ICE and the Unquestioned Human Cost of Efficiency: A Moral Reckoning

This paper examines how the concept of economic efficiency is utilized by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through three frameworks, to excuse human rights violations in the name of a productive and efficient deportation process. The first framework used is a discussion of how economic efficiency is positively coded and used in everyday life and as a means for state control. Efficiency and state control inform my second and third analyses of how the combination of ICE with local police forces and unconventional means of detainment aligns with a capitalist mentality that perpetuates a free market profit maximization while sacrificing human rights and safety. The conclusion of this paper states that the danger of an efficient deportation regime perpetuates ideas of detainment and deportation existing within a strict binary, and one that fails to recognize the increasingly privatized and violent process immigrants are subject to. By abolishing ICE and conceptions of human worth contingent on citizenship status, we can begin to remedy a system that solely functions for state control and profit

Screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit

This chapter discusses screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

Deriving Value from Big Data Analytics in Healthcare: A Value-focused Thinking Approach

With the potential to generate more insights from data than ever before, big data analytics has become highly valuable to many industries, especially healthcare. Big data analytics can make important contributions to many areas, such as enhancements in the quality of patient care and improvements in operational efficiencies. Big data analytics provides opportunities to address concerns such as disease diagnoses and prevention. However, it has posed challenges such as data security and privacy issues. Also, healthcare institutions have concerns about deriving the greatest benefit from their big data analytics endeavors. Therefore, identifying actionable objectives that can help healthcare organizations derive the maximum value from big data analytics is needed. Using the value-focused thinking (VFT) approach, we interviewed individuals associated with data analytics in healthcare to identify actionable objectives that one needs to consider to derive value from big data analytics, which practitioners can use for their own endeavors and provide opportunities for future research