Report to the New York City Housing Authority on Applying and Lifting Permanent Exclusions for Criminal Conduct

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is conducting an internal review of its policies related to permanent exclusions for criminal conduct on NYCHA property. Permanent exclusion (PE) occurs when a NYCHA tenant—rather than risk eviction—enters into a stipulation that those associated with the resident who have engaged in non-desirable behavior are barred from entering the apartment. It also occurs as a result of an administrative hearing where NYCHA seeks an eviction, but the hearing officer opts to preserve the tenancy and bars the offending person from the apartment.To inform this policy review, NYCHA partnered with the Vera Institute of Justice and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The review sought to understand how NYCHA could better balance its commitments to the safety of the community, the stability of its tenants' families, and the successful reentry of formerly incarcerated people. The following recommendations reflect an extensive review of existing policies and practices around PE, interviews with NYCHA staff, a meeting with NYCHA residents, and social science research on risk mitigation and future offending

Sustainability management : insights from the viable system model

A review of current literature on sustainability standards reveals a significant gap between their adoption and the implementation of sustainability into every level of the organisation. In this paper, it is argued that in order to overcome this challenge, an appropriate model of an organisation is needed. The Viable System Model (VSM) is proposed as such a model and, in order to illustrate this argument, it is used to interpret the ISO 26000 standard on Social Responsibility (SR). First, the VSM theory is introduced and presented by modelling the hypothetical company Widget Co. Then, the clauses of ISO 26000 are mapped on the Widget Co. model, together with detailed descriptions and examples on the organisational and managerial implications of its adopting the standard's guidelines. The result is the identification of generic SR functions that need to be performed by the various organisational governance systems, as well as their dynamic interrelations, thus clarifying implementation issues. Moreover, by identifying different SR management layers, VSM is suggested as a way forward to develop an integration model for SR issues and respective sustainability tools. Finally, a discussion is given on the implications of using this approach to integrate sustainability standards and the way this research contributes to recent developments in sustainability research

Geographic Information System; Route Tracking System Using Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)

Nowadays the mobile mapping which incorporation with handheld PDA devices for field data collection is rapidly expanding it wings of Geographic Information System (GIS). While the wireless technology is increasing through time, the usage of mobile GIS has become a very useful tool in any organizations and companies. The introduction of mobile technology actually has resulted in the fundamental paradigm which shifts into the integration of a centralized GIS database engine and other web presentation formats with the mobile data collection units. For mobile mapping, the lightweight GIS application ArcPad and small portable computers such as for example; the Compaq PocketPC are a viable option for field GIS. ESRI® ArcPad™ software is a mobile mapping and geographic information system (GIS) technology. Mobile computing is creating fundamental changes in the way we utilize geography with the ability to bring your work with you and interact directly with the world around you. Mobile GIS comprises the integration of four technologies: GIS, lightweight hardware, the global positioning system (GPS), and wireless communication. Here it emphasis the research on the GIS, more on focusing on the GIS in the mobile environment. It presents the idea of applying GIS concept in tracking route where mobile GIS will combine up with GPS as a tracking movement coordinate tool. The Sashimi Model is used as a guidance to monitor the project progress. The methodology is suitable as it stresses on both side which is the requirement side and the implementation side. A simulation of route tracking system would be presented as the findings of the while research. Further more the simulation present the idea of the real-time tracking the route using data output from the GPS receiver

Is the Viable System Model of organization inimical to the concept of human freedom?

This paper examines the sensitivity of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model of organization to the concept of human freedom. The paper notes the many critics who have suggested that the Viable System Model is inimical to human freedom and their especial reference to its application to the social economy of Chile in the early 1970s. Drawing on the work of philosophers, a conceptual analysis of freedom is provided that suggests a complex ordinary language usage of the term. At least three determinants of freedom, that are logically independent of one another, are identified as being of relevance to its ordinary usage. The paper finds that these determinants are implicitly addressed and acknowledged within Beer’s own writings, but that they are ignored by the critics of the Viable System Model and that this makes for a lack of clarity and precision in the debate. The paper also applies a further criterion, formulated in political philosophy, to judge whether the leadership of the government that applied the Viable System Model to the Chilean social economy was itself hostile to political freedom or democracy. This application of the criterion suggests that they were not

