How Public Policy Can Support Collective Impact

The problems we face are not simple, predictable, or linear. They do not fit neatly into electoral cycles or grant timelines. They are complex and involve many fluctuating actors, conditions, and norms. Yet many people in the social and public sectors feel constrained by a traditional approach to solve these problems through a single strong program, a single funding stream, or a single organization. They often understand the implications of complexity but feel bound by rules that oversimplify the range of possible responses.In a time of scarce resources and intractable problems, however, no one in the social sector, including policymakers, can afford to believe in singular solutions. Instead, we must all embrace the notion that addressing complex problems requires a collective impact approach that involves many actors from different sectors committing to a common agenda to solve a specific problem at scale. Many communities have adopted this approach, outlined in Table 1, and achieved success in tackling such complex challenges. If implemented more fully, the collective impact approach could increase the effective use of public resource

A Framework for Collaborative Multi-task, Multi-robot Missions

Robotics is a transformative technology that will empower our civilization for a new scale of human endeavors. Massive scale is only possible through the collaboration of individual or groups of robots. Collaboration allows specialization, meaning a multirobot system may accommodate heterogeneous platforms including human partners. This work develops a unified control architecture for collaborative missions comprised of multiple, multi-robot tasks. Using kinematic equations and Jacobian matrices, the system states are transformed into alternative control spaces which are more useful for the designer or more convenient for the operator. The architecture allows multiple tasks to be combined, composing tightly coordinated missions. Using this approach, the designer is able to compensate for non-ideal behavior in the appropriate space using whatever control scheme they choose. This work presents a general design methodology, including analysis techniques for relevant control metrics like stability, responsiveness, and disturbance rejection, which were missing in prior work. Multiple tasks may be combined into a collaborative mission. The unified motion control architecture merges the control space components for each task into a concise federated system to facilitate analysis and implementation. The task coordination function defines task commands as functions of mission commands and state values to create explicit closed-loop collaboration. This work presents analysis techniques to understand the effects of cross-coupling tasks. This work analyzes system stability for the particular control architecture and identifies an explicit condition to ensure stable switching when reallocating robots. We are unaware of any other automated control architectures that address large-scale collaborative systems composed of task-oriented multi-robot coalitions where relative spatial control is critical to mission performance. This architecture and methodology have been validated in experiments and in simulations, repeating earlier work and exploring new scenarios and. It can perform large-scale, complex missions via a rigorous design methodology

Institutional theories and public institutions: Traditions and appropriateness

Public institutions are organized configurations which are prone to institutionalization processes. They reflect as well as produce and diffuse valuues, norms, cognitions, meanings and identities about life and evolution of society, polity or economy. The text covers a set of theories which share a strong Verstehen perspective: historical institutionalism, sociological institutionalism, new institutionalism, and local order institutionalism. It presents their main hypotheses, their analytical methods, and most relevant findings. The empirical facets of such theories question the relevance or normative theories wich prescribe so-called rational or scientific solutions deducted from very abstracts axiomsinstitutionalism; path dependence; new institutionalism; change; norms

Increasing societal discomfort about a dominant restrictive planning discourse on open space in Flanders/Belgium

The specific spatial context in the densely urbanised northern part of Belgium, Flanders, offers a sort of laboratory conditions to study, design and plan fragments of open space in an urbanising context. A chronological analysis of documents in three periods relevant to Flemish spatial planning policy allows to conclude that one single planning discourse has reigned spatial planning in Flanders already since the design of the first zoning plans 45 years ago. This planning discourse considers city and countryside as two separate and separated entities. Today however, the validity of this dominant discourse is increasingly under pressure. An obvious societal need appears to be growing to turn around the perception of a possible contradiction between city and countryside. In a densely urbanised spatial context, alternative planning discourses should be based on the idea of open spaces that offer complementary services within a partnership between city and countryside