People centred eco-design: consumer adoption of low and zero carbon products and systems

Literature review, research model and findings of exploratory empirical research on consumer adoption and effective use of low and zero carbon technologies ranging from a hybrid car to solar water heating systems

Urban modelling as storytelling: using simulation models as a narrative

This article examines the distinctions between empirical and simulation models using the metaphors of argument and narrative. It argues that all argumentation is contextualized within a narrative that is either inferred or communicated. The paper provides another semantic structure for urban models that applies elements of systems- dynamic method to construct "stories" of the past and possible futures of communities in a watershed in southern Arizona. By constructing such narratives this paper demonstrates how computer-based urban models can "tell a story"

Towards critical event monitoring, detection and prediction for self-adaptive future Internet applications

The Future Internet (FI) will be composed of a multitude of diverse types of services that offer flexible, remote access to software features, content, computing resources, and middleware solutions through different cloud delivery models, such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Ultimately, this means that loosely coupled Internet services will form a comprehensive base for developing value added applications in an agile way. Unlike traditional application development, which uses computing resources and software components under local administrative control, FI applications will thus strongly depend on third-party services. To maintain their quality of service, those applications therefore need to dynamically and autonomously adapt to an unprecedented level of changes that may occur during runtime. In this paper, we present our recent experiences on monitoring, detection, and prediction of critical events for both software services and multimedia applications. Based on these findings we introduce potential directions for future research on self-adaptive FI applications, bringing together those research directions

An analytic framework to assess organizational resilience

Background: Resilience Engineering is a paradigm for safety management that focuses on coping with complexity to achieve success, even considering several conflicting goals. Modern socio-technical systems have to be resilient to comply with the variability of everyday activities, the tight-coupled and underspecified nature of work and the nonlinear interactions among agents. At organizational level, resilience can be described as a combination of four cornerstones: monitoring, responding, learning and anticipating. Methods: Starting from these four categories, this paper aims at defining a semi-quantitative analytic framework to measure organizational resilience in complex socio-technical systems, combining the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results: This paper presents an approach for defining resilience abilities of an organization, creating a structured domain-dependent framework to define a resilience profile at different levels of abstraction, to identify weaknesses and strengths of the system and thus potential actions to increase system’s adaptive capacity. An illustrative example in an anaesthesia department clarifies the outcomes of the approach. Conclusions: The outcome of the RAG, i.e. a weighted set of probing questions, can be used in different domains, as a support tool in a wider Safety-II oriented managerial action to bring safety management into the core business of the organization

Rich environments for active learning: a definition

Rich Environments for Active Learning, or REALs, are comprehensive instructional systems that evolve from and are consistent with constructivist philosophies and theories. To embody a constructivist view of learning, REALs: promote study and investigation within authentic contexts; encourage the growth of student responsibility, initiative, decision making, and intentional learning; cultivate collaboration among students and teachers; utilize dynamic, interdisciplinary, generative learning activities that promote higher-order thinking processes to help students develop rich and complex knowledge structures; and assess student progress in content and learning-to-learn within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and performances. REALs provide learning activities that engage students in a continuous collaborative process of building and reshaping understanding as a natural consequence of their experiences and interactions within learning environments that authentically reflect the world around them. In this way, REALs are a response to educational practices that promote the development of inert knowledge, such as conventional teacher-to-student knowledge-transfer activities. In this article, we describe and organize the shared elements of REALs, including the theoretical foundations and instructional strategies to provide a common ground for discussion. We compare existing assumptions underlying education with new assumptions that promote problem-solving and higher-level thinking. Next, we examine the theoretical foundation that supports these new assumptions. Finally, we describe how REALs promote these new assumptions within a constructivist framework, defining each REAL attribute and providing supporting examples of REAL strategies in action

World Class Supply Chain 2019: Next Generation Ideas

Next Generation Ideas, being the theme for the Fourth Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit, reflected summit’s focus on understanding what is becoming and what will continue to be of increasingly of high priority for current and future supply chain professionals. The summit, which was held on May 8th, 2019 in Milton, Ontario, brought together invited executives, scholars, and students to present and carefully examine a range of emerging ideas that are worthy of the supply chain community’s interest. The diversity of such ideas (e.g., new technologies, geopolitical developments, and the role of supply chain analytics) necessitated a diverse range of perspectives for structuring the summit deliberations. This was done through a summit program comprising three presentations to feature the following perspectives: Perspectives of a vastly experienced industry executive perspective who has amassed an extensive body of material on ecological considerations in supply chains Perspectives of an economist with evidence-based understanding of how decisions by national governments impact firms with both domestic and transnational supply chains Perspectives of a supply chain scholar whose research projects are strongly motivated by how companies have had (and will have) to rethink their distribution networks From the formal presentations and the question and answer component for each presentation, the essence of the insights could be summarized by this notion: While firms must still exemplify traditional supply chain fundamentals (trusted partners, robust IT infrastructure, etc.), they face the additional and an increasingly pressing imperative of needing the agility to be responsive to changes, especially from customers and competitors. Arguably, this is not an original statement because one can make a convincing case that dynamic change has always been a feature of the business landscape. Rather than originality, the statement is meant to underscore that, at this time in the development of the supply chain field, practitioners seem to be experiencing a very distinct level of bewilderment about the array of changes to be contemplated. The summit not only brought that bewilderment to the fore, it also: facilitated discussion of the opportunities resulting from the changes presented real-world examples of innovative and entrepreneurial responses to the changes addressed the interests and concerns of students - the next generation of supply chain professionals This white paper reports on (1) the substantive specifics of those elements of the summit and (2) issues requiring further study in order to be understood more clearly

Mobile Mental Health Crisis Intervention in the Western Health Region of Newfoundland and Labrador

The impetus for this research is Recommendation #15 of the 2003 Luther Inquiry into the deaths of Norman Reid and Darryl Power: “IT IS FURTHER RECOMMENDED that the Regional Health Boards establish mobile health units to respond to mentally ill persons in crisis where no criminal offence is alleged. Each unit would be developed locally and based on local needs.” Our stakeholder partners in the Western Regional Health Authority asked us to identify a range of mobile crisis intervention service models, some of which may be better suited to lower-density, rural populations and some of which may be better suited to higher-density areas like Corner Brook. Our partners expressed a particular interest in models that can be implemented with minimal additional human resources, but that involve local, face-to-face contact rather than telephone, electronic, or clinic-based models of service delivery. The term “crisis intervention” generally refers to any immediate, short-term therapeutic interventions or assistance provided to an individual or group of individuals who are in acute psychological distress or crisis. The term encompasses a number of after-the-fact interventions – such as rape counseling and critical incident stress debriefing – that would not be relevant to the kinds of situations described in the Luther Report. Given the project parameters specified by our partners at Western Health, we formulated a research question and a literature search strategy that would enable us to focus specifically on forms of crisis intervention that are designed to manage potentially dangerous mental health crises on-site rather than to mediate their impacts after the fact. Our research question is as follows: “What models of mobile– i.e., face-to-face – crisis intervention have proven effective in managing potentially violent mental health crises occurring outside the hospital setting?