ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
A Framework for the Implementation of Green Certification of Buildings in Ghana

Buildings are responsible for more than 40% of global energy use and one third of global greenhouse gas emissions both in developed and developing countries. A number of buildings are constructed every year but only a small number of them can be identified as “green buildings.” Despite the well-known benefits of green certification of buildings, it still remains in the state of infancy in Ghana, and adequate diffusion and implementation strategies should be put in place to ensure that they become more established. This study therefore sought to propose a framework which has guidelines which are practical steps that can aid the certifying body in making decisions in relation to implementing the green certification of buildings. Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory and Hartman’s theory were adopted to aid in proposing a framework. The study adopted a qualitative method of enquiry with semi-structured interviews to gather data from professional bodies in the built environment. Findings from the study revealed that some of the professional bodies have used their influences to sensitize their members on green certification of buildings while others are yet to do the same. The key barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings were identified to include lack of legal backing, cost and financing, inadequate awareness of the benefits of green certification of buildings, inadequate human resources, lack of active government participation, and the conservative nature of Ghanaians. Furthermore, the main drivers for the adoption of green certification of buildings were also identified to include lack of observability of the benefits of green certified buildings, commitment of government, incorporating it into the code of practice for professional bodies, public acknowledgement, policies and regulations, effective communication and source of information. To ensure that green certification of building is implemented in Ghana, it is recommended that the guidelines in the iiiiv proposed framework must be adopted by the certifying body which would help increase the awareness and adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana

Source: KNUST
A time optimal vehicle routing model for Disaster relief delivery

In linear programming, the transportation problem is one of the most important and successful applications of quantitative analysis for solving business problems in products distribution. It has also proved to be a handful tool in the optimal distribution of relief items at minimized times during disasters. This thesis presents a solution for transportation problem using computing modeling for the optimal distribution of relieve items in some selected districts of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana which has been known over the years to be susceptible to flooding. The considered areas included Ada Foah, Ada West, Lekma, Prampram and Tema. This thesis aim to minimize the time for sending relieve items from the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) office to disaster sites. The intent is that, the needs of each arrival area are met and every shipping vehicle operates within its capacity. These vehicles, nine in number, which served as sources of relieve items included the 1\2ton pickup, 1 ton pickup, 4 wheeler truck, 6 wheeler truck, 10 wheeler truck, 12 wheeler truck, 14 wheeler truck, 18 wheeler truck and the 22 wheeler truck. The underlying transportation tableau is derived and according to its governing mathematical model, the Vogel’s approximation method is used to search the basic feasible solution and the Modified Distribution Method (MODI) is also employed in optimizing the basic feasible solution.

Source: KNUST
A time optimal vehicle routing model for Disaster relief delivery Agyei

In linear programming, the transportation problem is one of the most important and successful applications of quantitative analysis for solving business problems in products distribution. It has also proved to be a handful tool in the optimal distribution of relief items at minimized times during disasters. This thesis presents a solution for transportation problem using computing modeling for the optimal distribution of relieve items in some selected districts of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana which has been known over the years to be susceptible to flooding. The considered areas included Ada Foah, Ada West, Lekma, Prampram and Tema. This thesis aim to minimize the time for sending relieve items from the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) office to disaster sites. The intent is that, the needs of each arrival area are met and every shipping vehicle operates within its capacity. These vehicles, nine in number, which served as sources of relieve items included the 1\2ton pickup, 1 ton pickup, 4 wheeler truck, 6 wheeler truck, 10 wheeler truck, 12 wheeler truck, 14 wheeler truck, 18 wheeler truck and the 22 wheeler truck. The underlying transportation tableau is derived and according to its governing mathematical model, the Vogel’s approximation method is used to search the basic feasible solution and the Modified Distribution Method (MODI) is also employed in optimizing the basic feasible solution.

