Making space for proactive adaptation of rapidly changing coasts: a windows of opportunity approach

Coastlines are very often places where the impacts of global change are felt most keenly, and they are also often sites of high values and intense use for industry, human habitation, nature conservation and recreation. In many countries, coastlines are a key contested territory for planning for climate change, and also locations where development and conservation conflicts play out. As a “test bed” for climate change adaptation, coastal regions provide valuable, but highly diverse experiences and lessons. This paper sets out to explore the lessons of coastal planning and development for the implementation of proactive adaptation, and the possibility to move from adaptation visions to actual adaptation governance and planning. Using qualitative analysis of interviews and workshops, we first examine what the barriers are to proactive adaptation at the coast, and how current policy and practice frames are leading to avoidable lock-ins and other maladaptive decisions that are narrowing our adaptation options. Using examples from UK, we then identify adaptation windows that can be opened, reframed or transformed to set the course for proactive adaptation which links high level top-down legislative requirements with local bottom-up actions. We explore how these windows can be harnessed so that space for proactive adaptation increases and maladaptive decisions are reduced

ZETAR: Modeling and Computational Design of Strategic and Adaptive Compliance Policies

Security compliance management plays an important role in mitigating insider threats. Incentive design is a proactive and non-invasive approach to achieving compliance by aligning an employee's incentive with the defender's security objective. Controlling insiders' incentives to elicit proper actions is challenging because they are neither precisely known nor directly controllable. To this end, we develop ZETAR, a zero-trust audit and recommendation framework, to provide a quantitative approach to model incentives of the insiders and design customized and strategic recommendation policies to improve their compliance. We formulate primal and dual convex programs to compute the optimal bespoke recommendation policies. We create a theoretical underpinning for understanding trust and compliance, and it leads to security insights, including fundamental limits of Completely Trustworthy (CT) recommendation, the principle of compliance equivalency, and strategic information disclosure. This work proposes finite-step algorithms to efficiently learn the CT policy set when employees' incentives are unknown. Finally, we present a case study to corroborate the design and illustrate a formal way to achieve compliance for insiders with different risk attitudes. Our results show that the optimal recommendation policy leads to a significant improvement in compliance for risk-averse insiders. Moreover, CT recommendation policies promote insiders' satisfaction

Chicken or Egg: Diversity and Innovation in the Corporate Legal Marketplace

Although their bank accounts might suggest otherwise, these are not the best of times for lawyers who work in the corporate legal marketplace. Instead, the trouble with lawyers in the corporate legal marketplace is that they are failing to answer two calls to action made by corporate clients, both of which are of great magnitude and importance for the future of the profession. The first call to action is one that Professor Deborah L. Rhode focused a lot of her scholarship on: the call to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the profession. The second call to action is the call by corporate clients for lawyers to collaborate and innovate. When it comes to the call to collaborate and innovate, the question is: are the stakes that high, i.e., does it really matter if lawyers in the corporate legal marketplace fail to collaborate and innovate? It is this question that this Essay urges should be taken seriously. This Essay argues that to enhance DE&I, in-house and firm lawyers alike need to be capable and willing to (1) innovate the way in which they practice and work with others, and (2) meaningfully collaborate in multidisciplinary efforts to create novel solutions that truly begin to fill the DE&I gap

