Safer clinical systems : interim report, August 2010

Safer Clinical Systems is the Health Foundation’s new five year programme of work to test and demonstrate ways to improve healthcare systems and processes, to develop safer systems that improve patient safety. It builds on learning from the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI) and models of system improvement from both healthcare and other industries. Learning from the SPI highlighted the need to take a clinical systems approach to improving safety. SPI highlighted that many hospitals struggle to implement improvement in clinical areas due to inherent problems with support mechanisms. Clinical processes and systems, rather than individuals, are often the contributors to breakdown in patient safety. The Safer Clinical Systems programme aimed to measure the reliability of clinical processes, identify defects within those processes, and identify the systems that result in those defects. Methods to improve system reliability were then to be tested and re-developed in order to reduce the risk of harm being caused to patients. Such system-level awareness should lead to improvements in other patient care pathways. The relationship between system reliability and actual harm is challenging to identify and measure. Specific, well-defined, small-scale processes have been used in other programmes, and system reliability has been shown to have a direct causal relationship with harm (e.g. care bundle compliance in an intensive care unit can reduce the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia). However, it has become evident that harm can be caused by a variety of factors over time; when working in broader, more complex and dynamic systems, change in outcome can be difficult to attribute to specific improvements and difficulties are also associated with relating evidence to resulting harm. The overall aim of Phase 1 of the Safer Clinical Systems programme was to demonstrate proof-of-concept that using a systems-based approach could contribute to improved patient safety. In Phase 1, experienced NHS teams from four locations worked together with expert advisers to co-design the Safer Clinical Systems programme

Hotels as Critical Hubs for Destination Disaster Resilience: An Analysis of Hotel Corporations’ CSR Activities Supporting Disaster Relief and Resilience

Disaster management has begun to examine the unique role of the private sector in disaster relief. The hotel and lodging industry is an especially critical infrastructure for community disaster relief and resilience, providing many lifeline services in addition to core skills and competencies contributing to the community’s social and human capital. Social and human capital empower the community to better cope with disturbance, and companies’ efforts to build social and human capital are often tied to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) management systems. A framework was developed to evaluate the management system maturity of the hotel and lodging industry’s CSR management for disaster relief and resilience. An analysis of three hotel and lodging corporations was performed to understand the current state of the industry. While many hotel properties are engaging in CSR activities during disaster relief, the analysis revealed that corporate management systems have room for maturation and growth to support the resilience of their community

The Role of Sustainability Practices in Improving Corporate and Sustainability Innovation Performance of the Petroleum Companies of Pakistan

The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyze the vital role of sustainability practices encompassing eco efficiency linked, employee or ethics centered and integrative procedures for enlightening corporate performance and guaranteeing greater sustainable innovation performance. This is achieved by upholding and maintaining EEA trait resilience that comprises engineering, ecological and adaptive facets of resilience. On the basis of tentative assumptions derived through a Triple Bottom Line (3BL) of oil and gas companies, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with SMART PLS has been used to perform path analysis for testing these hypotheses. The sample in the envisioned study with cross-sectional study design contains primary or empirical data obtained from the managers of petroleum companies in Lahore, Pakistan. With respect to the current study’s context, it can be established that sustainability or socially responsible practices are the ultimate supporting and ancillary beings of petroleum based organizations needed to gratify ecological, engineering and adaptability (EEA) resilience and assist these companies to achieve long term goals pertaining to corporate value, effectiveness and efficacy with augmented heights of sustainable innovation performance. This study features and emphasizes the true value of sustainability based on the premise of Institutional Theory and resilience or bounciness of oil and gas companies momentous of Systems Theory based texts. The findings reveal that higher sustainable innovation enactment and enhancement in corporate level performance of these petroleum companies can be sustained and endured in continuity by fetching resilience in adaptiveness, ecosystem protection and engineering processes through installing distinguished ethics, employee and integration centered sustainability and actions in operations.&nbsp

Issues Arising on the Interface of MPAs and Fisheries Management

One of 6 background papers presented at The Expert Workshop on Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries Management: Review of Issues and Considerations held in Rome from June 12-14, 2006. The workshop was a response to the FAO Committee on Fisheries' call for technical guidelines for marine protected areas (MPAs) to assist Members to establish representative networks of MPAs by 2012, as agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. This paper focuses on three key themes. First, it highlights the commonalities between discussions of marine protected areas and of fisheries management, with emphasis on their mutual use of spatial measures and ecosystem approaches. Second, the paper draws on the other Background Papers prepared for the Workshop, as well as a range of additional literature, to produce a substantial compilation of issues and considerations relating to the development and implementation of MPAs, within a fisheries management context. The third key theme of the paper is a focus on the 'preliminary steps' of decision-making, in which scoping of needs, gaps and feasibility takes place from the dual perspectives of MPAs and fisheries management. A relative paucity of information and analysis on this topic is noted, along with a consequent need for additional work on the subject. An initial effort is undertaken to explore the key decision-making elements in this 'preliminary stage'

2018 - California Water Plan Update - Public Review Draft

California Water Plan Update 2018 provides recommended actions, funding scenarios, and an investment strategy to bolster efforts by water and resource managers, planners, and decision-makers to overcome California’s most pressing water resource challenges. It builds on progress made in California Water Plan Update 2013; reaffirms State government’s unique role and commitment to sustainable, equitable, long-term water resource management; and introduces implementation tools to inform sound decision-making.https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_usa_3_d/1115/thumbnail.jp

Water resources management in a homogenizing world: Averting the Growth and Underinvestment trajectory

Biotic homogenization, a de facto symptom of a global biodiversity crisis, underscores the urgency of reforming water resources management to focus on the health and viability of ecosystems. Global population and economic growth, coupled with inadequate investment in maintenance of ecological systems, threaten to degrade environmental integrity and ecosystem services that support the global socioeconomic system, indicative of a system governed by the Growth and Underinvestment (G&U) archetype. Water resources management is linked to biotic homogenization and degradation of system integrity through alteration of water systems, ecosystem dynamics, and composition of the biota. Consistent with the G&U archetype, water resources planning primarily treats ecological considerations as exogenous constraints rather than integral, dynamic, and responsive parts of the system. It is essential that the ecological considerations be made objectives of water resources development plans to facilitate the analysis of feedbacks and potential trade-offs between socioeconomic gains and ecological losses. We call for expediting a shift to ecosystem-based management of water resources, which requires a better understanding of the dynamics and links between water resources management actions, ecological side-effects, and associated long-term ramifications for sustainability. To address existing knowledge gaps, models that include dynamics and estimated thresholds for regime shifts or ecosystem degradation need to be developed. Policy levers for implementation of ecosystem-based water resources management include shifting away from growth-oriented supply management, better demand management, increased public awareness, and institutional reform that promotes adaptive and transdisciplinary management approaches

Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response

The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a "pathways" metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such "adaptation pathways" approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of "adaptation pathways" that draws on 'pathways thinking' in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This re-conceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation

Oceans and the Sustainable Development Goals: Co-Benefits, Climate Change & Social Equity

Achieving ocean sustainability is paramount for coastal communities and marine industries, yet is also inextricably linked to much broader global sustainable development—including increased resilience to climate change and improved social equity—as envisioned by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This report highlights the co-benefits from achieving each SDG 14 target: progress towards each of the other 161 SDG targets when ocean targets are met, given ten-year lag times between ocean targets and other SDG targets. The identification of co-benefits is based on input from more than 30 scientific experts in the Nereus Program. Below we highlight notable co-benefits of achieving each target within SDG 14