Many project managers and business leaders lack effective strategies to control internal factors that affect information systems (IS) projects, which may impede leadership's ability to respond to market changes. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies used by 6 purposefully selected project managers who successfully implemented information system development (ISD) projects by controlling the internal factors that affected different ISD project phases in Puerto Rico's telecommunication service industry. The framework that guided this study was coordination theory. The data collection process included semistructured interviews and project documentation including business requirements, project charters, project plans, and lessons learned which also served as resources for member checking and validation to strengthen the trustworthiness of the study. Analysis of the data occurred following Yin's 5 analytical steps of validating, coding, interpreting, summarizing, and generating themes. The 5 themes that emerged were top management support, clear requirements, communication, project plan, and lessons learned. Each theme corresponded to a phase of the project life cycle. Top management support and clear requirements were the top critical factors (TCF) in the initiating and planning phases. Communication and project plan were the TCF in the executing, monitoring, and controlling phases. Lessons learned were the TCF in the closing phase of the project. Implications for social change include helping IS project managers successfully implement IS projects, providing innovative services to customers, and improving an organization's position so it can provide jobs and economic stability in the region in which it operates.

Hillsborough County, Florida is subject to a variety of natural and technological hazards, which have the potential to threaten both the population and the built environment. This research focuses on several natural hazards (coastal flooding, sink hole, and hurricane) and technological hazards (toxic transportation spills and toxic release from fixed storage facilities) and the population that is potentially exposed to these hazards. Social vulnerability for this population was determined using racial composition, gender, age and household rental/ownership status. Both social vulnerability and exposure to hazardous conditions occur as a continuum across geographical space. The determination of who is exposed; the extent of exposure; and the hazardousness of their environment; requires converting this continuum into discreet values. There is little agreement on how this should be accomplished. The goal of this project is to improve on this situation by developing a multiple hazard map and a social vulnerability map using the best available data with a focus on data integration. The resulting maps were used to determine the extent that the community of Hillsborough County is exposed to hazardous conditions and the social vulnerability of that exposed community. The impact of hazard analysis is dependant on the creation of the hazard map. The hazard map can be affected by application of weighting factors to the individual or groups of hazards. Weighted linear combinations were used to examine how the exposed population changes when different hazard models are used. A technique of cumulative frequency mapping was used to examine how the composition of the exposed population changed as the hazard scores increased. This was useful in visualizing that different vulnerable communities were not exposed to hazards equally. This technique will be useful for future vulnerability/hazard assessments. The results of this research show that the most vulnerable populations in Hillsborough County, Florida are not exposed to the most extreme hazards. Instead the preponderance of the population is moderately vulnerable and is exposed to moderate hazards. It is important to focus on this population to help prepare for and respond to hazardous events and to work toward diminishing their social vulnerability.

Orientador: Marcus César Avezum Alves de Castro / Resumo: Os problemas relacionados ao gerenciamento dos Resíduos da Construção Civil (RCC) envolvem todas as etapas, desde a geração à destinação final. A quantidade de resíduos gerados, que em sua maioria são materiais volumosos, a falta de áreas de deposição adequadas, a ausência de controle do município tanto na quantidade gerada quanto no descarte dos resíduos, são alguns dos desafios enfrentados pelos gestores municipais. Desta forma, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo principal analisar as práticas de gestão de resíduos da construção civil vigente no município de Rio Claro identificando as potencialidades e vulnerabilidades do sistema, e consequentemente propor estratégias e instrumentos que sinalizem para a solução dos problemas encontrados. Para isso, foram realizadas atividades de campo através de visitas às instalações de gestão de RCC do município e aplicação de entrevistas aos responsáveis por estas, e também aos transportadores e gestores municipais. Observou-se que o município possui um amplo arcabouço legal sobre o tema de RCC, porém seu PGRCC encontra-se desatualizado; em relação a infraestrutura de gestão de RCC, possui todas as instalações de destinação consideradas necessárias, porém a capacidade de processamento (principalmente dos PEV’s e da Usina) é insuficiente para receber todo o resíduo gerado no município. Além disso, o poder público municipal não realiza nenhum tipo de controle da geração e destinação dos RCC, isto faz com que os transportadores de peque... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) problems involve all phases of its management, from generation to final destination. The amount of waste generated, which is mostly bulky materials, the lack of adequate deposition areas, the lack of control of the municipality in both the amount generated and the waste disposal are some of the challenges faced by municipal managers. In this way, the main objective of this work is to analyze the waste management practices of the civil construction in the city of Rio Claro, identifying the potentialities and vulnerabilities of the system, and consequently to propose strategies and instruments that signal to solve the problems encountered. With that in mind, field activities were carried out through visits to the municipal C&DW management facilities and interviews with those responsible for them, as well as to municipal transporters and managers. It was observed that the municipality has a broad legal framework on the subject of C&DW, but its PGRCC is outdated; in relation to the C&DW management infrastructure, it has all the necessary disposal facilities, but the processing capacity (mainly of the ENP's and the Plant) is insufficient to receive all the waste generated in the municipality. In addition, municipal public power does not carry out any type of control of the generation and destination of C&DW, which means that small and large volume carriers are disposed of in irregular locations. From this analysis it was concluded that ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

