Ambiguity In Definition Research Articles

Technology Start-up Marketing Strategy and Lifecycle: First Empirical Findings by Qualitative Research

Purpose of the article: Technology start-ups go through certain stages in their lifecycle. In each stage of the lifecycle, there is a different approach to marketing strategy and its application through marketing activities. Creating an empirically based framework of a technology start up marketing strategy based on each lifecycle stage will increase the chances of success for such a technology start-up.Methodology: This research is based on qualitative research using structured interviews with the Czech and Slovak technology start-ups. The questions were validated by pilot research with a selected technology start-up and modified accordingly. The sample was obtained using non probability sampling methods. Deductive coding and content analysis are used. The outputs are represented by categorisation and followed by summarisation in the empirically based framework.Scientific aim: The aim is to create an empirically based framework of the marketing strategy of a technology start-up based on the lifecycle stages. The empirically based framework will be developed as an initial effort to gain knowledge in this area and to develop questions or the research direction for the future.Findings: The empirically based framework is developed through qualitative research to define the core marketing activities at a specific lifecycle stage. These activities are divided into categories of coding. The technology start-up should immediately and proactively develop marketing activities at the beginning of its foundation, not only internally but also with external support.Conclusions: For boosting the success of a technology start-up, it is necessary to create customised marketing activities. The ambiguous definition of a start-up hinders the advancement of the body of knowledge in this area and therefore primary research methods must be developed. The research is limited by the broad scope of the given topic. The marketing strategy area as such cannot be entirely covered and therefore sub-points need to be further addressed.

Regulation of the Smart Contract in (Romanian) Civil Law

The research aims to organize, examine, and analyze the provisions on smart contracts available in Romanian civil law. “Smart contracts” are not smart, and are not necessarily contracts, although they can be. As self-executing computer programs, smart contracts are operational on the blockchain and unlike traditional legal contracts, once the agreement has been concluded and the smart contract is set in motion, no party can intervene and it will be executed without interruption, modification, or breach. The crucial question in the final contract law topic is what happens when the smart contract's outcomes deviate from those required by law. To answer this issue, we must first understand that whether a smart contract becomes legally enforceable is determined by several circumstances, together with the unique use case, the type of smart contract employed, and the existing legislation. The paper addresses the subject of determining and regulating smart contracts under Romanian current laws. Particular emphasis is placed on two ambiguous definitions of smart contracts: as computer code and as a civil-law contract. The authors conclude that the concept of smart contracts requires more legal regulation, particularly in terms of managing their meaning and comprehension.

Dynamic boundary-insensitive loss for magnetic resonance medical image segmentation.

A deep learning method has achieved great success in MR medical image segmentation. One challenge in applying deep learning segmentation models to clinical practice is their poor generalization mainly due to limited labeled training samples, inter-site heterogeneity of different datasets, and ambiguous boundary definition, etc. The objective of this work is to develop a dynamic boundary-insensitive (DBI) loss to address this poor generalization caused by an uncertain boundary. The DBI loss is designed to assign higher penalties to misclassified voxels farther from the boundaries in each training iteration to reduce the sensitivity of the segmentation model to the uncertain boundary. The weighting factor of the DBI loss can be adjusted adaptively without any manual setting and adjustment. Extensive experiments were conducted to verify the performance of our DBI loss and its variant, DiceDBI, on four heterogeneous prostate MRI datasets for prostate zonal segmentation and whole prostate segmentation. Experimental results show that our DBI loss, when combined with Dice loss, outperforms all competing loss functions in dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and improves the segmentation performance across all datasets consistently, especially on unseen datasets and when segmenting small or narrow targets. The proposed DiceDBI loss will be valuable for enhancement of the generalization performance of the segmentation model.

