Irene Govender

By Stephen Akandwanaho and Irene Govender

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of automobiles in cities around the world. This is due to more people living and working in cities as a result of urbanization. Street parking remains a common option for motorists, due to it being cheap and convenient. However, this option leads to a high concentration of vehicles causing congestion and obstruction of traffic. This problem is compounded as motorists wait for others to pull out of parking bays or look for empty parking spaces. In order to provide relief to this problem, an intelligent approach is proposed that generates an optimal parking space based on the vehicle location and desired destination. The proposed approach applies its operators adaptively and it derives optimality from the synergy between genetic algorithm and a local search technique in the search optimization process. The proposed method exhibits superior performance when compared with the existing methods over multiple iterations.

Part of the book: Smart Urban Development

By Irene Govender

Computational thinking (CT) is an approach to problem-solving that has its roots in computer science. However, its inherent value in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines cannot be over-emphasized, considering that we are in the fourth industrial revolution. The chapter draws attention to its close affinity to problem-solving and programming, and the impact of computational thinking on the labour market, and in turn the digital economy is highlighted. A global overview of recent research findings and initiatives to implement CT education in school curricula are discussed. Because of the importance of STEM education, and the inherent value of CT, it is necessary to explore the status and inclinations of CT in STEM disciplines. Hence, a snapshot of research over the last two years was used in a systematic review to determine the trends and challenges for integrating CT in the curriculum of STEM related fields. Using the ERIC database of journals, and specific criteria for selection of publications, 31 articles were examined in this study. Overall, it was found several tools and instructional strategies are used to develop CT, but more needs to be done to increase teachers’ knowledge and enactment for CT in the STEM fields.

Part of the book: Advances in Research in STEM Education