Search Results (33)

In the context of urban extreme weather events, the efficacy of the “emergency language” employed by governments and public institutions on social media in effectively reaching and guiding the public in a timely manner necessitates a quantifiable evaluation framework. An indicator system was constructed on the basis of Hovland’s persuasion theory. This system comprised five input characteristics (word count/structural clarity, first/second-person perspective, emotional appeal, evidence and framing, and media format) along with three output indicators (reposts, comments, and likes). A data envelopment analysis (DEA) model that is oriented towards output was employed, with disseminators being categorized into four distinct decision-making units: central mainstream media, other government media, local government media, and other media. It is imperative to note that the outputs were subjected to a process of normalization through the implementation of a scale factor. The data were sourced from the Weibo platform within the specified time window, which was from 10:00 on 24 July 2025, to 12:00 on 19 August 2025, with a sample size of 744. The findings revealed substantial disparities in technical efficiency across different disseminator types. A subset of local government media demonstrated a technical efficiency ≈ 1.00 yet low scale efficiency. Posts exhibiting clear structures, actionable points, and accompanying images or videos achieved higher cross-efficiency scores. It is therefore evident that the proposed DEA model provides a benchmark for maximizing dissemination effectiveness under given information characteristics. It is recommended that posting frequencies be maintained at consistent intervals during periods of heightened activity, that a template structure be adopted in accordance with the “fact–action–assistance channel” model, and that the proportion of rich media content be augmented. Full article

The healthcare industry is one application for data envelopment analysis (DEA) that can have significant benefits for standardizing health service delivery. This narrative review focuses on the application of DEA in emergency departments (EDs) and the management of emergency conditions such as acute ischemic stroke and acute myocardial infarction (AMI). This includes benchmarking the proportion of patients that receive treatment for these emergency conditions. The most frequent primary areas of study motivating work in DEA, EDs and management of emergency conditions including acute management of stroke are sorted into five distinct clusters in this study: (1) using basic DEA models for efficiency analysis in EDs, i.e., applying variable return to scale (VRS), or constant return to scale (CRS) to ED operations; (2) combining advanced and basic DEA approaches in EDs, i.e., applying super-efficiency with basic DEA or advanced DEA approaches such as additive model (ADD) and slack-based measurement (SBM) to clarify the dynamic aspects of ED efficiency throughout the duration of a first-aid program for AMI or heart attack; (3) applying DEA time series models in EDs like the early use of thrombolysis and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in AMI treatment, and endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) in acute ischemic stroke treatment, i.e., using window analysis and Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to benchmark the performance of EDs over time; (4) integrating other approaches with DEA in EDs, i.e., combining simulations, machine learning (ML), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDM) by DEA to reduce patient waiting times, and futile transfers; and (5) applying various DEA models for the management of acute ischemic stroke, i.e., using DEA to increase the number of eligible acute ischemic stroke patients receiving EVT and other medical ischemic stroke treatment in the form of thrombolysis (alteplase and now Tenecteplase). We thoroughly assess the methodological basis of the papers, offering detailed explanations regarding the applied models, selected inputs and outputs, and all relevant methodologies. In conclusion, we explore several ways to enhance DEA’s status, transforming it from a mere technical application into a strong methodology that can be utilized by healthcare managers and decision-makers. Full article

Oil and gas refineries play a key role in the economies of countries by providing energy to various industrial sectors. A lack of an integrated efficiency analysis procedure, in many industries, could significantly impact the planning of sustainable industrial structures and operations. It also can influence company performance and competitiveness, and, eventually, negatively compromise the fuel supply process. All these problems taken together might negatively impact the environment and sustainable practices. Studies of efficiency in the oil industry can help to reduce its environmental and social impact and to achieve long-term green transition goals. In this work, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method was used to present improvement goals for production units, based on efficiency indexes. Furthermore, the DEA window analysis model, integrated with the Malmquist index and cluster analysis, was used to evaluate efficiency and the factors that explain the differences between refineries in a number of timeframes. A numerical analysis was carried out with data collected from 12 Brazilian oil refineries between 2012 and 2020, using DEA window analysis, cluster analysis, and the Malmquist index. Full article

