Organic farming is increasingly viewed as a plausible production system for sustainable agriculture for smallholder farmers. However, there is not enough scientific evidence and knowledge to advocate certified organic farming for African smallholder farmers who face several constraints related to production, storage and marketing. The potential for organic farming for smallholder farmers, faced by these constraints, is not clearly defined. As a result, this study set out to evaluate the production potential of organic agriculture among three smallholder farmer groups. Production questions were used to investigate and evaluate the potential for organic agriculture among three smallholder farmer groups and constituted the following subproblems: · What crops can be grown in the three study areas, based on climatic data ? · Do farmers concur that these are the most suitable potential organic crops? · How useful do the farmers find the decision making tool? · What constraints threaten commercial production of the identified crops for these farmers? Participatory methodologies that included the use of Force Field Analysis, discussions and workshops were used to identify organic production constraints related to production decisions. Farmers faced constraints related to finance, capacity enhancement, technical knowledge, fencing, irrigation, and a lack of, or inappropriately trained extension officers. As a response to identified production constraints, a decision support tool was developed. Natural resource data, including climatic and agronomic data, was used to create a specially calibrated Microsoft Excel spreadsheet interface that functions as an empirical organic production decision support tool for organic and aspirant organic smallholder farmers, by providing answers for farmer-prioritised production constraints. A list of potential crops for each of the three study areas was subjected to a series of checks against suitability for climate and disease conditions and nutrient requirements. A limited supply of manure, to meet the enormously high requirements for organic production in the poor soils of these areas, is the major constraint to exclusive organic production and renders certified organic production difficult and unsustainable. Farmers disagreed with some of the crops on the list, arguing that familiar crops were rejected by the model, but they were excited by the prospects for production of “new” crops suggested as suitable by the decision support tool, but not yet grown in the study areas. End users welcomed the model and expressed the opinion that it would be useful in decision making related to organic crop production. The study concludes that, although a number of agronomically-suitable crops can grow in the study areas, organic production is restricted by rather high manure requirements, lack of compost making skills, lack of knowledge on natural pest and disease control and poorly nourished soils, leading to poor yields. The rainy season creates a disease-supporting environment, rendering organic farming risky for rain-fed smallholder farming. Risk in certified organic farming for smallholders was further exacerbated by a hardly inconducive policy environment that low literacy levels exist amongst farmers. This study is innovative for three reasons. First, farmers were true participants and drivers of the research. Second, trans-disciplinary expert seminars were attended by experts from different disciplines who critiqued the conceptualisation, design, and implementation of the study. Third, the development of a practical decision-support tool shows innovation towards solving complex smallholder farmers decisions. If organic farming is to be promoted, commitment by government is needed in order to establish policy and legislation on organic farming to direct and govern training, information provision and marketing. Intensive training and knowledge building of organic production for smallholder farmers and extension officers is critical. There are also agroecological risks associated with organic farming for smallholder farmers. Recommendations for future research include comparison between organic agriculture and conventional agriculture, where sustainability of certified organic farming and economic viability can be conducted in the South African context. Improvement of the decision making tool will require involving information technology specialists so that the tool can be installed in community centres, extension offices and other accessible places for farmers and others. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

