Powerful-synergies: Gender Equality, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability

This is a collection of evidence-based papers by scholars and practitioners that explore the interconnections between gender equality and sustainable development across a range of sectors and global development issues such as energy, health, education, food security, climate change, human rights, consumption and production patterns, and urbanization. The publication provides evidence from various sectors and regions on how women's equal access and control over resources not only improves the lives of individuals, families and nations, but also helps ensure the sustainability of the environment

Technology and the environment: an evolutionary approach to sustainable technological change

(WP 02/04 Clave pdf) The results of our model show that it would be advisable to undertake policies expressly aimed at the process of sustainable technological change in a way that is complementary to the conventional equilibrium oriented environmental policies. In short, the main objectives of this paper are to understand more fully the dynamics of the process of technological change, its role in sustainable development, and to assess the implications of this dynamic approach to techno-environmental policy. To achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model, using distributed artificial intelligence concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation.Agent-based models, Evolutionary models, Lock-in , Standardization, Technology difussion, Sustainability

Neuronal oscillations, information dynamics, and behaviour: an evolutionary robotics study

Oscillatory neural activity is closely related to cognition and behaviour, with synchronisation mechanisms playing a key role in the integration and functional organization of different cortical areas. Nevertheless, its informational content and relationship with behaviour - and hence cognition - are still to be fully understood. This thesis is concerned with better understanding the role of neuronal oscillations and information dynamics towards the generation of embodied cognitive behaviours and with investigating the efficacy of such systems as practical robot controllers. To this end, we develop a novel model based on the Kuramoto model of coupled phase oscillators and perform three minimally cognitive evolutionary robotics experiments. The analyses focus both on a behavioural level description, investigating the robot’s trajectories, and on a mechanism level description, exploring the variables’ dynamics and the information transfer properties within and between the agent’s body and the environment. The first experiment demonstrates that in an active categorical perception task under normal and inverted vision, networks with a definite, but not too strong, propensity for synchronisation are more able to reconfigure, to organise themselves functionally, and to adapt to different behavioural conditions. The second experiment relates assembly constitution and phase reorganisation dynamics to performance in supervised and unsupervised learning tasks. We demonstrate that assembly dynamics facilitate the evolutionary process, can account for varying degrees of stimuli modulation of the sensorimotor interactions, and can contribute to solving different tasks leaving aside other plasticity mechanisms. The third experiment explores an associative learning task considering a more realistic connectivity pattern between neurons. We demonstrate that networks with travelling waves as a default solution perform poorly compared to networks that are normally synchronised in the absence of stimuli. Overall, this thesis shows that neural synchronisation dynamics, when suitably flexible and reconfigurable, produce an asymmetric flow of information and can generate minimally cognitive embodied behaviours

Development of a Middleware between SUMO simulation tool and JaCaMo framework

Smart City has an infrastructure that works with technology to reduce daily problems. The lack of parking spots is one of these problems that can be controlled by creating Smart Parking systems. The MAPS (Multi-Agent Parking System) project studies and develops multi-agent systems for smart parking using JaCaMo framework to implement agents and artifacts. This paper presents the so-called MAPS-SUMO, a middleware between the MAPS project and SUMO, a simulation tool used for urban traffic. Our middleware allows a graphical representation for the simulation executed by MAPS agents

IE WP 02/04 Technology and the environment: an evolutionary approach to sustainable technological change

Can the individual actions of agents spontaneously move the system out of a state where it is locked into an environmentally inferior technology, or is coordination from outside the system necessary in the form of public intervention? More importantly, even if the system were able to make the transition unaided, could market coordination mechanisms play an important role? The results of our model show that it would be advisable to undertake policies expressly aimed at the process of sustainable technological change –applying an ex ante (precautionary) approach– in a way that is complementary to the conventional equilibrium oriented environmental policies. The nature of these policies and how they might be implemented are questions we will address from this novel approach to the concept of sustainable development. In short, the main objectives of this paper are to understand more fully the dynamics of the process of technological change, its role in sustainable development, and to assess the implications of this dynamic approach to techno-environmental policy. To achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model (ABM), using distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation.Technology diffusion; standardization; lock-in; sustainability; precautionary approach; evolutionary models; agent-based models

Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey: 2012 Findings and Recommendations

2012 was the warmest year on record in the Lower 48 states and the second most extreme weather year in U.S. history. This is not a coincidence. Extreme weather -- stronger, more damaging storms, unprecedented drought and heat in some regions and unprecedented rainfall and flooding in others -- are the predictable consequences of rising global temperatures.Eleven extreme weather events each caused at least a billion dollars in losses last year in the United States. A single event, Hurricane Sandy, caused more than $50 billion in economic losses. Insurance companies are on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in claims as a result of Sandy and other severe weather events. And American taxpayers are on the hook for tens of billions of dollars themselves, thanks to losses sustained by the National Flood Insurance Program as well as disaster relief spendingThis raises a fundamental question: Is the insurance industry prepared? Have insurers analyzed and measured their climate-related risk? Are they planning for life in a warmer world? These should be essential questions for insurance regulators in all 50 states to be asking, and some are

Dynamical Systems on Networks: A Tutorial

We give a tutorial for the study of dynamical systems on networks. We focus especially on "simple" situations that are tractable analytically, because they can be very insightful and provide useful springboards for the study of more complicated scenarios. We briefly motivate why examining dynamical systems on networks is interesting and important, and we then give several fascinating examples and discuss some theoretical results. We also briefly discuss dynamical systems on dynamical (i.e., time-dependent) networks, overview software implementations, and give an outlook on the field.Comment: 39 pages, 1 figure, submitted, more examples and discussion than original version, some reorganization and also more pointers to interesting direction

CURRENT ISSUES AFFECTING TRADE AND TRADE POLICY: AN ANNOTATED LITERATURE REVIEW

This review provides a base of literature describing current issues and research on the impacts of lobalization and the industrialization of agriculture and recent approaches to analyze and model agricultural trade and trade policies. Three key factors of the survey are differentiated goods, global economic integration and international supply chain linkages. The review covers 182 publications, which are presented alphabetically by author with a brief annotation describing how it relates to the above criteria. The articles are also indexed by keyword. A brief summary highlights the documented literature and includes a series of issues for future discussion and research.International Relations/Trade,

Community Based Targeting for Social Safety Nets

This paper interprets case studies and theory on community involvement in beneficiary selection and benefit delivery for social safety nets. Several considerations should be carefully balanced in assessing the advantages of using community groups as targeting agents. First, benefits from utilizing local information and social capital may be eroded by costly rent-seeking. Second, the potential improvement in targeting criteria from incorporating local notions of deprivation must be tempered by the possibility of program capture by local elites, and by the possibility that local preferences are not pro-poor. Third, performance may be undermined by unforeseen strategic targeting by local communities in response to national funding and evaluation criteria, or by declines in political support.

Quasi-Expressivism about Statements of Law: A Hartian Theory

Speech and thought about what the law is commonly function in practical ways, to guide or assess behavior. These functions have often been seen as problematic for legal positivism in the tradition of H.L.A. Hart. One recent response is to advance an expressivist analysis of legal statements (Toh), which faces its own, familiar problems. This paper advances a rival, positivist-friendly account of legal statements which we call “quasi-expressivist”, explicitly modeled after Finlay’s metaethical theory of moral statements. This consists in a descriptivist, “rule-relational” semantics combined with a pragmatic account of the expressive and practical functions of legal discourse. We argue that this approach is at least as well-equipped as expressivism to explain the motivational and prescriptive features of “internal” legal statements, as well as a fundamental kind of legal disagreement, while being better positioned to account for various “external” uses of the same language. We develop this theory in a Hartian framework, and in the final part of the paper argue (particularly against Toh’s expressivist interpretation) that Hart’s own views in The Concept of Law are best reconstructed along such quasi-expressivist lines