Hochschule Konstanz University of Applied Sciences

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    2319 research outputs found

    Federated Digital Platforms: Value Chain Integration for Sustainable Infrastructure Planning and Delivery

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    Twenty-first century infrastructure needs to respond to changing demographics, becoming climate neutral, resilient, and economically affordable, while remaining a driver for development and shared prosperity. However, the infrastructure sector remains one of the least innovative and digitalized, plagued by delays, cost overruns, and benefit shortfalls. The authors assessed trends and barriers in the planning and delivery of infrastructure based on secondary research, qualitative interviews with internationally leading experts, and expert workshops. The analysis concludes that the root-cause of the industry’s problems is the prevailing fragmentation of the infrastructure value chain and a lacking long-term vision for infrastructure. To help overcome these challenges, an integration of the value chain is needed. The authors propose that this could be achieved through a use-case-based, as well as vision and governance-driven creation of federated digital platforms applied to infrastructure projects and outline a concept. Digital platforms enable full-lifecycle participation and responsible governance guided by a shared infrastructure vision. This paper has contributed as policy recommendation to the Group of Twenty (G20) in 2021

    Application of Copernicus Data for Climate-Relevant Urban Planning Using the Example of Water, Heat, and Vegetation

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    Specific climate adaptation and resilience measures can be efficiently designed and implemented at regional and local levels. Climate and environmental databases are critical for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and for efficiently planning and implementing appropriate adaptation measures. Available federated and distributed databases can serve as necessary starting points for municipalities to identify needs, prioritize resources, and allocate investments, taking into account often tight budget constraints. High-quality geospatial, climate, and environmental data are now broadly available and remote sensing data, e.g., Copernicus services, will be critical. There are forward-looking approaches to use these datasets to derive forecasts for optimizing urban planning processes for local governments. On the municipal level, however, the existing data have only been used to a limited extent. There are no adequate tools for urban planning with which remote sensing data can be merged and meaningfully combined with local data and further processed and applied in municipal planning and decision-making. Therefore, our project CoKLIMAx aims at the development of new digital products, advanced urban services, and procedures, such as the development of practical technical tools that capture different remote sensing and in-situ data sets for validation and further processing. CoKLIMAx will be used to develop a scalable toolbox for urban planning to increase climate resilience. Focus areas of the project will be water (e.g., soil sealing, stormwater drainage, retention, and flood protection), urban (micro)climate (e.g., heat islands and air flows), and vegetation (e.g., greening strategy, vegetation monitoring/vitality). To this end, new digital process structures will be embedded in local government to enable better policy decisions for the future

    Digitale Prozessoptimierung in Einkaufsbereichen

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    Im Zuge zunehmender Effizienzbestrebungen in produzierenden Unternehmen spielt auch die Optimierung von indirekten Wertschöpfungsprozessen eine immer größere Rolle. Neben einer ansteigenden Aufgabenvielfalt stellt ein parallel wachsender Kostendruck eine doppelte Herausforderung dar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Einkaufsbereiche entsprechender Organisationen, welche an der Schnittstelle zwischen der unternehmensinternen und -externen Wertschöpfungskette operieren und an dieser einen essenziellen Beitrag auch im Sinne des Informationsflusses zur Unterstützung eines integrierten Supply Chain Managements darstellen. Um diesen zu begegnen, ist es notwendig, die relevanten Kernprozesse der Einkaufsbereiche stetig im Blick zu halten und Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten zu identifizieren und umzusetzen. Dieser Beitrag will zu einem Überblick für die Prozessoptimierung mithilfe des Einsatzes digitaler Technologien speziell in Einkaufsbereichen beitragen. Es werden die Spezifika des Einkaufs vorgestellt, relevante Kernaufgaben beschrieben und exemplarisch technologische Ansätze zur Prozessoptimierung anhand von Process Mining, Robotic Process Automation und künstlicher Intelligenz aufgezeigt

    Digitales Plattformmodell am Beispiel eines Blechbearbeitungsunternehmens

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    Das produzierende Gewerbe in Deutschland erlebt aufgrund von Technologiewandel im Automobilbau, der Anpassung von Lieferketten und der digitalen Transformation grundlegende Veränderungen. Diese als Chance für künftiges Wachstum zu begreifen ist essenziell und eine zwingende Voraussetzung für den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Anhand eines konkreten Unternehmensbeispiels werden hierfür zentrale Aspekte für Transformation eines mittelständischen produzierenden Blechbearbeitungsunternehmens hin zu einem netzwerkbasierten Geschäftsmodell betrachtet. Auf Basis der Analyse von Referenzbeispielen webbasierter Vertriebsplattformen in der Blechbearbeitung werden erfolgsrelevante Aspekte für die Ausgestaltung und die Umsetzung für ein Onlineplattformmodell beschrieben. Hierbei wird exemplarisch dargelegt, wie mittels digitaler Vertriebsplattformen in Verbindung mit digitalen Auftragsmanagementprozessen neue Wege für Wachstum ermöglicht werden können

    Characterization, perturbation, and interval property of certain sign regular matrices

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    The class of square matrices of order n having a negative determinant and all their minors up to order n-1 nonnegative is considered. A characterization of these matrices is presented which provides an easy test based on the Cauchon algorithm for their recognition. Furthermore, the maximum allowable perturbation of the entry in position (2,2) such that the perturbed matrix remains in this class is given. Finally, it is shown that all matrices lying between two matrices of this class with respect to the checkerboard ordering are contained in this class, too

    Applying Text Analytics to Business Plans in New Technology-Based Firm Survival Research

