Search Results (237)

The mining industry is facing increasing pressure to improve operational safety, environmental performance, and resource efficiency while adapting to rapid technological change. In this context, the concept of Mining Industry 5.0 is emerging as an extension of Industry 4.0, promoting the integration of human-centric approaches with advanced digital technologies in mining systems. This paper proposes a 6S framework—Safety, Security, Sustainability, Sensitivity, Service, and Smartness—conceptualized as a Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSS)-based model that co-optimizes these six dimensions and supports adaptive and human-centric mining operations across the entire value chain. The study is based on a structured literature review and a comparative analysis of digital transformation practices in related sectors, including manufacturing, logistics, and energy, to identify solutions applicable to mining environments. The key enabling technologies, including artificial intelligence, digital twins, cyber-physical systems, and intelligent automation, are evaluated as particularly relevant to mining operations for improving workplace safety, process efficiency, and environmental management. The paper addresses challenges, including high investment costs, limited digital competencies, data interoperability issues, and cybersecurity concerns in mining practice. The results support the development of a roadmap for Mining Industry 5.0 by integrating the proposed 6S framework with technical and organizational operations in the mining sector. Full article

Background and Objectives: Artificial intelligence (AI) tools promise efficiency gains in oncology, yet adoption depends on economic factors that remain under-characterized in Eastern European health systems. We quantified AI economic literacy, cost-effectiveness perceptions, reimbursement readiness, and return-on-investment (ROI) confidence among Romanian oncology professionals; we described candidate economic adoption profiles and examined whether sector was associated with the strength of the indirect association between literacy and willingness to invest via ROI confidence. Materials and Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional survey (N = 108) was conducted between September 2025 and April 2026 at “Victor Babes” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara and affiliated oncology services. Participants completed a 25-item AI Economic Literacy Index (AIELI; 0–25) plus 1–5 scales for ROI confidence, willingness to invest, perceived financial barriers, cost-effectiveness perception, and adoption intention. Analyses used Spearman correlations, multivariable logistic regression, k-means clustering, and covariate-adjusted moderated mediation with 5000 bootstrap resamples. Results: Mean age was 41.3 ± 10.7 years; 58.3% were female. AIELI was moderate (13.7 ± 4.6/25). Familiarity favored cost-effectiveness analysis (59.3%) over AI-specific reimbursement codes (16.7%). High willingness to invest occurred in 48.1% and was independently associated with higher AIELI (aOR 1.78 per +1 SD; 95% CI 1.17–2.71), higher ROI confidence (aOR 1.93; 1.24–3.02), lower perceived financial barriers (aOR 0.58; 0.37–0.91), and prior AI training (aOR 2.34; 1.13–4.86). Three exploratory profiles were identified: Cost-Conscious Adopters (n = 43), Reimbursement-Cautious (n = 37), and Budget-Constrained Skeptics (n = 28). Moderated-mediation models were consistent with a sector-conditional indirect association, largest in private clinics (β = 0.193; 95% CI 0.087–0.318) and weakest in public hospitals (β = 0.072; 0.014–0.158). Conclusions: In this exploratory cross-sectional sample, AI economic literacy and ROI confidence were associated with willingness to invest in oncology AI, interpreted as stated support for investment rather than an enacted procurement decision, since many respondents lacked formal budgetary authority. Because the design cannot establish temporal ordering, whether sector-tailored capability-building and reimbursement clarity would increase adoption remains a hypothesis for prospective evaluation. Full article

Digital twins are becoming vital decision-making infrastructures across critical infrastructure sectors such as smart city urban services, transportation, energy, and healthcare. As digital twins become autonomous and gain real-time intervention capabilities, their governance becomes increasingly essential. Yet existing governance mechanisms remain largely procedural: they emphasize compliance without operationalizing the cognitive practices required to question assumptions, detect algorithmic harms, or support legitimate multi-actor deliberation. Drawing on a systematic scoping review, this study synthesizes the literature on digital twin autonomy, algorithmic risks, epistemic foundations, and governance mechanisms. The review reveals a fundamental gap: current governance mechanisms lack institutionalized cognitive capacities for continuous validation, proactive detection of emerging harms, and structured multi-stakeholder deliberation. This gap is corroborated by a limited but growing body of empirical studies on governance in deployed DT settings. To address this gap, the paper proposes the skeptical intelligence framework, developed through design science research. The framework integrates three cognitive functions: validation, detection, and deliberation supported by operational principles, governance artifacts, and distributed accountability roles. The framework advances digital twin governance beyond compliance toward a model rooted in critical epistemology, reflexivity, transparency, and democratic legitimacy. Consistent with design science research, the framework is delivered and evaluated at design time; empirical implementation and outcome evaluation are planned across multi-actor digital twin infrastructure contexts, including smart city governance, port logistics, and energy networks, where DT-mediated decisions redistribute opportunities and risks across heterogeneous stakeholders. Empirical validation in an operational setting is planned as the next phase of this research. Full article

