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Abstract: Excessive production, indiscriminate consumption, and improper disposal of plastics have led to plastic pollution and its hazardous environmental effects. Various approaches to tackle the challenges of reducing the plastic footprint have been developed and applied, such as the production of alternative materials (design for recycling), the production and use of biodegradable plastic and plastics from power-to-X, and the development of recycling approaches. This study proposes an optimisation strategy based on regression to evaluate and predict plastic use and end-of-life fate in the future based on historical trends. The mathematical model is formulated and correlations based on functions of time are developed and optimised by minimising the sum of squared residuals. The plastic quantities up to the year 2050 are projected based on historical trends analysis, and for improved sustainability, projections are additionally based on intervention analyses. The results show that the global use of plastics is expected to increase from 464 Mt in 2020 up to 884 Mt in 2050, with up to 4725 Mt of plastics accumulated in stock in 2050 (from the year 2000). Compared to other available forecasts, a slightly lower level of plastic use and stock are obtained. The intervention analysis estimates a range of global plastics' consumption between 594 Mt and 1018 Mt in 2050 by taking into account its different increment rates (between −1 % and 2.65 %). In the packaging sector, the implementation of reduction targets (15 % reduction in 2040 compared to 2018) could lead to a 27.3 % decrease in plastic use in 2050 as compared to 2018, while achieving recycling targets (55 % in 2030) would recycle >75 % of plastic packaging in 2050. The partial substitution of fossil-based plastics with bioplastics (polyethylene) will require significant land area, between 0.2 × 106 km2 for obtaining switchgrass and up to around 1.0 × 106 km2 for obtaining forest residue (annual yields of 58.15 t/ha and 3.5 t/ha) in 2050. The intervention analysis shows that proactive policies can mitigate sustainability challenges, however achieving broader sustainability goals also requires reduction of footprints related to energy production and virgin plastic production, the production of bio-based plastics, and the full implementation of recycling initiatives.
Keywords: plastic use, plastic waste, end-of-life fate, forecasting, hostorical trends, regression analysis, least square method, intervention analysis
Published in DKUM: 31.01.2025; Views: 0; Downloads: 2
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Abstract: In 2020, the CoViD-19 pandemic spread worldwide in an unexpected way and suddenly modified many life issues, including social habits, social relationships, teaching modalities, and more. Such changes were also observable in many different healthcare and medical contexts. Moreover, the CoViD-19 pandemic acted as a stress test for many research endeavors, and revealed some limitations, especially in contexts where research results had an immediate impact on the social and healthcare habits of millions of people. As a result, the research community is called to perform a deep analysis of the steps already taken, and to re-think steps for the near and far future to capitalize on the lessons learned due to the pandemic. In this direction, on June 09th–11th, 2022, a group of twelve healthcare informatics researchers met in Rochester, MN, USA. This meeting was initiated by the Institute for Healthcare Informatics—IHI, and hosted by the Mayo Clinic. The goal of the meeting was to discuss and propose a research agenda for biomedical and health informatics for the next decade, in light of the changes and the lessons learned from the CoViD-19 pandemic. This article reports the main topics discussed and the conclusions reached. The intended readers of this paper, besides the biomedical and health informatics research community, are all those stakeholders in academia, industry, and government, who could benefit from the new research findings in biomedical and health informatics research. Indeed, research directions and social and policy implications are the main focus of the research agenda we propose, according to three levels: the care of individuals, the healthcare system view, and the population view.