The modern day tourists do not want to deal with the hassle of using a large number of travel guides and paper maps while travelling. They would prefer to be able to access required information via their mobile phones or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). We realise that the delivered information may be originally available in numerous information formats. To support the administrator of the tourist guides the programme is required to help sorting information from these different sources and to help inserting them into a system. Our goal with this project is to develop a software support for processing information import via a graphical user interface, to support the administrator in identifying and extracting the appropriate sight information from various resources. The interface also helps in transferring and storing the structured and unstructured data into the TIP database.

Information security technologists and business scholars are motivated by a desire to understand how and to what extent the application of IT within enterprise systems leads to improved and secured organizational performance. An effective relationship between business and IT professionals is a primary determinant of success in gaining business advantage through the enterprise system. As business innovation has relied increasingly on partnerships between business and IT professional, a different perspective of how IT professionals view their organizational contributions was needed for organizations to remain competitive. Business knowledge is essential if IT professionals are to create linkages with other organizational units and have a wider perspective about business objectives, thus achieving fit between IT and organizational strategies. Organizations have started responding to this challenge by demanding more business acumen in their IT staff. The focus of this study is on the knowledge that is beyond that of independent business and IT only domain knowledge of information security. Therefore, technical areas of knowledge, such as hardware and software, all of which are closely associated with IT skills, are not discussed in this thesis. This is not to declare that such knowledge is not important. Clearly technical knowledge is part of the IT professional's overall information security technology expertise, but this study is about the organization proficiency of business and the IT professional, and is therefore interested in what enables business and IT professionals to apply their business domain and technical knowledge in ways that are beneficial to the organization and to act cooperatively with their customers and business partners. The purpose of this study is to employ the triangulation method to identify the theoretical links and empirically examine the association between business and IT perspective of information security. An important contribution of this study is the identification of business and IT perspectives on information security technology. By establishing the link between business and IT, the study focuses and evaluates Virtual Private Network (VPN) as an information security technology to find out if VPN can secure and gain competitive advantage by partisan business process and organization performance. This study articulates distinctive characteristics of Virtual Private Network and management processes that extend the range of applicability across diverse business segments. It distinguishes between business and IT and explains why the exploitation of a complementary set of related information security entities (such as VPN) across multiple functions create competitive vi advantages even across a diverse set of businesses that have limited opportunity to exploit business process and organization performance. The most important direct predictor of this study is a high level of communication between business and IT. However, one cannot mandate meaningful communication between individuals. IT people have to earn the right to play a meaningful role in management forums. Based on the findings from this study, one important way for an IT person to be heard is for him/her to devote the time necessary to create competitive advantage and develop shared domain knowledge, the most influential construct in the research model. An IT person needs to understand the leverage points of the industry, the history and current issues of the business units, and to learn to apply business oriented objectives in the application of technology to business problems. This change in view would help focus their attention on security technology and ideas that could produce the most benefit and create competitive advantage, rather than those that offer the most technical promise.