Maritime routes ensure connectivity between nations, carrying a vast flow of goods across borders, while ports serve as the critical junctions within this network, managing a wide spectrum of commodities from raw materials to finished goods. Ports also generate employment across numerous sectors and underpin a broad range of allied industries. A seaport is a maritime facility equipped with docks, cranes, and storage infrastructure for international trade, where ships load and unload cargo, containers, and passengers. Key functions of seaports include customs processing, warehousing, and vessel services, with major global hubs such as Shanghai, PSA Singapore, DP World, and Rotterdam handling immense volumes of cargo each year. In contrast, Bangladesh’s ports, Chittagong, Mongla, and Payra, play a vital role in sustaining regional commerce. Today, ports are widely recognized as essential capital infrastructure and prime movers of economic activity. Smart ports are automated facilities that leverage advanced digital technologies, including sensors, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), augmented reality (AR), digital twins, the Internet of Things (IoT), and various automation systems, to optimize overall operational efficiency. These tools streamline cargo movement while embedding sustainable practices to protect the environment. Beyond operational gains, smart ports deliver faster, more advanced services to all stakeholders involved in port operations, including shipping companies, customs agencies, local communities, and other relevant parties. Renewable energy sources, electric vehicle charging stations, onshore power supply, and smart logistics infrastructure are among the defining sustainability features of smart ports in the present-day context. This study examines the current status and future development trajectory of Bangladesh’s sea ports in relation to the broader global imperative toward smart port transformation. Full article

Lithium, as a Li-ion battery constituent, is pivotal for the transition to clean energy. Western Australia (WA) has become a global leader in hard-rock lithium mining, realising 10-fold growth from 2010 to 2024 and with royalty receipts to the WA government surpassing $1 billion AUD. Given the sector’s economic significance, we analyse key performance metrics including resource/reserve build, production growth, cumulative capital deployed, capital intensity, and development timelines for the new-generation lithium mines. Several enabling factors supported the rapid build-out of capacity. These include an efficient mine permitting process to manage environmental impacts and competing land use issues, a stable royalty regime, energy and logistics infrastructure, availability of a skilled workforce, and mining services capability. Contrary to the standard industry narrative that new mineral projects are constrained by legislative delay, the new lithium projects achieved development timelines of 7 years or less from first resource to production. This has broader implications for critical mineral projects where success is likely to depend less on strategic classification and more on project quality, financing, and regional capability. Full article

Background: Effective HIV prevention in South Africa requires implementing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) service delivery options responsive to adolescents and young people (AYP) with diverse characteristics and needs. We aimed to identify characteristics associated with AYP’s choice of PrEP initiation setting. Methods: Fast-PrEP is an ongoing phase 4 HIV prevention programme in Cape Town, South Africa. Oral PrEP (TDF/FTC) is offered to AYP (15–29 years) within sexual and reproductive health services from four community-based mobile clinics and 12 public primary healthcare facilities. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression models evaluated sociodemographic, behavioural, and clinical factors associated with PrEP initiation from mobile clinics and public health facilities in 13,807 AYP between Aug’22 and Dec’24. Results: Most AYP (70.7%; n = 9760) initiated PrEP from mobile clinics. AYP with more complex healthcare needs, such as pregnancy, parenthood, known sero-different relationships, or currently having STI symptoms, were significantly more likely to use the public health facilities. Both male and female AYP initiating PrEP at mobile clinics had four times the odds of moderate-to-severe depression. Previous PrEP experience was not associated with the choice of PrEP service delivery platform. Conclusions: Our results indicate that offering community-based PrEP alongside public sector facilities increases the reach of a diverse group of AYP who may benefit from PrEP. Full article