Antecedents, mechanisms and effects of synchromodal freight transport: a conceptual framework from a systematic literature review

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the current state of research in a specific field of transport, namely synchromodality. This includes a conceptual discussion of this innovative transport concept to differentiate it from previous concepts as well as the identification of the antecedents, mechanisms and effects of synchromodality.Design/methodology/approachThe paper combines systematic and content analysis-based approaches to literature review to analyse and synthesise a final sample of 88 publications related to synchromodality.FindingsSynchromodality is a transport concept in its infancy which suffers from ambiguous definitions and a lack of theoretical grounding. The paper identifies four mechanisms which differentiate synchromodality from other transport concepts: real-time switching, integrated network planning, horizontal collaboration and mode-free booking. Seven technical and six managerial antecedents for these mechanisms of synchromodality are defined.Research limitations/implicationsExisting research on synchromodality is largely focused on technical antecedents (e.g. information and communication technology, sophisticated planning systems). Suggestions for further research include managerial problems such as business models or measures to induce a mental shift and trust.Originality/valueThis paper gives a structured overview of the research field of synchromodality and presents existing research from a content-focused perspective. It also indicates opportunities for future research and contributes to a generally accepted understanding of synchromodality.

Water permits trading framework for urban water demand management based on smart metering

Water rights trading is commonly used as a means of water resources reallocation between different water use sectors or between different end-users within the same sector. No studies, however, were reported on water rights trading from residential water use to other sectors. The primary reasons include the ambiguous definition of residents’ water rights and lack of real-time information about water consumption. This study presents a domestic-industrial water permits trading framework for urban water demand management. The framework is applied to the case study of Dalian demonstrating its feasibility theoretically and technologically from the perspective of the whole city and typical demonstration areas. The finding obtained shows that the tradable water volume accounts for 13.72% of the total residential water use, brings a profit of 91.05 million yuan to the residents, and saves 56.67 million yuan of water resources costs for industry users. The increase in water prices for consumption through tiered pricing can raise the tradable volume to 16.10%. Furthermore, a trading platform based on WeChat is developed to completely materialize the entire water permits trading process according to the real-time water consumption data collected from smart water meters. This study shows that the water permits trading between urban domestic-industrial sectors is an effective means of redistributing urban water resources to improve economic benefits while ensuring urban water supply security.

Exploring the Irony in Japanese Popular Culture. A Cross-Cultural and Linguistic Analysis.

The present study addresses the status and use of irony in Japanese popular culture by closely examining its’ cultural variations on a corpus consisting of ironic utterances and situations from three popular culture media: Japanese drama, anime, and manga. While it is likely that Western popular culture abounds in ironic aesthetics and standpoints, the concept of “irony” faces cultural reconstruction within Japanese culture and society, a fact easily reflected in national media and cinematographic productions. In such cases, the cultural and linguistic distance between Japanese and English, and the striking difference, which exists between these two geographical and cultural contexts, increase the challenge interposed by the understanding and interpreting of irony. Moreover, on a conversational level, ironizing one’s communication partner is considered socially unacceptable and penalised accordingly. It stands against the much-expected politeness and traditional Japanese concepts such as “honne” and “tatemae,” which, if preserved, can create harmony in communication. In conclusion, the ambiguous definition of irony, together with the negative perception and reluctance of Japanese people towards its usage, has contributed to frequently branding irony strictly as a Western phenomenon. However, as the present research attempts to demonstrate, the usage of irony in Japanese popular culture embraces multifarious approaches, and it extends to reach the borders of semantics.

Ambiguous definitions for baseline serum creatinine affect acute kidney diagnosis at the emergency department

BackgroundAcute kidney injury (AKI) incidence is increasing, however AKI is often missed at the emergency department (ED). AKI diagnosis depends on changes in kidney function by comparing a serum creatinine (SCr) measurement to a baseline value. However, it remains unclear to what extent different baseline values may affect AKI diagnosis at ED.MethodsRoutine care data from ED visits between 2012 and 2019 were extracted from the Utrecht Patient Oriented Database. We evaluated baseline definitions with criteria from the RIFLE, AKIN and KDIGO guidelines. We evaluated four baseline SCr definitions (lowest, most recent, mean, median), as well as five different time windows (up to 365 days prior to ED visit) to select a baseline and compared this to the first measured SCr at ED. As an outcome, we assessed AKI prevalence at ED.ResultsWe included 47,373 ED visits with both SCr-ED and SCr-BL available. Of these, 46,100 visits had a SCr-BL from the − 365/− 7 days time window. Apart from the lowest value, AKI prevalence remained similar for the other definitions when varying the time window. The lowest value with the − 365/− 7 time window resulted in the highest prevalence (21.4%). Importantly, applying the guidelines with all criteria resulted in major differences in prevalence ranging from 5.9 to 24.0%.ConclusionsAKI prevalence varies with the use of different baseline definitions in ED patients. Clinicians, as well as researchers and developers of automatic diagnostic tools should take these considerations into account when aiming to diagnose AKI in clinical and research settings.