The Environmental Resource Mapping System (E-RMS) is a geographic information system (GIS) that is used by the National Parks and Wildlife Service to assist in management of national parks. The package is available commercially from the Service and is used by other government departments for environmental management. E-RMS has also been present in Australian Universities and used for academic work for a number of years. This thesis demonstrates that existing procedures for product quality and performance have not been followed in the production of the package and that the package and therefore much of the work undertaken with the package is fundamentally flawed. The E-RMS software contains and produces a number of serious mistakes. Several problems are identified and discussed in this thesis. As a result of the shortcomings, the author recommends that an enquiry be conducted to investigate *1/ The technical feasibility of each project for which the E-RMS package has been used; *2/ The full extent and consequences of the failings inherent with the package; and *3/ The suitability of the E-RMS GIS package for the purposes for which it is sold. Australian Standard 3898 requires that the purpose, functions and limitations of consumer software shall be described. To comply with this standard, users of the E-RMS package would have to be informed of several factors related to it. These are discussed in the research. Failure to consider the usefulness and extractable nature of information in any GIS database will inevitably lead to problems that may endanger the phenomena that the GIS is designed to protect. / Master of Applied Science (Environmental Science)

「跨組織資訊系統」(Interorganizational information system; IOS)為不同組織間建立了彼此資料流通的管道，也增強了組織間的合作關係。隨著網際網路(Internet)應用的盛行，使得跨越不同組織界限，甚至穿越國界的資訊交流更加便捷。本研究主要是收集國內外對於跨組織資訊系統採用的相關文獻，建構跨組織資訊系統的採用模式，以臺灣一千大製造業為研究對象，以瞭解現行臺灣製造業在跨組織資訊系統的使用情形，並特別比較不同採用因素（組織、跨組織、環境）對扮演角色（主動促進、被動接受）與採用目的（交易需求、決策支援）的影響及對未採用跨組織資訊系統的原因探討。 經過問卷的設計、預試、修改、發放到回收，總共寄發一千份，回收二百三十一份，回收率23.1%。結果顯示共有42.9%的製造業採用跨組織資訊系統，主要是透過電子資料交換、電子郵件的方式來進行資料交換，其中汽車及零件業的採用比率較高。就採用模式而言，屬於主動促進者與被動接受者的比例相當，而採用目的多為交易需求(63.6%)；權力關係較大、組織策略較著重IOS，及高階主管的支持會影響建置跨組織資訊系統時扮演主動促進者的角色，反之則扮演被動接受者的角色；而依存關係較大則會促使組織在建置跨組織資訊系統時，同時兼具交易需求及決策支援的功能。而在未採用跨組織資訊系統的原因，依重要性順序包括工作流程不重要、不著重IOS投資、不影響市場的競爭性、權力關係不足、無公會推動、信任關係不足、無政府推動、無特定依存關係。 / "Interorganizational Information Systems" (IOS) build the channel for information exchange between different organizations. With the wider applications of the Internet , they make the information flows across the border of the organizations or nations more convenient and fast. To begin with the study, the literature review regarding IOS was conducted to build a conceptual research model. Then the questionnaire was developed, pretested, modified and then mailed. It surveys the managers of information departments of the top 1000 manufacturing companies in Taiwan and reports status of IOS. Two hundreds and thirty-one in this study, giving a response rate of 23.1%. There were 42.9% of these companies which adopt IOS for information exchange, using electronic data interchange (EDI) , electronic mail or extranet. The automobile and accessories industry has higher adoption rate. Among this companies, the proactive companies are nearly equal to the reactive ones, and most companies adopt IOS for transaction processing (63.6%). More power ' the organizational stratgey on IOS with emphasis, and the support of top managers can make companies proactive to adopt the IOS; and more dependent relationship would facilitate companies to adopt IOS for both transaction processing and decision support. The factors for not adopting IOS are that the IOS is unimportant to work, it is not scheduled for investment, it don't affect market competitiveness , the company don't have enough power, the unions never promote the IOS, the partners don't have enough trust, the government don't advocate the IOS, and the partners don't have deeper dependency relationship.

