Recently, climate change has become more visible, with weather extremes and natural disasters causing more economic damage than ever before. Given all the factors that threaten the dynamic ecological balance, it is very important to ask whether there is a possibility to assess the sustainability of some territorial units using technical and scientific criteria. Is there a method to assert that one community or municipality is more resilient than another and to explain all of this? Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is the most appropriate theory best applied to such complex decisions. MCDA methods are used to assess "if and how resilient my city is". Previous methodological frameworks for urban sustainability have been created and presented in the literature, and most of them use the AHP technique. These methods form a hierarchy of decision-making problems with criteria and alternatives (cities, communities), and the latter are evaluated based on how well they meet the criteria. This paper aims to assess the urban resilience of Durres County, Albania, and its regions and municipalities that share the same urban and geographical characteristics using the AHP and Electre III methods. This city has been studied, analyzed, and evaluated because it has a history of natural disasters and is in a very dangerous area for some indicators. The results of the study concluded that the district, its regions, and communes are at high risk of flooding due to torrential rains accompanied by river floods, erosion of agricultural lands and the coast, as well as other natural risks, and need significant improvements to cope with them. Albania and the region of Durres have been involved over the years in several national and international projects to improve urban sustainability and resilience. However, the assessment and improvement of urban sustainability should always be an ongoing process.
This paper has conducted the study of the impact and effectiveness of Google Classroom in online teaching and learning. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2), the first aim was to rank the 8 constructs namely: Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions, Hedonic Motivation, Habit, Behavioral Intention, and the last Use Behavior. Each of the constructs have their respective questions due to the questionnaire formed from the UTAUT2 theory. To evaluate the use of Google Classroom, have been analyzed the feedbacks from every participant based on a 5-likert scale output. Secondly, was completed the rank of the questions based on the most preferred 5-likert scale options. The method proposed for the purposes of this study were fuzzy AHP with triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TpFN). The results suggested that the most preferred construct by fuzzy with TFN numbers was the Behavioral Intention while the least preferred was the Effort Expectancy, whereas for fuzzy TpFN the most preferred construct was the Social Influence and the least preferred was the Effort Expectancy. Based on the questionnaire, the rank resulted to be the same with both methods for the most preferred question and the least important one, that were respectively from Use Behavior construct, and from Performance Expectancy construct, while the ranked questions of other constructs differed slightly with both methods. These results showed that both methods produced the same rank for the 5likert scale options, where "Agree" option was the more important from the 5-likert scale options and "Strongly disagree" option was less important. From these findings was concluded that these changes in ranking were due to the different defuzzification methods that were used for both types of fuzzy numbers.
The development of learning management systems (LMS) has an integral role to the promotion of new alternatives in relation to improve teaching and learning for universities. This study proposes the determination of the constructs that influence learning management systems adoption and use. The conceptual framework has been developed on the basis of the expansion of Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM3) including the constructs Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), Subjective Norm (SN), Behavioral Intention (BI), Use Behavior (UB). The paper deals with the integration of the three approaches Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM), Analytic Hierarchic Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP). PLS-SEM have determined the reliability, the validity of the constructs, and tested the model’s hypotheses. These results have been integrated into the AHP and FAHP methods, to evaluate the importance of the constructs. These results will be especially useful to enhance the higher education policies.
Nowadays the evolution of the technologies regarding the online learning has influenced the field of education. The acceptance of a new technology is evaluated according the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2). The main aim of the study is to estimate the impact that has each of the constructs of the model UTAUT2 related with the behavioural intention of using a cloud based learning platform. The decision making methodology proposed in this study is fuzzy analytical hierarchic process with Z-numbers (Fuzzy Z-AHP). The data were collected through a survey of 400 samples from students of the University “Aleksander Moisiu” of Durres during 2020-2022. The findings of the research concluded that the most important construct of UTAUT2 is Habit. The findings help higher education policymakers to make better decisions related with the factors that influence most the cloud based learning management platform. Received: 05 May 2022 / Accepted: 10 June 2023 / Published: 23 July 2023
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