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Achieving disaster responsiveness under conditions of dysfunctional humanitarian environment: The role of coopetition and disaster preparedness
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonIn recent years, the increasing frequency and complexity of disasters—often occurring in environments marked by weak governance, limited resources, and fragmented coordination—have underscored the need for more resilient and adaptive humanitarian systems. In such settings, traditional competitive and siloed approaches among humanitarian organisations have proven inadequate. As a result, coopetition, which blends cooperation and competition, has emerged as a strategic model for enhancing disaster management outcomes. This study investigates the role of coopetition among humanitarian organisations in shaping disaster preparedness and disaster responsiveness within the context of a dysfunctional humanitarian environment, using Ghana as a case study. Guided by Cooperation Theory and Co-creation Theory, the research conceptualises preparedness and responsiveness as outcomes of interactive stakeholder engagements, where value is generated through shared goals, resource integration, and mutual influence, even in the face of institutional constraints. Data were collected through structured questionnaires administered to 235 professionals across governmental and non-governmental disaster management organisations. The analysis employed descriptive statistics and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to examine direct, mediated, and moderated relationships among the key constructs. The findings indicate that coopetition significantly enhances both disaster preparedness and responsiveness, with preparedness partially mediating the effect of coopetition on responsiveness. Moreover, the study finds that the dysfunctional humanitarian environment significantly moderates the relationship between coopetition and preparedness, highlighting how contextual barriers such as corruption, fragmented coordination, and resource mismanagement can shape collaborative outcomes. These insights affirm the relevance of co-creation and cooperation theories in explaining how inter-organisational collaboration under competitive pressures can foster adaptive capacity in disaster-prone and institutionally fragile contexts. The study advances theoretical understanding of coopetition in disaster management and provides practical guidance for humanitarian actors. Key recommendations include leveraging cooperative frameworks to build shared early warning systems, institutionalising trust-based governance mechanisms, and implementing transparent resource management strategies. The research offers valuable implications for policymakers, humanitarian practitioners, and organisational leaders seeking to strengthen disaster response systems in complex and dysfunctional environments.Ghana Scholarship Secretariat (Scholsec
The role of constraints in sport technology development for improving perceptual-motor learning and coaching, design, and commercialization outcomes: An ecological dynamics approach to transdisciplinary innovation in start-ups
Get PDFSupplementary Material is available online at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17479541241309559#supplementary-materials under a CC BY license. .In sport there are negative aspects of technology use and its innovation that includes concerns about reducing athlete skill diversity. To address this, reconceptualization of the product design process and the position of business models during technology innovation is needed. This paper explores ways in which theories of skill acquisition can be integrated with product design and entrepreneurship, using the interdisciplinary research base on creativity to bridge these domains. Intersecting concepts used to explain creativity are used to evaluate how shared constraints under which members of transdisciplinary teams interact might enhance coordination, communication, and integration of skills during technology innovation. A key gap that we address is how to conceptualize the role that the commercial perspective should have on technology innovation in sport, and the position of users (athletes, coaches, and sport scientists) therein. We propose using ‘sport technology incubators’ as vehicles to integrate business, design, and motor learning frameworks to examine empirical questions surrounding ways of optimizing sport technology innovation while sustainably supporting athlete skill in contexts of training and competition.The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
Holoscopic 3D Imaging Systems: A Review of History, Recent Advances and Future Directions
Get PDFAs the demand for high-quality visual experiences continues to grow, advanced imaging technologies offering higher realism and immersion are being increasingly integrated into various fields. Among them, glasses-free 3D imaging has gained significant attention for enhancing user experience without the need for wearable equipment. Holoscopic 3D imaging systems, known for their capability to reconstruct true volumetric images and provide natural depth perception, have emerged as a promising direction within this domain. Originating from early 20th-century optical theory, holoscopic imaging has evolved in response to diversified application scenarios and rapid advancements in micro-optics and computational imaging. This paper presents a representative historical overview of the development of holoscopic 3D systems, their unique features compared to other glasses-free 3D technologies, and their expanding presence in these applications. By analyzing representative use cases across sectors such as healthcare, education, cultural heritage, and media entertainment, this review offers a broader and more detailed perspective on the deployment of holoscopic 3D systems. Furthermore, this paper discusses current technical challenges and outlines future research directions, with a particular focus on the transformative potential of holoscopic 3D in the creative and entertainment industries. This study aims to provide both theoretical grounding and practical insights to support the next generation of holoscopic 3D imaging technologies.This research was funded by The Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication Excellent Project Fund, grant number: Ea202417 and Ea202421. Scientific Research Platform Construction Project of Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication, grant number: KYCPT202511 and the China National Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Fund, grant number: 202410015024
A phenomenological exploration of employee engagement: Processes and practices
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis study explores employee engagement within government organizations in the Kingdom of Bahrain, focusing on how government employees understand and experience engagement in their workplace. By reviewing existing literature and integrating theories such as Social Exchange Theory, Job-Resources Demand Theory, Task-Based Theory, and Psychological-Based Theory, this research identifies gaps in current knowledge about employee engagement in government settings.
