Search results

The study aims to apply catastrophe theory to the analysis of accidental dwelling fire injuries in terms of age band, gender and contributory factors in order to inform fire prevention activities.

The study employed a case study in a UK Fire and Rescue service concerning analysis of the circumstances of accidental dwelling fire injuries, and the characteristics and behaviours associated with utilising frequency analysis, percentages, ratios and catastrophe theory modelling.

Overall, males were more likely to be injured in an accidental dwelling fire compared to females by a ratio of 1.68 to 1, and those in the age band 50–64 appeared to be at maximum risk. A total of 15.4% of the accidental dwelling fire injuries involved consumption of alcohol or drugs, and 5.9% involved falling asleep.

The circumstances of accidental dwelling fire injury can be analysed to identify patterns concerning when a catastrophic change relating to ordinary use of domestic objects results in an accidental dwelling fire injury.

A catastrophe theory view can aid the understanding of how ordinary use of domestic objects results in an accidental dwelling fire injury.

Since fire injuries have both a social and economic cost, understanding how such fire injuries occur can aid fire prevention through appropriately targeted fire prevention activities.

The study made use of a catastrophe theory view to analyse the circumstances under which accidental dwelling fire injuries occurred using fire injury data from a UK fire and rescue service.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the evidence for purchasing power parity (PPP) using long, low‐frequency data (over 100 years) for 23 organization for economic co‐operation and development (OECD) countries against each of four different base currencies – the Deutsch mark, the Japanese yen, the British pound, and the US dollar.

The paper uses standard unit root tests and level and trend stationarity tests, and also investigates the robustness of the results to alternative testing methodologies from statistical physics, such as Lo's modified rescaled range statistic and the Hurst exponent.

The results indicate that the theory of PPP does not hold.

Motivated by the mixed results from previous research on the validity of the theory of PPP, the robustness of standard unit root and stationarity tests to alternative testing methodologies are investigated. In particular, the paper uses two tests from statistical physics – Lo's modified R/S statistic and the Hurst exponent.

The study examines alcohol and drug related accidental dwelling fire injuries during 2006–2016 in Merseyside in England.

The study carries out an examination of alcohol and drug related fire injuries from 2006 to 2016 in Merseyside, including analysis of injuries by age group, gender, level of deprivation and housing type.

Deprivation was a significant factor in alcohol and drug related fire injuries over the period studied, with 70% of such injuries occurring in areas with the highest level of deprivation. Males appeared roughly twice as likely to be injured in an alcohol and drug related fire incident than females. The majority of those injured were in the age range 35–59.

There were limitations on the generalizability of the research findings to other fire and rescue services, as Merseyside has some of the highest levels of alcohol consumption and deprivation in UK.

An understanding of those vulnerable to alcohol and drug related fire risks can support more targeted fire prevention strategies and aid referrals to partner health agencies to help to reduce underlying alcohol and drug misuse issues.

The study provides a detailed analysis of the circumstances associated with alcohol and drug related fire injuries over a ten-year period covered by a UK fire and rescue service, in particular, in terms alcohol and drug related fire injury risk differences between different groups.

The purpose of this paper is to use the game theory combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling to support the analysis of different retail marketing strategies, in particular, using payoff matrices for modelling the likely outcomes from different retail marketing strategies.

Theoretical research was utilised to develop a practical approach for applying game theory to retail marketing strategies via payoff matrices combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling.

Game theory combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling can provide a formal approach to understanding consumer decision making in a retail environment, which can support the development of retail marketing strategies.

Game theory combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling can support the modelling of the interaction between retail marketing actions and consumer responses in a practical formal probabilistic manner, which can inform marketing strategies used by retail companies in a practical manner.

Game theory combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling can provide a formalised mechanism for examining how consumers may respond to different retail marketing strategies.

The originality of this research is the practical application of game theory to retail marketing, in particular the use of payoff matrices combined with Monte Carlo simulation modelling to examine likely consumer behaviour in response to different retail marketing approaches.

This paper aims to present the application of situation calculus for knowledge representation in missing persons investigations.

The development of a knowledge representation model for the missing persons investigation process based upon situation calculus, with a demonstration of the use of the model for a missing persons example case.

Situation calculus is valuable for knowledge representation for missing persons investigations, as such investigations have state changes over time, and due to the complexity of the differing investigation activities applicable to different situations, can be difficult to represent using simpler approaches such as tables or flowcharts.

Situation calculus modelling for missing persons investigations adds formalism to the process beyond that which can be afforded by the current use of text, tables or flowcharts. The additional formalism is useful in dealing with the uncertainty present in such investigations.