Nowadays, one of the main challenges facing production management is how to enhance the performance of manufacturing processes by utilizing asymmetry input and output data. This research, therefore, developed a framework for window analysis in data envelopment analysis (DEA) for evaluating the overall technical efficiencies from asymmetry dynamic input and output data. The framework was applied to assess the technical (TE), managerial (PTE), and scale (SE) efficiencies of a blowing machine under three fuzzy input variables (planned production quantity, number of defectives, and idle time) and a fuzzy output variable (actual or target production quantity). The efficiency measures were then evaluated for all DMUs at low (L), middle (M), and high (H) data levels. The obtained optimal fuzzy efficiencies were then transformed into a single crisp optimal efficiency. The results showed that all seven DMUs of the blowing machine were technically inefficient. The input and output slacks were estimated and utilized to determine the necessary improvement actions. Improvement results revealed that the optimal TE, PTE, and SE were significantly improved, which may result in significant savings in production and quality costs. In conclusion, the proposed framework is effective in improving the efficiency of the blowing process and can be utilized for efficiency assessment in a wide range of applications. Full article

Finding solutions to the challenges posed by China’s urbanization is an urgent, pressing global concern. An effective approach for evaluating the ecological well-being performance (EWP) is a guideline for improvement. Most previous studies have focused on the evaluation of EWP efficiency without considering the effectiveness of the EWP, which may mislead the practice of improving the EWP. This paper proposed a bi-dimensional effectiveness and efficiency perspective evaluation of the EWP for pursuing sustainable development goals. The Ecological Consumption Index and the Human Development Index are selected to evaluate indicators for the EWP. The entropy method, line-weighted method, and four-quadrant evaluation framework are used to disclose EWP effectiveness. A Super SBM model and the DEA moving split-windows analysis method are applied to calculate the EWP efficiency. Data from 30 provinces in China for the period of 1997 to 2019 have been collected for empirical study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The main findings of the case study are: (1) The ECI and HDI increased during the study period, while the annual average value of the EWP efficiency among 30 provinces in China has decreased with fluctuation; (2) provinces in southern China and Chongqing have a low level of ECI and demonstrate good performance in the HDI; and (3) most developed regions, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, have not presented the best EWPs. The results of this study can provide a basis for understanding the EWP in China so as to formulate targeted sustainable-development strategies. Full article

The development of industrial parks plays an important role in the economic development of developed and developing countries, but it has recently been affected by globalization and the rise of environmental protection awareness, as 2050 net-zero carbon emissions are being pursued by the world’s major economies. To make their development more sustainable, this study evaluates the operational management performance of industrial parks in Taiwan from the perspective of ESG, to inform future industrial development strategies and policy research. First, 61 industrial parks managed by the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) were selected and underwent a fuzzy Delphi expert questionnaire to screen the ESG-oriented performance indicators; performance was evaluated through the data envelopment analysis (DEA) undesirable outputs model and the window analysis method. The results indicate that the New Taipei Industrial Park performed best in terms of ESG, followed by the Feng-Shan and Anping industrial parks, with the worst performance from the Mei-Lun, Yun-Lin Island, and Hu-Pin industrial parks. Regarding factors affecting the performance of operation management, a Mann–Whitney U test showed that the northern industrial parks performed significantly better than those in the eastern region, those in the municipalities significantly outperformed the nonmunicipalities, and the industrial parks with more clustered industries and those in areas with convenient transportation performed substantially better. Finally, this study summarizes the important issues facing Taiwan’s industrial parks, and it makes policy recommendations, including promoting ESG sustainable development objectives in their operation and management, as well as increasing the investment of government resources and the clustering of industries and transportation. Full article

As the country with the world’s largest fishing capacity, China suffers from the depletion of living marine resources, mainly caused by overexploitation, the effects of which also distinctly influence global sustainable utilization of marine resources and maritime order. The country has implemented a series of measures to control its national fishing capacity, notably since the late 1980s, and strongly expressed its responsibility and commitment to sustainable resource utilization in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). This study quantitatively assesses the effect of China’s fishing capacity management efforts by examining changes in the fishing capacity of marine capture fisheries by region from 1979 to 2019 in Chinese waters, based on window data envelopment analysis (DEA), and further proposes directions for policy adjustment. The results suggest that China’s coastal and offshore fisheries are still subject to overcapacity of approximately 20%, despite major corrective efforts invested in past decades. This implies that China needs to further improve its fishing capacity management and set clear objectives, as determined by the availability of resources and regional features. Global fisheries management’s focus is shifting from input to output control, but overcapacity still threatens the sustainable use of fisheries resources in China and poses obstacles to other systems. Full article

