The cities are being presented as commodities with their constructed images. Their names are being transformed to brand names, of entertainment, culture etc. Tourism industry is the main actor of this process. In my study on the relationship between tourism industry and its effects on the built environment of the city, the present study focuses on Batumi, a resort city of Georgia. A massive construction activity is being conducted in the city aiming to create tourist attractions, which include the creation of international chain hotels, beautification of public spaces and regeneration of the beach line. The city of Batumi, which has a long history as a port city and also as a resort mainly attracting tourists from the neighboring countries to Georgia, is undergoing a rapid change that transforms the city into a space of consumption. This change, including creation of tourist enclaves, commodification of heritage, gentrification and refashioning the city to create particular ways of seeing reflects the impact of consumption culture on tourism.

The subject of the conservation and preservation of industrial heritage was started to be handled starting from the middle of 20th Century in Europe. As in Turkey, industrial heritage concept is a subject which is in agenda in last years. Awareness about the subject increased with the help of social movements starting especially with the demolition of Ankara Maltepe Gas and Electric Factory. The Brewery of Ataturk Forest Farm should also be handled not to share the same fate with this example which was witnessed recently. In the years when Ataturk Forest Farm was founded, it was realized that industry is important for the economic development. In this sense, First Five Year Industry Plan, which was prepared with the order of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to accelerate industrialization, was taken into action in 1934 and many industrial complexes were founded according to this plan. The Brewery of Atat&uuml / rk Forest Farm is one of the reflections of First Five Year Industry Plan in Ankara. Today, the Brewery of Atat&uuml / rk Forest Farm is out of use, ill conditioned and faced with the danger of destruction. Therefore, the brewery of Atat&uuml / rk Forest Farm, which is one of the most significant examples of the industrial buildings of the Early Republican Period and located on a debated context like Atat&uuml / rk Forest Farm, should be conserved and handed down the next generations.

The term business as an economical activity brings along many issues related to / managerial activities, competition, marketing, finance, risk, etc. which all of them include a high level of decision making that need to be supported by trust able knowledge. Due to the unique specifications of the construction industry and the high sensitivity regarding the decisions made accompanied with the business, knowledge and knowledge management have been considered essential for the industry. As a fundamental step of a well structured knowledge management system, classification of the knowledge plays an important role in organizing and representing a domain. Among the many aspects of decision making, decisions regarding the business development of a company play a crucial role in the survival and growth of an available business. However up to now, the literature has a shortage on a comprehensive work which attempts to classify the knowledge in this specific domain of the construction industry. In an effort to cover this gap in the literature, this study focuses on developing a knowledge taxonomy for business development management in a construction company based on semi-structured interviews with Turkish construction professionals. The taxonomy designed by referring to expert opinion is comprised of five major concepts: Business environment, Clients, Partners, Related parties, and own Company. The presented taxonomy is tested on real cases and believed to be used for representing, storing, sharing, retrieving and in general, managing knowledge related to business development management of a construction organizations for decision supporting purposes. More over in order to demonstrate how the presented taxonomy can be used in a company a knowledge management tool has been designed.

Due to its high-risk nature, international construction projects are more vulnerable to adverse changes in project environment and company objectives. To achieve successful project outcomes, early provision of risks has a vital place in managing construction projects. Within the literature, several risk assessment methodologies have been offered to simulate probable consequences of risks. The majority of the proposed methodologies are limited in reflection of real project conditions as they require probabilistic measures or rely on solely intuition and experience of decision makers. In this study, it is argued that an additional assistance is needed for decision-makers when they are assessing magnitudes of risks under different project and country conditions. The purpose of this study is to develop a knowledge-based risk mapping tool for international construction projects using an ontology that relates risk and vulnerability to cost overrun and a novel risk-vulnerability assessment methodology. The tool incorporates a &lsquo / lessons learned database&rsquo / that utilizes learning from previous projects in order to assist decision-makers when quantifying the risk-related variables. The database is expected to aid decision-makers by retrieving and making use of the knowledge of previous projects that have been captured, codified, and stored within the database previously. In addition, to guide decision-makers by giving better understanding of the risk variables, attributes of the risk-related variables are identified that lists probable triggering events for the occurrence of the relevant variables. The tool has also been tested on a real construction project as well as its usability has been ensured by conducting some usability tests.

