Search Results (584)

In engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environments, the high variability of final product configurations makes it difficult to consistently estimate material consumption and, consequently, to define appropriate inventory control policies. This paper proposes a data-driven framework based on unsupervised learning to identify product typologies from historical manufacturing orders in a real industrial context. The approach employs a fuzzy k-prototypes algorithm to cluster mixed-type data, allowing the simultaneous treatment of numerical and categorical variables. In the case study, the proposed crisp-BOM-based scenario achieved a 28.67% reduction in line-side WIP and a 10.79% reduction in linear storage space, corresponding to the release of approximately two to three assembly stations. From the resulting fuzzy memberships, probabilistic bill of materials (BOM) structures are constructed, capturing the inherent variability of material consumption across different product configurations. A defuzzification procedure is then applied to obtain a crisp BOM representation suitable for operational decision-making. Additionally, a material versatility indicator based on entropy is introduced to quantify the dispersion of each material across product typologies. This indicator, together with the estimated consumption per cluster, is used as input for an analytical inventory model that supports the classification of materials into kanban or kitting policies. The methodology is validated using real data from a high- and medium-voltage switchgear manufacturing plant, comprising over 60,000 order–material observations. The results show that the proposed framework enables a more structured characterization of material behavior, reducing reliance on planner experience and improving the consistency of inventory policy decisions. From an industrial perspective, the approach provides a practical and scalable tool for aligning inventory strategies with the actual consumption patterns of ETO systems. Full article

This paper investigates machine learning (ML)-supplemented workflows integrated within a modular parametric modelling framework derived from a typological analysis of stadiums. The objective of the research is to address a gap between numerous isolated computational studies and the realities of early stadium design within the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Work (PoW) Stages 0–3. From a practical perspective, the proposed design framework aims to embed supervised learning, semi-supervised learning, and evolutionary optimisation into stadium design development to support site appraisal, brief preparation, concept development, spatial coordination, and stadium bay or stand optimisation based on quantifiable design characteristics. The framework addresses the inefficiencies and limitations of the traditional stadium design process by allowing rapid design space exploration defined by typological drivers, evaluation of a large set of solutions based on performance metrics such as circulation distances, sightline quality, and layout distribution, and the validation of concepts against benchmarks. Within the applicable design pipelines, and where labels are derived from deterministic performance criteria, the supervised approaches achieved prediction accuracies above 85%, while evolutionary optimisation reduced the number of seats with restricted views by approximately 95%. The value of the study is that it demonstrates that the integration of parametric modelling based on shared typological characteristics and the mapping of ML methods to the RIBA PoW has the potential to support stadium design in a novel way. Full article

Social media platforms increasingly function as informal education systems for programming learning, yet the systemic support structures these environments provide remain poorly understood. We analyzed 40,004 comments from programming tutorial videos on a major social media platform (2016–April 2025) to identify patterns of learner support needs at scale. Using BERTopic, we identified twelve discussion themes. We then consolidated these themes into a learner-needs typology based on their dominant support functions: instructional-oriented needs, operational support needs, and knowledge-constructionneeds. We mapped this typology onto the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework to assess its explanatory coverage. This mapping revealed a critical systemic gap. Operational support needs, covering environment configuration, tool integration, dependency management, and technical troubleshooting, constituted the largest category (44.53% of theme-level discourse), exceeding both knowledge-construction needs (28.42%) and instructional-oriented needs (26.95%). Learners repeatedly described these infrastructure-level challenges as disrupting their attempts to engage with content, execute code for testing ideas, and coordinate with peers, yet these operational readiness needs are not fully specified by CoI’s traditional presences. Social presence did not emerge as a standalone theme at the topic-modeling level; rather, social cues were often embedded within task-oriented troubleshooting. Based on these findings, we propose Technical Presence as a context-sensitive extension to the CoI framework, defined as the extent to which a learning community enables operational readiness through accessible infrastructure support and collaborative troubleshooting. As an infrastructural support condition, Technical Presence supports operational readiness within tool-dependent, practice-based learning: when learners report infrastructure failure, the conditions for enacting instructional design, cognitive inquiry, and peer collaboration are correspondingly weakened. These findings carry implications for content creators, platform developers, and education system designers seeking to strengthen the infrastructural foundations of technology-enhanced learning at scale. Full article

