Using Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction to Design Technology for Resilience

Abstract

There has been an increasing public demand for passenger rail service in the recent times leading to a strong focus on the need for effective and efficient use of resources and managing the increasing passenger requirements, service reliability and variability by the railway management. Whilst shortening the passengers' waiting and travelling time is important for commuter satisfaction, lowering operational costs is equally important for railway management. Hence, effective and cost optimised train scheduling based on the dynamic passenger demand is one of the main issues for passenger railway management. Although the passenger railway scheduling problem has received attention in operations research in recent years, there is limited literature investigating the adoption of practical approaches that capitalize on the merits of mathematical modeling and search algorithms for effective cost optimization. This paper develops a hybrid fuzzy logic based genetic algorithm model to solve the multi-objective passenger railway scheduling problem aiming to optimize total operational costs at a satisfactory level of customer service. This hybrid approach integrates genetic algorithm with the fuzzy logic approach which uses the fuzzy controller to determine the crossover rate and mutation rate in genetic algorithm approach in the optimization process. The numerical study demonstrates the improvement of the proposed hybrid approach, and the fuzzy genetic algorithm has demonstrated its effectiveness to generate better results than standard genetic algorithm and other traditional heuristic approaches, such as simulated annealing.

Operations Management teaching practices and information technologies adoption in emerging economies during COVID-19 outbreak

“…Additionally, a number of researchers (e.g. Mark and Semaan, 2008 ; Lopes, 2016 ; Tortorella et al., 2021 ) claim that ICTs adoption contribute to an enhanced resilience regardless of the industry sector of the organization. Nevertheless, our study suggested that the pervasiveness of ICTs associated with highly adopted OM teaching practices is still in its early stages, which makes the OM teaching in emerging economies less resilient as they are unable to adapt and restore to disruptions presented by the pandemic.…”

Examining the Predictors of Resilience and Work Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…These technologies have radically transformed how we work and have become entrenched in every facet of life; hence, they support the new normal of working from home. During a crisis, technology could empower people to access alternative resources to reconstruct, modify, and develop new routines or patterns of action for work and socialization [53]. With the aid of relevant collaborative tools, employees can quickly move to home office settings and communicate virtually to complete their work tasks [54].…”

Determinants of Web Search Effectiveness From the Perspective of Library and Information Science Students

“…Web search activity and online information retrieval and information search studies through surveys, observations and experiments have been carried out (Moon, 2004;Kim, 2008, Lopes, 2016Khan, 2018). In a comprehensive review of these studies, Malik and Mahmood (2009) and (Khan, 2018) concluded that research on web search activities and behaviour is still in the formative stage.…”