Proximity as a Service via Cellular Network-Assisted Mobile Device-to-Device

PhD ThesisThe research progress of communication has brought a lot of novel technologies to meet the multi-dimensional demands such as pervasive connection, low delay and high bandwidth. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a way to no longer treat the User Equipment (UEs) as a terminal, but rather as a part of the network for service provisioning. This thesis decouples UEs into service providers (helpers) and service requesters. By collaboration among proximal devices, with the coordination of cellular networks, some local tasks can be achieved, such as coverage extension, computation o oading, mobile crowdsourcing and mobile crowdsensing. This thesis proposes a generic framework Proximity as a Service (PaaS) for increasing the coverage with demands of service continuity. As one of the use cases, the optimal helper selection algorithm of PaaS for increasing the service coverage with demands of service continuity is called ContAct based Proximity (CAP). Mainly, fruitful contact information (e.g., contact duration, frequency, and interval) is captured, and is used to handle ubiquitous proximal services through the optimal selection of helpers. The nature of PaaS is evaluated under the Helsinki city scenario, with movement model of Points Of Interest (POI) and with critical factors in uencing the service demands (e.g., success ratio, disruption duration and frequency). Simulation results show the advantage of CAP, in both success ratio and continuity of the service (outputs). Based on this perspective, metrics such as service success ratio and continuity as a service evaluation of the PaaS are evaluated using the statistical theory of the Design Of Experiments (DOE). DOE is used as there are many dimensions to the state space (access tolerance, selected helper number, helper access limit, and transmit range) that can in uence the results. A key contribution of this work is that it brings rigorous statistical experiment design methods into the research into mobile computing. Results further reveal the influence of four factors (inputs), e.g., service tolerance, number of helpers allocated, the number of concurrent devices supported by each helper and transmit range. Based on this perspective, metrics such as service success ratio and continuity are evaluated using DOE. The results show that transmit range is the most dominant factor. The number of selected helpers is the second most dominant factor. Since di erent factors have di erent regression levels, a uni ed 4 level full factorial experiment and a cubic multiple regression analysis have been carried out. All the interactions and the corresponding coe cients have been found. This work is the rst one to evaluate LTE-Direct and WiFi-Direct in an opportunistic proximity service. The contribution of the results for industry is to guide how many users need to cooperate to enable mobile computing and for academia. This reveals the facts that: 1, in some cases, the improvement of spectrum e ciency brought by D2D is not important; 2, nodal density and the resources used in D2D air-interfaces are important in the eld of mobile computing. This work built a methodology to study the D2D networks with a di erent perspective (PaaS)

Financial system inquiry: final report

Executive summary This report responds to the objective in the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference to best position Australia’s financial system to meet Australia’s evolving needs and support economic growth. It offers a blueprint for an efficient and resilient financial system over the next 10 to 20 years, characterised by the fair treatment of users.   The Inquiry has made 44 recommendations relating to the Australian financial system. These recommendations reflect the Inquiry’s judgement and are based on evidence received by the Inquiry. The Inquiry’s test has been one of public interest: the interests of individuals, businesses, the economy, taxpayers and Government.   Australia’s financial system has performed well since the Wallis Inquiry and has many strong characteristics. It also has a number of weaknesses: taxation and regulatory settings distort the flow of funding to the real economy; it remains susceptible to financial shocks; superannuation is not delivering retirement incomes efficiently; unfair consumer outcomes remain prevalent; and policy settings do not focus on the benefits of competition and innovation. As a result, the system is prone to calls for more regulation.   To put these issues in context, the Overview first deals with the characteristics of Australia’s economy. It then describes the characteristics of and prerequisites for a well-functioning financial system and the Inquiry’s philosophy of financial regulation.   The Inquiry focuses on seven themes in this report (summarised in Guide to the Financial System Inquiry Final Report).   The Overview deals with the general themes of funding the Australian economy and competition.   The Inquiry has also made recommendations on five specific themes, which comprise the next chapters of this report: Strengthen the economy by making the financial system more resilient. Lift the value of the superannuation system and retirement incomes. Drive economic growth and productivity through settings that promote innovation. Enhance confidence and trust by creating an environment in which financial firms treat customers fairly. Enhance regulator independence and accountability and minimise the need for future regulation. These recommendations seek to improve efficiency, resilience and fair treatment in the Australian financial system, allowing it to achieve its potential in supporting economic growth and enhancing standards of living for current and future generations.   Financial system inquiry committee   Mr David Murray AO (Chair) Mr David Murray AO (Sydney) was most recently the inaugural Chairman of the Australian Government’s Future Fund Board of Guardians between 2006 and 2012. Mr Murray was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia between 1992 and 2005. In this time, Mr. Murray oversaw the transformation of the Commonwealth Bank from a partly privatised bank to an integrated financial services company. In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society in banking and corporate governance, and in 2007 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the finance sector, both domestically and globally, and service to the community.   Professor Kevin Davis Professor Kevin Davis (Melbourne) is currently a Professor of Finance at the University of Melbourne, Research Director at the Australian Centre for Financial Studies and a Professor of Finance at Monash University. Professor Davis is also a part-time member of the Australian Competition Tribunal and Co-Chair of the Australia–New Zealand Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee.   Mr Craig Dunn Mr Craig Dunn (Sydney) was most recently Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of AMP. Mr Dunn led AMP through the global financial crisis and has extensive experience in the financial sector. He was a member of the Australian Government\u27s Financial Sector Advisory Council and the Australian Financial Centre Forum, and an executive member of the Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee. Mr Dunn is a director of the Australian Government’s Financial Literacy Board.   Ms Carolyn Hewson AO Ms Carolyn Hewson AO (Adelaide) served as an investment banker at Schroders Australia for 15 years. Ms Hewson has over 30 years’ experience in the finance sector and currently serves on the boards of BHP Billiton Ltd and Stockland. Ms Hewson was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for her services to the YWCA and to business. Ms Hewson has served on both the boards of Westpac and AMP and retired from the board of BT Investment Management Ltd and as the Chair of the Westpac Foundation upon her appointment to the Financial System Inquiry Committee.   Dr Brian McNamee AO Dr Brian McNamee AO (Melbourne) served as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of CSL Limited from 1990 to 30 June 2013. During that time, CSL transitioned from a Government-owned enterprise to a global company with a market capitalisation of approximately $30 billion. He has extensive experience in the biotech and global healthcare industries. Dr McNamee was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to business and commerce. &nbsp

Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts: An Assessment of a Large-Scale Locally Controlled Water Governance Framework

In 1972 the State of Nebraska created the Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) to consolidate a multitude of single-purpose local natural resource districts into a more comprehensive, holistic, and efficient natural resources governance system. While consolidation and efficiency was important, so was the concept of maintaining local control. Thus, Nebraska rejected the governance framework of a single top-down state agency, preferring to create NRDs that are each governed by a locally elected board. The locally elected governing boards of the NRDs were given broad authorities over many of the state’s natural resources, including groundwater. Such a governance structure was, and to a large extent still is, experimental and unique. Giving the authority to manage and regulate groundwater to locally elected boards was not an insignificant decision. Today 85% of Nebraska’s irrigated acres are irrigated with groundwater. The state has more irrigated acres than any other state in the United States and, by far, the most irrigated acres per capita in the world. Has this experiment been successful? Is this governance system robust? Will Nebraska’s NRDs be able to meet the challenges of the future, including the uncertainties of climate change? This report tries to provide some answers to these questions

A Survey of Deep Learning for Data Caching in Edge Network

The concept of edge caching provision in emerging 5G and beyond mobile networks is a promising method to deal both with the traffic congestion problem in the core network as well as reducing latency to access popular content. In that respect end user demand for popular content can be satisfied by proactively caching it at the network edge, i.e, at close proximity to the users. In addition to model based caching schemes learning-based edge caching optimizations has recently attracted significant attention and the aim hereafter is to capture these recent advances for both model based and data driven techniques in the area of proactive caching. This paper summarizes the utilization of deep learning for data caching in edge network. We first outline the typical research topics in content caching and formulate a taxonomy based on network hierarchical structure. Then, a number of key types of deep learning algorithms are presented, ranging from supervised learning to unsupervised learning as well as reinforcement learning. Furthermore, a comparison of state-of-the-art literature is provided from the aspects of caching topics and deep learning methods. Finally, we discuss research challenges and future directions of applying deep learning for cachin