Meniscal Extrusion: A Narrative Review.

Background:Meniscal extrusion, referred to as an external displacement of the meniscus, is a commonly encountered but often overlooked magnetic resonance imaging finding in the knee joint. Meniscal extrusion alters the biomechanical properties of the meniscus, leading to accelerated cartilage degeneration and early osteoarthritic changes. The literature contains discrepancies about meniscal extrusion on topics ranging from definition to diagnosis. This narrative review outlines the pathogenesis, natural history, diagnosis, and treatment of meniscal extrusion.Purpose:To review the current literature on meniscal extrusion, from pathogenesis to treatment, and to provide recommendations for future research.Study Design:Narrative review.Methods:A computer-based search of the PubMed, Ovid Medline, and Cochrane Library databases was used to perform a comprehensive literature review on meniscal extrusion. A total of 81 studies was ultimately included in the review.Results:The literature review highlighted the current ambiguity in definition, difficulty in clinical diagnosis, and low level of awareness of this condition. This review covers all aspects related to meniscal extrusion and identifies many of its lesser known aspects.Conclusion:In the current literature, meniscal extrusion remains a lesser known albeit common condition because of its relatively silent nature along with lack of knowledge among orthopaedic surgeons. Further studies are warranted to provide better understanding and management of this condition.

Statistical analysis of spatial distribution of pores in metal additive manufacturing

Mechanical properties of additively manufactured parts are sensitive to the presence of pores form during the manufacturing process. The impact of pores on the mechanical performance has been investigated extensively with respect to different parameters, such as pore volume fraction, shape, and size. However, statistical investigations focusing on the relationships between the spatial distribution of pores and process parameters; and consequently, the performance of the manufactured parts are scattered and limited. Also, these sparse investigations usually suffer from an ambiguous definition of terminologies. For instance, the required criteria to consider a point pattern as complete spatial randomness (CSR) are generally not clarified. Moreover, no numerical formalism is yet developed to show how much the observed spatial results are statistically significant. To address these shortcomings, the statistical definition of CSR in a point pattern and the procedure to quantitatively determine the deviation of a pattern from CSR were discussed. The explained statistical approach was used to investigate the effect of scanning speed parameter on the spatial distribution of gas pores in laser powder bed fusion manufactured stainless steel parts. Furthermore, and to highlight the impact of the spatial distribution of pores on mechanical properties, fatigue performances of parts with clustered and randomly distributed pores were simulated by finite element analysis. It is shown that by reducing the scanning speed, the spatial distribution of gas pores deviated more from CSR, and correspondingly fatigue performance deteriorated.

Unsupervised Anomaly Approach to Pedestrian Age Classification from Surveillance Cameras Using an Adversarial Model with Skip-Connections

Anomaly detection is an active research area within the machine learning and scene understanding fields. Despite the ambiguous definition, anomaly detection is considered an outlier detection in a given data based on normality constraints. The biggest problem in real-world anomaly detection applications is the high bias of the available data due to the class imbalance, meaning a limited amount of all possible anomalous and normal samples, thus making supervised learning model use difficult. This paper introduces an unsupervised and adversarially trained anomaly model with a unique encoder–decoder structure to address this issue. The proposed model distinguishes different age groups of people—namely child, adult, and elderly—from surveillance camera data in Busan, Republic of Korea. The proposed model has three major parts: a parallel-pipeline encoder with a conventional convolutional neural network and a dilated-convolutional neural network. The latent space vectors created at the end of both networks are concatenated. While the convolutional pipeline extracts local features, the dilated convolutional pipeline extracts the global features from the same input image. Concatenation of these features is sent as the input into the decoder, which has partial skip-connection elements from both pipelines. This, along with the concatenated feature vector, improves feature diversity. The input image is reconstructed from the feature vector through the stacked transpose convolution layers. Afterward, both the original input image and the corresponding reconstructed image are sent into the discriminator and are distinguished as real or fake. The image reconstruction loss and its corresponding latent space loss are considered for the training of the model and the adversarial Wasserstein loss. Only normal-designated class images are used during the training. The hypothesis is that if the model is trained with normal class images, then during the inference, the construction loss will be minimal. On the other hand, if the untrained anomalous class images are input through the model, the reconstruction loss value will be very high. This method is applied to distinguish different age clusters of people using unsupervised training. The proposed model outperforms the benchmark models in both the qualitative and the quantitative measurements.