Long-term influent flow projection governs the sizing of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), yet conventional practice estimates future flows using per capita generation rates and coefficients assumed to remain constant over time, neglecting the fact that, in urbanizing catchments, the fraction of generated wastewater that reaches the treatment plant increases as the sewer network expands and densifies. This study develops and validates an explicit-structure model that separates demographic wastewater generation from hydraulic conveyance, disaggregates the service area into fully contributing and partially contributing sectors, and introduces a time-dependent transport coefficient, $k\left(t\right)$. Applied to the La Chira WWTP (Lima, Peru; approximately 2.6 million inhabitants), the model was evaluated through leave-one-year-out cross-validation against both a static transport model and an aggregated formulation. The proposed formulation consistently outperformed the alternatives in out-of-sample prediction (Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency of 0.965 and mean absolute percentage error of 1.88%, compared with 0.825 and 0.799 for the benchmark models), providing falsifiable evidence of the value of spatial disaggregation and time-varying transport representation. The transport coefficient increases from 0.491 in 2017 to 0.813 in 2040 under the linear reference specification, with a logistic alternative—statistically indistinguishable in calibration—bounding the projection from below; a formal Shapley decomposition attributes 44% of the projected flow increase to this coefficient. The observed flow rate in 2025 (7.341 m³ s⁻¹) provides an external validation point, predicted with a relative error of 0.7%. Mean influent flow is projected to reach 10.12 m³ s⁻¹ by 2040 (95% CI: 8.55–11.69), representing a 61% increase above the design average flow and approaching the design peak capacity (11.3 m³ s⁻¹), with an exceedance probability of the annual mean of approximately 5%. These results indicate a progressive approach to hydraulic saturation within the planning horizon. The proposed framework is robust to alternative per capita generation assumptions, mechanistically grounded, interpretable, and transferable to sanitation systems characterized by evolving coverage and network connectivity. Full article

Business model adjustment is a critical capability for microenterprises operating in import-dependent industries within emerging markets, and is increasingly recognised in the sustainable business model literature as a mechanism through which firms build economic resilience under resource constraints and volatile operating conditions. This paper examines how a specialty coffee microenterprise in Almaty, Kazakhstan, has adjusted its business model to create, deliver and capture value in a non-producing, landlocked economy characterised by rapid demand growth, currency volatility and high import dependency. The study answers two research questions regarding this case using Osterwalder and Pigneur’s business model canvas as the main analytical framework: (1) How did the case company set up its business model to create, deliver, and capture value? (2) In the context of Kazakhstani specialty coffee roasting, what possibilities and challenges influenced this business model? The analysis combines secondary market data with qualitative evidence from a semi-structured interview conducted in autumn 2025 with the founder of a nine-employee microenterprise that has evolved from a mobile coffee bar into a hybrid B2B–B2C roaster, café operator and e-commerce subscription service. Although Kazakhstan is not a coffee-producing country, its retail coffee market expanded from USD 326.71 million in 2019 to an estimated USD 554.5 million in 2025, with the fresh-coffee share rising from approximately 30% to 37%. The interview account describes a business model centred on locally roasted, traceable specialty coffee delivered fresh to a young, urban customer base, supported by educational and community-building activities. As reported by the founder, the enterprise faces structural challenges including exposure to international green-coffee price spikes—such as the record nominal highs of 354.32 US cents/lb reached in February 2025—currency-related cost volatility, logistical complexity across Eurasian transit routes and constrained access to growth-stage financing. Because the evidence base is a single founder interview combined with secondary market data, the paper does not independently verify the firm’s resilience, viability or financial outcomes. The findings are presented in the form of analytical generalisations—that is, generalisations relating to theoretical conclusions drawn from this specific case, rather than from a broader set of companies—which illustrate, based on the founder’s own account, how this micro-enterprise pursued a targeted, phased adaptation of its business model rather than a radical overhaul; the study does not independently verify resulting sustainability or resilience outcomes. As this is a case study, the present analysis does not allow us to determine the extent to which this model is representative of other micro-enterprises involved in coffee production, or of other non-manufacturing sectors in developing economies; the contribution of this study is empirical and contextual rather than theoretical: it extends the scope of business model analysis to under-researched geographical and institutional contexts and lays the groundwork for future comparative studies. Full article