The implications are a simplification of the application of the current police guidelines, and thoroughness in the application of such guidelines for missing persons investigations via situation calculus modelling.

This paper supports the management of missing person investigations, by using the most critical variables in a missing persons investigation to determine relevant investigation and search activities applicable to the circumstances of a given case.

The novelty of the knowledge representation approach is the application of situation calculus via state and action vectors and a matrix of fluents to the process of missing persons investigations.

The independence and well-being of people with dementia can be significantly influenced by the design of the physical environments around them. Several assessment tools exist to evaluate the dementia design quality of existing residential aged care facilities but, to date, none have been formally identified as suitable for use during the design process. This paper aims to examine the feasibility of re-purposing existing post-occupancy tools for use during the design process, while mapping the influence of design stages on resulting dementia design quality.

Literature searches identified audit tools for residential aged care settings. After reliability screening, three tools were analysed in-depth, mapping their suitability for use during the design process.

The study confirmed that existing tools can be re-purposed for design stage use and identified that early design stages have a larger influence on overall dementia design quality than previously thought.

Non-English language publications were not reviewed. Searches may not have identified other existing audit tools for residential care environments.

The ability to assess proposals at key stages of design may help improve the dementia design quality of future residential aged care environments – potentially enhancing the lives of ever-larger numbers of people with dementia.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known paper to consider formal design-stage evaluation of dementia design quality and the first to identify the relative influence of key stages of design on the resulting dementia design quality.

Web site development work is a growing aspect of the IT activities within many organisations. However, the skills and knowledge required by IT practitioners for successful Web site development are still largely uncertain. In this paper we examine the results of a research exercise involving case studies in 20 UK organisations aimed at investigating: the skills and knowledge that are required for Web site development work, how such skills and knowledge are used in actual practice, and the mechanisms by which such skills and knowledge can be acquired and improved.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive review of the monetary model of exchange rate determination which is the main theoretical framework on analyzing exchange rate behavior over the last 40 years. Furthermore, we test the flexible price monetarist variant and the sticky price Keynesian variant of the monetary model. We conduct our analysis employing a sample of 14 advanced economies using annual data spanning the period 1880–2012.

The theoretical background of the paper relies on the monetary model to the exchange rate determination. We provide a thorough econometric analysis using a battery of unit root and cointegration testing techniques. We test the price-flexible monetarist version and the sticky-price version of the model using annual data from 1880 to 2012 for a group of industrialized countries.

We provide strong evidence of the existence of a nonlinear relationship between exchange rates and fundamentals. Therefore, we model the time-varying nature of this relationship by allowing for Markov regime switches for the exchange rate regimes. Modeling exchange rates within this context can be motivated by the fact that the change in regime should be considered as a random event and not predictable. These results show that linearity is rejected in favor of an MS-VECM specification which forms statistically an adequate representation of the data. Two regimes are implied by the model; the one of the estimated regimes describes the monetary model whereas the other matches in most cases the constant coefficient model with wrong signs. Furthermore it is shown that depending on the nominal exchange rate regime in operation, the adjustment to the long run implied by the monetary model of the exchange rate determination came either from the exchange rate or from the monetary fundamentals. Moreover, based on a Regime Classification Measure, we showed that our chosen Markov-switching specification performed well in distinguishing between the two regimes for all cases. Finally, it is shown that fundamentals are not only significant within each regime but are also significant for the switches between the two regimes.

The results are of interest to practitioners and policy makers since understanding the evolution and determination of exchange rates is of crucial importance. Furthermore, our results are linked to forecasting performance of exchange rate models.

The present analysis extends previous analyses on exchange rate determination and it provides further support in favor of the monetary model as a long-run framework to understand the evolution of exchange rates.

Although the ideas of F.W. Taylor have profoundly marked the twentieth century, they do not seem to have been understood in the same way by the people who have studied them. Aims to enrich our understanding of the ideas of this remarkable author. Proposes a graphic representation of Taylor’s thinking in the form of a cognitive map. Then analyses the structure and content of the map using the Decision Explorer software package. Most of the concepts and links shown in the map were drawn from “Shop management”, and the remainder were taken from The Principles of Scientific Management. The results highlight the relative importance of the concepts used by Taylor, the dimensions on which he more or less consciously structured his thinking, together with the characteristics of the concepts he considered basically as “explanations” or “consequences”, and the more or less systemic or circular logic that guided him in the organization of his thinking. Discusses the limitations of the results and some future avenues for research.