Through in-depth interviews with employees from a specific ministry, and subsequent analysis using interpretative phenomenological and thematic methods, the study uncovers two key dimensions of employee engagement: the Personal Psychological Dimension and the Environmental/Cultural Dimension. These dimensions represent the core elements and practices that shape and sustain employee engagement in the workplace.
The findings highlight that effective engagement practices encompass both individual psychological factors and broader organizational culture. This study contributes to the development of a competency framework for understanding and enhancing employee engagement in the government context, offering valuable insights into the processes and practices that drive employee satisfaction and performance
Contactless Technology for Conveying Light and Fragile Objects
Get PDFProject Overview. Project Objective: Demonstration Video FE Modelling Testing Impedance Analysis 7 Transportation 8 Publications • Theproposedresearch aims to support the realisation of a new non-contact smart conveying technology using squeeze-film phenomenon to levitate and move objects. Justification: • Thedevelopmentfor industrial level applications requires better understanding of the underlying fundamental mechanisms, optimisation of potential effects and control over conveyance.The research reported in this paper is supported by the Peter Jost Foundation grant ”Contactless Technology for Conveying Light and Fragile Objects”
Line spectral estimation with unlimited sensing
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Data will be made available on request.In the paper, we consider the line spectral estimation problem in an unlimited sensing framework (USF), where a modulo analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is employed to fold the input signal back into a bounded interval before quantization. Such an operation is mathematically equivalent to taking the modulo of the input signal with respect to the interval. To overcome the noise sensitivity of higher-order difference-based methods, we explore the properties of the first-order difference of modulo samples, and develop two line spectral estimation algorithms based on the first-order difference, which are robust against noise. Specifically, we show that, with a high probability, the first-order difference of the original samples is equivalent to that of the modulo samples. By utilizing this property, line spectral estimation is solved via a robust sparse signal recovery approach. The second algorithms is built on our finding that, with a sufficiently high sampling rate, the first-order difference of the original samples can be decomposed as a sum of the first-order difference of the modulo samples and a sequence whose elements are confined to three possible values. This decomposition enables us to formulate the line spectral estimation problem as a mixed integer linear program that can be efficiently solved. Simulation results show that both proposed methods are robust against noise and achieve a significant performance improvement over the higher-order difference-based method. methods.This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 62103083. The work of H. Li was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. CCF-2316865, ECCS-2212940, and ECCS-2332534
An Effective Technique of Zero-Day Attack Detection in the Internet of Things Network Based on the Conventional Spike Neural Network Learning Method
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.The fast evolution of cyberattacks in the Internet of Things (IoT) area, presents new security challenges concerning Zero Day (ZD) attacks, due to the growth of both numbers and the diversity of new cyberattacks. Furthermore, Intrusion Detection System (IDSs) relying on a dataset of historical or signature-based datasets often perform poorly in ZD detection. A new technique for detecting zero-day (ZD) attacks in IoT-based Conventional Spiking Neural Networks (CSNN), termed ZD-CSNN, is proposed. The model comprises three key levels: (1) Data Pre-processing, in this level a thorough cleaning process is applied to the CIC IoT Dataset 2023, which contains both malicious and the most recent attack patterns in network traffic, ensuring data quality for analysis, (2) CSNN-based Detection, where outlier identification is conducted by comparing two dataset groups (the normal set and the attack set) within the same time period to enhance anomaly detection and (3) In the evaluation level, the detection performance of the proposed model is assessed by comparing it with two benchmark models: ZD-Deep Learning (ZD-DL) and ZD- Convolutional Neural Network (ZD-CNN). The implementation results demonstrate that ZD- CSNN achieves superior accuracy in detecting zero-day attacks compared to both ZD-DL and ZD-CNN.This research was supported by the Brunel University London
Caste and labour migration
No full textNepal Labour Migration Report 2024’s silence on caste reinforces the myth that migration is casteless.https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/12/21/caste-and-labour-migratio
Integrating historical archives and geospatial data to revise flood estimation equations for Philippine rivers