As small and medium enterprise organisations (SMEs) grapple with competing demands, decision-making is affected when faced with cost and regulatory uncertainties in response to sustainability obligations. Organisations adapt differently, focusing their resources to the most efficient use to optimise resources and enhance productivity. Qualitative interviews were carried out with 22 SME leaders spanning multiple sectors, including manufacturing, retail, services, construction, logistics, and hospitality, enabling examination of cross-sector variation while maintaining a shared regional context. The interviews lasted 45–65 min and captured managerial cognition, tacit knowledge, and informal strategic processes. The analysis reveals that SMEs do not respond uniformly to sustainability pressures. Instead, their responses are shaped by the interaction between cost pressures and regulatory uncertainty, producing distinct but overlapping strategic patterns. Three dominant mechanisms emerged across cases: cost filtering, temporal disruption under regulatory uncertainty, and strategic response variation. These mechanisms collectively explain how SMEs balance economic viability with environmental performance under constraint. The paper contributes to debates on sustainability transitions, resilience, and SME sustainability transitioning and growth strategies by identifying pathways that balance economic viability with environmental performance. Full article

In mountainous wildfire response, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) emergency services depend on rapidly deployable and spatially reliable vertiports. However, existing site-selection methods insufficiently support continuous UAV operations in topographically complex terrain. This study develops a geographic information system (GIS)-based framework integrating Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) and k-medoids clustering to shift UAV vertiport planning from individual site suitability ranking to networked deployment. The framework organizes feasible vertiport candidates into sector-based support staging nodes for coordinated multi-node wildfire response. Applied to the Xichang wildfire, the selected vertiport candidates reduced the mean first-arrival time by up to 71.4% compared with existing fire stations. Under differentiated reload-time assumptions, the staging node support mode further reduced the mean sortie cycle time by up to 56.85% and increased the mean delivery capacity from 17 to 42 fire-extinguishing bombs per UAV per hour. These results indicate that combining vertiport suitability evaluation with staging node-based logistical coordination improves the spatial organization and operational efficiency of UAV-enabled wildfire suppression. The framework offers decision support for networked UAV vertiport and staging node deployment in mountainous wildfire response. Full article

Artificial intelligence, digital payments and platform-based services are reshaping the operating conditions of Africa’s informal economy and micro-enterprise sector. While mobile money, digital marketplaces, app-mediated logistics and algorithmic scoring systems are commonly presented as instruments of financial inclusion and enterprise modernisation, their effects on informal traders remain uneven, conditional and under-governed. This systematic review synthesises recent peer-reviewed evidence on AI-mediated digitalisation pathways for informal and micro-enterprises in Africa, with particular attention to mobile money, platform payments, app-based logistics, digital credit, algorithmic management and platform governance. Following PRISMA-informed systematic review procedures, this review analyses 60 peer-reviewed, DOI-bearing articles published between April 2022 and June 2026 through a mechanism–outcome synthesis approach. The final corpus was selected through database searching, duplicate removal, title-and-abstract screening, full-text eligibility assessment, quality appraisal and mechanism–outcome coding. The findings show that digitalisation can expand market access, reduce cash-handling risks, create transaction histories, strengthen customer reach, improve operational continuity and support household resilience. However, the same digital infrastructures may also intensify livelihood vulnerability through opaque scoring, unexplained account freezes, fee shocks, exclusionary verification procedures, algorithmic ranking losses, data extraction and weak dispute-resolution mechanisms. The review therefore argues that informal enterprise digitalisation should not be understood only as a technology adoption issue, but as a socio-technical systems governance challenge. The article contributes a governance-and-risk framework linking local infrastructure, platform and payment design, AI (artificial intelligence) mediation, adoption conditions and livelihood outcomes. It further identifies minimum policy and design protections required for inclusive and resilient participation, including transparent fees, proportionate verification, human appeal channels, explainable restrictions, data-use consent, timely settlement and contingency mechanisms during digital outages or erroneous flags. The review concludes that sustainable digital inclusion for African informal micro-enterprises depends not merely on access to digital tools, but on the fairness, transparency, recoverability and accountability of the systems through which traders participate. Full article