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face mounting pressure to advance their digital transformation while integrating sustainability practices. However, the relationship between digital maturity and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) integration in SMEs remains insufficiently comprehended, especially in regional contexts. This study examines how digital maturity shapes the scope and development of ESG practices in six Quebec SMEs using a qualitative multiple-case study design guided by Yin’s framework. Data were collected through a structured 54-item diagnostic protocol generating Digital Maturity Scores (DMSs), Sustainability Management Indices (SMIs), and Digital Literacy Indices (DLIs), complemented by thematic coding in NVivo. Cross-case analysis reveals that higher digital maturity is broadly associated with more diversified ESG practices, though this alignment is uneven and conditioned by governance mechanisms, firm size, and sectoral dynamics. An inductive typology distinguishes three profiles: compliance-oriented firms, ESG diversifiers, and strategic integrators. Findings further indicate that governance structures are necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainability outcomes, as their effectiveness depends on alignment with operational routines and data practices. This study contributes to the literature by providing a combined digital maturity–ESG diagnostic framework adapted to the realities of SMEs. It also advances three theoretical propositions suitable for testing in larger and more diverse samples. Full article

The assessment of the “Do No Significant Harm” (DNSH) principle in European Union (EU)-funded projects currently relies on narrative justification, which generates subjective evaluations, inconsistent results, and high administrative effort. This study aims to develop an operational framework and project-level tool to standardize how environmental impact is measured across multiple sectors and project types. The methodology applies a stepwise, non-compensatory approach, combining typology-based filtering, financial thresholds derived from carbon intensity and sustainability coefficients, checklists, spatial analysis, and quantitative indicators such as the circular economy transition metric. Each environmental objective is evaluated independently, ensuring that compliance cannot be offset by positive performance in other areas. The framework was preliminarily validated using a dataset of 1406 projects implemented in Romania, indicating its potential to distinguish low-risk from high-risk projects, reduce evaluator subjectivity, and improve the proportionality of analytical effort. While the tool is tested on Romanian case studies, its design allows for application across various European funding programmemes. The tool supports early-stage screening, encourages green procurement, and aligns project planning with EU environmental objectives, including climate mitigation, adaptation, water resource protection, pollution prevention, circular economy, and biodiversity conservation. The proposed methodology provides a clear, reproducible, and practical approach, offering evaluators a consistent mechanism for DNSH compliance verification and integrating environmental protection into project design and implementation. Full article

This study examines how entrepreneurial ecosystem constraints shape MSME resilience in the Jakarta–Bogor–Depok Indonesia corridor using a qualitative multiple-case design. Drawing on 20 MSME case reports across food and beverage, retail, services, and small-scale manufacturing, the study addresses two questions: (1) which ecosystem domains are the most binding constraints, and (2) how MSMEs convert ecosystem resources into resilience outcomes. The analysis shows that market pressure is the most universal constraint (20/20 cases), followed by digital-managerial support infrastructure gaps (18/20), supply chain volatility (13/20), and finance, human capital, and institutional constraints (each 12/20 cases). Cross-case evidence identifies four recurrent mechanisms: market pressure is managed through digital channel orchestration and customer engagement; capital constraints are managed through internal cash discipline and partnership-based financing; input volatility is managed through supplier diversification, local sourcing, and inventory control; and skill gaps are managed through internal training and process standardization. Building on these mechanisms, the study develops a threefold resilience typology: Adaptive Leaders, Operational Survivors, and Vulnerable Traditionalists. The main theoretical contribution is to show that MSME resilience is configurational and depends on inter-domain alignment rather than on isolated ecosystem components or entrepreneur-level grit alone. The practical contribution is a typology-based policy logic that prioritizes integrated intervention bundles, which are finance, digital capability, operations, supply chain, and managerial upgrading, over fragmented support programs. Full article