<p>Many information technology artefacts can be found in today’s cars. The interaction with these artefacts is the driver’s secondary task while driving the car in a safe way is the primary task. When designing interfaces for in-vehicle usage, measures have to be taken in order to make the interaction with the artefact suit the in-vehicle environment. One of these measures is to have the appropriate screen density level, which is the amount of information present on the screen.</p><p>This thesis compares the usability of two integrated in-vehicle display prototypes, one with low screen density and one with high screen density. The usability comparison considers both safety and user preferences. Safety was measured by a Lane Change Test (LCT) which measures distraction of a primary task while performing a secondary task, and user preferences was measured with a questionnaire. Before the comparison was made, controls and a graphical user interface were designed.</p><p>Results showed no significant difference in driver distraction between performing tasks on the high screen density display and the low screen density display. However, a vast majority of the users preferred high screen density over low. Furthermore, the distraction levels for both the high and the low screen density displays were below the proposed 0.5 meter limit for allowed driver distraction. The results indicate that in-vehicle displays can have a high level of screen density without imposing a level of distraction on the driver that is unsuitable for driving.</p>

<p>Aim: The aim of this thesis has been to try to answer the question of how an IT based marketing information system support the formation of business and product related strategies and when and how such a system should be integrated in a company</p><p>Method: Analytical meta-study of published literature condensed through a SWOT analysis and combined with a qualitative evaluation of questionnaires directed to companies with experience of developing and implementing marketing information systems.</p><p>Result & Conclusion: Company size and market volatility decides the time of implementation of a marketing information system. Implementation should be initiated top-down in order to secure full organisational inertia. The approach should be holistic and tailor-made for each specific organisation. Users should fully integrated in development and implementation.</p><p>Suggestions for future research: Supplementary work could be carried out in trying to quantify how a marketing information system affect the new product time to market and the strategic mismatch to real market development, hence the efficiency of such a system. Another question of interest is the organisational inbound resistance to change, how this resistance affect the implementation of a marketing information system and how to overcome the boundaries it poses.</p><p>Contribution of the thesis:This thesis contributes with a general framework that sustains the implementation of a marketing information system. It answers the initial questions that a manager has, standing before the possible implementation of such a tool.</p>

<p>There are a number of decision making problems in which Geographical Information System (GIS) has employed to organize and facilitate the procedure of analyzing the problem. These GIS-based decision problems which typically include a number of different criteria and alternatives are generally analyzed by Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA).Different locations within a geographical area represent the alternatives by which the overall goal of the project is achieved. The quality of achieving the goal is evaluated by a set of criteria which should be considered in the work. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is a powerful method of MCDA generally can organize spatial problems and decides which alternatives are most suitable for the defined problems. However due to some intrinsic uncertainty in the method, a number of authors suggest fuzzifying the method while others are against fuzzification of the AHP.</p><p>The debate over fuzzifying AHP is going on and attempt for finding that was mostly in theory, and little, if any; practical comparison between the AHP and fuzzified AHP has done. This work presents a practical comparison of AHP and fuzzy AHP in a GIS-based problem, case study, for locating a dam in Costa Rica, considering different criteria. In order to perform the AHP and fuzzy AHP in the GIS-based problem and calculating weights of the criteria by the methods, some computer codes have written and developed in MATLAB.</p><p>The comparisons between the AHP and fuzzy AHP methods are done on result weights and on the result final maps. The comparison between the weights is repeated on different levels of uncertainty in fuzzy AHP then all the results are compared with the result of AHP method. Also this study for checking the effect of fuzzification on results is suggested Chi-Square test as a suitable tool.</p><p>Comparisons between the resulting weights of the AHP and fuzzy AHP methods show some differences between the methods. Furthermore, the Chi-Square test shows that the higher level of uncertainty in the fuzzy AHP, the greater the difference in results between the AHP and fuzzy AHP methods.</p>