Economic resilience : including a case study of the global transition network

This paper explores the dynamic properties of organisms and ecosystems that make them so resilient and capable of adapting to changing circumstances, allowing them to maintain an overall condition of coherence, wholeness and health while living in balance within the resources of the planet. Key principles of resilient ecological systems are explored including: self-regulation; positive and negative feedback; diversity; scale and context; cooperation; emergence and novelty; and ecological tipping points. In contrast, market based economic systems can produce unstable growth with unintended destruction of cultural and species diversity and homogenisation of global life-styles. The paper re-examines fundamental economic principles using insights from biological evolution and ecosystem dynamics to establish a foundation for more resilient economies. This involves experimenting with different models in different communities to find patterns of sustainable production and exchange appropriate to local regions. Fundamental steps in this direction include the emergence of self-organising local communities based on creative experimentation, re-localisation of core sectors of the economy (food, energy, health and education), evolution of local currencies and banking practices that support local enterprise and investment in green technologies, stimulation of decentralised renewable energy networks and economic reform aligned with ecological principles. The Transition Network provides a case study of an international community based movement that has been experimenting with putting some of these principles into practice at the local level. The aim of the Transition Network is to support community led responses to peak oil and climate change, building resilience and well-being. The concept of ecological resilience and its application to local economy is hard wired into the values and emerging structure of the network of transition communities across the globe. The movement started in the UK in 2005 and there are now over 1000 Transition initiatives spanning 34 countries across the world. Many attribute the success and phenomenal growth of the Transition Network to its emerging holographic structure that mimics cell growth within living organisms. Growing a more resilient food system in the face of the twin challenges of natural resource scarcity and climate change is central to the Transition movement. A set of principles for a post carbon resilient food economy in the UK are offered. These include an 80% cut in carbon emission in the food sector by 2050, agricultural diversification, prioritization of farming methods that establish and enhance carbon sinks, phasing out of dependence on fossil fuels in food growing, processing and distribution, promoting access to nutritious and affordable food, as well as promoting greater access to land for growing food in urban and peri-urban areas. Practical examples of Transition related projects in the food sector are presented across the following themes: access to land, low carbon production methods, food distribution systems, health and community gardens and orchards, and collaborative ownership models

VIRTUALIZED BASEBAND UNITS CONSOLIDATION IN ADVANCED LTE NETWORKS USING MOBILITY- AND POWER-AWARE ALGORITHMS

Virtualization of baseband units in Advanced Long-Term Evolution networks and a rapid performance growth of general purpose processors naturally raise the interest in resource multiplexing. The concept of resource sharing and management between virtualized instances is not new and extensively used in data centers. We adopt some of the resource management techniques to organize virtualized baseband units on a pool of hosts and investigate the behavior of the system in order to identify features which are particularly relevant to mobile environment. Subsequently, we introduce our own resource management algorithm specifically targeted to address some of the peculiarities identified by experimental results

Adoption of "eco-advantage" by SMEs: emerging opportunities and constraints

Purpose: A recent study has asserted that businesses need to adopt “eco-advantage”. This paper aims to explore the viability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) achieving “eco-advantage” by exploring their understanding of sustainability issues, how they adopt and innovate in terms of sustainability and the benefits and obstacles they face. Design/methodology/approach: The research approach is exploratory, comprised of 15 SME embedded cases based in the UK. The cases are participants in short interventions in sustainable product and process design as a part of a university knowledge transfer project, representing the overall case. Cases are based on interviews with company participants and collaborating academics, supplemented by documentary and observational evidence. Findings: The results build on the work on “eco-advantage” found in a recent study, highlighting marketing, rather than compliance issues as a catalyst for change. The newly aware SME enters a development process which involves cumulative capabilities, gaining a nascent inner confidence, which includes espousing wider sustainable values. Research limitations/implications: The results reveal the scope and challenges for SMEs to adopt more sustainable practices, encompassing innovations and a broad set of capabilities. Further research points to the need to monitor benefits as well as inputs in evaluating sustainability improvements and to consider longitudinal business sustainability issues. Originality/value: The paper informs the emerging debate on sustainability in SMEs, providing a rich source of data to enhance the provision of business support and knowledge transfer activities, where a more holistic and customised approach is required to realise the real environmental and economic benefits accrued from implementing sustainable improvements

Business Models and their Implications for Skills

The dominant political-economic narrative of our time is that, under conditions of global competition with low-wage economies able to undercut even efficient western firms, the only viable and sustainable route to competitiveness is to trade on high value-added goods and services and that these in turn require enhanced skills and knowledge. This kind of analysis finds echo and sustenance in the management literature concerning 'knowledge'. Drawing upon a series of case studies this monograph reveals a more varied and complex pattern of possibilities