Public parks are increasingly expected to function not only as recreational green spaces but also as components of urban green stormwater infrastructure. In practice, however, their performance is still commonly judged by stormwater storage capacity alone, a project-level metric that tends to favor larger parks and obscure differences in how parks contribute to broader blue-green stormwater systems. Accordingly, this study aimed to develop and apply an exploratory comparative framework for assessing the differentiated stormwater roles of sponge city parks beyond storage capacity alone. Using 20 sponge city parks in Shanghai as cases, the framework integrates stormwater storage capacity, storage efficiency, flow leverage, and facility configuration. The results show that annual stormwater storage capacity varied substantially across the 20 parks, ranging from 7625.12 m³ to 132,915.24 m³, with a mean value of 47,220.80 m³. However, this capacity-based ranking was strongly associated with park area. Once storage was normalized by area, the ranking changed markedly: line-type parks showed the highest mean storage efficiency of 1.393, followed by node-type parks at 0.921, whereas patch-type parks recorded a much lower mean value of 0.059. Flow leverage scores ranged from 0 to 6, with a mean value of 2.35, indicating that parks with comparable storage performance may occupy different hydrological positions within the broader topographic flow structure. The preliminary capacity-leverage typology further showed that high storage capacity did not always coincide with high hydrological leverage, and facility configuration scores ranged from 1 to 5, suggesting additional variation in internal infrastructural organization. These findings suggest that storage capacity should be complemented by spatial efficiency, hydrological position, and facility configuration when interpreting the differentiated stormwater roles of sponge city parks. The study reframes evaluation from a single project-level storage metric toward a more differentiated understanding of sponge city parks as urban green stormwater infrastructure and supports more sustainable assessment of community-scale stormwater management within broader blue-green systems. Full article

Urban agriculture (UA) is a vital component of sustainable urban development. In China, however, it is more closely associated with policy-oriented urban modern agriculture (UMA), which integrates peri-urban production, agricultural modernization, multifunctional development, and urban–rural governance. Nevertheless, few researchers have conducted systematic cross-city evaluations of UMA development, especially in rapidly urbanizing national contexts. To address this research gap, we have developed a multidimensional evaluation framework to assess the level of UMA development across 36 large- and medium-sized cities in China during 2019–2023. The indicator system covers five dimensions: production capability, industrial integration, agricultural ecological sustainability, factor agglomeration, and operational modernization. A composite evaluation model combining objective weighting with expert-adjusted subjective weighting is applied to compute city-level performance scores. In addition, Ward’s hierarchical clustering method is utilized to identify distinct contextual city typologies. According to our findings, UMA development exhibits a relatively stable hierarchical structure. A handful of leading cities maintain clear advantages, but the majority remain concentrated in the middle and lower tiers with limited upward mobility. Alterations in city rankings predominantly occur among cities of comparable performance. Ward clustering of contextual indicators identifies four contextual city types related to UMA development: balanced development cities, economically efficient cities, resource-constrained cities, and agricultural-potential cities. These categories reflect differences in socioeconomic development, resource carrying capacity, and environmental capacity, and therefore help to interpret the constraints and feasible policy directions that inform UMA performance. Overall, our proposed framework proves to be a practical tool for benchmarking UMA development and informing differentiated policy design across city types. Full article

This article argues that Alejandro Amenábar’s first three features—Tesis (1996), Abre los ojos (1997), and The Others (2001)—constitute a systematic investigation of cinema’s fundamental operations through thriller form. These films employ different thriller subgenres to explore cinema’s psychic, phenomenological, and ontological dimensions, progressing from explicit apparatus representation (Tesis thematizes scopophilia) through phenomenological allegory (Abre los ojos uses virtual reality to allegorize cinema as dream machine) to ontological embodiment (The Others makes ghosts figures for cinematic images). Drawing on Martin Rubin’s concept of the thriller as metagenre, Lucien Dällenbach’s typology of the mise en abyme, and psychoanalytic film theory (Mulvey, Metz, Baudry), I show how the thriller’s sadomasochistic rhetoric, its aggressive manipulation of spectatorial response, makes it uniquely suited to metatextual exploration. The trilogy demonstrates that reflexivity intensifies rather than disrupts genre pleasure, challenging conventional oppositions between entertainment and critique, popular cinema and metacinematic practice. Full article

