Marketing trends and future challenges: A review of dairy industry in Saudi Arabia

This paper reviews the challenges facing the Saudi Arabian dairy industry dominated by a few companies engaged in aggressive price war strategies. The key players and the main drivers for milk production and consumption are discussed in detail. The latest developments in the ‘Saudisation’ policy and ‘Nitaqat’ scheme have also affected the quality of the labour force in the industry. The paper concludes that although the future prospects are promising, smaller milk‐producing companies might not survive unless they adopt alternate strategies. The latest push for job replacement with the domestic labour will also create difficulties for dairy firms to produce high quality products at a sustaining labour cost.     

The metamorphosis of the urban fabric in Arab-Muslim City: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has experienced rapid growth inurban development since the 1960s. This urbangrowth is not based on the traditional urbanplanning principles which have been followed inSaudi Arabia for many centuries. Instead,various imported urban forms and planningregulations have been implemented in thecountry. These relate neither to thetraditional built environment and culture norto the local climate of the city. As a result,major cultural and climatic problems haveoccurred. The aim of this paper is to identify andanalyze the types of built environment inRiyadh, as an example of Saudi Arabia's cities,and discuss the cultural conflicts resultingfrom the use of imported planning principlesand regulations. In light of this analysis anddiscussion, the planning regulations will bereviewed and recommendations will be made foramendments.     

中东原油馏分油加氢生产润滑油基础油

分析了中东原油馏分油的基本性质，综述了加氢裂化、加氢处理、加氢脱蜡、加氢精制及组合工艺的工业应用情况，探讨了由中东原油馏分油生产润滑油基础油应注意的问题，提出了适合炼油厂生产润滑油的建议。     

Electricity demand modeling in Saudi Arabia: Do regional differences matter?

The paper examines the electricity demand behavior for Saudi Arabia, using annual data for the period of 1990–2016, at regional level. The study finds that income, price and population are the main drivers of electricity demand at regional level. Although, the impacts vary across regions (central, eastern, southern and western), the estimated elasticities all are statistically significant, in both long and short run, and have the expected signs for all the regions. The income, price and population elasticities range from 0.10 to 0.93, from -0.63 to -0.06, and from 0.24 to 0.95, respectively, across regions in the long run. In the short run these intervals are (0.05, 0.47), (−0.27, −0.01) and (0.13, 1.49) respectively for income, price and population across the regions. The findings reported in this paper, should assist policy makers to develop insights about the potential regional impact of changes to electricity prices, income and population patterns.     

Measurements of thermal properties of insulation materials by using transient plane source technique

The paper reports on the measuring technique and values of the measured thermal properties of some commonly used insulation materials produced by local manufacturers in Saudi Arabia. Among the thermal properties of insulation materials, the thermal conductivity (k) is regarded to be the most important since it affects directly the resistance to transmission of heat (R-value) that the insulation material must offer. Other thermal properties, like the specific heat capacity (c) and density (ρ), are also important only under transient conditions. A well-suited and accurate method for measuring the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of materials is the transient plane source (TPS) technique, which is also called the hot disk (HD). This new technique is used in the present study to measure the thermal conductivity of some insulation materials at room temperature as well as at different elevated temperature levels expected to be reached in practice when these insulations are used in air-conditioned buildings in hot climates. Besides, thermal conductivity values of the same type of insulation material are measured for samples with different densities; generally, higher density insulations are used in building roofs than in walls. The results show that the thermal conductivity increases with increasing temperature and decreases with increasing density over the temperature and density ranges considered in the present investigation.     

Factors affecting construction practices in Makkah Al-Mukkaramah, Saudi Arabia

Each year the Hajj attracts over one million pilgrims to Makkah with all the enormous administrative, social and economic implications this signifies. The authors conclude that there are unique factors affecting construction practice in Makkah and it is apparent that early action is always needed to correct aspects of construction, less costly overruns are an inevitable consequence.     

Value engineering in public construction projects in Saudi Arabia

It was found that value engineering was in limited use since it has been introduced in 1981. The main reason for the lack of adoption being unfamiliarity with the concept among public sector organizations, as well as local architectural/engineering firms in the Kingdom.     

Exporting water from the desert? An analysis of the virtual water content of Saudi Arabian agricultural exports

This study applies input-output analysis to evaluate and trace Saudi Arabia’s virtual water exports arising from exports of agricultural products. Saudi Arabia’s total virtual exports in 2011 were around 2.42 km³, mainly to neighbouring Arab countries. This amount is enough to meet the water demand of the country’s entire population. Agricultural exports seem economically beneficial only because they rely on groundwater; however, since the indirect cost of desalinating equivalent amounts of water for domestic purposes is much higher, a better strategy would have been to direct those water resources towards domestic needs.     

A framework for critical security factors that influence the decision of cloud adoption by Saudi government agencies

Cloud computing technologies can play an essential role in public organisations and companies while it reduces the cost of using information technology services. It allows users to access the service anytime and anywhere, with paying for what they use. In developing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the cloud computing is still not extensively adopted, compared to countries in the west. In order to encourage the adoption of cloud services, it is considerable to understand an important and particular complications regarding to cloud computing is the potential and perceived security risks and benefits posed by implementing such technology.This paper investigates the critical security factors that influence the decision to adopt cloud computing by Saudi government agencies. A framework was proposed for three categories, Social Factors category, Cloud Security Risks Category and Perceived Cloud Security Benefits that includes well-known cloud security features. The framework factors were identified by critically reviewing studies found in the literature together with factors from the industrial standards within the context of Saudi Arabia. An experiment study was conducted in five government agencies in Saudi Arabia by interview and questionnaire with experts in order to improve and confirm the framework. All the factors in the proposed framework were found to be statistically significant. An additional factor identified was Failure of client side encryption. Moreover, they suggested including this factor as a potential risk under Security Risk Factors Category. The initial framework was updated based on the expert reviews and questionnaires. The results were analysed via one-sample t-test with the data integrity analysed via Cronbach’s alpha. The outcome indicated the majority of cloud security adoption framework categories were statistically significant. Potential future study directions and contributions are discussed.