Fog-enabled Edge Learning for Cognitive Content-Centric Networking in 5G

By caching content at network edges close to the users, the content-centric networking (CCN) has been considered to enforce efficient content retrieval and distribution in the fifth generation (5G) networks. Due to the volume, velocity, and variety of data generated by various 5G users, an urgent and strategic issue is how to elevate the cognitive ability of the CCN to realize context-awareness, timely response, and traffic offloading for 5G applications. In this article, we envision that the fundamental work of designing a cognitive CCN (C-CCN) for the upcoming 5G is exploiting the fog computing to associatively learn and control the states of edge devices (such as phones, vehicles, and base stations) and in-network resources (computing, networking, and caching). Moreover, we propose a fog-enabled edge learning (FEL) framework for C-CCN in 5G, which can aggregate the idle computing resources of the neighbouring edge devices into virtual fogs to afford the heavy delay-sensitive learning tasks. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to jointly processing sensed environmental data, dealing with the massive content statistics, and enforcing the mobility control at network edges, the FEL makes it possible for mobile users to cognitively share their data over the C-CCN in 5G. To validate the feasibility of proposed framework, we design two FEL-advanced cognitive services for C-CCN in 5G: 1) personalized network acceleration, 2) enhanced mobility management. Simultaneously, we present the simulations to show the FEL's efficiency on serving for the mobile users' delay-sensitive content retrieval and distribution in 5G.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Magzine, under review, Feb. 09, 201

Green chemistry and green engineering in China: drivers, policies and barriers to innovation

With the world’s largest population and consistently rapid rates of economic growth, China faces a choice of whether it will move towards a more sustainable development trajectory. This paper identifies the different factors driving innovation in the fields of green chemistry and green engineering in China, which we find to be largely driven by energy efficiency policy, increasingly strict enforcement of pollution regulations, and national attention to cleaner production concepts, such as “circular economy.” We also identify seven key barriers to the development and implementation of green chemistry and engineering in China. They are (1) competition between economic growth and environmental agendas, (2) regulatory and bureaucratic barriers, (3) availability of research funding, (4) technical barriers, (5)workforce training, (6) industrial engineering capacity, and (7) economic and financial barriers. Our analysis reveals that the most crucial barriers to green chemistry and engineering nnovations in China appear to be those that arise from competing priorities of economic growth and environmental protection as well as the technical challenges that arise from possessing a smaller base of experienced human capital. We find that there is a great deal of potential for both the development of the underlying science, as well as its implementation throughout the chemical enterprise, especially if investment occurs before problems of technological lock-in and sunk costs emerge

A Taxonomy for Management and Optimization of Multiple Resources in Edge Computing

Edge computing is promoted to meet increasing performance needs of data-driven services using computational and storage resources close to the end devices, at the edge of the current network. To achieve higher performance in this new paradigm one has to consider how to combine the efficiency of resource usage at all three layers of architecture: end devices, edge devices, and the cloud. While cloud capacity is elastically extendable, end devices and edge devices are to various degrees resource-constrained. Hence, an efficient resource management is essential to make edge computing a reality. In this work, we first present terminology and architectures to characterize current works within the field of edge computing. Then, we review a wide range of recent articles and categorize relevant aspects in terms of 4 perspectives: resource type, resource management objective, resource location, and resource use. This taxonomy and the ensuing analysis is used to identify some gaps in the existing research. Among several research gaps, we found that research is less prevalent on data, storage, and energy as a resource, and less extensive towards the estimation, discovery and sharing objectives. As for resource types, the most well-studied resources are computation and communication resources. Our analysis shows that resource management at the edge requires a deeper understanding of how methods applied at different levels and geared towards different resource types interact. Specifically, the impact of mobility and collaboration schemes requiring incentives are expected to be different in edge architectures compared to the classic cloud solutions. Finally, we find that fewer works are dedicated to the study of non-functional properties or to quantifying the footprint of resource management techniques, including edge-specific means of migrating data and services.Comment: Accepted in the Special Issue Mobile Edge Computing of the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journa

The online multi-agency support barometer

This report presents the findings of a small feasibility study which sought to investigate the use of an online risk management Barometer. The barometer was developed with a view to helping multiple agencies communicate about vulnerable and 'at risk' patients within mental health settings.The Barometer is an online tool which allows staff from multiple agencies to access and share information with other staff if a patient is at risk.The key aims and objectives of this small research project were i) to evaluating how professionals felt about their current risk assessment tools, ii) to assess the ease of use and the relevance of questions within the Barometer tool and iii) to discuss some potential modifications/problem areas of incorporating the Barometer tool within mental health services and across a multi-disciplinary perspective.The research was conducted in three mental services within the South Essex Partnership Trust (2 x CAMHS and 2 x Adult Services) using a mixed-methods approach