Source: KNUST
A time series analysis of number of patients in five departments of Ho Regional Hospital

Continuous increase in human population and economy, causes a rise in healthcare demand. Overcrowding in the departments of the hospitals of Ghana specically has become an increasingly important problem of late. The study aimed to develop a time series model for forecasting the monthly volume of patients admission to the five departments of the Ho Regional Hospital (Traflagar). To achieve the objectives of the present study, the researcher herein employed time series analysis to study the random pattern of admission into the various departments of the aforementioned hospital and as such the Box-Jenkins procedure was used to ARIMA and seasonal ARIMA (SARIMA) models to the data collected. Analysis of the data indicated that the various series show seasonality and hence the Seasonal ARIMA (SARIMA) models were better in fitting the admission data (having smaller mean squared errors of forecasting) than the non-seasonal ARIMA models. It was further observed that the admission to the emergency ward will fluctuate steadily from January to August. Admission will decrease in September and October and rise in November and December for the year 2019. Moreover, the admission to the male ward will have significant in March, May, June and September respectively for the 2019 year. The female ward admission for 2019 will increase but with study fluctuation between January and June. Admission reduces afterwards and an increase in October and November. In addition, the admission to the maternity ward tend to be very stable with little fluctuation. Admission fluctuates steadily for all months of the year. Finally, the forecast for children for the four years saw a significant increase in December.

Source: KNUST
Accummulation and bioaccessibility of heavy metals in some root tubers and soil in selected communities in the Ashanti region of Ghana

The presence of metal contaminants in agricultural soils or lands and subsequent uptake of heavy metals by food crops pose serious risk to human health. The study assessed the levels of toxic metals -arsenic, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc- in soils and some edible root tuber crops in the Ashanti region to evaluate the potential human health risks associated with exposure to these metals. Concentrations of heavy metals in the 154 samples were initially screened using field portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometer prior to confirmation on an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer. The mean metal concentrations analyzed in the various samples were in the order; As ˂ Cu ˂ Ni ˂Cr ˂ Zn ˂ Mn ˂ Fe for cassava and cocoyam, As ˂ Cu ˂ Zn ˂ Ni ˂ Cr ˂ Mn ˂ Fe, As ˂ Zn ˂ Cu ˂ Ni ˂ Cr ˂ Mn ˂ Fe As ˂ Cu ˂ Ni ˂ Cr ˂ Mn ˂ Fe and Cu ˂ As ˂ Ni ˂ Cr ˂ Z n ˂ Mn ˂ Fe for yam, sweet potato, cassava peels and soil respectively. Soil pH and electrical conductivity ranged between 5.30 to 9.17 and 37.8 μS/cm to 4020 μS/cm respectively. The contamination indices indicated low to moderate contamination. The bioaccumulation factor of these heavy metals in foodstuffs from soil indicated that cassava peels had higher capacity to absorb zinc and iron gave the lowest capacity of absorption. Arsenic recorded the highest value in terms of target hazard quotient (THQ) followed by nickel and chromium, the least value. Comparing the THQ values for adults and children, results for children were higher than that of adults which indicates that children are more likely to express the effect than adults.

Source: KNUST
Agroforestry as an old approach to a new challenge of combating climate change: a critical analysis of the cocoa sector

Climate change is the greatest challenge to developing countries, especially where rain-fed agriculture is the main source of livelihood and revenue. Agroforestry provides an opportunity for farmers to adapt and reduce the carbon footprint. We conducted an exploratory review on the role of cocoa agroforestry for climate change mitigation and adaptation of smallholders by applying combinations of keywords that include climate change, agroforestry, stakeholders, Paris agreement, INDCs/NDCs, mitigation and adaptation. The paper combined data sources covering reports on past and on-going cocoa sustainability projects and policy interventions in Ghana as well as the output of exploratory review that utilized relevant key words to identify appropriate literature for investigation and analysis. We established that, there is low adoption of pro-environmental interventions introduced by both Government and NGOs in the cocoa sector. In addition, there is a shift in cocoa farming from expansion into forest areas to adoption of intensive cocoa monoculture. Despite the importance of shaded trees in cocoa production such as the benefits gained from agroforestry system, cocoa farmers have low appreciation of their environmental, soil, nutrients and other ecological benefits. We recommend that cocoa farmers should be involved in the formulation and implementation of pro-environmental interventions that affect their cocoa production practices. This will make farmers take ownership of the innovation instead of it being introduced to them. In addition, since our review of the literature established that the surge in yield is the impetus for cocoa mono-culture adoption, there is the need to introduce cocoa varieties with higher yields under agroforestry system. Finally, there should be monetary valuation of shade trees used in cocoa agroforestry systems for payment to farmers to help improve agroforestry adoption. We argue that cocoa agroforestry though considered an old practice, remains one of the most appropriate land-use systems that is climate-smart with great potential to contribute to sustainable cocoa production.

