Smart and Green Cities Inspired Research
Our Smart City discoveries enable us to translate research to tools for preparing for tomorrow’s possibilities in Africa.
Sub theme: Investigating the Emergence of E-governments and systems in Africa
- E-government adoption and environmental bonuses: A study of Nigeria and United Kingdom
- Barriers to the uptake of E-procurement in the Nigerian building industry
- Factors influencing e-procurement adoption in the Nigerian building industry
- 5G Networks: Open Network Architecture and Densification Strategies For Beyond 1000x Network Capacity Increase
- Developing Smart Cities through Optimal Wireless Mobile Network
E-government adoption and environmental bonuses: A study of Nigeria and the United Kingdom
ABSTRACT: The research work borders on e-government and environmental bonus in Nigeria and United Kingdom. The study examines whether the use of online government services could produce significant savings in the use of papers, filing cabinets, folders, and shelves in offices. The study specifically seeks to find out whether there is a significant difference in E-government Adoption of paper usage and pollution reduction between Nigeria and the United Kingdom. A survey study research method was adopted where 24 federal ministry activities in Nigeria was compared with that of the United Kingdom with the use of the secondary method of data collection. Levene's test of equality of variances based on F-value and T-test were used for the data analysis based on Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 15. The result showed a statistical non-significant relationship between e-government adoption in Nigeria and UK. The statistical non-significance could be attributed to non-implementation of e-government in Nigeria. The research also revealed that there is a significant difference in E-government adoption of paper usage and pollution reduction between Nigeria and the United Kingdom. This, therefore, shows that Nigeria requires policies to speed the processes for implementing e-government in its agencies to save paperwork, filing cabinets, folders, shelves in offices, boost productivity, make information sharing easier, and generally, help the environment. Based on the foregoing, the study recommends that the Nigerian government should increase the use of the internet among its citizens that will later transform into the widespread usage of e-government. This process will help the government improve on the revenue generation while at the same time deliver its promises to the electorate while contributing to environmental savings. The contribution of this research to literature and knowledge is that e-government has been able to reduce the environmental impact of papers, save cost, boost productivity, make information sharing easier, and generally help the environment.
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Barriers to the uptake of E-procurement in the Nigerian building industry
ABSTRACT: Although the uptake of e-Procurement technologies and processes by businesses and organizations has been very impressive in the developed countries, the same cannot be said in many developing countries where the uptake of e-Procurement is rather slow and low. This study investigated the barriers to the uptake of e-Procurement using data derived from a questionnaire survey of 213 consulting firms, contractors, client organizations and government establishments in the Nigerian building industry (NBI). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor, and multiple regression analyses. The result shows that the two factors with the most significant adverse effect on the uptake of e-Procurement were the high investment cost and lack of technical expertise required in setting up e-procurement technologies and processes. Difference between how the researchers and practitioners understood the barriers to the uptake of e-Procurement was observed. Technical, infrastructure, political, social, and cultural issues; the lack of evidence of the benefits of e-Procurement in the building industry; and lack of top management support were the three strongest predictors of low uptake of e-Procurement by the organizations surveyed. The study suggests that to ensure a critical mass uptake of e-Procurement and maximization of its benefits in the procurement of building works, services, and materials in Nigeria, there is a need for concerted effort by all stakeholders in the industry to eliminate the barriers identified in this research.
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Factors influencing e-procurement adoption in the Nigerian building industry
ABSTRACT: Against the backdrop of increasing adoption of e-Procurement in supply chain management, there is a need for adequate knowledge of the factors that influence the decision by organizations in the building industry to use e-Procurement. This study aims to fill the knowledge gap by investigating the factors influencing e-Procurement adoption based on the data sourced in a questionnaire survey involving 213 organizations in the building industry. The survey was conducted between June and November 2015 in Nigeria. Descriptive statistics, factor, and categorical regression analyses were used to analyze the data. The results show that the three most important factors influencing the adoption of e-Procurement amongst the participants, in order of importance, were: the benefits of e-Procurement in enhancing efficiency in project delivery; eliminating geographic barriers and effective communication among project team members. The 29 factors were investigated in seven different dimensions-the benefits of e-Procurement use; the level of awareness on e-Procurement in construction; and the availability and cost of e-Procurement applications emerged as the three most significant predictors of e-Procurement adoption in the survey. The study concludes by identifying strategies that should be engaged in increasing the uptake and maximizing the benefits of e-Procurement in the Nigerian building industry.
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5G Networks: Open Network Architecture and Densification Strategies for Beyond 1000x Network Capacity Increase
ABSTRACT: The key advantages of the 5G network include among other things a 1000x capacity increase in the available network capacity. This increase will support the Internet of things and also the Device to Device communication architecture. However, the increased network capacity provided by the 5Gcommunications standards comes with the high cost of infrastructure. The high attenuation faced by mmWaves in the proposed 5G spectrum restricts the 5G network deployments to femtocells. This cell size increases the densification of the network resulting in very high infrastructure cost for the operators. This paper presents a network topology capable of minimizing the deployment costs of the 5G networks and at the same time increasing the network capacity by several factors beyond the 1000x capacity increase currently being proposed by the 5G network. This architecture relies on the use of collocation strategies, centralized system network planning, and a cloud-based MSC and HLR/VLR database system. With this approach, a single third party provides the MSC and database service while each operator controls their dedicated BSC and BTS. The traffic from users of a given operator is transmitted using the operator's infrastructure and bandwidth. When the operator's capacity is exhausted, the traffic is routed through the infrastructure of the next operator and the revenue from the traffic is shared between the operators. This system, however, gives priority to the original customers of the operator and only transmit traffic from other customers if the second operator has the excess unused capacity. The centralized network planning makes the channels from each operator available at each cell. This increases the available capacity of the network to greater than 1000x and improves user experience and spectrum utilization.
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Developing Smart Cities through Optimal Wireless Mobile Network
ABSTRACT: Wireless mobile communication has become the interconnecting technological platform through which seamless services of data, voice and other value-added services can be deployed within local, national and global platforms. As a means to integrating smart services, the mobile network must be efficient in terms of coverage and quality of service. This paper, therefore, investigates large-scale propagation models used to predict the signal strength with the aim of providing sufficient data required for radio frequency planning and optimization, which will engender flawless mobile network integration and consequently improved quality of service. Data analysis and optimization were carried out using the Root Mean Square statistical tool for which the COST231 model was optimized to ensure proper mobile network planning and improved quality of service.
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