Water scarcity is a major challenge in agriculture, where nearly 70% to 80% of freshwater is used for irrigation. This study reviews clay pot irrigation and its integration with drip irrigation and Internet of Things (IoT)-based monitoring for improving water use efficiency. Previous studies have reported substantial irrigation water savings under clay pot irrigation systems up to 80% compared to conventional methods by supplying water slowly near to the root zone and reducing losses. It also provides good water use efficiency and maintains acceptable crop yield under limited water conditions. Previous studies have shown that the performance of the clay pot irrigation depends on pot design, including size and shape. A few studies suggested that storing water in clay pots and the water passing through the pot walls may lead to some improvement in water quality, although detailed data is still limited. However, the integration with drip irrigation and IoT-based control can further improve water distribution and reduce manual effort.
This study examines how digital technologies shape green supply chain management (GSCM) in Vietnam’s electronics industry. Using an exploratory qualitative multi-case design, we investigated two leading Vietnamese electronics firms and triangulated evidence from company documents, field observations and 12 semi-structured interviews, including 10 interviews across the two focal firms and two interviews with external experts. Interviewees represented senior management and key functions related to environmental management, production, procurement and technology, with interview duration ranging from 80 to 120 minutes. The cases suggest an internal environmental management-led digitalization pattern in which firms first deploy digital tools for internal environmental monitoring and control and subsequently strengthen greener manufacturing and environmental cooperation, while green procurement and reverse logistics tend to lag when data integration, supplier participation and analytics capabilities remain limited. Digital adoption appears to support operational efficiency, environmental performance, employee capability development, supplier participation and faster Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) compliance responses, enabled by real-time sustainability information and reuse practices linked to reverse logistics. However, implementation is constrained by investment costs, skills gaps, fragmented systems and cybersecurity risks, reinforced by uncertain sustainability requirements and weak domestic green demand. The findings provide exploratory multi-case evidence from two leading Vietnamese electronics firms on practice-specific digitalization in an emerging-economy context and propose a staged digital-green capability-building roadmap. The study supports analytical rather than statistical generalization and should be interpreted as theory-building evidence for digital-green supply-chain transformation.
River transport remains central to mobility in Banjarmasin, Indonesia, where riverine settlements and uneven road access continue to shape everyday travel and regional connectivity. This study examines the factors associated with water-bus use on the Banjarmasin–Muara Teweh corridor and evaluates how these factors relate to sustainable fluvial mobility. A quantitative survey was conducted with 60 passengers of the Pancar Mas water bus at Banjar Raya Pier, supported by brief interviews on travel motives. The questionnaire covered economic, regional, and social indicators. Data adequacy was tested using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and Bartlett’s test, followed by principal component extraction, Varimax rotation, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results showed acceptable sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.614) and significant inter-variable correlations (Bartlett’s test, $p <$ 0.001). Three factors were retained and together explained 69.55% of the variance. Economic conditions formed the strongest factor, with income opportunity (loading = 0.879), occupation type (0.800), and job availability (0.735) as the main indicators. Regional characteristics were represented by transport availability (0.913) and accessibility (0.838), while the social dimension was reflected in housing ownership status (0.851). The CFA results also showed acceptable model fit, with $\chi^2$/$df$ = 2.15, goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.91, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.93, and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.062. The findings indicate that water-bus use in this corridor is shaped by livelihood opportunities, transport access, and settlement security. The study provides empirical evidence for maintaining river transport as part of regional connectivity and sustainable transport planning in riverine areas.