Source: KNUST
An assessment of the quality of delivery care in the Manhyia Kumasi Metropolitan District

Background Maternal mortality contributes to about 20 million death per year despite the completing of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) implementation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2014), every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. 99% of these maternal deaths occur in developing regions particularly Africa and Asia. The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) of 380 per 100, 000 live births for Ghana is an improvement over the past 20 years but we still could not reach the target of three quarters reduction by 2015. This study seeks to investigate the quality of supervised delivery care in the Manhyia Kumasi Metropolitan District of the Ashanti Region Methodology The study is a descriptive cross sectional study using simple convenient sampling. For the purpose of the research a total of one fifty (150) respondents were interviewed. The respondents comprised of 140 mothers who have babies aged 0-6 months who delivered at Manhyia hospital and attending PNC and 10 health workers at the Manhyia labour ward which included doctors, nurses, midwives, nursing students and midwifery students were also interviewed after they consented to be part of the study. Results Mean ages of our respondents were between 15 – 35 years with majority of them having secondary school education (45%). All the health workers (100%) in the labour ward monitor labour with partograph but only 90% of the respondent knew partograph was started in active phase of labour. 55% believe if initial assessment require referral there was no need for partograph. 90% believe infection is not a problem in the facility, and all sharp instruments were disposed using a sharp box. All the labour ward health workers use clean running water for hand washing. All labour ward health workers believe that minimal vaginal examination and the use of chlorhexidine in HIV/ AIDS patients prevents infections, 90% objected to artificial rupturing of membrane and 70% responded positively to the use of obstetric interventions xiv in labour. 73.5% of the staffs welcomed the respondents with a smile whiles 93.9% listened to their views, about 5.4% of the respondents were verbally abused by staffs with 96.6% sensitive to the plight of the patients. All the skilled staff present in the department were available for work but 30.6% of the respondents believe they are inadequate for the work. The cord was cut after 1-3mins, most babies were dried after delivery and mothers were encourage to breastfeed within 30 mins. 97.9% of clients were educated on breastfeeding, 83.2% established breast feeding within the first 30 minutes after birth under normal circumstances.76% of the clients upon orientation from the medical staff implemented the exclusive 6 months system. Conclusion This study has sought to assess the quality of delivery care in the Manhyia district hospital, Kumasi metropolis. The general over view of the study showed an above average quality of health care with respect to delivery care. xv

Source: KNUST
An optimal feature extraction vector for offline signature Verification

Automatic signature verification is a very practical research area in the field of pattern recognition. The uniqueness of each person's signature, makes signature a behavioural characteristic of human biometrics. The unavoidable side-effect of the signatures is that they can be misused for the purpose of feigning a data authenticity. The rising effect in cases regarding forgery shows the need for efficient Signature Verification System. This thesis presents an optimal feature extraction vector for offline signature verification system using the glcm and properties of image regions features of signatures. Support Vector Machine (SVM) was used to verify and classify the signatures with various variations in kernel functions. The Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) and the Least Square method of the SVM was used. It was observed that the Radial Basis Function (RBF) with the SMO gave the best performance of the system.

Source: KNUST
Analyse des procédés de traduction utilisés dans La traduction Anglaise d'une vie de boy (houseboy)

This study entitled Analyse des procédés de traduction utilisés dans la traduction anglaise d'Une vie de boy (Houseboy) is about an analysis of the translation procedures used by the translator of Ferdinand Oyono's novel, Une vie de boy from French into English.The novel Une vie de boy (Houseboy) has been of much research especially in literature. There has not been enough research on the translation of this book into English. This is the gap that our work seeks to help fill. Our particular interest is in the seven translation procedures of Vinay et Darbelnet and the two methods of translation of Peter Newmark. The seven procedures of Vinay and Darbelnet are divided into two groups, namely direct and oblique translation. Newmark identified eight technics but concludes that it is semantic and communicative translations that meet the two objectives of translation: exactitude and economy. The methodology we used is that, we studied the seven translation procedures of Vinay and Darbelnet and the two methods of Newmark. We then examined how the translator used these procedures and methods to do his translation. In the course of our analysis, we discovered that Reed maintainned words borrowed from Spanish, Latin and Ewondo (a Cameroonian local language) in the original text. In addition, he translated certain African proverbs literally. Also, we realized that he did some faulty translations. Finally, we observed that human languages have some linguistic units in common despite the linguistic {fferences. These common linguistic units facilitate translating from one language into another.

