Search

In the dynamic world of technology, changes and transformations have emerged rapidly in recent years. Service providers such as government departments transformed their services from e-government to m-government for widespread customer reach. However, several issues existed that were obstructing the implementation of such a system by the Ministry of Housing in Oman, especially in rural areas. This study proposes a novel framework based on the fuzzy delphi and TOPSIS models to provide digital literacy and services. This framework considered the variables extracted from previous studies. Furthermore, a survey was conducted on 20 experts to determine the accepted variables. Thirty-five pre-service engineers evaluated the questionnaires using TOPSIS to determine the skills of pre-service engineers based on delphi criteria outcomes. The conceptual framework developed from the accepted results uses 11 different variables based on the TAM model. The study benefits the stakeholders in the area of m-government development.

Context: When the epidemic first broke out, no specific treatment was available for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The urgent need to end this unusual situation has resulted in many attempts to deal with SARS-CoV-2. In addition to several types of vaccinations that have been created, anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have added a new dimension to preventative and treatment efforts. This therapy also helps prevent severe symptoms for those at a high risk. Therefore, this is one of the most promising treatments for mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 cases. However, the availability of anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAb therapy is limited and leads to two main challenges. The first is the privacy challenge of selecting eligible patients from the distribution hospital networking, which requires data sharing, and the second is the prioritization of all eligible patients amongst the distribution hospitals according to dose availability. To our knowledge, no research combined the federated fundamental approach with multicriteria decision-making methods for the treatment of SARS-COV-2, indicating a research gap. Objective: This paper presents a unique sequence processing methodology that distributes anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAbs to eligible high-risk patients with SARS-CoV-2 based on medical requirements by using a novel federated decision-making distributor. Method: This paper proposes a novel federated decision-making distributor (FDMD) of anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAbs for eligible high-risk patients. FDMD is implemented on augmented data of 49,152 cases of patients with SARS-CoV-2 with mild and moderate symptoms. For proof of concept, three hospitals with 16 patients each are enrolled. The proposed FDMD is constructed from the two sides of claim sequencing: central federated server (CFS) and local machine (LM). The CFS includes five sequential phases synchronised with the LMs, namely, the preliminary criteria setting phase that determines the high-risk criteria, calculates their weights using the newly formulated interval-valued spherical fuzzy and hesitant 2-tuple fuzzy-weighted zero-inconsistency (IVSH2-FWZIC), and allocates their values. The subsequent phases are federation, dose availability confirmation, global prioritization of eligible patients and alerting the hospitals with the patients most eligible for receiving the anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAbs according to dose availability. The LM independently performs all local prioritization processes without sharing patients' data using the provided criteria settings and federated parameters from the CFS via the proposed Federated TOPSIS (F-TOPSIS). The sequential processing steps are coherently performed at both sides. Results and Discussion: (1) The proposed FDMD efficiently and independently identifies the high-risk patients most eligible for receiving anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAbs at each local distribution hospital. The final decision at the CFS relies on the indexed patients' score and dose availability without sharing the patients' data. (2) The IVSH2-FWZIC effectively weighs the high-risk criteria of patients with SARS-CoV-2. (3) The local and global prioritization ranks of the F-TOPSIS for eligible patients are subjected to a systematic ranking validated by high correlation results across nine scenarios by altering the weights of the criteria. (4) A comparative analysis of the experimental results with a prior study confirms the effectiveness of the proposed FDMD. Conclusion: The proposed FDMD has the benefits of centrally distributing anti-SARS-CoV-2 mAbs to high-risk patients prioritized based on their eligibility and dose availability, and simultaneously protecting their privacy and offering an effective cure to prevent progression to severe SARS-CoV-2 hospitalization or death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented Reality or "AR" has been recognized for its significant importance in different areas of technology, not to mention its significant presence in the education sector. This research aimed to map the relevant literature on AR usage with the aim of rehabilitating people with disabilities. The search was performed on three databases: Science Direct, IEEE Explore and Web of Science from 2013 to 2018. . Based on our inclusion and exclusion criteria, (n=13) articles were selected. Seven of the studies (n=7/13) intellectual disability. Six of the studies (n=6/6) physical disability. The basic idea of this article is to measure the size of the virtual environment utilization in order to rehabilitate the disabled, in addition to the ability of modern technology to restore people with disabilities to normal life and integration into society. This research is expected to display the current literature in this area and to increase the understanding of this research field.

