The length of stay (LOS) is an important indicator of the efficiency of hospital management. Reduction in the number of inpatient days results in decreased risk of infection and medication side effects, improvement in the quality of treatment, and increased hospital profit with more efficient bed management. The purpose of this thesis is to determine which factors are associated with length of hospital stay, in the covid period using the collected data. In this thesis the student will apply a data mining approach to understand the management process in the covid period. The data is from a Portuguese hospital.

Process mining is a data analytics approach which has shown promising results in healthcare including the potential to improve the management of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD). Cardiology is a branch of medicine that diagnoses and treats heart and blood vessel illnesses include coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic heart disease, and other heart conditions. CVDs are the world's leading cause of disease-related death. In 2015, the top two cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart disease and stroke, caused 15 million deaths worldwide. From an economic standpoint, CVD has a significant impact on healthcare expenses, productivity loss, and the care of persons with chronic illnesses. A big problem is lowering the cost of CVD care while also enhancing the quality of care.

Helping healthcare professionals develop a better understanding of how to improve CVD care pathways may result in better outcomes for patients.   A Data analytics process will be applied to the collected big data from a hospital. Process mining can be applied in healthcare settings to give new insights that help enhance patient treatment processes (also known as care pathways).

FRAM is the brand name of Møre and Romsdal (M&R) counties’ integrated public transport service system. The system combines multiple ferry-, express boat-, and bus services, with the latter accounting for some 9 million passengers and ticket revenues of 170 million NOK per year.

FRAM offers an extensive set of ticket options, so travellers can pick the best fare that fits their individual needs. Among other things, passengers can choose between paying onboard (e.g., cash/credit card) or using off-bord payment solutions (e.g., FRAM-app) to purchase tickets before the trip. From an operational perspective, FRAM prefers off-board payments as they reduce the bus drivers’ workload and increase the average system speed. FRAM currently charges a 20-kroner service fee for all onboard tickets to incentivise travellers to use off-board payment options. Despite this premium, some 40 per cent of our customers still purchase their tickets on board, suggesting that some traveller segments might value the option to pay onboard higher than 20 kroner.

A successful MSc-project analyses passengers’ valuation of onboard/off-board payment options in M&R and proposes adequate surcharge levels for different traveller segments.

The topic is suggested by the SiMolde Canteen (https://simolde.no/en/kantine)

Background

The canteen at Molde University College experiences a classic peak-hour problem with most of the customers coming lunch time creating a bottleneck for the operation of the canteen. The canteen is a part of the Student Welfare Organization in Molde (SiMolde) being organized as a legal entity responsible for the welfare of students at universities, university colleges, scientific universities and other colleges in Norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_welfare_organisation. Since the canteen is closely related to the operation of HiMolde, cooperation ideas on lecture scheduling, library services, bookstore services might also be explored.

Proposed Main Problem:

How to handle the high variation in arrival of customers while keeping or increasing the total throughput over the opening hours? Other problem statements including the combination with the operation of HiMolde services are welcome.

Tasks could be:

First map the current operation of the canteen. Detailed data for each day is available. Second, do explorative research of different models for handling the peek hour problem, e.g., fast food, sushi conveyor systems, pre-paid models (buffets, or single customer), airport lounge systems, and canteen services combined with other services (literature review, visit places with similar operations). Third, analyze models, compare-and-contrast results. Forth, suggest improvements. Possible research methods include explorative research, AI/ML based on available data for predictions, lean and case study.

Advisors:

Supervisors: Professor Bjørn Jæger bjorn.jager@himolde.no, Steinar Westlie Kristoffersen steinar.w.kristoffersen@himolde.no, and Head of Canteen Tone Anita Åbelvold tone.a.abelvold@simolde.no.

Crowdshipping business model characteristics, comparison, and typologies.

Currently cities are suffering from increase in congestion and pollution, also due to freight deliveries mostly linked to e-commerce increase. Private companies are searching for new solutions to deliver goods efficiently while minimizing cost, emissions, and congestion.

Crowdshipping, or a service that uses non-professional bringers to deliver packages to final costumers, is considered a promising option to jointly deal with these three daunting issues. However, research is suggesting that crowdshipping can be performed according to very different business models bearing completely different implications with respect to the mentioned critical issues mentioned above.