The South African (SA) sugar industry supports approximately 50,940 small and large scale producers who collectively produce 22 million tons of sugarcane seasonally, on average. SA farmers face many challenges that lead to an uncertain decision making environment. Despite a general consensus among agricultural economists that risk constitutes a prevalent feature of the production and marketing environment, various authors have recently stated that risk-related research has failed to provide a convincing argument that risk matters in farmers' decisions. The various shortcomings of previous research have been identified and recommendations for the future proposed. Recommendations include that the focus of future risk research should be on holistic risk management. This study firstly identified the perceived importance of 14 separate sources of risk for a sample of 76 large-scale commercial sugarcane farmers in KwaZulu-Natal. Once a sufficient understanding of the risk perceptions of respondents had been attained, their use of 12 risk-related management strategies was determined. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to investigate how individual management instruments are grouped together by respondents into choice brackets in order to make use of complementary and substitution effects. The study then proposed and demonstrated a technique that may be used in future research to isolate the effects of risk on individual risk-related management responses by modelling the management strategies contained within individual choice brackets with two-stage least squares regression analysis (2SLS). The most important risk sources were found to be the threats posed by land reform, minimum wage legislation and the variability of the sugar price, in that order. PCA identified seven risk dimensions, collectively explaining 78% of the variance in all 14 risk sources considered. These dimensions were: the "Crop Gross Income Index", "Macroeconomic and Political Index", "Legislation Index", "Labour and Inputs Index", "Human Capital and Credit Access Index", "Management Index" and the "Water Rights Index". Respondents were also asked questions regarding risk-related management strategies, including diversification of on-farm enterprises, investments and management time. PCA identified six management response brackets, collectively explaining 77% of the variance in the 12 responses considered. These response indexes were: the "Mechanisation and Management Bracket", "Enterprise and Time Diversification Bracket", "Insurance and Credit Reserve Bracket", "Geographic and Investment Diversification Bracket", "Land Trade Bracket" and the "Labour Bracket". Lastly, the study proposed a methodology for investigating the role of individuals' risk preferences in decision making. The recommended technique involves the simultaneous modelling of the major risk-related management strategies within each management response bracket, using 2SLS. A measure of risk preference was included in the 2SLS analysis to establish the influence of risk on decision making. By applying this methodology to the data obtained in this study, respondents were shown to be taking advantage of various complementary and substitution effects that exist between management responses. This was evident from the PCA and confirmed for the first previously identified management response bracket using 2SLS regression analysis. Risk attitude was shown to be a significant determinant of management decisions regarding the extent to which back-up management is kept in reserve. Important policy recommendations stemming from this study include that government review restrictive labour legislation and decrease the uncertainty surrounding new land redistribution legislation. Farmers need to make better use of available information by considering the effects of any single management decision on separate decisions, enabling them to take further advantage of substitution and complementary effects that may exist between management strategies previously considered in separate decision brackets. The fact that mechanisation and labour use occur in separate risk-related management response brackets in this study is an example of one such substitution effect that farmers do not seem to be utilising in terms of their management decision making. Future research using time series data is important in order to identify how risk perceptions and management portfolios change over time. Also, further research using the methodology proposed in this study may prove to be a useful means of more adequately addressing the question "Does risk matter in farmers' decisions?" / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is becoming imperative across building disciplines to improve communication and workflow from the first blueprint. Maintenance and facility management is however lagging behind in adoption and research of BIM. Utilizing research-through-design, this study explores BIM-enabled facility management and the critical practice of decision-making at the Celsius building in Uppsala. Contextual design and inquiry were applied to identify and suggest important design features that support decisions related to the task of establishing maximum room occupation. Results show that facility managers can make use of fuzzy multicriteria decision-making and expert heuristics to independently reach conclusions. Important design features were found to heavily rely on the existing building models, where context-view filtered to room capacity data in the existing BIM-system effectively supported the users’ assessment of data. The filtered, aggregated information presented in a simplified mobile format was insufficient for decision-making, suggesting that the building model was more important than initially perceived.

