Purpose: Human Development Index (HDI) reported annually by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is a popular measure of human well-being. The purpose of this study is to propose a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique named Modified Similarity technique for ranking countries based on multi-criteria HDI. Design/methodology/approach: In Human Development Reports (HDRs), the HDI for each country is first calculated from the average of the health, education and income dimension indices with equally allocated weight. Then the countries are ranked based on this index. Regarding the criticisms (that) the method of calculating the HDI has received, this study uses Modified Similarity Multi Criteria Decision Making method for ranking countries based on multi-criteria HDI, as an alternative method to the average method, which is being used in annually reported HDRs. Findings: We used the four HD indices mentioned in the 2010 and 2011 HDRs to rank 187 countries which have been investigated in the 2011 HDR. The results of ranking countries by the Modified Similarity technique were somewhat different from the 2011 HDR ranking. Originality/value: Some of the HDI criticisms are related to the method of calculating this index in the form of computing the average of the three health, education and income dimension indices with equally allocated weights. In an attempt to eliminate some of the-254-Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management-http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.837 weaknesses which are associated with the index, this study uses Similarity technique, as an alternative to the average method of ranking countries in terms of human development. In addition, due to some discrepancies associated with the Similarity technique introduced by Deng (2007), a Modified Similarity technique is discussed.

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Brand orientation and service quality have been recognized as having a positive impact on organizational performance in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors. With the ever-increasing competition in the higher education context, institutions will achieve growth and market share if they follow a branding-based approach in their strategic thinking and planning. So, the importance of brand and brand orientation increases in this sector day by day. Likewise, provision of quality services is one of the most important priorities of educational institutes around the world because of its integral role in developing competitive advantage and in attracting new and retaining existing students. This study aims to propose a framework to investigate the effects of perceived brand orientation and perceived service quality on behavioral and attitudinal consequences of students such as trust, loyalty, satisfaction, and word-of-mouth in Iran's higher education industry. Simple random sampling approach was employed, and data were collected through a questionnaire distributed among students of Kharazmi's Faculty of Management in Tehran and analyzed by structural equation modeling using Smart PLS. The results revealed that perceived brand orientation has a positive impact on trust, loyalty, satisfaction, and word-ofmouth. Particularly, perceived brand orientation has a positive impact on perceived service quality. Besides, the relationship between perceived service quality, trust, satisfaction, and word-of-mouth was confirmed.

Soil moisture represents many attributes of the geo-hydrological cycle and the climate system. Citizen science through social media as an emerging tool could be utilized to collect soil moisture data. A pilot study area was selected in Shahriar, Iran. A user interface and a sampling process (use of citizen science by subscribers) were designed to analyze the subjective and gravimetric soil moisture data. Furthermore, explanatory moisture condition (EMC), a new initiative to consider land use in soil moisture information from vegetation cover, was evaluated. A statistical artificial neural network was used for quantifying subjective data, and soil moisture layouts were produced by utilizing the ordinary kriging (OK) method. For cross-validating, the land surface temperature data from the MODIS satellite were retrieved. A platform for the region with 200 m grids resolution to collect daily soil moisture at eight ungauged stations is proposed to utilize subjective data from the subscribers and cross-validated with satellite data. A virtual station at the centroid of the pervious part of the study area was selected as a reference station for data collection daily or weekly to generate soil moisture time series. The results showed a high potential of utilizing satellite and citizen science data for real-time estimation of scarce soil moisture data in developing regions.

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