258,154 research outputs found

    Towards durable multistakeholder-generated solutions: The pilot application of a problem-oriented policy learning protocol to legality verification and community rights in Peru

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    This paper reports and reflects on the pilot application of an 11-step policy learning protocol that was developed by Cashore and Lupberger (2015) based on several years of Cashore’s multi-author collaborations. The protocol was applied for the first time in Peru in 2015 and 2016 by the IUFRO Working Party on Forest Policy Learning Architectures (hereinafter referred to as the project team). The protocol integrates insights from policy learning scholarship (Hall 1993, Sabatier 1999) with Bernstein and Cashore’s (2000, 2012) four pathways of influence framework. The pilot implementation in Peru focused on how global timber legality verification interventions might be harnessed to promote local land rights. Legality verification focuses attention on the checking and auditing of forest management units in order to verify that timber is harvested and traded in compliance with the law. We specifically asked: How can community legal ownership of, and access to, forestland and forest resources be enhanced? The protocol was designed as a dynamic tool, the implementation of which fosters iterative rather than linear processes. It directly integrated two objectives: 1) identifying the causal processes through which global governance initiatives might be harnessed to produce durable results ‘on the ground’; 2) generating insights and strategies in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. This paper reviews and critically evaluates our work in designing and piloting the protocol. We assess what seemed to work well and suggest modifications, including an original diagnostic framework for nurturing durable change. We also assess the implications of the pilot application of the protocol for policy implementation that works to enhance the influence of existing international policy instruments, rather than contributing to fragmentation and incoherence by creating new ones

    Cryptographic protocol for privacy-preserving integration of HAZOPs in modular process plants

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    Information which is contained in Hazard & Operability (HAZOP) studies is highly sensitive since it can reveal the vulnerabilities of a system and potential ways in which to bypass safeguards. Through the design of systems involving collaboration along a value chain, at some point this information is shared between several parties. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the secure exchange of safety information whilst preserving sensitive information for the application of modular Hazard & Operability (HAZOP) studies. We use homomorphic encryption in a workflow for the sharing of information between plant owners and operators as well as module vendors. We apply encryption to the risks from different modular HAZOPs (mHAZOPs), and combine and compare them without disclosing the risk level. Our contribution is a privacy-preserving protocol for mHAZOP comparison during the integration of modular process and equipment. We provide an exemplary implementation of the protocol and demonstrate the protocol’s privacy and correctness

    Online cooperation learning environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

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    This project aims to create an online cooperation learning environment for students who study the same paper. Firstly, the whole class will be divided into several tutorial peer groups. One tutorial group includes five to seven students. The students can discuss with each other in the same study group, which is assigned by the lecturer. This is achieved via an online cooperation learning environment application (OCLE), which consists of a web based J2EE application and a peer to peer (P2P) java application, cooperative learning tool (CLT). It can reduce web server traffic significantly during online tutorial discussion time

    A framework for prototyping telecare applications

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    [[abstract]]Telecare is the term for providing remote care to less able people such as elderly people and babies. A elecare application may be composed of several software and hardware components. The typical deployment structure is a distributed environment for hosting these interconnected components. In this paper, we design a software framework that is suitable for prototyping a telecare application. The framework is a realization of the service oriented architecture (SOA). Therefore an application is implemented as a few services. The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) network is the infrastructure for service collaboration. The flexibility of the XMPP allows dynamic configuration of the services and thus good for the prototyping purpose. At the end of the paper, we demonstrate a telecare application based on our framework. The analysis, design, and implementation are described to show the effectiveness and feasibility of the framework.[[notice]]èŁœæ­ŁćźŒç•ą[[journaltype]]ćœ‹ć€–[[incitationindex]]EI[[ispeerreviewed]]Y[[booktype]]çŽ™æœŹ[[booktype]]é›»ć­ç‰ˆ[[countrycodes]]TW

    OSCAR: A Collaborative Bandwidth Aggregation System

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    The exponential increase in mobile data demand, coupled with growing user expectation to be connected in all places at all times, have introduced novel challenges for researchers to address. Fortunately, the wide spread deployment of various network technologies and the increased adoption of multi-interface enabled devices have enabled researchers to develop solutions for those challenges. Such solutions aim to exploit available interfaces on such devices in both solitary and collaborative forms. These solutions, however, have faced a steep deployment barrier. In this paper, we present OSCAR, a multi-objective, incentive-based, collaborative, and deployable bandwidth aggregation system. We present the OSCAR architecture that does not introduce any intermediate hardware nor require changes to current applications or legacy servers. The OSCAR architecture is designed to automatically estimate the system's context, dynamically schedule various connections and/or packets to different interfaces, be backwards compatible with the current Internet architecture, and provide the user with incentives for collaboration. We also formulate the OSCAR scheduler as a multi-objective, multi-modal scheduler that maximizes system throughput while minimizing energy consumption or financial cost. We evaluate OSCAR via implementation on Linux, as well as via simulation, and compare our results to the current optimal achievable throughput, cost, and energy consumption. Our evaluation shows that, in the throughput maximization mode, we provide up to 150% enhancement in throughput compared to current operating systems, without any changes to legacy servers. Moreover, this performance gain further increases with the availability of connection resume-supporting, or OSCAR-enabled servers, reaching the maximum achievable upper-bound throughput

    Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks

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    Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today. CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices

    Heterogeneous component interactions: Sensors integration into multimedia applications

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    Resource-constrained embedded and mobile devices are becoming increasingly common. Since few years, some mobile and ubiquitous devices such as wireless sensor, able to be aware of their physical environment, appeared. Such devices enable proposing applications which adapt to user's need according the context evolution. It implies the collaboration of sensors and software components which differ on their nature and their communication mechanisms. This paper proposes a unified component model in order to easily design applications based on software components and sensors without taking care of their nature. Then it presents a state of the art of communication problems linked to heterogeneous components and proposes an interaction mechanism which ensures information exchanges between wireless sensors and software components
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