A Village?Up View of Sierra Leone's Civil War and Reconstruction

This article, based on the original report, 1 offers a ‘bottom?up’ review of the post?war reconstruction of the Sierra Leone state. The impact of the civil war on human security and governance in the rural areas was devastating, yet rural communities remained intact. The pre?war (traditional) leadership structures continued informally to provide a degree of governance response. Despite the post?war restoration of chieftaincy and its general popularity, elected district councils have been reintroduced. Also, most communities are now using the alternative dispute mechanisms created by donors, who have played a significant role in Security Sector Reform (SSR), democratisation and decentralisation. Although the police are much improved as a consequence, it would be a mistake to say that they are wholly transformed. The various reforms are incomplete and the institutional boundaries of the newly reconstructed multilayered governance system are unclear. Not enough attention has been paid to how governance at the ‘periphery’ is to be conducted

A Village-Up View of Sierra Leone’s Civil War and Reconstruction: Multilayered and Networked Governance

Sierra Leone not only has a direct relationship with its citizens as individuals but also a mediated one through the rural governance systems that pre-dated colonialism and often have greater legitimacy than the central state itself. The impact of the civil war in the rural areas was devastating. Nonetheless the pre-war (traditional) leadership structures continued informally to provide whatever degree of governance response was possible. In the 38 communities visited throughout rural Sierra Leone, a third of the chiefs remained with their people (even if in hiding) throughout even the most difficult part of the civil war and most of the rest fled only briefly. During the war chiefs made a major change to include youth and women in their governance practices and this more participatory approach to governance has persisted. Although a large number of chiefs died during the war period, their positions were easily refilled afterward. During the war most communities in the South and East created local Civilommunity Defensce Forces (CDF) to defend themselves. Chiefs retained at least some degree of direction over 71% per cent of the CDF forces in the areas visited, with the consequence that only a third of these CDFs gave trouble to their communities. The role of international donors increased significantly as a result of the war as well. Nonetheless, their initiatives have strengthened, not threatened the legitimacy of the state because the army, police and health services have improved and as local citizens do not know how to access the donors directly they tend to credit their activities to various government actors. The various reforms that have come in the wake of the civil war are incomplete and the institutional boundaries of the newly reconstructed multi-layered governance system are unclear. Not enough attention has been paid to governance at the ‘periphery’.The report was produced under the auspices of the RCUK Global Uncertainties Programme on Security in an Africa of Networked, Multi-Level Governance

Willingness to fight for Ukraine: Lessons for the Baltic states

Although not necessarily new, indirect and asymmetric methods of warfare have become more common in the last 30 years. This is the result of the development of new technologies and the rise of what the West calls “hybrid warfare,” with the fabrics of the nation being increasingly targeted by hostile actors to achieve the ultimate objectives of warfare in the political realm. Since the threat is multilayered and targets the nation’s very existence, war and defense should go beyond the armed forces and involve the whole of society. Therefore, the whole of society is a legitimate target and should take part in defense and war efforts. Since contemporary warfare targets a nation in its totality, defense must go beyond the traditional military realm. It must include the people, information system, culture, politics, economics, and infrastructure to increase the nation’s resilience. One fundamental factor determining a country’s resilience is the relationship between the social and the political realms. Data from the World Values Survey shows that, before the escalation of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a considerable gap existed between both realms with antagonistic characteristics. Taking the above into account, a fair question to be answered is why Russia’s war against Ukraine helped consolidate the Ukrainian nation and reduced the gap between the social and political realms resulting in greater resilience? This article uses Ukraine as a case study to draw lessons about resilience in non-kinetic/hybrid warfare to the Baltic states that might be extended to Western countrie

Habitus Entrapment : The Constrictive, Deterministic Habitus of Peter the Venerable

Peer reviewe

Simulation for Cybersecurity: State of the Art and Future Directions

In this article, we provide an introduction to simulation for cybersecurity and focus on three themes: (1) an overview of the cybersecurity domain; (2) a summary of notable simulation research efforts for cybersecurity; and (3) a proposed way forward on how simulations could broaden cybersecurity efforts. The overview of cybersecurity provides readers with a foundational perspective of cybersecurity in the light of targets, threats, and preventive measures. The simulation research section details the current role that simulation plays in cybersecurity, which mainly falls on representative environment building; test, evaluate, and explore; training and exercises; risk analysis and assessment; and humans in cybersecurity research. The proposed way forward section posits that the advancement of collecting and accessing sociotechnological data to inform models, the creation of new theoretical constructs, and the integration and improvement of behavioral models are needed to advance cybersecurity efforts

HIV/AIDS, Security and Conflict: New Realities, New Responses

Ten years after the HIV/AIDS epidemic itself was identified as a threat to international peace and security, findings from the three-year AIDS, Security and Conflict Initiative (ASCI)(1) present evidence of the mutually reinforcing dynamics linking HIV/AIDS, conflict and security

