ali sibevei

Desertification is the greatest environmental challenge that serious threats to food security and biodiversity. This research was conducted with the aim of evaluating the risk of desertification and providing management plans using the DPSIR-M conceptual model in Khorasan Razavi province and in 4 steps. These steps include; - Collecting data and preparing basic maps, - Choosing a model to prepare a desertification intensity map, - Assessing the risk of desertification and finally, providing management plans based on the conceptual approach of DPSIR-M. The results showed that more than 30% of the study area are located in the relatively critical to severe desertification class. In terms of fragility, about 59% of the areas of Khorasan Razavi province are in relatively fragile to very fragile environmental conditions, and about 7% have the potential of fragility. The results of the desertification risk map showed that more than 98% of the regions are in the high and very high desertification risk class, and only 2% of the areas are in the moderate to very low classes. This issue can be a serious warning of the land degradation for the officials and executives of Khorasan Razavi province. Therefore, based on the intensity and risk maps of desertification and using the DPSIR-M model, six policies and 46 strategies and action plans were proposed for optimal land management. The proposed programs are in the form of preventive, corrective and rehabilitation programs. Therefore, it is suggested that the results obtained from this research be used by managers and experts of executive departments.

Regional and local levels of managing and implementing development policies have always been the focus of scientific, policy-making, and executive circles. In this regard, new models have emphasized sustainable development. The sustainable development of a region should not only be coordinated with its various resources, but also it should be based on the social environment and native culture of the country and region. Therefore, in the current research, a dynamic model of the economic-cultural development triangle is presented with the inclusion of sustainable development dimensions (social, environmental and economic). The economic-cultural development triangle model is a non-dynamic model with four dimensions of executive bodies, parliament representatives, private sector and Friday Imams. In this model, cooperation and coordination of these four dimensions are considered necessary for regional development. This shows the complexity of an economic system that consists of various factors and many interactions, which leads to complex behaviors of economic indicators over time. In this complex system, the implementing of regional development policies without a systemic approach and holistic view is not beneficial and may lead to a decrease in economic growth and regional production. Therefore, in policy-making, attention should be paid to the influential factors in the system, and the appropriate policy should be selected and implemented. The systems dynamics approach is a holistic thinking method about all components of a system and is a way to understand the dynamic behavior of complex systems. Therefore, this approach has been used in this research.

Due to the complex and interlinked relationships in the sustainable development system of the region, the constituent elements of this system are dynamic and change over time. Therefore, in this research, systems dynamics method is used. In this approach, in the first step, the research problem is defined. According to the research background, the variables of the problem and the boundary of the sustainable economic development system of the region are determined. In the next step, the relationship between the variables is determined by a cause-and-effect diagram. Then a flow diagram is drawn to simulate the problem. After simulating using Vensim software and validating the model, suitable scenarios are evaluated.

The purpose of presenting the model is to improve the economic and social indicators of the province. Based on the designed model, the behavior of the system has been simulated in a ten-year time horizon from 2013 to 2023. The results of the scenario show that private sector’ presence did not have a one-time and jumpy increase effect on the gross domestic product of the region. However, rather it helped the production growth process in a very gentle and delayed manner. The results of the simulation of the policies show that the two policies, "stability of laws and executive procedures" and "optimal use of investments," lead to the increase of private sector’ economic activities. Since these policies highlight private sector’ presence in the region, the implementation of this policy will lead to an increase in jobs created by private sector and investment through private sector’s activities. In contrast, the physical capital created on a large scale in the province is not noticeable. The strength of the economic and cultural development triangle plan is the correct direction of investments and using unused capacities, and as a result, the working population has increased.

According to the results of the implementation of the policies, it is suggested that they should be implemented simultaneously according to the combined policy of "stability of laws and executive procedures", "optimal use of investments," and "development of educational infrastructure," which will also make use of the capacities of the region's workforce. Moreover, it also increases the available physical capital because other investors (other than private sector) tend to invest. With the implementation of the combined policy, the working population and physical capital, which are considered as production inputs, will increase. As a result, the production of the region will increase.

The bus transportation system is one of the most important urban public transportation systems and plays a major role in intracity travel and daily travel in all cities. Due to the increase in personal car travel, it’s important to determine the policy for the use of buses on intra-city trips but to achieve this goal, one must know which one of the proposed plans can increase the use of buses. The innovation of the current research is the use of the systems dynamics approach in bus transportation systems in order to achieve this goal. Factors affecting the use of buses have been identified using the content analysis method, and variables such as culture-building, intelligence, and physical-technical quality of the bus have been included in the model, which has not been considered in other studies. The model was implemented in city of Mashhad. After validating the model, two scenarios and seven types of budget policies were implemented on the model according to the experts' opinion. The results of the bus fare scenario showed that if the bus fare rate is not changed, the attractiveness of the bus will increase slightly. The scenario of increasing the budget for improving the bus organization also showed that there is not much change in the use of buses. The results of the policy review also show that the best policy is to reduce the budget for purchasing the bus fleet and increase the funding for culture and intelligence, which will increase the use of buses in the long run.

