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Abstract The South Korean government has been actively promoting an educational-facility improvement program as part of its energy-saving efforts. This research seeks to develop a decision support model for selecting the facility expected to be effective in generating energy savings and making the facility improvement program more effective. In this research, project characteristics and electric-energy consumption data for the year 2009 were collected from 6282 elementary schools located in seven metropolitan cities in South Korea. In this research, the following were carried out: (i) a group of educational facilities was established based on electric-energy consumption, using a decision tree; (ii) a number of similar projects were retrieved from the same group of facilities, using case-based reasoning; and (iii) the accuracy of prediction was improved, using the combination of genetic algorithms, the artificial neural network, and multiple regression analysis. The results of this research can be useful for the following purposes: (i) preliminary research on the systematic and continuous management of educational facilities’ electric-energy consumption; (ii) basic research on electric-energy consumption prediction based on the project characteristics; and (iii) practical research for selecting an optimum facility that can more effectively apply an educational-facility improvement program as a decision support model.

Abstract Renewable energy projects in developing countries should provide clean energy supply as well as support sustainable economic development. To this end, risks arising from uncertainties such as rapidly changing technologies and host government conditions should be carefully addressed. However, traditional methods for economic assessment are not adequate to support decision-making regarding investments in renewable energy. This paper proposes a real options analysis framework as a tool to assess renewable energy investment in developing countries. A case study involving a hydropower project in Indonesia was conducted to validate and verify the proposed framework. This framework is expected to help host countries and investors assess renewable energy projects with high volatility and risk.

Abstract In spite of the remarkable growth and price reductions of the photovoltaic (PV) market during the past decade, the PV market still needs financial supports and incentives in order to achieve its national target from the long-term perspective. However, due to the financial burden on the government budget, most of the countries are reducing their financial supports and incentives as time goes by. In order to sustain the growth of the PV market, it is crucial to determine the optimal solar incentive design by minimizing the government budget while maximizing the resident's benefit. Towards this end, this study aims to propose a framework for optimizing the solar incentive from the perspective of residents and policy makers. The proposed framework consists of five steps: (i) establishment of database; (ii) generation of incentive scenarios; (iii) calculation of the electricity generation; (iii) Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis; and (v) Multi-objective optimization using Pareto optimal solutions. The proposed framework could help both residents and policy makers in several ways by developing a multi-objective optimization model in the future study: (i) minimize the government budget; (ii) maximize the resident's benefit; (iii) determine an optimal solar incentive design which can satisfy both residents and policy makers. Application of the proposed framework could be extended to any other country or sector in the global environment.

People of developing countries especially from rural area are commonly exposed to high levels of household pollution for 3-7 h daily using biomass in their kitchen. Such biomass produces harmful smoke and makes indoor air pollution (IAP). Community-based cross-sectional study was performed to identify effects of IAP by simplified measurement approach in Sunsari District of Nepal. Representative samples of 157 housewives from household, involving more than 5 years in kitchen were included by cluster sampling. Data were analyzed by SPSS and logistic regression was applied for the statistical test. Most (87.3%) housewives used biomass as a cooking fuel. Tearing of eyes, difficulty in breathing, and productive cough were the main reported health problems and traditional mud stoves and use of unrefined biomass were statistically significant (p  2) with health problems related to IAP. The treatment cost and episodes of acute respiratory infection was >2 folders higher in severe IAP than mild IAP. Simplified measurement approach could be helpful to measure IAP in rural area. Some effective intervention is suggested to reduce the severe level of IAP considering women and children.

Many new services have emerged to realize ubiquitous computing environments, owing to the increasing supply of mobile devices and more widespread Internet and wireless network facilities. We introduce the U-Campus (ubiquitous computing for campus) service. This study has been conducted through interdisciplinary research by four participating departments. The U-campus project is part of the UTOPIA project (Ubiquitous computing TOwn Project: Intelligent context Awareness), which covers town- and city-wide environments. Currently, a test bed for U-campus has been constructed to support various services suck as U-profile, U-messaging and U-campus tour guide services. Students, professors, school staffs, and campus visitors can easily access the various available campus services by using image-based sensors and mobile devices such as CDMA cellular phones or WiFi smart phones. The major purpose of this research is to provide a context-aware U-campus environment to users by utilizing sensors and mobile devices currently available in the public sector and the marketplace.

Despite being Asia’s fastest-growing economy, as of 2015, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) ranked the Philippines 33rd out of 48 countries in terms of water security. This verifies that economic development does not always lead to better provisions of basic needs. This study attempts to discover the fundamental issues that decrease water security in Metro Manila, the capital region of the Philippines. With El Niño disrupting the optimal weather conditions, Metro Manila is facing the lasting impacts of a water shortage crisis, which is the worst in the past decade. This research inspects the role of climate change in exacerbating El Niño, and its threat to the water security of the developing city. Furthermore, other factors that influence Metro Manila’s water security are discussed. Upon establishing a correlation between climate change and El Niño, Metro Manila’s general water management strategy is evaluated to better assess the multiple factors that have led to the current water shortage crisis. This paper is intended to recommend necessary and feasible proactive measures that are geared towards water security in Metro Manila, and possibly other cities with similar circumstances.

The purpose of this study was to explore the adaptation process of female Ph.D. holders working in universities who shifted from being irregular employees to regular employees. The study adopted a qualitative approach using in-depth interviews to investigate participants’ experiences and discover any inconsistencies, as well as how they are alleviated. The basic findings of the study indicate that the adaptation process is more feasible when the gap between the personal aspect of job adaptation and the organizational environment and satisfaction with it decreases. The participants in the study joined the labour union to convert to regular jobs. However, after transitioning to full-time positions, the participants did not realize the structural aspect of the contracts they had signed. Although they expected to make their unfair situation more fair through the transition of their job positions, they still faced structural discrimination. As the participants were women with doctoral degrees, their professionalism was considered a cardinal value, and their job satisfaction varied according to the degree of matching between their work and their expertise. Moreover, during the evaluation period, they began to establish themselves as legitimate members of their teams through the employee evaluation procedure of full-time employees, which is conducted mutually rather than unilaterally. Through its in-depth interviews with transitioning university staff, this study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how female faculty adjust to changes in their life and position in the organization following a change in their status. These findings prove that higher education institutions need focus on career development for female students as well as their faculty and staff members. Such a focus also requires more active actions by university and college members.

As stakeholder relations vary depending on firm characteristics, the associations among corporate financial performance (CFP), corporate giving, and corporate social performance (CSP) are complex. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by exploring CFP as a predictor of CSP by differentiating the stakeholder groups that firms interact with; that is, primary versus secondary stakeholder relations. Our study also extends the existing literature by examining who the beneficiaries of corporate philanthropy are, and the role played on the CFP/CSP association. By extracting a sample of 52 firms and 312 firm-year observations from the Korea Economic Justice Institute database, we find that while CFP has a positive effect only on primary stakeholder relations, corporate philanthropy has a positive impact on both primary and secondary stakeholder relations. Furthermore, we observe an overall influence of CFP on stakeholder relations when corporate philanthropy is high. Our findings suggest that differentiating multiple stakeholder groups together with the role played by corporate philanthropy provides a more valuable and meaningful analysis of the antecedents of CSP.