This study examines the transformation of religiosity among individuals who leave traditional Eastern madrasas in Turkey unfinished, focusing on the existential rupture between traditional religious education and modern secular life. While the madrasa institution has historically served as a primary site of religious formation and cultural production in the region, the transition to civil life has led to a significant reshaping of the relationship between faith and practice. Utilizing a qualitative research design, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 male participants in Batman to explore the impact of institutional departure on individual belief systems. The findings suggest that a curriculum weighted toward grammar and the presence of intense social pressures can affect perceptions of the sacred, triggering a shift in the individual’s attitude toward religious boundaries. Crucially, not being in a position that represents the religious status relieves individuals of the burden of representation, fostering a sense of conscientious flexibility toward abandoning worship. The study identifies a post-secular typology of believing but indifferent, in which belief persists as an ontological comfort zone while losing its regulatory power over daily life. These results indicate that, in the context of madrasa dropout, secularization manifests as the ineffectiveness and worldliness of belief rather than its outright rejection. Full article

This study aims to identify the defining characteristics of pocket parks and evaluate their ecological and socio-economic significance by analyzing their contribution to sustainable development, in alignment with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research highlights the benefits of green spaces and pocket parks in relation to the three core pillars of sustainability, mapping them directly onto specific SDG Targets and indicators. This framework informs the creation of a streamlined, early design indicators toolkit. The toolkit’s practical utility is then evaluated and validated through its application to four real-world case studies, where the performance of pocket parks is assessed regarding their contributions to urban sustainability. The selected case studies represent diverse morphological typologies and operational attributes. To embed sustainability benefits into the active planning process, their spatial design criteria were cross-examined to identify structural interconnections, which were subsequently translated into a parametric model. Each design parameter is analyzed with emphasis on the relationships among spatial elements rather than on their absolute metric values. The study develops a procedural design sequence that, when applied to any site boundary, generates the essential spatial characteristics defining a pocket park. The results demonstrate that this parametric approach establishes the adaptability and effectiveness of pocket parks as versatile urban green spaces, regardless of available plot size or geometric configuration. Full article

Open, non-governmental building datasets have become increasingly important for urban analysis, exposure modelling, and policy support. Despite their growing use, little is known about the consistency, completeness, and comparability of the semantic information they provide at a continental scale. This study presents the first systematic comparison of the semantic attributes of six major pan-European open building datasets—OpenStreetMap, EUBUCCO, Microsoft Global ML Building Footprints, Overture Maps, GHS-OBAT, and the Digital Building Stock Model (DBSM)—using the 27 EU Member States as a common reference area. Five key semantic attributes (height, typology, building age, number of floors, and building material) were harmonised and analysed in terms of completeness and value distributions across countries and degrees of urbanisation. The workflow combines API-based data ingestion, distributed geospatial processing, and high-performance computing to handle around 1.250 billion building footprints. Results reveal pronounced heterogeneity in semantic content across datasets. Remote-sensing-derived products (GHS-OBAT and DBSM) exhibit the highest levels of attribute completeness for height, typology, and building age, but rely on aggregated or coarse semantic representations. In contrast, community-driven and conflated datasets (OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps) provide richer and more detailed semantic schemas, albeit with low and spatially uneven completeness. Completeness patterns vary substantially across countries and urbanisation classes, and high completeness values often mask limited semantic informativeness due to the prevalence of unknown or aggregated attribute values. Overall, the findings demonstrate that no single dataset is universally optimal regarding consistency and completeness of building footprints’ semantic attributes. Nonetheless, the paper provides practical guidance for selecting suitable data sources depending on spatial scale, attribute requirements, and analytical objectives. Full article

This study investigates whether spa settlements can be analytically interpreted through a relational spascape framework that reveals structural and configurational patterns beyond conventional typological classifications. In the context of increasing interest in therapeutic landscapes and heritage-sensitive development, spa settlements represent complex spatial systems shaped by the interplay of natural resources, urban form, and socio-cultural practices, yet they remain insufficiently understood through existing analytical models. The methodology is based on a structured analytical design combining three urbanization dimensions (material transformation, territorial regulation, and everyday life) with six thematic fields, operationalized through graded cross-affiliation scoring. The empirical research is conducted on a sample of 12 spa settlements in Serbia, selected to reflect diverse geographical, morphological, and developmental conditions. Statistical calibration was performed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering to identify underlying structural relationships and configurational groupings. The results indicate that spa settlements operate as multi-affiliated relational entities rather than fixed typologies, exhibiting dimension-specific structural logics and forming distinct configurational families depending on the analytical perspective applied. PCA reveals differentiated internal structures across dimensions, while clustering confirms the absence of a single stable typology. The findings support a relational understanding of spa settlements as dynamic spatial systems characterized by shifting alignments of material, regulatory, and experiential factors. Beyond the Serbian context, the study offers a transferable methodological framework that connects qualitative urban interpretation with quantitative spatial analysis, contributing to heritage-sensitive planning, territorial governance, and the management of spa systems as relational clusters. Full article