Keywords: biomedical and health informatics, artificial intelligence in medicine, research trends, CoViD-19
Published in DKUM: 03.04.2024; Views: 333; Downloads: 240
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Abstract: The supply chain has become very essential to run any business nowadays. Throughout the history of business, the professionals have been trying always to find out the best practice, and as long as the business concept is evolved over time, the practice, methodologies and techniques of doing the business also have been evolved. This evolvement led to the concept of supply chain initially and then later it became essential to have strategy for supply chain. The evolvement of the markets, globalization, and new technologies became very decisive subjects for building any supply chain and developing its strategy, but there are many other events that may take place which could enforce the supply chain decision makers to change the current approach of running their business. The dynamic business environment and the possible future trends of the global markets represent a real challenge for development of appropriate supply chain strategies, like lean, agility, and leagility. Therefore, it is very important to assess how different possible strategies are suitable for the future changes of the markets? This is to enable the supply chain to be prepared with adequate strategies for different future scenarios. To achieve this aim of preparing the supply chains for the future with adequate strategies, a deep study is done to research lean, agility and leagility, explaining the similarities and differences of these concepts. These strategies are dealing with the most important factors in supply chains; the time and the cost, what is the key reason for selecting these particular strategies lies in the fact, that they are concerned with improving the effectiveness and responsiveness in the supply chain and this is extremely important for the future. We continued study of these strategies by development of three possible future scenarios for energy scarcity, new international monetary system, and wars. The reason of developing these particular scenarios is because they are concerned with the most important political and economic events which could happen and affect the supply chains in the future (EY, 2013; Cook, 2006; Sokov, 2015). These scenarios are established to anticipate the possible challenges which could face the supply chain strategies in the future and to evaluate the suitability of supply chain strategies for such future scenarios. A survey of 150 supply chain professionals, who are working currently in the field of supply chain management, is done in two phases. The first phase is focusing on recognition of the opinions of surveyed supply chain professionals towards the supply chain strategies and their utilization. Based on the theoretical knowledge of the academic literature reviewed in this research, proposed scenarios, and the feedback of professionals in the survey, it was evident that supply chains’ managers need adequate framework, which will support improvement of current and future supply chain management. Therefore, the grounded theory methodology is used to create a new conceptual framework. The core idea of the proposed framework is to improve the global sourcing practice, which consequently will enable improving the management of supply chains according to the predicted scenarios. A second phase of survey is conducted to present the proposed framework to the supply chain professionals for evaluation. The proposed framework adds value to the global sourcing process, which enhancing the supply chain collaboration and helps to support the selected supply chain strategies for consideration – i.e., lean, agility, and leagility, to work better in the future. The proposed framework represents scientific contribution to the supply chain strategies utilization in practice. The results of this contribution are obviously to fill the gap highlighted by the supply chain professionals in the survey, who highlighted the essential need for improvement to the supply chain collaboration globally, and this will be the basic c
Keywords: Keywords: supply chain strategies, lean, agility, leagility, supply chain future trends, supply chain management, grounded theory, scenario planning, supply chain collaboration, sourcing.
Published in DKUM: 04.03.2021; Views: 1489; Downloads: 157
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Abstract: Purpose: The main goal of the paper is to analyse dynamics of juvenile crime and to identify long-term tendencies in the development of this negative social phenomenon in Croatia in this century. Design/Methods/Approach: Based on official police statistics, the analysis of the dynamics and the average rate of change are used to reveal and compare trends in reported overall, violent, and juvenile property crime in Croatia between 2000 and 2013. Model of a linear trend is used to make a prediction of future short-time trends. Findings: Though the total number of reported juvenile crime is stable or even slightly declining over the observed period, there are exceptional increases or declines in certain years and in certain offences, which can create the wrong impression about alarming changes. It especially applies to the oscillations of the number of reported juvenile homicide and rape, because of small absolute numbers. Substantial and significant fluctuations during the observed period, are found in reported rates for robbery and theft: there is a decrease in reported theft and increase in reported robbery. Originality/Value: In Croatia, but also in other post-socialist countries in Central Eastern Europe, there are general beliefs of the dramatic increase in juvenile crime rates since late 1990s. Results of this study reveal how such cursory review obscures some long-term and significant changes in juvenile crime, which are indicative when speaking about the juvenile crime under conditions of intensive social change.
Keywords: juvenile, overall crime, violent crime, property crime, Croatia, trends
Published in DKUM: 16.04.2020; Views: 1100; Downloads: 50
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Abstract: The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the phenomenon of professionalization that is observable in organizations from the nonprofit sector. Empirical research was conducted among Hungarian nonprofit organizations, and the data were collected within the framework of a country-wide survey. Through the analysis of the research results, the paper provides deeper insights into knowledge about professionalization trends in the nonprofit sector. It proves that organizational development positively impacts nonprofit organizations’ improvement of their professionalization level and the members of these organizations.
Keywords: non-profit organizations, organizational development, training, knowledge, trends, research, analysis
Published in DKUM: 14.11.2017; Views: 1263; Downloads: 489
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