Exploring clinical leadership in long-term care: An integrative literature review.

The aim of this study is to understand the concept of clinical leadership and clinical leadership development for nurses working with older adults in long-term care health care facilities. In Canada, clinical care within long-term care is undertaken by registered nurses and licenced practical nurses working with health care aides. Effective clinical leadership is essential for providing quality nursing care. An integrative literature review using the framework of Whittemore and Knafl (2005). All selected articles were quality appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program and the accuracy, authority, coverage, objectivity, date and significance checklist. The analysis resulted in four themes: ambiguous definitions, practice-based and value-driven care, the impact of clinical leadership and clinical leadership development for Canadian nurses. The findings suggest that ambiguity surrounds the concept of clinical leadership, with the term denoting both 'management' as a formal administrative role and 'leadership' in general. More recently, the clinical leadership focus has been on informal leadership by nurses at the bedside, where personal and professional values align with clinical action. Effective clinical leadership can have a positive impact on quality care and employee job satisfaction.

A systematic review on privacy-preserving distributed data mining

Combining and analysing sensitive data from multiple sources offers considerable potential for knowledge discovery. However, there are a number of issues that pose problems for such analyses, including technical barriers, privacy restrictions, security concerns, and trust issues. Privacy-preserving distributed data mining techniques (PPDDM) aim to overcome these challenges by extracting knowledge from partitioned data while minimizing the release of sensitive information. This paper reports the results and findings of a systematic review of PPDDM techniques from 231 scientific articles published in the past 20 years. We summarize the state of the art, compare the problems they address, and identify the outstanding challenges in the field. This review identifies the consequence of the lack of standard criteria to evaluate new PPDDM methods and proposes comprehensive evaluation criteria with 10 key factors. We discuss the ambiguous definitions of privacy and confusion between privacy and security in the field, and provide suggestions of how to make a clear and applicable privacy description for new PPDDM techniques. The findings from our review enhance the understanding of the challenges of applying theoretical PPDDM methods to real-life use cases, and the importance of involving legal-ethical and social experts in implementing PPDDM methods. This comprehensive review will serve as a helpful guide to past research and future opportunities in the area of PPDDM.

Nurses' Decisions in Error Reporting and Disclosing Based on Error Scenarios: A Mixed-method Study

Background: It is ensured that nurses’ error reporting and disclosing improve services to patients and are considered a movement toward creating a culture of transparency in the healthcare system. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the nurses' decisions on reporting and disclosing Medical Errors (MEs). Methods: This research followed a mixed-method embedded design that was performed in five hospitals in Iran in 2018. A total of 491 nurses participated in the quantitative phase of the study with stratified sampling, followed by a simple random sampling technique. Also, 22 nurses joined the qualitative phase. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire and semi-structured interviews through a scenario-based method. Quantitative data analysis was performed using descriptive and analytical statistics by SPSS 21.0 and Expert Choice 10.0 software. The qualitative data were analyzed based on the content analysis approach. Results: The most important perceived barriers with the highest impact coincided with educational (57.17%) and motivational (56.77%) factors based on SEM analysis (ES: 1.33, SE: 0.16). Regression analysis showed that error-reporting mechanisms, educational factors, and reporting consequences were significantly associated with age, sex, and work experience (P-Value ≤0.05). Error scenarios were thematized into three categories: Error perception (including ambiguity and weakness in error definition, the severity of the error, unawareness of guidelines, deviation from standards, and untrained staff), error reporting (including ineffective reporting system, hesitation in reporting to a formal system, increased workload, improper reaction, punitive responses, and concerns about consequences), and error disclosure (including no disclosure, partial disclosure, and full disclosure). Conclusions: The obtained results contributed to a better understanding of the barriers to error reporting and disclosing. In addition, these results can help hospitals encourage error reporting and ultimately make organizational changes, which reduce the incidence of errors.

