Trade in the balance: reconciling trade and climate policy: report of the Working Group on Trade, Investment, and Climate Policy

This repository item contains a report published by the Working Group on Trade, Investment, and Climate Policy at The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, and the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University.This report outlines the general tensions between the trade and investment regime and climate policy, and outlines a framework toward making trade and investment rules more climate friendly. Members of the working group have contributed short pieces addressing a range of issues related to the intersection of trade and climate policy. The first two are by natural scientists. Anthony Janetos discusses the need to address the effects of international trade on efforts to limit the increase in global annual temperature to no more than 2oC over preindustrial levels. James J. Corbett examines the failure of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to adequately address the environmental implications of shipping and maritime transport. The next two pieces are by economists who examine economic aspects of the trade-climate linkage. Irene Monasterolo and Marco Raberto discuss the potential impacts of including fossil fuel subsidies reduction under the TTIP. Frank Ackerman explores the economic costs of efforts to promote convergence of regulatory standards between the United States and the European Union under the TTIP. The following two contributions are by legal scholars. Brooke Güven and Lise Johnson explore the potential for international investment treaties to redirect investment flows to support climate change mitigation and adaptation, particularly with regard to China and India. Matt Porterfield provides an overview of the ways in which both existing and proposed trade and investment agreements could have either “climate positive” or “climate negative” effects on mitigation policies. The final article is by Tao Hu, a former WTO trade and environment expert advisor for China and currently at the World Wildlife Fund, arguing that the definition of environmental goods and services’ under the WTO negotiations needs to be expanded to better incorporate climate change

Trade in the balance: reconciling trade and climate policy: report of the Working Group on Trade, Investment, and Climate Policy

This repository item contains a report published by the Working Group on Trade, Investment, and Climate Policy at The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, and the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University.This report outlines the general tensions between the trade and investment regime and climate policy, and outlines a framework toward making trade and investment rules more climate friendly. Members of the working group have contributed short pieces addressing a range of issues related to the intersection of trade and climate policy. The first two are by natural scientists. Anthony Janetos discusses the need to address the effects of international trade on efforts to limit the increase in global annual temperature to no more than 2oC over preindustrial levels. James J. Corbett examines the failure of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to adequately address the environmental implications of shipping and maritime transport. The next two pieces are by economists who examine economic aspects of the trade-climate linkage. Irene Monasterolo and Marco Raberto discuss the potential impacts of including fossil fuel subsidies reduction under the TTIP. Frank Ackerman explores the economic costs of efforts to promote convergence of regulatory standards between the United States and the European Union under the TTIP. The following two contributions are by legal scholars. Brooke Güven and Lise Johnson explore the potential for international investment treaties to redirect investment flows to support climate change mitigation and adaptation, particularly with regard to China and India. Matt Porterfield provides an overview of the ways in which both existing and proposed trade and investment agreements could have either “climate positive” or “climate negative” effects on mitigation policies. The final article is by Tao Hu, a former WTO trade and environment expert advisor for China and currently at the World Wildlife Fund, arguing that the definition of environmental goods and services’ under the WTO negotiations needs to be expanded to better incorporate climate change

The integrity of digital technologies in the evolving characteristics of real-time enterprise architecture

Advancements in interactive and responsive enterprises involve real-time access to the information and capabilities of emerging technologies. Digital technologies (DTs) are emerging technologies that provide end-to-end business processes (BPs), engage a diversified set of real-time enterprise (RTE) participants, and institutes interactive DT services. This thesis offers a selection of the author’s work over the last decade that addresses the real-time access to changing characteristics of information and integration of DTs. They are critical for RTEs to run a competitive business and respond to a dynamic marketplace. The primary contributions of this work are listed below. • Performed an intense investigation to illustrate the challenges of the RTE during the advancement of DTs and corresponding business operations. • Constituted a practical approach to continuously evolve the RTEs and measure the impact of DTs by developing, instrumenting, and inferring the standardized RTE architecture and DTs. • Established the RTE operational governance framework and instituted it to provide structure, oversight responsibilities, features, and interdependencies of business operations. • Formulated the incremental risk (IR) modeling framework to identify and correlate the evolving risks of the RTEs during the deployment of DT services. • DT service classifications scheme is derived based on BPs, BP activities, DT’s paradigms, RTE processes, and RTE policies. • Identified and assessed the evaluation paradigms of the RTEs to measure the progress of the RTE architecture based on the DT service classifications. The starting point was the author’s experience with evolving aspects of DTs that are disrupting industries and consequently impacting the sustainability of the RTE. The initial publications emphasized innovative characteristics of DTs and lack of standardization, indicating the impact and adaptation of DTs are questionable for the RTEs. The publications are focused on developing different elements of RTE architecture. Each published work concerns the creation of an RTE architecture framework fit to the purpose of business operations in association with the DT services and associated capabilities. The RTE operational governance framework and incremental risk methodology presented in subsequent publications ensure the continuous evolution of RTE in advancements of DTs. Eventually, each publication presents the evaluation paradigms based on the identified scheme of DT service classification to measure the success of RTE architecture or corresponding elements of the RTE architecture

Cyber Threats and NATO 2030: Horizon Scanning and Analysis

The book includes 13 chapters that look ahead to how NATO can best address the cyber threats, as well as opportunities and challenges from emerging and disruptive technologies in the cyber domain over the next decade. The present volume addresses these conceptual and practical requirements and contributes constructively to the NATO 2030 discussions. The book is arranged in five short parts...All the chapters in this book have undergone double-blind peer review by at least two external experts.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbook/1038/thumbnail.jp

