Bolstering Global Trade: Governance A Work Program for the WTO presented by the High-Level Board of Experts on the Future of Global Trade Governance

The WTO provides the foundation of the rules-based global trading system that has played a critical role in sup- porting growth in global GDP during recent decades. Preserving the salience of the WTO is vital in managing the adjustment pressures from globalization and sustaining the cooperation needed to govern trade relations in a world in which the transformation towards a global digital economy and associated servicification of production creates new policy challenges. Efforts to address these challenges are stymied by disagreements between WTO members regarding the priorities for the multilateral trading system. These disagreements reflect differences in views on the extent to which national policies have adverse international effects and the costs and benefits of ne- gotiating additional trade policy rules. The result has been to impede progress on rule-making for both long- standing core policies of concern to many WTO members (e.g., agriculture) as well as new policy areas. Matters have been compounded by dissatisfaction by some Members regarding the functioning of the WTO dispute set- tlement body and transparency mechanisms. While preferential trade agreements are important complementary vehicles for countries to pursue deeper coop- eration on trade policy matters than has been possible in the WTO, such initiatives depend on the strong foundation of basic rules provided by the WTO. Moreover, they only offer partial solutions – many of the emerging policy areas of concern to business and civil society call for multilateral cooperation. Re-vitalizing such coopera- tion does not require major changes in the organization. What is needed is willingness to engage in candid, substantive discussion of perceived problems and possible solutions. The recent Agreement on Trade Facilitation, with its positive approach to addressing development concerns, and the success of Members in incrementally deepening cooperation on some matters under the purview of some WTO agreements – e.g., addressing specific trade concerns arising from proposed new product regulations – show that WTO Members can innovate and agree to common approaches towards trade policies while recogniz- ing differences in social preferences and national circumstances

A Semantic-Based Information Management System to Support Innovative Product Design

International competition and the rapidly global economy, unified by improved communication and transportation, offer to the consumers an enormous choice of goods and services. The result is that companies now require quality, value, time to market and innovation to be successful in order to win the increasing competition. In the engineering sector this is traduced in need of optimization of the design process and in maximization of re-use of data and knowledge already existing in the company. The “SIMI-Pro” (Semantic Information Management system for Innovative Product design) system addresses specific deficiencies in the conceptual phase of product design when knowledge management, if applied, is often sectorial. Its main contribution is in allowing easy, fast and centralized collection of data from multiple sources and in supporting the retrieval and re-use of a wide range of data that will help stylists and engineers shortening the production cycle. SIMI-Pro will be one of the first prototypes to base its information management and its knowledge sharing system on process ontology and it will demonstrate how the use of centralized network systems, coupled with Semantic Web technologies, can improve inter-working activities and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing

Quantify resilience enhancement of UTS through exploiting connect community and internet of everything emerging technologies

This work aims at investigating and quantifying the Urban Transport System (UTS) resilience enhancement enabled by the adoption of emerging technology such as Internet of Everything (IoE) and the new trend of the Connected Community (CC). A conceptual extension of Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and its formalization have been proposed and used to model UTS complexity. The scope is to identify the system functions and their interdependencies with a particular focus on those that have a relation and impact on people and communities. Network analysis techniques have been applied to the FRAM model to identify and estimate the most critical community-related functions. The notion of Variability Rate (VR) has been defined as the amount of output variability generated by an upstream function that can be tolerated/absorbed by a downstream function, without significantly increasing of its subsequent output variability. A fuzzy based quantification of the VR on expert judgment has been developed when quantitative data are not available. Our approach has been applied to a critical scenario (water bomb/flash flooding) considering two cases: when UTS has CC and IoE implemented or not. The results show a remarkable VR enhancement if CC and IoE are deploye

Industry 4.0 implications in logistics: an overview

During the last decade, the use and evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in industry have become unavoidable. The emergence of the Industry Internet of Things (IIoT) promoted new challenges in logistic domain, which might require technological changes such as: high need for transparency (supply chain visibility); integrity control (right products, at the right time, place, quantity condition and at the right cost) in the supply chains. These evolvements introduce the concept of Logistics 4.0. In this paper, it is presented some reflections regarding the adequate requirements and issues enabling organizations to be efficient, and fully operational in Logistics 4.0 context.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Approach towards an operational tool to apply institutional analysis for the assessment of policy feasibility within SEAMLESS-IF

Environmental Economics and Policy,

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Community Foundations: Learning from a Collective Experience: Process of Systematization

The report of a community foundation strengthening program involving eight Mexican community foundations: Tecate CF, Frontera Norte CF, Matamoros CF, Oaxaca CF, Puebla CF, Fundación Comunidad, Fundación del Empresariado Chihuahuense (FECHAC), and Fundación Internacional de la Comunidad (FIC). The report is also available in Spanish