What Do We Know about Gender and Other Social Impacts of IWS Projects?: A Literature Review

The approach of this short literature review is to look firstly at what the literature has to say about wider social impacts of "investing in watershed services" (IWS) projects or programs and, secondly, to examine more specifically the gender issues. The term IWS is used in this paper as a convenient shorthand while realizing that this is a controversial term and that there is a case for using other terms such as "payments for watershed services", "reciprocal arrangements in watershed service provision" or "compensation for provision of watershed services." In the interest of brevity, this discussion is not entered into except to say that the term IWS is used here in a broad and inclusive way similar to "IWS-like schemes" as used in the Bellagio Conversations (Asquith & Wunder 2008)

Project RISE: Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions

Industrial smoke emissions pose a significant concern to human health. Prior works have shown that using Computer Vision (CV) techniques to identify smoke as visual evidence can influence the attitude of regulators and empower citizens to pursue environmental justice. However, existing datasets are not of sufficient quality nor quantity to train the robust CV models needed to support air quality advocacy. We introduce RISE, the first large-scale video dataset for Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions. We adopted a citizen science approach to collaborate with local community members to annotate whether a video clip has smoke emissions. Our dataset contains 12,567 clips from 19 distinct views from cameras that monitored three industrial facilities. These daytime clips span 30 days over two years, including all four seasons. We ran experiments using deep neural networks to establish a strong performance baseline and reveal smoke recognition challenges. Our survey study discussed community feedback, and our data analysis displayed opportunities for integrating citizen scientists and crowd workers into the application of Artificial Intelligence for social good.Comment: Technical repor

Liberty versus safety: a design review

It is our contention that when designing against terrorism, it is important to fully understand both terrorist perpetrator techniques and terrorism prevention principles and to establish the myths and realities about ‘fear of terrorism’, before catalyzing new design innovations. This paper assesses the requirement for designers to mediate issues of user liberty versus security. We assess the troublesome design tradeoffs between accommodation of users and exclusion of terrorist misuse and abuse linked to bicycle parking, using the Conjunction of Terrorism Opportunity framework. We include the case study of the Biceberg automated bike parking system in relation to the fitness for purpose versus resistance to terrorism debate

Controlling industrial pollution : a new paradigm

The authors call for a revised model for the regulation of industrial pollution. They think the traditional emphasis on appropriate instruments, while ultimately correct, is premature, because agencies in most developing countries have insufficient information and burdensome transaction costs to implement any instruments comprehensively. Once regulators have better information, more integrated information systems, more capacity for setting priorities, and a stronger public mandate, it will not be difficult for them to manage pollution more cost-effectively. Overhasty production of market-based instruments will not work and will probably discredit those regulatory tools. Rather, the new model of regulation should relegate regulators to their proper place in the scheme of things. The state should play a role in regulating pollution externalities, but should also recognize the role of the community and the market. In the authors'view, appropriate regulation in developing countries should incorporate five key features, namely, it should foster a climate of information intensity, encourage community environmental education, allow variations in regulations in different communities, initiate pilot projects and build larger programs later, and fashion adaptive regulatory instruments that both counter environmental degradation and minimize disruption for investors.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Public Health Promotion,Decentralization,ICT Policy and Strategies,Urban Services to the Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Keeping California cool: Recent cool community developments

In 2006, California introduced the Global Warming Solutions Act (Assembly Bill 32), which requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. "Cool community" strategies, including cool roofs, cool pavements, cool walls and urban vegetation, have been identified as voluntary measures with potential to reduce statewide emissions. In addition, cool community strategies provide co-benefits for residents of California, such as reduced utility bills, improved air quality and enhanced urban livability. To achieve these savings, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has worked with state and local officials, non-profit organizations, school districts, utilities, and manufacturers for 4 years to advance the science and implementation of cool community strategies. This paper summarizes the accomplishments of this program, as well as recent developments in cool community policy in California and other national and international efforts. We also outline lessons learned from these efforts to characterize successful programs and policies to be replicated in the future

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level