The purpose of thesis was to investigate and compare how two companies within pharmaceutical industry and nuclear power industry are currently working with quality development regarding continuous improvement and Lessons Learned in business processes. In addition, a simple comparison was made with the automotiveindustry. McNeil AB are improving their processes continuously and are according to the findings of this report performing well in their pursuit of world-class pharmaceutical production. They have a well functioning process regarding improvements proposed in weekly improvement meetings engaging all employees. However, during interviews it was made clear that the functionality of the process which administer improvement proposals generated in addition to, or beside the weekly improvement meetings, were inadequate. McNeil AB is proposed to administer this through an IT solution instead of by paper and e-mail, that simplifies the process of adding, implementing and follow up an improvement proposal. The nuclear power plant Ringhals AB recently made major improvements in their business processes as well as the plant itself. In a short period of time, several major modernization projects have been carried out and the project department have been put to the test. In order to drive changes in the plant, a plant modification process is used which is highly appreciated by the employees. However, when compared to McNeil AB and the automotive industry’s processes the plant modification process was found to lack in Lessons Learned. Ringhals AB is therefore proposed to implement Lessons Learned methodologies in check points throughout the projects lifecycle.

The capability to know what knowledge there is and where it resides within an organization is becoming increasingly important in the new knowledge-based economy. This paper takes on a practise-based view of knowledge in order to decide on a course of action for how to successfully implement knowledge management within a knowledge-based company. By considering all knowledge as more or less contextual and socially constructed, knowledge is divided into three dimensions depending on the degree to which it is tacit, namely: information, knowledge and skills. The paper then discusses inhibitors and enablers for transferring knowledge via these three dimensions respectively.  The empirical findings are based upon a case study of Faveo. It is shown that Faveo, like most organizations, has til now focused on the collection of codified knowledge, i.e. documentation of information. Faveo has the technology established to potentiallymanage information transfer to an adequate degree. Still, the company fails to do so due to its incapability to enable use of its groupware. To surmount this problem, Faveo needs to address the attitudes of its employees towards its groupware and train them in how to use it. To improve Faveo’s knowledge management and thus pursue world class project management, the company also needs to step up its game within the two areas of knowledge and skills transfer. There are some but not sufficient plans for handling knowledge transfer at Faveo and, again, Faveo fails to enable these processes to turn from plans into action. There is an overall need for more formal as well as informal interaction between individual and groups of employees at Faveo. In addition, Faveo needs to acknowledge skills transfer as a vital part of knowledge management. This report finally suggests that Faveo needs to motivate knowledge management, create goals for knowledge management, train its employees in how to carry out knowledge management and evaluate its knowledge management.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationships of different types of perceived parenting style and learned resourcefulness. The sample of the study consisted of 834 (360 males, 474 females) volunteered high school students in Yenimahalle Alparslan High School in Ankara. The data were gathered by administering two instruments, namely Parenting Style Inventory (PSI) and Rosenbaum&rsquo / s Self-Control Schedule (SCS). The results of ANOVA employed to learned resourcefulness scores of the students revealed a significant main effect for parenting style groups. Neither the main effect for gender nor the gender and parenting style interaction effect was significant. The results yielded that there were significant differences between those who perceived their parents as authoritative and those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian. Significant differences were also found between those who perceived their parent indulgent and those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian. These findings suggested that those who perceived their parents as authoritative had a relatively high level of learned resourcefulness as compared to those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian. Findings also suggested that those who perceived their parents as indulgent had a higher level of learned resourcefulness than those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationships of learned resourcefulness and conflict behaviors of university students. The sample of the study consisted of 393 (253 females, 140 males) volunteered undergraduate students from Faculty of Education in Middle East Technical University in Ankara. The data were gathered by administering two instruments, namely Rosenbaum&rsquo / s Self-Control Schedule (SCS) and Conflict Behaviors Questionnaire (CBQ). The results of MANOVA employed to CBQ scores revealed significant main effects for learned resourcefulness groups and gender. The interaction effect of gender and learned resourcefulness levels was not significant. The results of ANOVA yielded a significant difference between high and low learned resourcefulness groups in collaborating behavior, indicating that, as compared to low resourceful group, high resourceful group reported higher usage of collaborating behavior in conflict situations. Findings also seemed to suggest that, in conflict situations, those in the high resourcefulness group tended to use compromising behaviors more than those in low resourcefulness group. No significant difference was found in any of the other conflict behaviors as a function of learned resourcefulness.