This thesis analyzes, compares, and typifies the main and most relevant crowdshipping companies worldwide. The investigation will rely on an internet search and in-depth interviews. On the base of the business model canvas model, the various companies will be grouped within corwdshipping’ business model types. Taking advantage of previous literature, each business model typology will be evaluated in terms of the most likely impacts it will have on cost, congestion, and emission. Thus, allowing to discover when exactly e crowdshipping service is actually contributing to the improvement of the economic and environmental conditions city dwellers are experiencing.

Many cities are moving away from traditional data collection instruments to automated and diverse sources. Cities that incorporate the use of traffic sensors and build intelligent transport systems to manage traffic also have a huge stream of real-time data. The advent of smart cities and smart management of many traditionally manual utilities are making a variety of data streams available (and in some cases open) to be exploited for analysis. Nevertheless, this high volume of data in smart city initiatives, brings a need to secure such data.  Cason and Wierschem (2020) discuss securing information and communication systems of smart city through the transportation sector and identify several trust issues and vulnerabilities in such systems. Promoting transparency and trust are two of the most relevant features that blockchain can bring to applications. This proposal investigates the feasibility, advantages and drawbacks of bringing blockchain into smart city applications.

Keywords: smart cities, blockchain technology, applications

The transition from fossil fuel-based to renewable energy systems is needed for the green transformation to decarbonize our economic systems and mitigate climate change. Offshore Wind Energy is one of the necessary sources in this transition.

Given the urgency of effectively mitigating climate change, the market share of renewables is planned to increase very quickly.

Among the many requirements for growing renewable energy, the critical role of the supply chain is often forgotten. The Offshore Wind Energy Supply Chain is new and in development. There are no guarantees that the supply chain can perform under the predicted increase in demand.

This thesis should analyze the Offshore Wind Energy Supply Chain, find challenges and bottlenecks, and propose ways to mitigate delays in Offshore Wind Energy in Europe.

The transition from fossil fuel-based to renewable energy systems is needed for the green transformation to decarbonize our economic systems and mitigate climate change. Offshore Wind Energy is one of the necessary sources in this transition.

Given the urgency of effectively mitigating climate change, the market share of renewables is planned to increase very quickly.

It is crucial for offshore wind farms to have their operation and maintenance expenses at the minimum level. Vessels are the most important part of the logistics costs in offshore operations. Having the correct support vessel fleet sizing avoids disruptions in the operation with a minimal cost.

This thesis should review the literature about failure forecasting and fleet sizing in offshore wind energy O&M support vessels and implement a quantitative approach to determine the optimal fleet sizing under uncertainty.

Tine AS produces a wide range of products, some products do not have close substitutes in the market, some other meet intense competition. In order to make correct pricing decisions, the producer needs good estimates of price elasticity of demand for the products. 

The task for this MSc thesis is to look into existing methods of estimation of price elasticity and find out which of them are relevant and apply them to the case of TINE. This work requires a good understanding of statistical methods and skills to apply them in R or Python.

Operators in the tourism industry have taken to highlighting their environmentally friendly practices in order to speak to sustainability issues. Booking.com, for example, uses a leaf icon in a visual scale to indicate a particular hotel’s “green rating” to appeal to potential customers who want to make eco-friendly selections. However, it is not clear if such a scale is well defined or even aligned with the 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) as proposed by the United Nations.

Blockchain technology has been hailed as the definitive way to ensure accountability. By building sustainability practices for tour operators around blockchain technologies, it is theoretically possible to ensure that claims made in their marketing material are trustworthy and accurate. With such a technology in place, the question becomes one of if and how customers will use such information. If booking.com hypothetically improved their simple leaf scale with a set of scales that indicate the various measures conforming to the 17 SDGs, will customers now choose the most sustainable hotels? Or will they give such scales a cursory glance, feel overwhelmed by the data, and then just choose the cheapest option anyway?

This thesis will investigate this issue and ask: At what level is the detailed accountability with blockchain effective in a customer-facing context? This thesis tackles this question using user data from the real world. The work will involve working with a local tourism-based company, the deployment of a test mock website, the collection of user data, and an analysis of the collected data. The outcome should shed light on how blockchain technology can impact the purchasing decisions of the common consumer.

Urban freight transport (UFT) is now recognized as critical in pursuing Sustainable Development Goals given the rise in demand within cities. In fact, UFT is both essential to ensure high standard of livings as well as responsible for relevant environmental and social costs.