Environmental noise generated by motorcycle traffic constitutes a critical challenge for intermediate cities of the Global South, where high motorization rates intensify exposure to stressful acoustic environments. In Florencia (Caquetá, Colombia)—a city in which motorcycles represent 96.6% of the vehicle fleet—noise functions not only as an environmental pollutant but also as a psychosocial trigger associated with irritability, stress, and aggressive driving behaviors among young riders. This study evaluates urban motorcyclists’ perceived effectiveness of regulatory measures aimed at noise and traffic control, considering how education level and driving experience shape normative perceptions. Using a non-experimental, cross-sectional design, data were collected from 502 motorcyclists. Kruskal–Wallis tests and Spearman correlations revealed a significant positive association between higher education and favorable perceptions of regulatory effectiveness, while no association was observed for driving experience. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) confirmed a two-factor structure (54.3% variance), differentiating structural/collective measures from individual/educational ones. Overall, structural and educational interventions were perceived as more effective than coercive approaches. These findings highlight the need for context-sensitive regulatory frameworks that integrate social legitimacy, cultural adaptation, and psychological determinants of behavior. The study contributes empirical evidence for designing participatory and education-centered strategies for noise management and mobility governance in structurally informal urban contexts such as Florencia.
This study develops an integrated planning and operational framework for a next-generation electric bus with high level of service (Electric-BHLS) corridor along the Najaf–Al-Manathira–Al-Meshkhab axis in Iraq. The corridor represents a strategically important urban–rural mobility corridor characterized by rapid demographic growth, fragmented public transport services, congestion, environmental degradation, and increasing dependence on informal low-capacity vehicles. Unlike conventional electric bus operations, the proposed Electric-BHLS model combines high-service operational characteristics—including adaptive service frequency, intelligent transport systems (ITS)-based fleet control, hybrid priority lanes, opportunity charging systems, and real-time operational management—with full electric propulsion and regional accessibility planning. The methodological framework integrates engineering analysis, Geographic Information System (GIS)-based spatial accessibility assessment, operational modeling, and generalized cost optimization. Empirical calibration is based on 2024 field surveys, passenger interviews, Global Positioning System (GPS) based travel-time measurements, institutional datasets, and corridor infrastructure assessments. The proposed system includes articulated electric buses, pantograph opportunity-charging infrastructure, centralized Operations Control Center (OCC) management, smart passenger information systems, and a hierarchical station structure designed to improve operational reliability and multimodal integration. The results demonstrate substantial operational, environmental, and spatial improvements compared with the existing transport system. The optimized Electric-BHLS configuration reduces generalized transport cost by 27%, decreases average passenger waiting time by 61%, and lowers carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emissions by approximately 29%. Corridor passenger capacity increases from approximately 15,000 to 36,000 passengers per day, while average operating speed improves from 22 km/h to 35 km/h through ITS-supported operational control and selective priority measures. GIS analysis further indicates accessibility gains of 24% in urban areas and 38% in rural catchment zones, improving access to employment, education, healthcare, and regional services. Beyond technical performance, the study evaluates governance, financial feasibility, operational risk, and long-term implementation constraints within the Iraqi context. A phased Design–Build–Operate–Maintain (DBOM) Public–Private Partnership (PPP) framework and a unified corridor governance authority are proposed to support institutional coordination and long-term operational sustainability. The study concludes that Electric-BHLS represents a scalable and economically viable mobility model capable of supporting sustainable regional development and transport modernization in Iraq and comparable developing-country contexts.
Cleaner production (CP) has evolved from a regulatory obligation into a strategic management approach that supports firms’ transition toward sustainable competitiveness. This study examines how cleaner production practices move beyond compliance-oriented environmental management to become strategic capabilities associated with stronger innovation orientation, operational efficiency, and corporate legitimacy. Drawing on the Natural Resource-Based View (NRBV) and the Porter Hypothesis, this research employs a multiple-case qualitative content analysis of six energy-intensive firms—Enerjisa, Tüpraş, Şişecam, Enel, E.ON, and TotalEnergies—for the 2020–2024 reporting period. The findings identify a three-stage evolutionary trajectory of cleaner production integration: compliance-driven, efficiency-driven, and strategy-driven. Firms that move toward strategic integration tend to exhibit stronger dynamic and organisational capabilities and clearer strategic positioning in sustainability-oriented decision-making. European multinationals demonstrate more holistic and mature integration due to stable policy frameworks and access to sustainable finance, whereas emerging-economy firms primarily leverage cleaner production for efficiency gains and regulatory compliance. The study contributes to theory by conceptualising cleaner production as a dynamic strategic capability rather than a technical or operational tool and by providing comparative qualitative evidence consistent with the innovation-competitiveness mechanisms proposed by the Porter Hypothesis across diverse institutional contexts. In practice, the findings offer actionable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to design regulatory, financial, and organisational enablers that accelerate the transition from compliance to strategy, thereby positioning cleaner production as a central pathway through which firms may build sustainable competitiveness. Given the qualitative and document-based design, the study does not claim causal proof but identifies patterned associations across cases and institutional contexts.
