Identifying species likely threatened by international trade on the IUCN Red List can inform CITES trade measures

Overexploitation is a major threat to biodiversity and international trade in many species is regulated through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). However, there is no established method to systematically determine which species are most at risk from international trade to inform potential trade measures under CITES. Here, we develop a mechanism using the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species to identify species that are likely to be threatened by international trade. Of 2,211 such species, CITES includes 59% (1,307 species), leaving two-fifths overlooked and in potential need of international trade regulation. Our results can inform deliberations on potential proposals to revise trade measures for species at CITES Conference of the Parties meetings. We also show that, for taxa with biological resource use documented as a threat, the number of species threatened by local and national use is four times greater than species likely threatened by international trade. To effectively address the overexploitation of species, interventions focused on achieving sustainability in international trade need to be complemented by commensurate measures to ensure that local and national use and trade of wildlife is well-regulated and sustainable

Assessing the cost of global biodiversity and conservation knowledge

Knowledge products comprise assessments of authoritative information supported by stan-dards, governance, quality control, data, tools, and capacity building mechanisms. Considerable resources are dedicated to developing and maintaining knowledge productsfor biodiversity conservation, and they are widely used to inform policy and advise decisionmakers and practitioners. However, the financial cost of delivering this information is largelyundocumented. We evaluated the costs and funding sources for developing and maintain-ing four global biodiversity and conservation knowledge products: The IUCN Red List ofThreatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the WorldDatabase of Key Biodiversity Areas. These are secondary data sets, built on primary datacollected by extensive networks of expert contributors worldwide. We estimate that US$160million (range: US$116–204 million), plus 293 person-years of volunteer time (range: 278–308 person-years) valued at US$14 million (range US$12–16 million), were invested inthese four knowledge products between 1979 and 2013. More than half of this financingwas provided through philanthropy, and nearly three-quarters was spent on personnelcosts. The estimated annual cost of maintaining data and platforms for three of these knowl-edge products (excluding the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems for which annual costs were notpossible to estimate for 2013) is US$6.5 million in total (range: US$6.2–6.7 million). We esti-mated that an additional US$114 million will be needed to reach pre-defined baselines ofdata coverage for all the four knowledge products, and that once achieved, annual mainte-nance costs will be approximately US$12 million. These costs are much lower than those tomaintain many other, similarly important, global knowledge products. Ensuring that biodi-versity and conservation knowledge products are sufficiently up to date, comprehensiveand accurate is fundamental to inform decision-making for biodiversity conservation andsustainable development. Thus, the development and implementation of plans for sustain-able long-term financing for them is critical

Mapping ADL specifications to an efficient and reconfigurable runtime component platform

Recent research has recognised the potential of coupling ADLs with underlying runtime environments to support systematic and integrated "specification-to-deployment" architectures. However, while some promising results have been obtained, much of this research has not considered the crucial issue of causally-connected dynamic reconfiguration and has considered only domain-specific areas. In this paper we discuss a specification-to-deployment architecture called Plastik that employs an extended general-purpose ADL and is underpinned by an efficient runtime that is suited both for high-level application development and low-level systems development (e.g. embedded systems). Runtime reconfiguration is supported both at the ADL level and at the runtime level, and both programmed reconfiguration and adhoc reconfiguration are supported. The paper focuses on the mapping of ADL-level specifications to runtime instantiations and on the necessary runtime support for causally-connected dynamic reconfiguration

Architecting dynamic reconfiguration in dependable systems

The need for dynamic reconfiguration is a complicating factor in the design of dependable systems, as it demands from software architects both rigour and planning. Although recent research has shown that systematic and integrated "specification-to-deployment" environments are promising approaches to architecting dependable systems, few proposals have yet considered dynamic reconfiguration, and then only in specific situations. In this paper, we propose a generic approach to supporting dynamic reconfiguration in dependable systems. The proposed approach is built on our view that dynamic reconfiguration in such systems needs to be causally connected at runtime to a corresponding high-level software architecture specification. In more detail, we propose two causally-connected models: an architecture-level model and a runtime-level model. Dynamic reconfiguration can be applied either through an architecture specification at the architecture level, or through reconfiguration primitives at the runtime level. Both foreseen and unforeseen reconfigurations are supported. We discuss the issues involved in handling these two types of reconfiguration at both levels and the mapping between them. We also discuss an implementation of our approach that evaluates its main benefits

2 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN)

Abstract. The need for dynamic reconfiguration is a complicating factor in the design of dependable systems, as it demands from software architects both rigour and planning. Although recent research has shown that systematic and integrated “specification-to-deployment ” environments are promising approaches to architecting dependable systems, few proposals have yet considered dynamic reconfiguration, and then only in specific situations. In this paper, we propose a generic approach to supporting dynamic reconfiguration in dependable systems. The proposed approach is built on our view that dynamic reconfiguration in such systems needs to be causally connected at runtime to a corresponding high-level software architecture specification. In more detail, we propose two causally-connected models: an architecture-level model and a runtime-level model. Dynamic reconfiguration can be applied either through an architecture specification at the architecture level, or through reconfiguration primitives at the runtime level. Both foreseen and unforeseen reconfigurations are supported. We discuss the issues involved in handling these two types of reconfiguration at both levels and the mapping between them. We also discuss an implementation of our approach that evaluates its main benefits

Flexible programmable networking: A reflective, component-based approach

The need for programmability and adaptability in networking systems is becoming increasingly important. More specifically, the challenge is in the ability to add services rapidly, and be able to deploy, configure and reconfigure them as easily as possible. Such demand is creating a considerable shift in the way networks are expected to operate in the future. This is the main aim of programmable networking research community, and in our project we are investigating a component-based approach to the structuring of programmable networking software. Our intention is to apply the notion of components, component frameworks and reflection ubiquitously, thus accommodating all the different elements that comprise a programmable networking system. 1

NETKIT: a software component-based approach to programmable networking

While there has already been significant research in support of openness and programmability in networks, this paper argues that there remains a need for generic support for the integrated development, deployment and management of programmable networking software. We further argue that this support should explicitly address the management of run-time reconfiguration of systems, and should be independent of any particular programming paradigm (e.g. active networking or open signaling), programming language, or hardware/ operating system platform. In line with these aims, we outline an approach to the structuring of programmable networking software in terms of a ubiquitously applied software component model that can accommodate all levels of a programmable networking system from low-level system support, to in-band packet handling, to active networking execution environments to signaling and coordination