Guided missiles are among the most effective threats against air platforms. Aircraft and helicopter losses in the last decades were mostly due to guided missiles, 70% of which were infrared guided missiles. Today, there are as many as 500,000 shoulder-fired missiles in military arsenals around the world, whose guidance algorithms enable them to track the desired trajectories very precisely. In this thesis, main focus is on defining infrared missile guidance and control algorithms in order to study on various target-missile scenarios for the effectiveness of these algorithms. First, a mathematical model of a generic missile is given. Then the flight control system of the missile is created by using LQR and PID controllers. Different kinds of PNG algorithms applied to an infrared missile are presented. The seeker part of the infrared missile is also discussed. The effectiveness of guidance algorithms are studied based on different target &ndash / missile scenarios and the responses of them to IR countermeasures are also observed. This study shows that different guidance algorithms can be used for different scenarios. If suitable algorithms are combined and suitable constants are applied, the guided missile can track the target very precisely. In addition, the seeker part has to be improved with tracking algorithms in order to recognize IR-countermeasures and not to follow them.

Polypropylene, PP, based nanocomposites were produced via melt blending method by using twin-screw extrusion in this study. The effects of organoclay type, compatibilizer type, and mixing order of components on the morphology, thermal, mechanical and flow properties of ternary nanocomposites were investigated. Terpolymer of ethylene/butyl acrylate/maleic anhydride, ethylene/methyl acrylate/glycidyl methacrylate, and copolymer of ethylene/glycidyl methacrylate elastomers were used as compatibilizer, whereas Cloisite&reg / 30B, Cloisite&reg / 15A, and Cloisite&reg / 25A were used as organoclay. iv In order to determine the optimum amount of compatibilizer, PP/compatibilizer blends were produced with different compositions. The content of compatibilizer was determined as 5 wt % based on the mechanical tests. Then, ternary nanocomposites were prepared with 5 wt % compatibilizer and 2 wt % organoclay contents. In addition, neat PP and PP/organoclay composites were prepared in order to make comparison. After that, the samples were characterized. According to the XRD analysis, the highest increase in the interlayer spacings of organoclays were observed in the PP/E-MA-GMA/Cloisite&reg / 15A (23%) and PP/E-MA-GMA/ Cloisite&reg / 25A (88.3%) ternary systems. SEM micrograms revealed that compatibilizer E-MA-GMA is the most compatible elastomer with PP. Thus, it was decided to investigate the effect of mixing order on the properties of these nanocomposites with E-MA-GMA. DSC analysis showed that the melting behavior of the nanocomposites does not change significantly with the presence of organoclay and compatibilizer. In addition, compatibilizers and organoclays have no significant nucleation activity in PP. The systems PP/E-MA-GMA/Cloisite&reg / 15A and PP/E-MA-GMA/Cloisite&reg / 25A have the highest improvements according to the results of mechanical tests. The results of mechanical tests showed that the mixing sequence (PEC), in which PP, organoclay and compatibilizer were compounded simultaneously in the first extrusion run, is the best sequence.