Deliberation, Representation, Equity

"What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences.

Deliberation, Representation, Equity: Research Approaches, Tools and Algorithms for Participatory Processes

In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. This book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences

Deliberation, Representation, Equity

"What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences.

A fuzzy hierarchical multiple criteria group decision support system - Decider - and its applications

Decider is a Fuzzy Hierarchical Multiple Criteria Group Decision Support System (FHMC-GDSS) designed for dealing with subjective, in particular linguistic, information and objective information simultaneously to support group decision making particularly on evaluation. In this chapter, the fuzzy aggregation decision model, functions and structure of Decider are introduced. The ideas to resolve decision and evaluation problems we have faced in the development and application of Decider are presented. Two real applications of the Decider system are briefly illustrated. Finally, we discuss our further research in this area. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Environmental regulation as a determinant of trade: an empirical investigation of the "Pollution Haven Hypothesis" in the context of international trade

This paper applies an augmented version of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek model to a broad cross section of countries for the period 2001 to 2011, providing evidence that a country's environmental regulatory regime has an influence on the energy content of trade. These results conform to predictions made under the "Pollution Haven Hypothesis" and the notion of "Carbon Leakage", reiterating the importance of incorporating these issues to some extent in the formulation of future trade and climate policy

State-of-the-Art Report on Systems Analysis Methods for Resolution of Conflicts in Water Resources Management

Water is an important factor in conflicts among stakeholders at the local, regional, and even international level. Water conflicts have taken many forms, but they almost always arise from the fact that the freshwater resources of the world are not partitioned to match the political borders, nor are they evenly distributed in space and time. Two or more countries share the watersheds of 261 major rivers and nearly half of the land area of the wo rld is in international river basins. Water has been used as a military and political goal. Water has been a weapon of war. Water systems have been targets during the war. A role of systems approach has been investigated in this report as an approach for resolution of conflicts over water. A review of systems approach provides some basic knowledge of tools and techniques as they apply to water management and conflict resolution. Report provides a classification and description of water conflicts by addressing issues of scale, integrated water management and the role of stakeholders. Four large-scale examples are selected to illustrate the application of systems approach to water conflicts: (a) hydropower development in Canada; (b) multipurpose use of Danube river in Europe; (c) international water conflict between USA and Canada; and (d) Aral See in Asia. Water conflict resolution process involves various sources of uncertainty. One section of the report provides some examples of systems tools that can be used to address objective and subjective uncertainties with special emphasis on the utility of the fuzzy set theory. Systems analysis is known to be driven by the development of computer technology. Last section of the report provides one view of the future and systems tools that will be used for water resources management. Role of the virtual databases, computer and communication networks is investigated in the context of water conflicts and their resolution.https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/wrrr/1005/thumbnail.jp

Human Dimensions of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries: An Overview of Context, Concepts, Tools and Methods

This document aims to provide a better understanding of the role of the economic, institutional and sociocultural components within the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) process and to examine some potential methods and approaches that may facilitate the adoption of EAF management. It explores both the human context for the ecosystem approach to fisheries and the human dimensions involved in implementing the EAF. For the former, the report provides background material essential to understand prior to embarking on EAF initiatives, including an understanding of key concepts and issues, of the valuation of aquatic ecosystems socially, culturally and economically, and of the many policy, legal, institutional, social and economic considerations relevant to the EAF. With respect to facilitating EAF implementation, the report deals with a series of specific aspects: (1) determining the boundaries, scale and scope of the EAF; (2) assessing the various benefits and costs involved, seen from social, economic, ecological and management perspectives; (3) utilizing appropriate decision-making tools in EAF; (4) creating and/or adopting internal incentives and institutional arrangements to promote, facilitate and fund the adoption of EAF management; and (5) finding suitable external (non-fisheries) approaches for financing EAF implementation

Conflicting Objectives in Decisions

This book deals with quantitative approaches in making decisions when conflicting objectives are present. This problem is central to many applications of decision analysis, policy analysis, operational research, etc. in a wide range of fields, for example, business, economics, engineering, psychology, and planning. The book surveys different approaches to the same problem area and each approach is discussed in considerable detail so that the coverage of the book is both broad and deep. The problem of conflicting objectives is of paramount importance, both in planned and market economies, and this book represents a cross-cultural mixture of approaches from many countries to the same class of problem

Sustainability performance analysis and decision-making for minerals beneficiation : a South African iron and steel scrap case study

It is widely accepted that downstream mineral resource beneficiation has the potential to promote socio-economic growth in resource-rich nations. Many African countries, including South Africa, are thus prioritizing mineral beneficiation in their national policies and development strategies. However, policies with a strict focus on promoting downstream mineral beneficiation may come at the expense of other emerging sectors, as well as overshadow potential economic benefits of cross linkages into lateral sectors. Therefore, when presented with different beneficiation alternatives for a particular commodity, decision makers ideally need to base decisions on a systematic analysis of positive and negative impacts, if the sustainability benefits are to be maximised. Decision support frameworks (DSF) have been recommended for the promotion of sustainable development in the minerals sector, in particular for corporate and public policy development. They provide a structured and systematic approach to decision-making in complex situations, often characterised by multiple decision-makers with potentially conflicting views and objectives. Furthermore, the structured approach allows for transparent decisions to be made which take into consideration both the decision situation and stakeholder perspectives. Research thus far, on DSFs in the minerals sector, has been in the context of mineral processing decision situations which were primarily concerned with technology selection or process design. This dissertation investigates the applicability of decision support frameworks for sustainability performance analysis and comparison of decision alternatives, aimed at strategic planning in the minerals sector. More specifically, this entails the sustainability performance evaluation of decision alternatives as well as exploration of stakeholder perspectives regarding the relative importance of different factors in the decision-making process. The dissertation places particular emphasis on the different steps outlined in DSFs, rather than the final decision outcome, enabling analysis of the value that may be gleaned from the DSF as a whole, and from the individual stages. The application of decision support frameworks is demonstrated for the case of the iron and steel scrap industry in South Africa, with a particular focus on the potential for increased local beneficiation of scrap in steel mills and/or foundries. The export of scrap metal has been identified as a significant concern to some, as it is viewed to come at the expense of local beneficiation, hampering access to affordable and quality scrap for local processors. As such, decision-makers are faced with the question of which option for scrap metal processing has the most potential sustainability benefits. The sustainability performance evaluation was based on available industry data, and assumptions were made when data were unavailable. Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the industry, which included representatives of metal recycling, steel mills, foundries and institutions