Kestävän kehityksen edistäminen digitalisaation avulla suomalaisissa julkisen ja yksityisen sektorin organisaatioissa

The objective of this study is to understand how different organizations in Finland view digitalization in improving environmental sustainability. There are three research questions. First, it is studied what motivates organizations for environmental sustainability. Second, it is researched how organizations have improved or are interested in improving environmental sustainability through digitalization. Third, it is analyzed what are the differences in motivations, interests and actions depending on respondent positions and organizational characteristics, such as employer sector or industry. The study consists of a literature review and empirical research on Finnish organizations. Literature is presented on environmental sustainability motivation and on the different direct, indirect and structural effects of digitalization on the environment. The empirical study consists of a survey that gained 249 responses from public and private sector organizations in Finland. The survey covered motivation for environmental sustainability, perceptions on digitalization and sustainability and both actions taken and future interests in different aspects. Digitalization was covered for direct, indirect and structural effects. Environmental aspects included energy, material, waste and emissions. The results show that respondent organizations were most motivated for environmental improvement by cost savings, followed by reputation, regulation and organizational values or strategy. 90 % of respondents agreed that digitalization and sustainability are highly connected. Furthermore, many respondent organizations have both taken action already and are even more interested in the future about many aspects of digitalization and sustainability. Only around half of the organizations had already taken action to reduce direct environmental impacts of IT equipment, but a large majority were interested in it in the future. Remote work and electronic processes were reported to be used for environmental sustainability already in over 85 % of organizations. Respondents were highly interested in improving environmental sustainability regarding aspects of energy, materials, emissions and waste. 64 % of respondents showed interest in improving three or all four of the aspects. There were rather few differences found between organizational factors.Työn tavoitteena on ymmärtää miten erilaiset organisaatiot suhtautuvat digitalisaatioon ympäristöllisen kestävän kehityksen edistämisessä. Työssä on kolme tutkimuskysymystä. Ensinnäkin tutkitaan, mikä motivoi organisaatioita ympäristökestävyyteen. Toisekseen tutkitaan, miten organisaatiot ovat jo parantaneet ympäristökestävyyttä digitalisaation avulla, ja mistä asioista ollaan kiinnostuneita tulevaisuudessa. Kolmanneksi tutkitaan, mitä eroja on motivaatiossa, tehdyissä toimenpiteissä ja kiinnostuksen kohteissa riippuen vastaajien asemasta ja organisaatioiden luonteesta, kuten työnantajasektorista tai teollisuudenalasta. Tutkimus koostuu kirjallisuuskatsauksesta ja empiirisestä tutkimuksesta suomalaisille organisaatioille. Kirjallisuutta esitellään ympäristökestävyyden motivaatioista ja digitalisaation suorista, epäsuorista ja rakenteellisista vaikutuksista ympäristöön. Empiirinen tutkimus koostuu kyselystä, johon saatiin 249 vastausta suomalaisilta julkisen ja yksityisen sektorin organisaatioilta. Kysely käsitteli motivaatiota ympäristökestävyyteen, näkemyksiä digitalisaation ja kestävän kehityksen yhteydestä sekä tehtyjä toimenpiteitä ja tulevaisuuden kiinnostusta digitalisaation ympäristöparannuksiin. Digitalisaatiota käsiteltiin suorien, epäsuorien ja rakenteellisten vaikutusten kautta, ja ympäristövaikutuksissa tarkasteltiin energiaa, materiaaleja, jätteitä ja päästöjä. Tulosten mukaan vastaajaorganisaatiot ovat motivoituneimpia ympäristöparannuksiin kustannussäästöjen, maineen, lainsäädännön sekä organisaation arvojen tai strategian takia. 90 % vastaajista oli samaa mieltä väittämän kanssa, että digitalisaatio ja kestävä kehitys liittyvät vahvasti toisiinsa. Useat organisaatiot ovat jo tehneet paljon toimenpiteitä digitalisaation avulla ympäristökestävyyden parantamiseksi ja vielä suurempi osuus on kiinnostunut aiheesta tulevaisuudessa. Vain noin puolet vastaajista oli tehnyt toimenpiteitä IT:n suorien ympäristövaikutusten vähentämiseksi, mutta suuri enemmistö ilmoitti kiinnostuksesta tulevaisuudessa. Yli 85 % vastaajista ilmoitti, että etätyötä ja elektronisia prosesseja käytetään jo nyt ympäristöparannuksiin. Vastaajat olivat kiinnostuneita parantamaan ympäristövaikutuksia niin energian, materiaalien ja jätteen kuin päästöjenkin suhteen. 64 % vastaajista ilmoitti kiinnostuksensa kolmeen tai kaikki neljään näistä ympäristövaikutuksista. Tulosten mukaan vastaukset erosivat organisaatiotyyppien perusteella toisistaan vähäisesti

Siren

Siren is a ritualized performance inspired by the Aveiro para-hydromorphic Regosal - the constantly changing boundary between land and water. Breathing, voluntary and involuntary muscle movements and dual heartbeats compose the sound. The performance is accompanied by an interactive video-art piece edited from a film taken from a site-specific performance at the Aveiro wetlands

Emerging Informatics

The book on emerging informatics brings together the new concepts and applications that will help define and outline problem solving methods and features in designing business and human systems. It covers international aspects of information systems design in which many relevant technologies are introduced for the welfare of human and business systems. This initiative can be viewed as an emergent area of informatics that helps better conceptualise and design new world-class solutions. The book provides four flexible sections that accommodate total of fourteen chapters. The section specifies learning contexts in emerging fields. Each chapter presents a clear basis through the problem conception and its applicable technological solutions. I hope this will help further exploration of knowledge in the informatics discipline