In the fuzzy multicriteria decision-making approach, a committee of decision-makers is usually involved in the assessment of the suitability of different alternatives based on the evaluation criteria by using linguistic terms and their equivalent fuzzy numbers. In this context, researchers have developed the Pythagorean fuzzy set (PFS) to overcome the limitation of intuitionistic fuzzy set in the description of decision-maker information such as imposing restrictions on the representation of membership and nonmembership grades. On the one hand, PFS still does not have sufficient ability and flexibility to deal with such issues. On the other hand, multipolar technology is used to operate large-scale systems in real-life situations, especially in dealing with dissatisfaction and indeterminacy grades for the alternatives of the reference set. Thus, m-polar fuzzy set is utilized and applied with other fuzzy sets because of its remarkable ability as a tool for depicting fuzziness and uncertainty under multipolar information in many circumstances. With the practical features of m-polar fuzzy set in combination with PFS, this paper employs it to extend two considerable MCDM methods, namely, fuzzy decision by opinion score method and fuzzy-weighted zero inconsistency. Such extensions, called Pythagorean m-polar fuzzy-weighted zero-inconsistency (Pm-PFWZIC) method and Pythagorean m-polar fuzzy decision by opinion score method (Pm-PFDOSM), are formulated to weight the evaluation criteria followed by alternative ranking progressively. The research methodology is presented as follows. Firstly, the mechanisms of Pm-PFWZIC and Pm-PFDOSM are formulated and integrated into the development phase. Secondly, the description of the real-world case study of the evaluation and benchmarking of the sign language recognition systems is adapted and presented. The result of Pm-PFWZIC shows that the criterion of 'finger movements' has the highest weight amongst the rest of the criteria, whereas 'misclassification error' has the lowest weight. In the ranking results, a variation of ranking is scored by each expert, and group decision-making is applied to solve the individual ranking variety. The robustness of the formulated methods is evaluated using systematic ranking, sensitivity analysis and comparison analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water quality monitoring plays a significant part in the transition towards intelligent and smart agriculture and provides an easy transition to automated monitoring of crucial components of human daily needs as new technologies are continuously developed and adopted in agricultural and human daily life (water). For the monitoring and management of water quality, this effort, however, requires reliable models with accurate and thorough datasets. Analyzing water quality monitoring models by utilizing sensors that gather water properties during live experiments is possible due to the necessity for precision in modeling. To convey numerous conclusions regarding the concerns, issues, difficulties, and research gaps that have existed throughout the past five years (2018–2022), this review article thoroughly examines the water quality literature. To find trustworthy peer-reviewed publications, several digital databases were searched and examined, including IEEE Xplore®, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Web of Science. Only 50 articles out of the 946 papers obtained, were used in the study of the water quality monitoring research area. There are more rules for article inclusion in the second stage of the filtration process. Utilizing a real-time data acquisition system, the criteria for inclusion for the second phase of filtration looked at the implementation of water quality monitoring and characterization procedures. Reviews and experimental studies comprised most of the articles, which were divided into three categories. To organize the literature into articles with similar types of experimental conditions, a taxonomy of the three literature was created. Topics for recommendations are also provided to facilitate and speed up the pace of advancement in this field of study. By conducting a thorough analysis of the earlier suggested methodologies, research gaps are made clear. The investigation largely pointed out the problems in the accuracy of the models, the development of data-gathering systems, and the types of data used in the proposed frameworks. Finally, by examining critical topics required for the development of this research area, research directions toward smart water quality are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of human life. The pandemic not only caused millions of fatalities and problems but also changed public sentiment and behavior. Owing to the magnitude of this pandemic, governments worldwide adopted full lockdown measures that attracted much discussion on social media platforms. To investigate the effects of these lockdown measures, this study performed sentiment analysis and latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling on textual data from Twitter published during the three lockdown waves in Malaysia between 2020 and 2021. Three lockdown measures were identified, the related data for the first two weeks of each lockdown were collected and analysed to understand the public sentiment. The changes between these lockdowns were identified, and the latent topics were highlighted. Most of the public sentiment focused on the first lockdown as reflected in the large number of latent topics generated during this period. The overall sentiment for each lockdown was mostly positive, followed by neutral and then negative. Topic modelling results identified staying at home, quarantine and lockdown as the main aspects of discussion for the first lockdown, whilst importance of health measures and government efforts were the main aspects for the second and third lockdowns. Governments may utilise these findings to understand public sentiment and to formulate precautionary measures that can assure the safety of their citizens and tend to their most pressing problems. These results also highlight the importance of positive messaging during difficult times, establishing digital interventions and formulating new policies to improve the reaction of the public to emergency situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]