This study developed a sustainability-based governance model for Village-Owned Enterprises (VOEs) to support the acceleration of sustainable development at the village level. Weak governance structures, limited human resource capacity, and insufficient integration of sustainability values continue to constrain VOE effectiveness as drivers of local economic development. Having used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), this study evaluated five governance criteria: Human resource capacity and quality, transparency and accountability, collaboration and partnership, environmental commitment, as well as community participation and empowerment, across six sustainability-oriented VOEs. The results indicated that human resource capacity and quality constituted the highest priority (weight 0.3333), followed by transparency and accountability (0.2667) and cross-sector collaboration (0.2000). Although environmental commitment and community participation received lower priority weights, evidence from a qualitative study demonstrated that these dimensions played a critical role in strengthening socio-ecological resilience. Empirical cases from Ponggok and Kenteng VOEs showed that water conservation initiatives and waste management innovations were essential to sustaining long-term economic performance. Overall, the findings suggested that effective VOE governance extended beyond administrative functions toward a transformative model that integrated institutional capacity, social legitimacy, and environmental stewardship. This governance framework positions VOEs as socio-ecological actors contributing to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), thus highlighting sustainability-oriented governance as a strategic prerequisite for resilient village development in the context of green transition.
Driver drowsiness is one of the major reasons behind road accidents, emphasizing the need for accurate and efficient fatigue detection systems that can help monitor practical in-vehicle environments. While significant progress has been made in visual fatigue detection based on deep learning, many previous studies have been performed using a single dataset for training or controlled environments for testing. In this paper, we examine the reliability of lightweight driver-monitoring architectures for vision-based driver drowsiness detection based on three heterogeneous public datasets, i.e., Yawning Detection Dataset (YawDD), Driver Drowsiness Dataset (DDD), and National Tsing Hua University Drowsy Driving Dataset (NTHU-DDD), which cover different lighting conditions, facial characteristics, and head poses as encountered in driving scenarios. Among the considered architectures, Single Shot Detector (SSD)-MobileNetV2 was the most consistent, yielding an accuracy of 92%, precision of 93%, recall of 92%, and F1-score of 92% while also being computationally lighter than the other considered architectures. Reliability of the proposed architecture was statistically validated using the McNemar Test and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI). Our results show that SSD-MobileNetV2 could be a promising baseline for future lightweight driver-monitoring systems for heterogeneous driving environments.
Evaluating technological innovation performance in regional public hospitals requires balancing multiple policy objectives, including operational efficiency, distributive equity, and innovation value creation. Conventional evaluation methods often rely on fixed indicator weights, which inadequately capture trade-offs among competing objectives and limit their usefulness for strategic resource allocation. To address this limitation, this study develops a multi-objective decision optimization framework that reformulates innovation performance evaluation as a constrained decision-making problem under fiscal, institutional, and policy conditions. A multi-objective linear programming model is constructed to jointly optimize efficiency, fairness, and innovation value. Using three-year panel data from regional public hospitals, the framework is validated through comparative evaluation, sensitivity analysis, and statistical testing. The results show that the optimized weighting structure improves institutional performance balance, reduces inter-regional disparities in innovation capacity, and strengthens the contribution of research investment to technological output and knowledge transformation. Human capital composition, research funding intensity, and technology commercialization capability are identified as key variables shaping the innovation performance frontier. Scenario analysis further shows that institutional performance varies under different policy preferences, highlighting the need for adaptive weighting mechanisms. The findings provide a practical and interpretable framework for evidence-based innovation performance evaluation and public hospital governance.
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