Source: KNUST
Analysis of claim severity models

Insurance, according to the PNDC Law 277, is a contract whereby one person (insurer) undertakes, in return for an agreed consideration(Premium), to pay another person(insured) a sum of money or its equivalent on the happening of a specified event. Just as there are premiums paid to the insurers' coppers by their customers, there are also claims from these customers when the contingency insured against happens. Claim frequency is the number of times a particular customer requests to be given an amount of money in the view that the risk insured against has happened, while Claim Severity is the cost paid as a liability of a claim. The insurance company's cash in-ow is primarily the premiums paid into the company and the cash out-ow is the number and size of claim reported with time. To that elect, premiums can be viewed as assets to the company while claims are a liability to the company. According to the Insurance Information Institute (www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-homeowners-and renters insurance,2018), It reported United States Homeowners losses ranked by claim severity (average claim) to the tune of $104; 086 between 2012 and 2016. To this end, there's the need for proper assessments to be made so that the insurance companies will be solvent and be able to settle claims when they come. There are several models for claim severities and this research work analyzes some data with statistical software to determine the best model to use when modelling claim severities for an insurance company.

Source: KNUST
Analysis of metal content of seized cocaine in Ghana

The trafficking of cocaine has become a global challenge now and Ghana is no exception. Cocaine is a whitish powder, which is, produced both from natural and synthetic means. The aim of the project was to study the metal content of seized cocaine in Ghana and the data used for batch identification. Ten metals namely Pb, Cu, Mg, Mn, Cr, As, Ni, Fe, Co and Ca were analyzed in 37 cocaine samples which were sampled from seizures made from 2010 to 2014 and samples selected based on within-seizure and between-seizure classifications. Seized cocaine samples were obtained from Ghana Standards Authority by the help of Narcotic Control Board of Ghana. All seized illicit cocaine samples used were classified under natural cocaine. Analyses of the metals were done using ICP-MS and data analysis done using ANOVA at 95% confidence level. The results showed that, Calcium recorded the highest amount in all the samples with a mean ppm value of 64.94±54.60 with Magnesium, Zinc and Iron recording moderate amounts. All the samples analyzed contained Calcium since lime is known to be used as one of the additives in the production of cocaine. All the cocaine samples, which were sampled, based on within-seizure classification under class A showed no significant differences between each pair. With three sample pairs under class B in the within-seizure classification, one of the pairs, 103A and 105B showed no significant differences between them even though they were sampled from two different packages from the same seizure. Five samples from five different seizures also showed significant difference among them showing that they came from different batches or origin. It could be confirmed that seized cocaine contained some poisonous heavy metals like Lead, Arsenic and Chromium, which had amount that could affect the user. Based on the data gathered from the within-seizure class A group, it could be proposed that a missing cocaine could be identified by its metal content if no adulterants were added during the time it could not be found. With the information on the metal content of cocaine, the identity of seized cocaine can be achieved with the purity during forensic screening in order to protect the cocaine during investigations.

Source: KNUST
Analysis of phishing attacks on gn bank’s network using gophish

The internet has brought efficiency to the banking sector; nevertheless, it has in addition increased information security concerns with customers and banks being the victims, thus creating security threats. In Ghana, online attacks on banking institutions are on the ascendancy. The situation becomes even more complicated when there are not many measures in place to mitigate the threat. This research therefore set out to find means of improving information security in order to mitigate phishing attacks in GN bank Ghana relying on sound literature by adopting a qualitative research method. Personnel from the IT and Operations Departments of GN Bank, Head Office constituted the study sample. Qualitative data was gathered through interviews and a Gophish simulation application was also adopted in the study. The study also employed Nessus a vulnerability and penetration tool to scan GN Bank’s network. Findings indicated that online attacks are indeed present in the financial services landscape and to a greater extent impacts the financial institutions core systems as well as their customers. A multi-layer approach was identified as a key means of mitigating online attacks and thereby improving information security. Fructification of Host was also identified as an approach and module to secure host machines on the network. Recommendations are provided in light of these findings. The study recommended that regulatory pressures should increase and backed by compliance from the finance industry. The information security programs of financial institutions should by and large, be of high standards. Regulatory frameworks like, rights of access, policies on security as well as standards of operation are ideal for which governments should introduce and subsequently on the national level for the financial industry. Moreover, financial institutions must ensure regulatory compliance in order to guard against attacks targeted at, and which could impact on customers’ loyalty and reputation, in addition to exacting serious financial losses to the nation.

Source: KNUST