Critical Review on Terminology and Definitions of Blended Learning

Blended learning seems an effective solution to knowledge dissemination among the knowledge community in the modern educational context. As the concept of ‘blended learning’ is interpreted differently by individuals, it makes a conceptual and definitional ambiguity among the practitioners over the years. This review tries to establish an insight into terminological and conceptual ambiguity over the definition of blended learning, and it would support scholars to be consistent in defining blended learning in future studies. The review was conducted with 74 research papers published in international peer-reviewed journals accessed via Google Scholar and Scinapse. The findings were thematically analysed in-depth and identified four dimensions of blended learning: Technology, Pedagogy (Educational), Cultural and Social, and Economical. The further analysis of review results could lead into formulating an amenable definition on blended learning - a combination on face-to-face and online instruction which ensure greater flexibility in students’ learning and congruity of course delivery - which is termed as ‘popular sense’ in this paper. Further, it is noted that blended-learning definition often tends to get influenced by contextual and personal experiences of the educationalists.
 Keywords: Blended Learning, Blended Learning Definitions, Technology-integrated Learning

Limitations and gaps in global bat wing morphology trait data

Abstract Species’ life‐history traits have a wide variety of applications in ecological and conservation research, particularly when assessing threats. The development and growth of global species’ trait databases are critical for improving trait‐based analyses; however, it is vital to understand the gaps and biases in the available data. We reviewed bat wing morphology data, specifically mass, wingspan, wing area, wing loading, and aspect ratio, to identify issues with data reporting and ambiguity. Additionally, we aimed to assess taxonomic and geographic biases in trait data coverage. We found that most studies used similar field methodology, but that data reporting and quality were inconsistent/poor. Additionally, we noted several issues regarding semantic ambiguity in trait definitions, specifically around what constitutes wing area. Globally, we found that bat wing morphology trait coverage was low. Only six bat families had ≥40% trait coverage, and, of those, none consisted of more than 11 species in total. We found similar biases in trait coverage across International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List categories, with threatened species having lower coverage. Geographically, North America, Europe, and the Indomalayan regions exhibited higher overall trait coverage, while both the Afrotropical and Neotropical ecoregions showed poor trait coverage. The underlying biases and gaps in bat wing morphology data have implications for researchers conducting global trait‐based assessments. Implementing imputation techniques may address missing data, but only for smaller regional subsets with substantial trait coverage. Due to generally low overall trait coverage, increasing species’ representation in the database should be prioritised. We suggest adopting an Ecological Trait Standard Vocabulary to reduce semantic ambiguity in bat wing morphology traits, to improve data compilation and clarity. Additionally, we advocate that researchers adopt an Open Science approach to facilitate the growth of a bat wing morphology trait database.

Effect of Spray-Wall Interaction on Thermoacoustic Instability Prediction by Flame Transfer Function and the Convective Time Delay Method

Abstract This study numerically investigates the effect of spray-wall interactions on thermoacoustic instability prediction. The large-eddy simulations (LES)-based flame transfer function (FTF) and the convective time delay methods are used by combining the Helmholtz acoustic solver to predict a single spray flame under the so-called slip and film spray-wall conditions. It is found that considering more realistic film liquid and a wall surface interaction model achieves a more accurate phase lag in both of the time lag evaluations compared to the experimental results. Additionally, the results show that a new time delay exists between the liquid film fluctuation and the unsteady heat release, which explains the larger phase value in the film spray-wall condition than in the slip condition. Moreover, the prediction capability of the FTF framework and the convective time delay methodology in the linear regime is also presented. In general, the instability frequency differences predicted using the FTF framework under the film condition are less than 10 Hz compared with the experimental data. However, an underestimation of the numerical gain value leads to requiring a change in the forcing position and an improvement in the numerical models. Due to the ambiguous definition of the gain value in the convective time delay method, this approach leads to arbitrary and uncertain thermoacoustic instability predictions.

