simple-PSO and Parallel MutantPSO.In simulation results,it is observed that the proposed Parallel MutantPSO solution for cloud QoS violation prediction achieves 94%accuracy which is many accurate results and is computationally the fastest technique in comparison of conventional PSO technique.
文摘Road Diets are far from a new technique for designers to apply to roadways. Yet after over 50 years of implementation and countless studies into their effectiveness, it is only relatively recently that the process is gaining widespread recognition and implementation. Each year, more states and countries are examining potential road diets and putting them into place. Still, there remains great skepticism and opposition in many corners. In addition, cities and states may be drawing from many of the same sources in how to go about the process of a road diet and evaluate them, yet their methodology, goals, and even terminology can vary from region to region. This study analyzes the implementation of a road diet along a one-way arterial road, in Newark, Delaware. The primary aim of this analysis is to evaluate the feasibility of introducing a dedicated bicycle infrastructure to enhance local accessibility and to quantify its potential impacts on traffic flow, parking availability, and loading logistics within the vicinity. While the reduction of one lane could be perceived as a constraint on traffic management, the investigation revealed that E Main Street, the roadway analyzed, for the most part, can adequately accommodate its traffic load with a single lane. Detailed findings underscore the notable enhancement in level of service and subsequent reduction in delay times across most surveyed approaches.