Historically, South Africans, particularly small-scale farmers have had little support and hence lack tools and information when faced with production decisions. Information plays an important role in enlightening people, raising their level of knowledge and in turn improving their standard of living and participation in decision making process. Research shows that Information Communication Technology (ICT) like Decision support tools (DSTs) plays an important role in systematic dissemination of information in agriculture, thus improving the quality of farmers’ decisions. Decision support tools provide up-to-date data, procedures and analytical capacity leading to better-informed decisions, especially in rural areas. A body of research is emerging around issues of effectiveness of DSTs for farmers in the developed world. However, few studies have focused on issues around effectiveness of these tools for farmers in the developing world, particularly for resource-limited farmers. This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of a new DST for organic and small-scale farmers with a group of extension officers and researchers in KwaZulu-Natal. As an extension to the DST, a crop disease management component linked to the DST was developed. The study also set to evaluate the effectiveness of the crop disease management component. Extension officers and researchers were purposively selected for this study because both groups play a major role as far as organising and disseminating information to organic and small-scale farmers is concerned. This study identified key measures for effectiveness of DSTs and crop disease management guides using literature from the study. Two frameworks for measuring effectiveness were developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the new DST and its crop disease management component with the extension officers and researchers. Focus group discussions were used for data collection. The frameworks were used as a base for the focus group discussions. Focus groups were conducted to explore and establish whether in the light the groups (extension officers and researchers), the new DST and its crop disease management component are effective. Results from the study revealed that extension officers and researchers felt that the DST and its crop disease management component are effective since they meet key measures for effectiveness identified in the framework. The groups agreed that the DST and its crop disease management component are relevant to small-scale farmers. They also agreed that the DST has the ability to improve access to information for small-scale farmers. Lastly, they also agreed that the DST and its crop disease management component are transparent (meaning flexible and user friendly) for small-scale farmers. Some of the areas for improvement identified by the groups included a need for information on pests and more diseases for the DST and the crop disease management component. Although the groups felt that both the DST and crop disease management were effective, they strongly recommended a need for another study that will aim at developing a pest management component of the DST as this was clearly requested by groups in this study. Results of this study showed that half the respondents felt that the DST was easy enough to be used by small-scale farmers without help from extension officers, while the other half believed that small-scale farmers will still need the help of extension officers to show them how to use the DST. Government and other relevant institutions need to provide appropriate training for these farmers, making the DST useful to them. / Thesis (M.Agric)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

Diplomová práce "Strategické rozhodování o investičním projektu Kasárna Slatina" je zaměřena na využití metod rozhodovací analýzy při řešení rozhodovacího problému v rámci revitalizace armádního brownfield Kasárna Slatina. V teoretické části je vysvětlena základní terminologie, metody a postupy, které se vztahují k problematice řešeného rozhodovacího problému. V praktické části je řešeno závažné strategické rozhodnutí spojené s otázkou rozvoje konkrétní brněnské lokality. Na základě použitých postupů je v souladu s rozhodovací metodikou navrženo optimální rozhodnutí.

The dissertation deals with the topic of how the school management of Czech primary schools assign teachers to classrooms. The aim of the thesis was to define the system of assigning teachers to classrooms at schools applying pupils' differentiation and to clarify which criteria the school management follows in the assignment of teachers to the classrooms. The theoretical part was based on both domestic and foreign sources dealing with the concept of differentiation of pupils in primary education and with the choice of assignment of teachers to classrooms. Differentiation of pupils was presented in terms of the positive effects of effective education of similarly competent pupils and in terms of the view that differentiation supports the unequal distribution of pupils in classes and the subsequent recruitment of teachers applying different demands and curriculum. In addition, a model of pupils' differentiation and models of assignment of teachers to classrooms were presented, and also the theoretical model of teacher's knowledge was introduced, which was further used in the empirical part for the determination of the criteria for assigning teachers to classrooms. The aim of the empirical part was to describe the real way of assigning teachers to classrooms by the school management in five...

This thesis presents the development and evaluation of a 2D simulation model designed to predict the spread and behavior of forest fires, with a specific focus on Swedish forest ecosystems. Despite the model's simplicity and inherent limitations due to assumptions such as homogeneity in fuel distribution and the exclusion of topographical influences, the simulations yield remarkably accurate predictions of fire spread and intensity. The model integrates basic meteorological data (wind speed and direction, temperature) and uses a discretized spatial approach to simulate the dynamics of forest fires. Initial results suggest that even with minimal input variables and broad assumptions, the model offers significant predictive capabilities, highlighting potential areas for future refinement. Key aspects such as the interaction between conduction and advection terms, the role of water vaporization in fire dynamics, and the influence of wind on fire propagation are discussed. The findings encourage further development of the model, aiming at incorporating more complex variables such as topography and more forest fuels, potentially enhancing its utility in real-time fire management and decision-making processes.