Traditional villages in the Chaoshan region serve as living repositories of local cultural heritage. Their concentrated and coordinated conservation and utilization can transcend administrative boundaries, enabling the integrated allocation of regional resources and the enhancement of cultural synergy. Currently, conservation practices for traditional villages are largely limited to piecemeal rescue efforts focused on individual villages. There is a lack of systematic understanding from a regional perspective and an explanation of the mechanisms underlying the formation of local landscapes, which hinders the realization of economies of scale in conservation and the development of cultural synergy. To explore effective approaches for the cluster-based conservation of traditional villages in China’s Lingnan coastal region, as well as the characteristics of human–land relationships and their adaptive mechanisms, this study focuses on 115 national and provincial-level traditional villages in the Chaoshan region. By introducing methods of single-factor and multi-factor cluster identification, the study innovatively constructs a four-dimensional cluster identification framework comprising “spatial proximity, geomorphological similarity, cultural convergence, and residential isomorphism,” and, utilizing the ArcGIS platform for coupled analysis, kernel density analysis, cluster identification, and field surveys, systematically analyzed the diverse typologies and landscape-specific characteristics of traditional village clusters in the Chaoshan region. The results indicate the following: (1) The identification of Chaozhou–Shantou traditional village clusters reveals three diverse types—comprehensive, distinctive, and potential—reflecting the richness and diversity of these clusters in the region. (2) Spatially proximate clusters exhibit a single-core, multi-point distribution, topographically similar clusters show differentiated distributions across plains and river valleys, culturally convergent clusters are significantly correlated with cultural carriers such as postal routes, water transport, and trade, and residential distributions are significantly correlated with topography and landforms, collectively constituting the unique character of Chaozhou–Shantou traditional village clusters. (3) Traditional villages in Chaoshan exhibit significant coupling with the natural environment, forming diverse spatial siting patterns in relation to mountains, water, forests, fields, and the sea, reflecting differentiated adaptation to and ingenious utilization of the natural environment. (4) The adaptive mechanism of the landscape of traditional Chaozhou–Shantou villages can be distilled into a three-tiered structure, natural adaptation as the foundation, social adaptation as the framework, and cultural adaptation as the soul, revealing the spatial planning wisdom of the Chaozhou–Shantou people in complex mountain and coastal environments. This study not only deepens our understanding of the human–land relationship in traditional villages of the Chaoshan region but also provides scientific evidence and theoretical support for the holistic preservation of cultural heritage and regional coordinated development. It holds significant practical value for promoting the protection and sustainable development of rural cultural heritage in the Lingnan coastal region. Full article

This article explores the specificity of social assistance conducted by the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) compared to Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) in the UK, USA, and France. The article is a secondary qualitative analysis of a circumscribed subset of the interview material assembled in a wider mixed-methods study on the professionalization of charity in the ROC, pursuing a different research question—the configurational specificity of the Orthodox model—than the parent study itself. Using Grounded Theory methodology on the corpus of nineteen interviews with clergy, social workers, and experts from Northeastern Romania, the analysis develops the category of the sacralization of social assistance—a configuration of practices and meanings in which the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated, sacramentally obligatory, and clerically authorized. While each of these features has been documented individually in Protestant and Catholic faith-based organizations, their joint configuration in the Romanian Orthodox case differs in degree and arrangement from patterns reported in the Western literature. A theoretically informed contrast with that literature highlights six dimensions along which the ROC configuration, as articulated by providers, diverges from the patterns most frequently reported in that literature: (1) the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated in ROC versus optional in UK/USA or institutionally absent in France; (2) leadership remains predominantly clerical versus secularly professionalized in the West; (3) the beneficiary is conceptualized as a living icon of Christ versus a person with civil rights; (4) the purpose of interventions is soteriological versus immanent social reintegration; (5) professionalization generates anxiety about secularization versus comfortable normalization; (6) volunteerism remains informal-communitarian versus formalized-systematic. The research proposes a dual-axis typology that differentiates between the presence and the nature of the spiritual dimension. Full article