Experts suggest adopting a participatory approach to UFT planning so to define the best possible compromise solution that can account for the heterogeneity of preferences among stakeholders (e.g., transport providers, retailers, public administration, and citizens), the substantial interaction effects, and the low level of cooperation among them. While consensus is building around the need for participatory planning, at the same time the engagement of citizens is typically low since freight transport is not considered important from their perspective while being the source of many negative externalities produced within the city boundaries.

The level and width of the engagement of the various stakeholders is a critical element to produce good compromise solutions capable of dealing with the hard-to-solve problems local decision makers are confronted with when taking decisions.

The thesis will investigate the possible role gamification can play in promoting awareness and engagement among citizens whose level of knowledge of the environmental, social, and economic implications deriving from the actions they frequently take (e.g., buy goods online).

The thesis will delve on both the theoretical and practical gamification principles that one has to consider when developing a gamification strategy capable of increasing citizens’ awareness with respect to the impact their daily choices have on their lives, while also upgrading their understanding of the phenomenon. The thesis will also analyze the possible methods one could use to measure the impact the gamification might have in terms of the aims pursued.

The student could also consider developing a simple game and test its impact in a pilot study simulating the adoption of such an approach in practice.

Crowdshipping, also known as crowd logistics, applies a crowdsourcing approach to freight delivery. Crowdshipping represents an example of people using social networking to act  collaboratively and share both services and assets with the intent of serving a given community while also benefitting from this action. In fact, crowdsourcing, is a crasis of two words “crowd” and “outsourcing”, originally created by Howe (2006) refers to the outsourcing by a firm of a given activity to the crowd. While the phenomenon can be characterized by different approaches nevertheless it always includes a contribution from the crowd.

Crowdshipping represents a shipping alternative to traditional delivery systems, particularly suitable for e-commerce. Although some benefits in terms of reduced pollution and congestion could be obtained by replacing dedicated freight trips, the impacts of crowdshipping are unclear and depend on several factors such as the transport mode used, the match between supply and demand, length of detours, and possible induced demand.

There are nowadays different types of crowdshipping services which rely on peculiar business models, involving different geographical scales (international, national, and local), targeting heterogeneous customers, and producing diverse environmental and social impacts.

The thesis will investigate, by conducting a detailed web search combined with online interviews with crowdshipping companies, the currently active crowdshipping initiatives throughout the world and will typify them using a business model canvas approach that constitutes a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool to describe and analyze organizations and start-ups alike.

The various categories will then be used as a reference to benchmark the alternative options and calculate their environmental impact with respect to other types of shipment.

An additional output of the thesis will consist in the definition of the main characteristics that need to be satisfied in order to survive the high market competition in this specific segment.

The environmental effects of e-commerce are both difficult to calculate and, as evidence suggests, relevant. Over the last years, e-commerce has consistently grown. The e-commerce share of the turnover of all EU-27 enterprises (except financial) increased from 13% in 2010 to 18% in 2019 and jumped to 20% in 2020 and 2021. Cross-border transactions also increased ad many consumers purchased from sellers in a non-EU country. Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this evolution since many more consumers and retailers in the EU shifted from physical stores to online. In fact, there are several issues that need to be consider estimating the relative environmental impact e-commerce produces with respect to physical buying options.

The extant literature suggests that there are some theoretical as well as practical issues that one must consider. Among these one can recall: 1) the substitution or complementarity of on-line and off-line purchases; 2) the fulfillment arrangements that the seller provides (express vs regular) delivery; 3) the management of missed deliveries and returned items; 4) the mix between home and click-and-pick deliveries; 5) the type of vehicles used and their average load factors; 6) the induced changes e-commerce can generate with respect to shopping habits… and possibly many others.

The assumption of positive environmental consequences linked to e-commerce have not been supported either by convincing theoretical reasonings or hard practical evidence.

Two are the crucial questions one needs to address to reverse this situation which is extremely relevant given the current and expected increase in the volume of e-commerce throughout the world. In more detail, we need to ask ourselves: (1) How do we improve our understanding and management of the environmental effects deriving from e-commerce?; (2) Which are the policy interventions one should deploy to foster the adoption and diffusion of sustainable e-commerce solutions?

Since the literature is currently using alternative methods and conceptual paradigms when estimating the environmental impact of e-commerce, the thesis will systematically investigate, analyze, and critically compare them with the intent of providing a credible and transparent evaluation of the pros and cons of the different options while also making explicit the underlying assumptions each one relies on.

In fact, determining the most accurate estimates about the environmental impact e-commerce produces is essential to ensure communicating the correct and reliable information to end consumers allowing them autonomously and consciously take their purchase decisions.