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    Text produced by entrepreneurs represents a data source in entrepreneurship research on venture performance and fund-raising success. Manual text coding of single variables is increasingly assisted or replaced by computer-aided text analysis. Yet, for the development of prediction models with several variables, such dictionary-based text analysis methods are less suitable. Natural language processing techniques are an alternative; however, the implementation is more complex and requires substantial programming skills. More work is required to understand how text analytics can advance entrepreneurship research. This study hence experiments with different artificial intelligence methods rooted in Natural Language Processing and deep learning. It uses 766 business plans to train a model for the automated measurement of transaction relations, a construct which is an indicator for new technology-based firm survival. Empirical findings show that the accuracy of construct measurement can be significantly increased with automated methods and improves with larger amounts of training data. Language complexity sets limits to the precision of automated construct measurement though. We therefore recommend a hybrid approach: making use of the inherent advantages of combining automated with human coding until the amount of training data is sufficiently large to substitute the human coding completely. The study provides insights into the applicability of different text analytics methods in entrepreneurship research and points at future research potential

    Economic Diversification and Sustainable Development of GCC Countries

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    For decades now, exports and import have grown more rapidly than domestic production. This is a strong indication that, besides the rapid growth of foreign trade in final goods, trade in intermediates is becoming increasingly important. For this reason, an input-output ap-proach is more appropriate for any analysis of diversification than a traditional approach based purely on macroeconomic data. This article analyses economic diversification in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using data from input-output tables which are an integral part of the national accounts. We compare the performance of the GCC economies with that of a reference case, Norway, which is considered to have successfully diversified its economy despite having a large oil resource base. It also assesses these countries’ relative progress on sustainable development using a measure of the World Bank, adjusted net savings, which evaluates the true rate of savings in an economy after accounting for investments in physical and human capital, de-pletion of natural resources, and damage from environmental pollution. The article concludes that GCC countries have, contrary to expectation, collectively per-formed relatively well on diversification, but their performance on sustainable development varies

    Constant-Weight Convolutional Codes for Index Modulation

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    The encoding of antenna patterns with generalized spatial modulation as well as other index modulation techniques require w-out-of-n encoding where all binary vectors of length n have the same weight w. This constant-weight property cannot be obtained by conventional linear coding schemes. In this work, we propose a new class of constant-weight codes that result from the concatenation of convolutional codes with constant-weight block codes. These constant-weight convolutional codes are nonlinear binary trellis codes that can be decoded with the Viterbi algorithm. Some constructed constant-weight convolutional codes are optimum free distance codes. Simulation results demonstrate that the decoding performance with Viterbi decoding is close to the performance of the best-known linear codes. Similarly, simulation results for spatial modulation with a simple on-off keying show a significant coding gain with the proposed coded index modulation scheme

    Numerical Modeling and Characterization of Drying Process of Agricultural Products

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    The main goal of this work was to experimentally characterize the hot air-drying process of agricultural products (Potato, Carrot, Tomato) and verify it with numerical solutions at single layer and industrial scale dryer using Comsol Multiphysics® 5.3. Input parameters at single layer dryer effects on quality attributes were examined. Two strategies of drying were applied on batch dryer to examine the input effects on quality attributes. Constant input parameters strategy was designed by using central composite design formulation and optimized by Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The second strategy was applied for further optimization of the selected region by using square wave profile of the air temperature and relative humidity. Similarly, numerical method for single layer dryer, unsteady-state partial differential equations have been solved by means of the Finite Elements Method coupled to the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE). Also, for batch dryer, the mechanistic mathematical models of coupled heat and mass transfer were developed and solved as solid porous moist material. With this work, the process of convective drying of agricultural products could be optimized. Furthermore, important knowledge about the basic mechanisms of the drying process was found and implemented in the numerical models.Das Hauptziel dieser Arbeit war es, die Konvektionstrocknung von landwirtschaftlichen Produkten (Kartoffel, Möhre, Tomate) experimentell zu untersuchen und die Ergebnisse mit numerischen Lösungen zu vergleichen, die unter Verwendung von Comsol Multiphysics® 5.3 erzeugt wurden. Dabei sollte sowohl der Trocknungsprozess in dünnen Schichten als auch der in einem Trockner in industriellem Maßstab berücksichtigt werden. Beim Einzelschichttrockner wurde der Einfluss der Trocknungsbedingungen, also der Eingangspara¬meter des Trocknungsprozesses, auf die Qualitätsmerkmale ‚Farbe‘ und ‚Schrumpfung‘ sowie ‚Gehalt an Vitamin C‘ bestimmt. Beim Trockner im industriellen Maßstab wurden die Veränderung der Qualitätsmerkmale bei zwei unterschiedlichen Trocknungsstrategien untersucht: Zum einen kam ein Trocknungsprozess mit konstanten Eingangsgrößen zur Anwendung. Ziel war hier eine Optimierung dieser Werte hinsichtlich der Veränderung der Qualitätsmerkmale mit Hilfe der „Response Surface Technology” (RSM). Zum anderen wurde der zeitliche Verlauf der Trocknungsparameter ‚Temperatur‘ und ‚Feuchte‘ abschnittsweise so verändert, dass sich Profile in Form eines Rechteckes ergaben. Mit dieser Arbeit konnte der Prozess der konvektiven Trocknung von landwirtschaftlichen Produkten optimiert werden. Darüber hinaus wurden wichtige Erkenntnisse über die grundlegenden Mechanismen des Trocknungsprozesses gefunden und in den numerischen Modellen umgesetzt

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