Human settlement patterns in the South are clearly inequitable and dysfunctional, with tenure insecurity remaining a significant issue. Consequently, there has been a dramatic increase in housing demand driven by rising household sizes and accelerated urbanization. Local governments have a clear mandate to ensure socio-economic development and promote democracy, which necessitates ongoing consultations and renegotiations with citizens. This paper critically examines the de-densification of informal settlements as a pivotal strategy to enhance the quality of life for citizens, all while maintaining essential social networks. Governments must take decisive action against pandemics by transforming spaces into liveable settlements that improve livelihoods. A qualitative method was employed, analyzing data drawn from interviews to gain insights into individual views, attitudes, and behaviors regarding the improvement of livelihoods in informal settlements. The study utilized a simple random sampling technique, ensuring that every individual in the population selected had an equal opportunity for inclusion. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty community members in Cornubia, alongside discussions with three officials from eThekwini Municipality and KwaZulu Natal (KZN) Provincial Department of Human Settlements. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis, and the findings hold substantial benefits for the most disadvantaged citizens. Therefore, municipalities have an obligation to transform urban areas by reducing inequality, bolstered by national government policy, to achieve a resilient, safe, and accessible urban future. The evidence presented in this paper underscores that local governments, through municipalities, must prioritize de-densifying informal settlements in response to pandemics or hazards. It is vital to leverage community-driven initiatives and reinforce networks within these communities. The paper calls for the establishment of a socially centered government through the District Development Model (DDM), emphasizing socio-economic transformation as a pathway to enhance community quality of life.

Objectives: This study aims to examine the impact of Sun Tzu’s Art of War Five Virtues Leadership on innovation and the efficiency of the Chinese brand passenger vehicle industry, explore the role of innovation in enhancing industry efficiency, and propose strategies for leveraging the Five Virtues Leadership to improve operational performance and competitiveness in the sector. Methodology: A mixed research method using quantitative research (questionnaire survey) as the main method and qualitative research (in-depth interview) as the auxiliary method. Result: Quantitative and qualitative research results confirm the positive correlation between the Five Virtues Leadership, innovation, and the efficiency of Chinese brand passenger vehicle companies. And through effective data analysis, it explains the importance of the five virtues of leadership in traditional Chinese culture. Further understanding of the effectiveness and competitiveness of China’s passenger car brands, with leadership references. Conclusion: Five Virtues Leadership can foster a favorable environment for innovation, enhance time utilization, optimize resource allocation, and strengthen brand image. By developing and validating a measurement for Five Virtues Leadership, this study enhances the understanding of its role and significance in modern management, paving the way for future research.

This paper aims to contribute with a literature review on the use of AI for cleaner production throughout industries in the consideration of AI’s advantage within the environment, economy, and society. The survey report based on the analysis of research papers from the recent literature from leading database sources such as Scopus, the Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, Springer Link, and Google Scholar identifies the strategic strengths of AI in optimizing the resources, minimizing the carbon footprint and eradicating wastage with the help of machined learning, neural networks and predictive analytics. AI integration presents vast aspects of environmental gains, including such enhancements as a marked reduction concerning the energy and materials consumed along with enhanced ways of handling the resulting waste. On the economic aspect, AI enhances the processes that lead to better efficiency and lower costs in the market on the other hand, on the social aspect, the application of any AI influences how people are utilized as workers/clients in the community. The following are some of the limitations towards AI adoption as proposed by the review of related literature; The best things that come with AI are yet accompanied by some disadvantages; there are implementation costs, data privacy, as well as system integration that may be a major disadvantage. The review envisages that with the continuation of the AI development in the following years, the optic is going to be the accentuation on the enhancement of the process of feeding the data in real-time mode, IoT connections, and the implementation of the proper ethical approaches toward the AI launching for all segments of the society. The conclusions provide precise suggestions to the people working in the industry to adopt the AI advancements appropriately and at the same time, encourage the lawmakers to create favorable legal environments to enable the ethical uses of AI. This review therefore calls for more targeted partnerships between the academia, industry, and government to harness the full potential of AI for sustainable industrial practices worldwide.

To address the escalating online romance scams within telecom fraud, we developed an Adaptive Random Forest Light Gradient Boosting (ARFLGB)-XGBoost early warning system. Our method involves compiling detailed Online Romance Scams (ORS) incident data into a 24-variable dataset, categorized to analyze feature importance with Random Forest and LightGBM models. An innovative adaptive algorithm, the Adaptive Random Forest Light Gradient Boosting, optimizes these features for integration with XGBoost, enhancing early Online romance scams threat detection. Our model showed significant performance improvements over traditional models, with accuracy gains of 3.9%, a 12.5% increase in precision, recall improvement by 5%, an F1 score increase by 5.6%, and a 5.2% increase in Area Under the Curve (AUC). This research highlights the essential role of advanced fraud detection in preserving communication network integrity, contributing to a stable economy and public safety, with implications for policymakers and industry in advancing secure communication infrastructure.

To achieve the electrification of private vehicles, it is urgent to develop public charging infrastructure. However, choosing the most beneficial type of public charging infrastructure for the development of a country or region remains challenging. The municipal decision’s implementation requires considering various perspectives. An important aspect of energy development involves effectively integrating and evaluating public charging infrastructure. While car charging facilities have been thoroughly studied, motorcycle charging facilities have been neglected despite motorcycles being a vital mode of transportation in many countries. The study created a hybrid decision-making model to evaluate electric motorcycle charging infrastructure. Firstly, a framework for evaluating electric motorcycle charging infrastructure was effectively constructed through a literature survey and expert experience. Secondly, decision-makers’ opinions were gathered and integrated using Bayesian BWM to reach a group consensus. Thirdly, the performance of the alternative solutions was evaluated by exploring the gaps between them and the aspiration level through modified VIKOR. An empirical analysis was conducted using examples of regions/countries with very high rates of motorcycle ownership worldwide. Finally, comparative and sensitivity analyses were conducted to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed model. The study’s findings will aid in addressing municipal issues and achieving low-carbon development objectives in the area.

The main goal of this study is to assess the moderating role of digital leadership capabilities (DLC) in improving the overall performance of telecom companies through their organisational knowledge capabilities. The author builds a conceptual model with six hypotheses and tests them with data collected through an electronic questionnaire. The data is analysed using WarpPLS 8.0 software as an application of the structural equation modelling technique. The sample size included 528 participants. The study revealed that individual knowledge capability (IKC) does not significantly affect organisational performance (PR). Also, the results reveal that managerial knowledge capability (MKC) and organisational collaborative capability (OCC) have a positive but weak impact on the performance of telecom companies (PR). However, it was clear that individual knowledge capability (IKC) and organisational collaborative capability (OCC) do not affect organisational performance (PR) through the moderator, digital leadership capabilities (DLC). On the other hand, it was also evident that managerial knowledge capabilities (MKC) significantly negatively affect the performance of telecom companies (PR) through the moderator role of digital leadership capabilities (DLC). The author recommends that telecom companies adopt knowledge-based practices to ensure enduring high performance. He also suggests creating a knowledge management department to foster a culture of creativity and cooperation across departments, which is essential to establishing a work environment that promotes continuous learning and development. Findings may help telecom sector CEOs boost the company’s performance value. The research highlights the importance of fostering appropriate knowledge pillars and building digital leaders to shift telecom companies to a new successful stage. These findings offer tangible benefits that can be directly applied in the telecom industry, making the research highly relevant and valuable.