Threat Assessment and Risk Analysis (TARA) for Interoperable Medical Devices in the Operating Room Inspired by the Automotive Industry

Prevailing trends in the automotive and medical device industry, such as life cycle overarching configurability, connectivity, and automation, require an adaption of development processes, especially regarding the security and safety thereof. The changing requirements imply that interfaces are more exposed to the outside world, making them more vulnerable to cyberattacks or data leaks. Consequently, not only do development processes need to be revised but also cybersecurity countermeasures and a focus on safety, as well as privacy, have become vital. While vehicles are especially exposed to cybersecurity and safety risks, the medical devices industry faces similar issues. In the automotive industry, proposals and draft regulations exist for security-related risk assessment processes. The medical device industry, which has less experience in these topics and is more heterogeneous, may benefit from drawing inspiration from these efforts. We examined and compared current standards, processes, and methods in both the automotive and medical industries. Based on the requirements regarding safety and security for risk analysis in the medical device industry, we propose the adoption of methods already established in the automotive industry. Furthermore, we present an example based on an interoperable Operating Room table (OR table)

Passive shielding of space radiation for human exploration missions - Simulations and Radiation Tests

Space radiation is one of the main showstoppers for human exploration of deep space. When leaving the protection provided by Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, the astronaut crew find themselves immersed into a complex radiation field, originated by the interaction of different high-energy radiation sources with the spacecraft’s walls, and characterized by many particle species with a broad range of energies. The biological effects of the long-term radiation exposure is largely uncertain and could give rise not only to late solid cancers and leukemia, but also to early effects to cardiac and nervous tissues, possibly undermining mission success. An available countermeasure to defend the astronauts from radiation is passive shielding, i.e. the interposition of shielding materials between the radiation sources and the exposed subjects. However, the majority of space radiation is practically impossible to completely stop: the high energetic particles constituting the space environment have the capability to penetrate several meters of materials, generating a harmful component of secondary particles, further contributing to the radiation dose. The ability of a material to attenuate the incoming space radiation and the nature of the generated secondary particles largely depends on the traversed material itself, in particular on the ratio between its charge and mass atomic numbers, Z/A. The lower is this ratio, the higher the material’s capability to attenuate the incoming radiation will be, both through electromagnetic and nuclear interactions. While the radiobiology community is focusing on the biological effects, radiation physics is trying to lower uncertainties characterizing the radiation interactions with materials, performing radiation measurements of various nature. In this framework I focused my PhD activity on the study of materials which could be used in space as shielding layers and multipurpose structures have been evaluated and selected under different criteria. At first, their ability to shield different kinds of space radiation were calculated with the aid of 1D Monte Carlo simulations, also followed by an evaluation of their structural and thermal proprieties, cost, availability and compatibility with the space environment. Simulations, in particular, were performed both to support the material selection process both to produce guidelines for design. The selected materials were then procured to be tested under different radiation beams and different set-ups, in single and multi-layers configurations, in an attempt to reproduce space exposure conditions. At the same time, the radiation tests have been reproduced by means of Monte Carlo simulations, to compare the experimental results and the simulations’ outputs, confirming the codes’ ability to reproduce radiation measurements involving High Z-number and high Energy (HZE) particles. For some materials, suggestions were provided on which nuclear model was better reproducing the data. The performed experimental campaign suggested that a candidate shielding material suitable for Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) should be tested with at least two beams with different characteristics, since the results indicated that some materials good at shielding 972 MeV/nuc 56Fe ions performed very poorly when irradiated with high energetic alphas. Furthermore, among the material types included in this investigation work, Lithium Hydride resulted the best option to stop space radiation, when only radiation shielding properties are considered. At the end of the experimental campaigns, on the basis of the test results, a 3D simulation activity has started and is still on-going and a modular space habitat model has been created. Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out, reproducing different Moon exposure scenarios with the goal of calculating crew radiation exposure during a Moon surface mission. This work reports results only for a standard aluminum habitat, with only Moon soil used as shielding material. However, future simulations will include Lithium Hydride and possibly others materials as shielding layers, to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing the dose in a realistic exposure scenario. Preliminary results show that even with a heavily shielded spacecraft (the habitat taken in consideration in this work is providing from every direction at least 30 g/cm2 of aluminum equivalent) radiation exposure approaches values close to the existing annual radiation exposure limits. Part of this thesis’ work was done at Thales Alenia Space, using Thales Alenia Space infrastructures and in the framework of the ROSSINI2 study. The ROSSINI2 study has been supported by European Space Agency (ESA) under the contract RFP IPLPTE/LF/mo/942.2014 and with the generous support of NASA and BNL, providing beam time at the NSRL facility