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Data are available via the University of Glasgow Enlighten Research Data repository, “Flood estimation for ungauged catchments in the Philippines: Annual Maximum Flow (AMAX) and catchment properties” (https://doi.org/10.5525/gla.researchdata.1666, Hoey et al., 2024).Supplement:
The supplement related to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-6181-2025-supplement.Flood magnitude and frequency estimation are essential for the design of structural and nature-based flood risk management interventions and water resources planning. However, the global geography of hydrological observations is uneven, with many regions, especially in the Global South, having spatially and temporally sparse data that limit the choice of statistical methods for flood estimation. To address this data scarcity, we pool all available annual maximum flood data for the Philippines to estimate flood magnitudes at the national scale. Available river discharge data were collected from publications covering 842 sites, with data spanning from 1908 to 2018. Of these, 466 sites met criteria for reliable estimation of the annual maximum flood. Using the index flood approach, a range of controls was assessed at both national and regional scales using modern land cover and rainfall data sets, as well as geospatial catchment characteristics. Predictive equations for 2 to 100 year recurrence interval floods using only catchment area as a predictor have R2≤0.59. Adding a rainfall variable, the median annual maximum 1 d rainfall, increases R2 to between 0.56 for Q100 and 0.66 for Q2. Very few other topographic or land use variables were significant when added to multiple regression equations. Relatively low R2 values in flood predictions are typical of studies from tropical regions. Although the Philippines exhibits regional climate variability, residuals from national predictive equations show limited spatial structure, and region-specific equations do not significantly outperform the national equations. The predictive equations are suitable for use as design equations in ungauged catchments for the Philippines, but statistical uncertainties must be reported. Our approach demonstrates how combining individually short historical records, after careful screening and exclusion of unreliable data, can generate large data sets that can produce consistent results. Extension of continuous flood records by continuous and rated monitoring is required to reduce uncertainties. However, the national-scale consistency in our results suggests that extrapolation from a small number of carefully selected catchments could provide nationally reliable predictive equations with reduced uncertainties.This research was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (grant no. NE/S003312); the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development; and the Scottish Funding Council Global Challenges Research Fund. Pamela Louise M. Tolentino received a DOST – Science Education Institute and British Council studentship award
Enzymatic dynamics and chemical transformation in Dendrocalamus sinicus biodeterioration by typical filamentous fungi
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The authors do not have permission to share data.Supplementary material is available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926669025019417#sec0105 .Dendrocalamus sinicus, the world's largest bamboo species, is valued for its high strength and rapid growth, finding extensive application in construction, furniture, and composite materials. However, mold-induced deterioration impairs the visual appearance, chemical stability, and structural integrity, thereby compromising service performance and lifespan. This study aimed to elucidate the multi-scale deterioration mechanisms of Dendrocalamus sinicus under colonization by Aspergillus niger, Penicillium citrinum, and Trichoderma viride. It was found that the deterioration efficiency depended critically on the spatiotemporal overlap between lignin-degrading enzyme and hydrolase activities. Hemicellulose was the primary and preferentially attacked component by all three molds. Distinct enzymatic pathways drive mold-specific cellulose-lignin biodeterioration. Aspergillus niger employed an inward-to-outward cellulose-prioritized pathway, Penicillium citrinum executed a surface-oriented lignin-prioritized degradation, and simultaneously decomposed cellulose and lignin. Microstructural erosion followed a continuous three-stage pattern commencing with colonization and consumption of readily decomposable substances, progressing to enzymatic deconstruction of cell walls, causing a sharp increase in porosity, and culminating in structural collapse. These mechanistic insights provide novel targets for developing species-tailored preservation technologies, which are essential for extending the service life of bamboo products and promoting the value-added conversion of bamboo resources within a circular economy framework.The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Regional Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32260362), the Joint project of Yunnan Agricultural Basic Research (202401BD070001–025), the Foreign Experts Project of Yunnan Province (202505AO120007), the Reserve Talent Project for Young and Middle-aged Academic and Technical Leaders of Yunnan Province (202405AC350033), and the 111 Project (D21027)
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