Fuzzy Logic Path Planning System for Collision Avoidance by an Autonomous Rover Vehicle

Systems already developed at JSC have shown the benefits of applying fuzzy logic control theory to space related operations. Four major issues are addressed that are associated with developing an autonomous collision avoidance subsystem within a path planning system designed for application in a remote, hostile environment that does not lend itself well to remote manipulation of the vehicle involved through Earth-based telecommunication. A good focus for this is unmanned exploration of the surface of Mars. The uncertainties involved indicate that robust approaches such as fuzzy logic control are particularly appropriate. The four major issues addressed are: (1) avoidance of a single fuzzy moving obstacle; (2) back off from a dead end in a static obstacle environment; (3) fusion of sensor data to detect obstacles; and (4) options for adaptive learning in a path planning system

Towards Realizability Checking of Contracts using Theories

Virtual integration techniques focus on building architectural models of systems that can be analyzed early in the design cycle to try to lower cost, reduce risk, and improve quality of complex embedded systems. Given appropriate architectural descriptions and compositional reasoning rules, these techniques can be used to prove important safety properties about the architecture prior to system construction. Such proofs build from "leaf-level" assume/guarantee component contracts through architectural layers towards top-level safety properties. The proofs are built upon the premise that each leaf-level component contract is realizable; i.e., it is possible to construct a component such that for any input allowed by the contract assumptions, there is some output value that the component can produce that satisfies the contract guarantees. Without engineering support it is all too easy to write leaf-level components that can't be realized. Realizability checking for propositional contracts has been well-studied for many years, both for component synthesis and checking correctness of temporal logic requirements. However, checking realizability for contracts involving infinite theories is still an open problem. In this paper, we describe a new approach for checking realizability of contracts involving theories and demonstrate its usefulness on several examples.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in NASA Formal Methods (NFM) 201

When should precaution prevail? : interests in (public) health, the risk of harm and xenotransplantation.

Xenotransplantation is an example of a developing biotechnology which highlights three differing interests in the health of the public; a specific interest in enhancing the health of individuals who require a particular procedure or treatment, a wider interest in protecting the health of us all by avoiding introducing biotechnologies which risk the health of the public, and a public interest in advancing medical knowledge and treatment. Here we explore how matters of private benefit and public risk can be appropriately reconciled and consider whether ideas of public health should take a more central role when deciding whether clinical xenotransplantation should proceed. The risks of xenotransplantation are not certain but the nature of the harm to individual and public health could be severe. The concept of risk is central to our analysis as xenotransplantation threatens potential future harm as well as possible benefit. We argue that it is sometimes legally and ethically necessary for the state to act in advance to protect the health of the public, and that xenotransplantation is such a case. In reaching this conclusion we adopt a precautionary approach; an approach which we modify by Mill’s harm principle

Structuring institutions to exploit learning technologies: A cybernetic model

The adoption of learning technologies has not fulfilled expectation in any sector of education. Arguably, it is the structure of educational institutions which is the main obstacle. Schools, colleges and universities were designed to allow the delivery of education by the few to the many at a time when the key technology was the printed page, and many of the organizational instruments that facilitated this are still with us today: timetables, classrooms, syllabuses and so on. These permit a particular style of education to take place, but result in a system where the complexity of learning needs is ignored New technologies can provide new organizational devices that recognize this complexity. These require careful design and imply a significant restructuring of institutional organization. This paper addresses how the tools provided by management cybernetics, in particular Stafford Beer's Viable System Model, allow the analysis of structural mechanisms and how they impact on organizational complexity. It describes how these tools can be used to redesign educational organizations, including identifying key points where technologies can be used to create structures that permit a more flexible exploitation of the opportunities offered by learning technologies. The current JTAP project Toolkit for the Management of Learning is offered as an example of a set of software tools that emerge from such a cybernetic analysis