Customer satisfaction is the main condition for competing in the global market. In the international market, customer requirements or needs have been turned into a primary concern for organizations. Also, numerous studies have shown that customer satisfaction has a positive effect on organizations’ profitability. In order to attract and retain customers, it is essential to identify and classify their requirements and predict them for organizations. Ideally, every organization should fully understand each of its customers, which is impossible in practice, so this study has used the market segmentation technique to identify customer needs. After the market segmentation, appropriate services should be provided for each segment to achieve customer satisfaction. One of the powerful techniques in this field is the Kano model. Investing in the motivational needs of customers and obtaining their satisfaction requires identifying the most important motivational needs. Therefore, in this study, the combinations of the K-means, Kano, and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) methods are used.

In today's turbulent world, supply chains face a variety of disruptions that cause disruption or reduction of flow in them. One way to deal with supply chain disruptions is through resilience strategies. In this paper, a two-stage scenario-based model was developed considering two disruptions in the multilevel blood supply chain as well as their effects.

First, by examining different articles, the research gap was investigated and then the mathematical modeling was done. Also, to deal with uncertainty, two-stage stochastic programming was used. Finally, in order to face the multi-objective nature of the model, the model was solved by Torabi and Hosseini method.

The proposed model was solved using the Torabi and Hosseini method in the real case, i.e. the blood supply chain of Tehran, in a suitable period of time by GAMS software.

The achieved results of the present study proved that adopting strategies such as redundancy, flexibility, and expanding social responsibility makes it is possible to make the blood supply chain resilient and reduce the shortage when faced with disruptions.

Supply chains face various disruptions from human-made to natural disasters preventing proper flow of materials and products. This problem is more important in the healthcare supply chains, especially the blood supply chains, in which human lives are at risk. Making the supply chains resilient, recently addressed by managers and researchers, can be a good way to tackle them. This study aimed to identify the most important disruptions and associated resilience strategies in the blood supply chain of Tehran, Iran, and prioritize the identified strategies based on the disruptions.

In the current study, important disruptions and associated appropriate resilience strategies were determined using previous studies and Delphi method. Then, the most important resilience strategies were identified and prioritized proposing the House of Quality and Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) as a novel hybrid approach.

A total of 9 disruptions and 16 resilience strategies were determined by reviewing previous studies and asking for expert opinions. The suggested hybrid model also contributed to determining the importance of each strategy in addressing disruptions and prioritizing them in the blood supply chain of Tehran.

Those strategies with high importance and low performance, such as flexibility or risk management culture, are of great importance and should be considered by managers and improved according to IPA. In addition, other strategies, such as social responsibility or redundancy, should be continued in the current way.

Supply chain risk management is very important for effective supply chain management. In the meantime, the healthcare supply chain and its risks need more attention given its important mission. Concerning the sensitivity of blood and its supply chain, the purpose of this study is to investigate the risks of the blood supply chain and their relations in Tehran.

In this descriptive-analytical study, the risks of blood supply chain were selected by reviewing the articles and expert opinions through interviews and questionnaires. The most important ones were identified using risk matrix and expert opinions, and their relationships were discussed using DEMATEL method.

The 19 most important risks were identified. Also, according to the Demetel method, it was shown that in terms of the importance of risks (D + R), selection of inappropriate suppliers (2.25), lack of appropriate budget allocation (2.23), low employee productivity (2.16) and inadequate blood inventory (2.01) were identified as the most important risks. In terms of mutual influences (D-R), economic and political sanctions (1.68) were selected as the most influencing and inadequate response to hospital demand (-0.89) as the most influenced risk.

After identifying the risks that are both significant and most influencing, such as the risks of lack of appropriate budget allocation, sanctions, exchange rate fluctuations, and catastrophes, in order to improve supply chain performance and prevent future problems, the factors that cause these risks need to be focused. And for controlling them, appropriate strategies, especially management strategies should be adopted.

This paper considers the problem of selecting the most appropriate ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), which is a polyolefin with a variety of usages in different areas. The metallocene catalyst, bis(2-phenyl indenyl) zirconium dichloride ((2-PhInd)2ZrCl2) was synthesized by a modified method and applied to the terpolymerization of ethylene, propylene, and 5-ethylidiene-2-norbornene (ENB). The methylaluminoxane (MAO) was used as a cocatalyst. It showed an appropriate activity, a high incorporation ability of the comonomers, and good performance in terpolymerization. The compounded EPDM showed good thermal stability with time. Proper criteria were chosen for the selection of the best EPDM, and a hybrid of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) was used for prioritizing 15 different synthesized EPDM species. The sensitivity and Genetic Association Interaction Analysis (GAIA) analysis were also performed. Finally, one of the polymers, which had a very high quality and moderate yield, cost, and curing time was selected.