How Are We to Govern Ourselves?: The Engagement of Citizens in the Local Government Policy Process

This paper examines the effectiveness of citizen engagement as a complementary process to the representative nature of local democracy based on case studies of two policy issues that used different methods of citizen participation in Kincardine, Ontario. Interviews with the mayor and seven of eight councillors in the municipality were conducted. The findings reveal that the traditional method of top-down consultation processes is inferior to deliberative approaches and interactive forms of engagement can achieve more satisfactory outcomes

Analysing and predicting falsework failure in Hong Kong

Falsework is a temporary structure supporting the permanent structure while it is not self-supporting. Falsework is commonly required in concrete construction which involves a number of parties such as the design engineer, contractor, subcontractor, supplier and checking engineer. In the past, many failures occurred due to procedural inadequacy such as confusion in responsibility delineation and communication. In Hong Kong, during the last six years, at least eight major falsework collapses have been reported. Researchers studying falsework failures have devised models for analysis and prediction. However, procedural inadequacy has not been adequately considered and assessed in these models. Further, these models were mainly used to predict the likelihood of eventual failure at loading stage without evaluating the safety condition at various stages of falsework construction. The overall aim of this thesis was to develop a procedural framework that can be used to assess the proneness to failure at different stages of constructing falsework in Hong Kong, thus, warning can be given promptly. [Continues.

Second CLIPS Conference Proceedings, volume 1

Topics covered at the 2nd CLIPS Conference held at the Johnson Space Center, September 23-25, 1991 are given. Topics include rule groupings, fault detection using expert systems, decision making using expert systems, knowledge representation, computer aided design and debugging expert systems

Law and Moral Dilemmas

A runaway trolley rushes toward five people standing on the tracks, and it will surely kill them all. Fortunately, you can reach a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track – but then you notice that one other person is standing there. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley to that side track, where it will kill one person instead of five? Is it not only morally permissible, but even morally required? This classic thought experiment is a mainstay in the repertoire of law school hypotheticals, often raised alongside cases about cannibalism at sea, tossing people from overcrowded lifeboats, or destroying buildings to save a city from fire