Do the citizens of Europe trust their police?

Purpose - The maintenance of public order and the control of crime are clearly amongst the primary objectives of global law enforcement agencies. An important antecedent to this is the consideration of public trust in their police force. The purpose of this paper is to utilise data from the 5th Round European Social Survey (ESS), to investigate how public social indicators may highlight the level of trust in a country’s police force. Design/methodology/approach – The results from the ESS are analysed using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), multiply conjunctional causal configurations of the considered social indicators are then established and analysed. Findings - A consequence of using fsQCA, asymmetric causal configurations are identified for the relative high and low limiting levels of trust towards the police in the considered countries. The results offer novel insights into the relationship between social indicators and police trust, as well as expositing a nascent technique (fsQCA) that may offer future potential in this area. Originality/value – This paper introduces a novel technique to analyse a major European data set relating to citizens perceptions of the police. The findings might prove useful for policing organisations as they develop strategies to maintain/improve the level of trust and confidence of citizens in the policing services they provide

Using graphical models and multi-attribute utility theory for probabilistic uncertainty handling in large systems, with application to nuclear emergency management

Although many decision-making problems involve uncertainty, uncertainty handling within large decision support systems (DSSs) is challenging. One domain where uncertainty handling is critical is emergency response management, in particular nuclear emergency response, where decision making takes place in an uncertain, dynamically changing environment. Assimilation and analysis of data can help to reduce these uncertainties, but it is critical to do this in an efficient and defensible way. After briefly introducing the structure of a typical DSS for nuclear emergencies, the paper sets up a theoretical structure that enables a formal Bayesian decision analysis to be performed for environments like this within a DSS architecture. In such probabilistic DSSs many input conditional probability distributions are provided by different sets of experts overseeing different aspects of the emergency. These probabilities are then used by the decision maker (DM) to find her optimal decision. We demonstrate in this paper that unless due care is taken in such a composite framework, coherence and rationality may be compromised in a sense made explicit below. The technology we describe here builds a framework around which Bayesian data updating can be performed in a modular way, ensuring both coherence and efficiency, and provides sufficient unambiguous information to enable the DM to discover her expected utility maximizing policy

Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making

A Cost-Effectiveness Study of Animal Disease Eradication Strategies: Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Ireland

The primary focus of this poster paper is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of alternative control strategies for a number of simulated outbreaks of Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD) in four agriculturally diverse Irish regions, examining for the first time, the potential role of emergency vaccination in the country. With the increasing threat of transboundary animal diseases due to globalisation, wider market integration and increased animal movement it is important that such an evaluation of control and eradication strategies be undertaken and contingency plans be put in place. The new EU Directive (2003/85/EC) on FMD control permits the use of emergency vaccination as part of an FMD control strategy. The slaughter of infected animals and "dangerous contacts" (susceptible animals on epidemiologically linked holdings) remains the principal tool for tackling an outbreak, but the potential use of vaccination as an adjunct to the basic culling policy is now being considered. Using an integrated approach, combining an epidemiological model and an economic model, alternative control strategies are compared here during hypothetical outbreaks using a computer-simulation model and their cost-effectiveness assessed. The study provides outputs in terms of a range of epidemiological, economic and resource requirement measures under a wide range of different scenarios for each of the alternative control strategies.Foot-and-Mouth disease, control strategies, transboundary animal diseases, emergency vaccination, computer simulation, cost-effectiveness, Livestock Production/Industries, Q1, Q17, Q58,

Environmental Risk Analysis: Problems and Perspectives in Different Countries

The authors discuss various industrial accidents, which have led to growing concerns about the potential hazards and risks involved in chemical process industries