Background: Logistics and supply chain resilience research typically assumes access to formal infrastructure, including contracted fleets, warehouses, inventory systems, and institutionalized contingency mechanisms. Yet many micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in emerging economies operate without these resources, leaving their logistics practices underexplored. This study examines how informal MSEs sustain operational continuity and recover from disruptions through tacit relational support. Methods: Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was applied to 400 informal MSEs in Ecuador’s manufacturing, services, and commerce sectors. Tacit network structure was measured using four function-specific name generators covering transport, storage, contingency management, and informal financing. Operational resilience was assessed through order fulfillment rate and recovery time after disruption. Results: No relational-support domain was individually necessary for resilience. Six sufficient configurations were identified, with consistency values from 0.817 to 0.978 and solution coverage of 0.433. One configuration combined contingency-management and informal-financing ties despite low membership in transport and storage networks, indicating a compensatory relational pathway. Conclusions: Tacit personal networks are better understood as context-dependent relational logistics support systems than as substitutes for formal infrastructure. The findings offer bounded, exploratory configurational evidence on selected pathways associated with operational resilience in informal MSEs. Full article

Youth in northern Ghana experience high rates of unintended pregnancy due to limited access to and use of sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) services. Peer-led interventions are effective in increasing the youth uptake of SRH services, but limited peer-led interventions have been developed for Ghana. This study explores youth (ages 15–24 years) and clinical provider perspectives on youth SRH to inform the co-design of a peer-led SRH counseling program in northern Ghana. We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 22 SRH providers and 27 youth. We then conducted an inductive thematic analysis and mapped themes onto the COM-B (Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavior) model. Results revealed that youth capability to make informed and confident SRH decisions is constrained by a fragmented information environment. Although access to SRH services is increasing in the region, logistical and privacy barriers limit adolescents’ opportunities to engage in care. Religious and cultural norms stigmatize youth SRH care, though support for contraceptive use is growing among more educated sectors. Youth motivation to use SRH services is driven by a desire for autonomy but undermined by concerns about contraceptive side effects and anticipated stigma. This study supports the co-development of a contextually grounded peer counseling SRH intervention in northern Ghana. Full article

The rapid growth of the construction sector has substantially increased the demand for natural resources, resulting in growing pressures on ecosystem services and resource sustainability. This study presents a dynamic emergy-based assessment of construction material consumption in Kerala, India, for the period 2009–2023, focusing on four major construction materials: steel, cement, river sand, and brick clay. Emergy accounting was employed to quantify annual material consumption, emergy per unit cost, ecosystem service deficits, economic losses associated with ecological degradation, and the contribution of recycling and material substitution. Temporal trends were evaluated using the non-parametric Mann–Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator, while logistic (sigmoid) functions were fitted to characterize resource-use transitions and identify growth, transition, saturation, and overshoot phases. Steel and cement exhibited significant positive consumption trends ($\tau =0.752$ and $0.790$, respectively), whereas river sand and brick clay displayed strong declining trends ($\tau =-0.891$ and $-0.638$, respectively). Logistic modelling revealed that steel and cement remain in growth phases supported by recycling and material substitution, whereas river sand and brick clay exhibit characteristics of transition and ecological overshoot. Carrying-capacity assessments indicate that river sand and brick clay extraction exceeded sustainable ecosystem-support capacities, resulting in persistent ecosystem service deficits. The study demonstrates that recyclability plays a critical role in reducing transformity, delaying resource scarcity, and moderating ecological overshoot. Full article

Low-altitude cellular services are increasingly demanded by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled logistics, inspection, and emergency missions, yet existing terrestrial-oriented configurations often lead to severe 3D coverage overlap, interference accumulation, and spatial serving-sector ambiguity in airspace. This paper develops a practical region-oriented framework to enhance air–ground cellular performance under existing deployments by jointly tuning sector electrical and mechanical downtilts. A unified evaluation pipeline is constructed to characterize received signal strength (RSS), signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), and spatial serving-sector patterns, and to quantify service reliability through threshold-based coverage rates and edge performance. By treating UAV service altitude as an adjustable planning parameter, the proposed framework captures height-dependent coverage behavior and provides altitude-specific downtilt optimization results for representative low-altitude service heights. A sampling-based regional evaluation scheme is further designed to approximate area-level performance with reduced computational cost, enabling repeated fitness evaluation within a genetic search procedure. Extensive evaluations show that the proposed approach consistently enhances low-altitude coverage reliability and edge experience while keeping the coupled impact on terrestrial performance within a controlled range. Full article