The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the establishment of a web-based cession collateral registration platform for agri-financiers in South Africa. The agricultural industry is earmarked for growth due to pressures of food security and the role it could play in rural development, job creation and social upliftment. Agri-finance to farmers for primary input costs, is the catalyst which kick-starts the agricultural value chain. Due to many reasons, the traditional asset-based collateral in the fashion of mortgage bonds will become more and more unavailable to agri-financiers to secure their loans. Agri-financiers will have to rely on commodity-based collateral (cession) as security for repayment of their loans. The law of cession and trite common law principle of first in time first in right creates an undue credit risk to agri-financiers. A market gap exists to establish a cession collateral registration platform in South Africa to mitigate the aforementioned credit risk assumed by agri-financiers. This platform is an entrepreneurial opportunity which could be operated as a viable and sustainable business enterprise. The results of the empirical research have shown that the market will embrace such platform as solution to the credit risk associated with commodity-based collateral in the form of a cession of crop income. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the establishment of a web-based cession collateral registration platform for agri-financiers in South Africa. The agricultural industry is earmarked for growth due to pressures of food security and the role it could play in rural development, job creation and social upliftment. Agri-finance to farmers for primary input costs, is the catalyst which kick-starts the agricultural value chain. Due to many reasons, the traditional asset-based collateral in the fashion of mortgage bonds will become more and more unavailable to agri-financiers to secure their loans. Agri-financiers will have to rely on commodity-based collateral (cession) as security for repayment of their loans. The law of cession and trite common law principle of first in time first in right creates an undue credit risk to agri-financiers. A market gap exists to establish a cession collateral registration platform in South Africa to mitigate the aforementioned credit risk assumed by agri-financiers. This platform is an entrepreneurial opportunity which could be operated as a viable and sustainable business enterprise. The results of the empirical research have shown that the market will embrace such platform as solution to the credit risk associated with commodity-based collateral in the form of a cession of crop income. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Asset management of force main infrastructure entails accurate prediction of the condition of the system to operate and maintain at the lowest overall costs. In this thesis report, guidelines for asset management of force main infrastructure is provided by synthesizing the trends observed in the inspection, condition assessment and renewal engineering strategies. Furthermore, this thesis focuses on development of a centralized web-based platform for advanced asset management of force main infrastructure. The key components involved in this comprehensive asset management of the force main infrastructure are data management, model implementation and information visualization. The thesis depicts various aspects involved in developing a web-based application for utilities that store, collect and analyze the data in dissimilar methods. A risk assessment model employed by a utility to prioritize the assets for renewal is demonstrated with various utilities' data. Consequently, the model is published as geo-processing services through ESRI ArcGIS Server. A visualization tool is developed for individual utilities that interacts with the geo-processing services and renders a web-based interactive map to visualize the model results. A drupal website (www.pipeid.org) is developed to support the data collection and model dissemination process. / Master of Science

Modern science has seen the rise in prominence of group research projects and other many-person endeavours, in what has been called "Big Science". Computational linguistics is no exception to that, and especially the devel- opment of large linguistic resources is a task best suited for collaborative approaches. In this document, the design and implementation of an environment for doing computational linguistics online is described. The environment is a software tool, with which development of formal grammars and other types of computational linguistic resources can be performed in a collaborative way. The application supports HPSG as an example paradigm of this kind of work. 1

No description available.

No description available.

In this thesis, we present a review of the current practices of user involvement. Different methods and tools have proliferated for user-involvement, however, to comprehend the explicit features of a small and medium-sized web-based platform service companies, we contrast our findings with previous experiences and research of user involvement in big companies. In the basis of the aforementioned, we identify methods and contexts that may be appropriate in the context of small and medium-sized web-based platform service companies. Mainly, we reviewed the research field of: user-involvement and new service development.   The central purpose of this study is to determine how do small and medium-sized web-based platform service companies utilize the process of the user involvement across the stages of new service development. Building on previous researches, we suggested that there are different methods to consider under the service development stage (i.e. ideation, development and testing). These methods are grouped under the following terms user-involvement ecosystem, user-involvement interactions, user-involvement platform and user-involvement personnel. The aforementioned methods are suggested to help web-based platform service companies utilize user involvement across the new service development stages. This study is of qualitative nature with a deductive approach. We conducted eight semi-structured interviews in order to get insights from high-level managers responsible of the user-involvement process. All the small and medium-sized companies operated in the service sector and provided a web-based platform. The theoretical framework was utilized in order to analyze the empirical data gathered. We used thematic analysis for our deductive study approach, to interpret the gathered material in order to conclude the results and answer the research question.   Our results revealed that in the ideation and development stages the following is vital: involving lead-users or those who are tech-savvy and tolerant to ambiguity, educating users to familiarize them with the company’s system, moderate rules and structure, mixing focus groups, encouraging user-to-user communication, small number of participants, multi-media approach and online tools, and encouraging idea hunting culture among company’s staff. However, in testing the following is recommended: involving average-users or those who are open-minded and tolerant to risk and innovation, unifying goals and common view by tangibilizing the service, setting rules and regulations for testing the service, having permanent interactions with users, and large number of participants. Finally, it is important to ensure a close relationship, transparency, motivation, face-to-face interactions, and to have an entrepreneurial leader to oversee the whole process across all the former three stages of NSD. To improve on this study, we would recommend the investigation on the user perspective to gain insights on their views of the process of user-involvement across the NSD, as they are directly involved in the development of a new service. Hence, a more extensive research on the user-involvement in web-based platform service companies on both, internal and external facets instantaneously would be of great significance.