The resilience of embodied energy networks: a critical dimension for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access, renewables and efficiency have been identified as targets in the field of energy under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Resilience is also a critical dimension that needs to be considered in moving towards sustainable energy. Diversification of direct energy suppliers has been the conventional recourse for achieving energy security. In consideration of the increasingly globalized nature of trade, energy and supply chain networks, however, this approach would be insufficient for addressing the resilience of energy supplies to potential environmental, economic and social shocks and disruptions. In this paper we investigate countries' energy resilience by quantifying diversity in suppliers of both direct and embodied energy and examine how selections of indirect energy supplies can affect the resilience of the entire embodied-energy trade network. We find that the geographical diversity of embodied energy imports is much greater than that of direct energy imports, and there are considerable variations across countries in the diversification of embodied energy imports. This suggests a possible strategy for countries that depend heavily on a few neighbors for their direct energy imports to diversify their supply chain globally in order to benefit from larger diversity of embodied energy supplies, thereby strengthening the energy resilience of their economies

The stable free rank of symmetry of products of spheres

A well known conjecture in the theory of transformation groups states that if p is a prime and (Z/p)^r acts freely on a product of k spheres, then r is less than or equal to k. We prove this assertion if p is large compared to the dimension of the product of spheres. The argument builds on tame homotopy theory for non simply connected spaces.Comment: 30 pages; improved exposition, some details adde

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe

Quantifying the supplier-portfolio diversity of embodied energy: Strategic implications for strengthening energy resilience

This paper investigates energy resilience of countries by quantifying the supplier diversification of both direct and embodied energy import. In particular, we quantify two approaches to diversify a country's supplier portfolio: by lowering the dependency on each supplier (portfolio diversification) and by having embodied energy suppliers that are different from its direct energy suppliers (portfolio differentiation). We examine possibilities for strategic utilization of embodied energy trade to compensate for low diversity of direct energy trade for three types of fossil resources: coal, oil, and gas. We find that the diversity of embodied energy import is much greater than that of direct energy import. Of the three energy resources, coal enables countries to adopt portfolio diversification and portfolio differentiation more than gas and oil. Our results suggest embodied energy can be considered as a transfer of energy resources across national borders that can directly benefit from the diversity of the world energy production by “skipping” the limited diversity of the world energy export

Examining the resilience of national energy systems: Measurements of diversity in production-based and consumption-based electricity in the globalization of trade networks

Energy is a critical component of achieving sustainable development. In addition to the three aspects of promoting access, renewables, and efficiency, the dimension of resilience in energy systems should also considered. The implementaton of resilient energy systems requires a quantitative understanding of the socio-economic practices underlying such systems. Specifically, in line with the increasing globalization of trade, there remains a critical knowledge gap on the link between embodied energy in the production and consumption of trade goods. To bridge this knowledge gap, we investigate the resilience of global energy systems through an examination of diversity measure of global embodied electricity trade based on multi-regional input-output (MRIO) networks. The significance of this reserch lies in its ability to utilize high resolution MRIO data sets in assessing the resilience of national energy systems. This research indicates that secure and responsible consumption requires the diversification of not only energy generation but also energy imports. This research will lay the ground for further research in the governance of resilience in global energy networks

Towards an ontology for scenario definition for the assessment of automated vehicles: An object-oriented framework

The development of new assessment methods for the performance of automated vehicles is essential to enable the deployment of automated driving technologies, due to the complex operational domain of automated vehicles. One contributing method is scenario-based assessment in which test cases are derived from real-world road traffic scenarios obtained from driving data. Given the complexity of the reality that is being modeled in these scenarios, it is a challenge to define a structure for capturing these scenarios. An intensional definition that provides a set of characteristics that are deemed to be both necessary and sufficient to qualify as a scenario assures that the scenarios constructed are both complete and intercomparable. In this article, we develop a comprehensive and operable definition of the notion of scenario while considering existing definitions in the literature. This is achieved by proposing an object-oriented framework in which scenarios and their building blocks are defined as classes of objects having attributes, methods, and relationships with other objects. The object-oriented approach promotes clarity, modularity, reusability, and encapsulation of the objects. We provide definitions and justifications of each of the terms. Furthermore, the framework is used to translate the terms in a coding language that is publicly available