The design of cooperative applications combining several unmanned aerial and aquatic vehicles is now possible thanks to the considerable advancements in wireless communication technology and the low production costs for small, unmanned vehicles. For example, the information delivered over the air instead of inside an optical fiber causes it to be far simpler for an eavesdropper to intercept and improperly change the information. This article thoroughly analyzes the cybersecurity industry’s efficiency in addressing the rapidly expanding requirement to incorporate compelling security features into wireless communication systems. In this research, we used a combination of DEA window analysis with the Malmquist index approach to assess the efficiency of the cybersecurity industry. We used input and output factors utilizing financial data from 2017–2020 sources from a US market. It was found that U1—Synopsys and U9—Fortinet exhibited the best performances when relating Malmquist and DEA window analysis. By evaluating ten big companies in the cybersecurity industry, we indicate that U2—Palo Alto Networks and U6—BlackBerry Ltd. companies needed significant improvements and that four other companies were generally more efficient. The findings of this study provide decision-makers a clear image and it will be the first study to evaluate and predict the performance of cyber security organizations, providing a valuable reference for future research. Full article

South Korea and China are located adjacent to Korea’s West and South Seas and China’s Yellow, Bohai, and East China Seas. These seas are semi-closed and are inhabited by many transboundary species. Korea and China signed a Fisheries Agreement in 2000, pledging cooperation for conservation in the Yellow and East China Seas. Discussions for collaborative fisheries management continued; however, competitive fishing has been occurring between them. Moreover, Korean and Chinese fisheries suffer overcapacity, deterioration, and decreased production. Accordingly, they strengthened the fisheries management of their own seas; however, issues continue to exist. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop more effective measures by evaluating and refining the existing system; fisheries management mainly focuses on fishing capacity control. Window-DEA is useful for analyzing the trend of efficiency over time and has been widely used as an evaluation tool for fisheries management measures, particularly fishing capacity. We comprehensively assessed the dynamic fishing capacity of the fishing ground shared by Korea and China per coastal region using Window-DEA for its sustainable development. Our results show the shared fishing ground has suffered from long-term overcapacity, which is expanding further with the intensification of fishing competition between the two countries, implying that the regime currently employed has inherent drawbacks because most naturally inhabiting fish species are transboundary and characterized by active ecological interactions. Our study proposes to set a Korea–China joint fisheries management regime. Full article

In Vietnam, foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important capital flow for sustainable socio-economic growth and international economic integration, contributing to the supplementation of capital, modern technology, management and business capacity, and the ability to organize and participate in the global supply chain. In this paper, a novel hybrid model combining simple average combination of SMA (Simple Moving Average), IFTS (Improved Fuzzy Time Series), and DEA window analysis is proposed to evaluate FDI attractiveness in Vietnam. Five crucial indicators, including labor force (LF), gross regional domestic product (GDP), the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), FDI by capital, and FDI by cases, were employed to explore their impacts on the efficiency of attracting FDI into provinces, for sustainable economic growth. First, the future values of indicators for 2021–2022 were predicted based on collected historical data from 2012 to 2020. Then, the DEA window was employed to evaluate the efficiency of the provinces in terms of their FDI attractiveness during the period 2012–2022. From the results, Binh Duong, Ho Chi Minh, and Vung Tau were found to be the most efficient localities at attracting FDI, while An Giang, Tuyen Quang, and Can Tho had the lowest FDI attractiveness indexes. The proposed model was proven to be effective in identifying both the provinces which should be targeted for further improvement, and the provinces which should serve as role models for other provinces. In this direction, this paper can serve as a significant guideline for decision-makers and the Government to improve FDI attractiveness, with solutions to attract FDI in a sustainable way. Full article

This article aims to review, analyze, and classify the published research applications of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) window analysis technique. The number of filtered articles included in the study is 109, retrieved from 79 journals in the web of science (WoS) database during the period 1996–2019. The papers are classified into 15 application areas: energy and environment, transportation, banking, tourism, manufacturing, healthcare, power, agriculture, education, finance, petroleum, sport, communication, water, and miscellaneous. Moreover, we present descriptive statistics related to the growth of publications over time, the journals publishing the articles, keyword terms used, length of articles, and authorship analysis (including institutional and country affiliations). To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first survey reviewing the literature of the DEA window analysis applications in the 15 areas mentioned in the paper. Full article