Avicenna on Equivocity and Modulation: A Reconsideration of the asmāʾ mushakkika (and tashkīk al-wujūd)

Abstract This study investigates Avicenna’s conception of philosophical terminology through an analysis of the relation between equivocity (ishtirāk) and modulation (tashkīk) and by drawing evidence from a broad array of logical, physical, and metaphysical texts. In so doing, it also re-examines the notion of the modulation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd). Although the intrinsic definitional ambiguity of tashkīk makes it possible to approach it alternatively through the lens of univocity and equivocity, there are strong textual and philosophical reasons to believe that Avicenna preferred to regard tashkīk as a kind of moderate equivocity, as opposed to both univocity and a kind of pure or absolute equivocity. As a corollary, it is preferable to construe tashkīk al-wujūd as a “modulated equivocity of being” rather than as a “modulated univocity of being.” On the one hand, this underscores the continuity with Aristotle’s theory of pros hen predication and its late-antique Greek and early Arabic reception, which Avicenna, as heir to a long commentatorial tradition, reinterprets in his own way. On the other hand, the reading of the asmāʾ mushakkika and tashkīk al-wujūd proposed here may explain some of the origins of the ontological debates on the construal of existence that developed from the post-classical reception of Avicenna’s works.

The Policy Coherence Framework Approach in a Multi-Level Analysis of European, German and Thuringian Climate Policy with a Special Focus on Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)

This work sets out to apply the Policy Coherence Framework (PCF) to the case of climate policy, taking into account the European, German and Thuringian political levels of analysis. It combines an analysis of vertical coherence between these levels and horizontal coherence within and between different sectoral policies. The study demonstrates disparities between coherence within climate policy itself and between other policy sectors as regards forest area development. It further reveals some contradictions between economic and ecological goals in German climate policy, particularly as concerns the role of forests. According to the authors, this observation can, at least in part, be explained by the national security obligations of Germany as a nation state. This assumption is supported by the observation that the regional level of Thuringia is more consistent with the supranational level of the European Union, both of which can “afford” to favour ecology over economy due to not being nation states. Another finding suggests that the broad and ambiguous definition of climate policy causes many contradictions, leading to an “omnipresence” of climate policy, and in doing so, strips it of its meaning and, consequently, practical relevance.

A Recast Framework for Welfare Deservingness Perceptions

Many important societal debates revolve around questions of deservingness, especially when it comes to debates related to inequality and social protection. It is therefore unsurprising that a growing body of research spanning the social and political sciences is concerned with the determinants of deservingness perceptions. In this contribution, we engage with the currently central theoretical framework used in deservingness research and point out an important weakness: Partly ambiguous definitions of the framework’s central concepts, the criteria for perceived deservingness. We also highlight the negative consequences this has for empirical research, including notably varying and overlapping operationalizations and thereby a lacking comparability of results across studies. Our main contribution is a redefinition of the criteria for perceived deservingness and a demonstration of the empirical implications of using this new set of criteria via original vignette survey experiments conducted in Germany and the United States in 2019. Our results provide a clearer image of which criteria drive deservingness perceptions.

Sustainable development of territorial units: MCDM approach with optimal tail selection

In the face of accelerating climate change, economic instability and limited resources, it is essential to find indicators that better measure the sustainable development of territorial units. Despite ambiguous definitions of sustainable development, numerous studies describe quantitative indicators of sustainable development. Main methodological problems include data availability and their use, spatial and time scales, selection of indicators, and their aggregation. Usually, analysts and decision-makers apply well known conventional methods that have numerous limitations. These methods in many cases cause excessive simplification of the real phenomena and relations between their determinants. Moreover, variables describing the development of territorial units (especially the environmental pillar) are often characterized by strong asymmetry or extreme observations. Even a single outlier for a given territorial unit may significantly affect the analysis and the resulting conclusions.The objective of this paper is to present the application potential of a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach with an optimal tail selection to assess the sustainable development of territorial units. The proposed approach is based on the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and different methods of optimal tail selection of variable distribution. The Oja's spatial median and the optimal tail selection methods are used to reduce the impact of strong asymmetry and extreme values of variables. Moreover, the measure of cluster compactness is proposed for the evaluation of the proposed method. The proposed approach was used to assess the sustainable development of municipalities in Poland in 2018. We found that the automated Eye-Ball method and the Guillou and Hall's method enabled correct identification of extreme values of variables describing the economic, social, and environmental development of municipalities. This made it possible to distinguish the types of sustainable development level and its pillars and enabled to provide the statuses of the sustainable development level of the examined municipalities with respect to other municipalities in Poland.