Use Of System Tools Research Articles

System Thinking for Sustainable Water Management: The Use of System Tools in Sustainability Transitions

AbstractManaging water resources to meet current social, economic, and environmental needs without compromising the ability to meet those needs in the future, requires water managers to look beyond jurisdictional boundaries and their immediate supply operations, protect shared water and marine environments, resources and ecosystems from pollution and over-abstraction and deliver structural changes and resilient solutions to make the provision of water services sustainable. With a plethora of system tools increasingly available to support the sustainability transformation of water systems, sorting through their breadth and diversity to determine what is useful and what is not can be challenging. From a selection of 40 popular system tools grouped in terms of how they function, we review those most commonly used in water management through 35 water-related studies from the literature. Findings demonstrate that system tools are not a substitute for systems thinking and applying them alone does not qualify the development of systemic solutions. Systems thinking offers a powerful approach to first improving collective understanding of sustainability challenges related to water and then, in collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders and the public, defining desired goals for water management and working together to make them a reality. System tools in that context can play an important role in facilitating the process and here we propose an overarching framework of how to select and apply available tools to facilitate a holistic, integrated, and interdisciplinary systems approach for water management and wider urban sustainability transitions.

Analysis of tools for the interaction of the government and society: financial security, legislative regulation

Introduction. The paper is devoted to interaction between the authorities and the community at the legal and financial levels. The institutional mechanism for ensuring the implementation of personnel support for the effective functioning of local self-government bodies in Ukraine at the current stage of development are revealed. The purpose of the paper is the analysis to solve the current problems of state management, administration, development of territorial communities requires the modernization of the system of public management and administration. Results. Forms, principles, economic and legal regulation of the organization and functioning of the community are provided. At the present stage, united communities are faced with a number of problems and challenges, such as the globalization of the economy, increased mobility of labor resources and the related increase in unemployment, increased international competition for investments and development resources. A set of problems and prospects contributing to the development of communities as important territorial units is justified. A model of the strategy for further development according to international practices is presented. The peculiarities of the concept of "territorial community" as a political, social, and economic phenomenon of local self-government were investigated. Conclusion. The redistribution of power and resources between the state and local self-government bodies involves the use of system tools in regulating the socio-economic space and achieving macroeconomic stability of the territory swarm and the state as a whole. Research methodology includes methods of scientific knowledge such as descriptive, systematic and analysis. The practical value of the work lies in the conclusions of the study and further research. Specialists in the legal and economic sectors can use this material.

Assessment of environmental risks of underground transport infrastructure development by BOCR method

Formulation of the problem. Solving the problems of urban transport communications, in particular the constantly growing intensity of automobile traffic in megalopolises, is one of the main directions of minimizing the environmental and man-made risks of the urban environment. Global concepts of greening large cities pay considerable attention to the possibilities of underground space to take on the functions of the most dangerous and risky surface objects and communications, since the impact of any underground object on the environment is much lower (than similar on the surface) and can be better controlled. At the same time, planning for the development of underground transport infrastructure should be based on a systematic methodology and tools for analyzing complex systems. Purpose. It consists in the use of system tools (BOCR method - criteria of benefits, opportunities, costs and risks) for planning underground transport infrastructure of large cities to ensure minimization of environmental and man-made risks of urban space and prioritization for the construction of road tunnels (for example, the General Plan of the Kiev city). Methodology. A methodology and decision support toolkit for calculating the priorities of alternatives based on hierarchical and network criteria models are proposed. The modified BOCR method developed by the authors (N. Pankratova, N.I. Nedashkovskaya) was applied to assess decision alternatives taking into account benefits, costs, opportunities and risks. Results. System models of two road tunnels, according to the General plan of the Kiev city until 2025 were developed. Assessment of the models using the BOCR method (criteria for benefits, opportunities, costs and risks) was performed. The priorities of alternatives for tunnels' routes aggregated over a network of parameters and a reasonably expedient sequence of their construction were calculated according to the criteria for reducing the environmental and man-made risks of the urbanized space. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the target function of the system model for the development of underground infrastructure in large cities is to minimize the environmental and man-made risks of urban space. The capabilities of the modified BOCR method have been expanded and two alternative tunnel track models have been successfully tested. Practical significance. The research methods and results provide investors, city state administrations and public organizations with an effective toolkit for assessing the priority of the construction of underground urban facilities to regulate urban development in order to improve environmental standards and the safety of life in megacities.

Defining and Integrating Informatics Competencies Into a Hospital Nursing Department

Expanding use of complex patient information management systems and communication technology in healthcare organizations requires nurses to possess core competencies that until recently were not considered as integral to practice as those of a strictly clinical nature. Organizational changes necessary to formally integrate informatics competencies into nursing practice require strong partnerships among facility nursing leaders, educators, and informaticists. The authors describe a strategic initiative one acute care organization used to develop nursing practice that ensures use of system tools to manage patient information, support clinical decision making, optimize workflow, and communicate with members of the care team. The initiative involved defining nursing computer and informatics management skills for the clinical system applications and technologies utilized in the organization and integrating the introduction, evaluation, and on going professional development of the defined informatics competencies into organizational processes and tools to support the bedside nurse.

Development of a Multisensory Nonvisual Interface to Computers for Blind Users

The advent of graphic-based display environments such as those found on the Macintosh, Windows, OS/2 Presentation Manager, and XWindows, has the potential for providing barriers for individuals with visual impairments, particularly those who are blind. The problems stem from three factors. First, the information being displayed on the screen has shifted from a character-based format that was stored in an ASCII text buffer to a pixel-based format. This makes it much more difficult for screen reading software to determine what characters are on the screen. Second, text-based systems used a single font and relatively few attributes (bold, underline). On the graphic displays, text can assume a very large variety of sizes, fonts, and attributes (bold, underline, italic, crossed out, etc.). When these font changes or attributes contain information, they complicate the process of presenting information via speech or braille. Third, the advent of the graphics-based system has led to much more widespread incorporation of graphic elements, such as charts, diagrams, and pictures, within the text. The new systems also introduce a number of advantages or opportunities for individuals with severe visual impairments or who are blind. Both the consistency of the human interface among applications and the use of system tools in the display process hold the potential for providing access to a broader range of applications for persons who are blind, if an effective human interface to these operating systems can be developed. The Systems × project is using a multi-sensory approach to explore techniques for providing an effective and efficient interface to graphic-based by people who are blind. A prototype system, dubbed “Systems 3,” has been developed which uses speech input/output, the keyboard, and a virtual tactile tablet to allow individuals to access both text and graphic elements in the system. Using the prototype, individuals who are completely blind have been able to use a Macintosh computer, access and read text documents, and handle simple to moderate graphic elements such as bar charts. A series of research studies is now ongoing to test the limits of the access and to quantify the relative efficacy of various approaches to providing a nonvisual interface to these graphic-based operating environments.