Maintaining low ecological consumption and high well-being while making economic progress and thus achieving sustainable development is a significant issue facing the world today. Ecological well-being performance (EWP) is one indicator that tracks this progress. Although EWP has been typically assessed at the national, provincial and urban levels, investigations into EWP units in the Great Lakes region are lacking. This study applied the two-stage super-efficiency slack-based measure (Super-NSBM) model and DEA window analysis to evaluate the EWP and sub-stage efficiency in the Poyang Lake (largest freshwater lake in China) area and analyzed its spatial differences at the local level. Redundancy analysis was conducted to explore the EWP improvement paths of different counties in the Poyang Lake region and Dagum’s Gini coefficient was applied to clarify the policy priorities of coordinated regional development. Results showed that the EWP of the Poyang Lake area presents an improving trend from 2007 to 2019, although the overall level is still low. The Poyang Lake area mainly faces the incongruity of ecological and economic development, which is the main reason for the low overall level of EWP. Excessive resource input and severe environmental pollution are common in most counties, but the focus of measures to improve EWP differs from county to county. The expansion of spatial differences in eco-economic efficiency leads to the spatial differences of EWP in the Poyang Lake area being still apparent at the local level. Reducing inter-basin disparities while alerting the widening of intra-basin differences is the policy focus for the future coordinated development of the Poyang Lake area. Full article

The faster development of the agriculture sector has led to the excessive waste of agriculture resources and that development causes serious damage to the ecological environment. So, ecological agriculture has become an important topic to understand the relationship between agriculture and the environment. This study tries to examine the impact of agricultural fiscal expenditures on agricultural ecological efficiency. In the first step, the researcher found the ecological efficiency of agriculture. The second step tries to examine the agricultural fiscal expenditure impact on agriculture’s ecological efficiency. The study used data from 30 provinces of China from 1998 to 2018. For the empirical results, the researcher used the super-efficiency DEA window analysis in the first step. Moreover, we used the spatial Durbin model in the second step. The results of the study revealed that China’s agricultural ecological efficiency shows a downward trend to an upward trend. The efficiency value of the eastern region is higher than the central region’s efficiency value, which is lower than the national average level. The western region’s efficiency value is equal to the national average level, and the differences between regions vary with the time period. The nuclear density of agricultural eco-efficiency in China showed a trend of “left-shift rising—double peaks—right-shifting decline”. In terms of space, China’s agricultural ecological efficiency has a significant positive spatial spillover effect, especially in the eastern and western regions. The results of the spatial Durbin model revealed that agricultural fiscal expenditures have a significant role in promoting China’s agricultural ecological efficiency. While agricultural governance has shown a significant spatial crowd-out effect. Therefore, it is proposed to promote the development of inter-provincial agricultural cooperation, and the formulation of agricultural financial support strategies should be green-oriented and should consider regional heterogeneity. Full article

The goal of the current research is to propose the credibility-based fuzzy window data envelopment analysis (CFWDEA) approach as a novel method for the dynamic performance evaluation of hospitals during different periods under data ambiguity and linguistic variables. To reach this goal, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, a window analysis technique, a possibilistic programming approach, credibility theory, and chance-constrained programming (CCP) are employed. In addition, the applicability and efficacy of the proposed CFWDEA approach are illustrated utilizing a real data set to evaluate the performance of hospitals in the USA. It should be explained that three inputs including the number of beds, labor-related expenses, patient care supplies, and other expenses as well as three outputs including the number of outpatient department visits, the number of inpatient department admissions, and overall patient satisfaction level, are considered for the dynamic performance appraisal of hospitals. The experimental results show the usefulness of the CFWDEA method for the evaluation and ranking of hospitals in the presence of fuzzy data, linguistic variables, and epistemic uncertainty. Full article

Improving the poor sustainability of the construction industry requires long-term actions, especially in developing countries such as China. Regional sustainability assessment plays an indispensable role, contributing to a better understanding of the state of development in various regions. However, few studies have focused on the overall sustainability of regional construction industries, and occupational safety is generally ignored. To fill these gaps, an input-output system is established to evaluate regional sustainable performance of the construction industry (SPCI), which is made to include occupational safety by introducing the number of fatalities as an undesirable output. An evaluation model is constructed by combining window analysis with a super-slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (windows-super-SBM DEA). The SPCI in China’s 30 provinces from 2010 to 2017 is dynamically evaluated, and regional differences are further analyzed, with eight regions being defined. The results indicate that (1) the overall SPCI in China has fluctuated smoothly around a slight downward trend. By comparison, the integration of occupational safety refreshes the relative performance of most provinces; (2) dividing China into eight regions presents more detailed information because of those regions’ smaller coverage areas, and more attention should be given to the northeast, northwest, Middle Yellow River region and east coast because of the decrease in the SPCI; and (3) vigorously developing of the construction industry does not necessarily result in a large number of byproducts if the relevant policy is sufficiently strong. The findings of this study are conducive to rationally allocating resources and formulating targeted policies. Full article