A New Approach to Evaluate and Reduce Uncertainty of Model-Based Biodiversity Projections for Conservation Policy Formulation

Biodiversity projections with uncertainty estimates under different climate, land-use, and policy scenarios are essential to setting and achieving international targets to mitigate biodiversity loss. Evaluating and improving biodiversity predictions to better inform policy decisions remains a central conservation goal and challenge. A comprehensive strategy to evaluate and reduce uncertainty of model outputs against observed measurements and multiple models would help to produce more robust biodiversity predictions. We propose an approach that integrates biodiversity models and emerging remote sensing and in-situ data streams to evaluate and reduce uncertainty with the goal of improving policy-relevant biodiversity predictions. In this article, we describe a multivariate approach to directly and indirectly evaluate and constrain model uncertainty, demonstrate a proof of concept of this approach, embed the concept within the broader context of model evaluation and scenario analysis for conservation policy, and highlight lessons from other modeling communities

Applying the Practice Theoretical Perspective to Healthcare Knowledge Management

A primary focus of healthcare knowledge management is to provide clinical practitioners with appropriate knowledge resources for making the best patient care decisions. Over the years, advances in information technology have enabled a knowledge-rich healthcare system with accessible databases and repositories. However, healthcare knowledge remains largely under-utilised, and often wrongly utilized, in patient care decision making. As greater considerations of social and organizational contexts began to emerge, concepts and techniques of the practice theoretical perspective have gained relevance as a tool for providing a rich set of findings required to making sense of how healthcare knowledge is utilized at the point of care and for designing systems to support that use. In this chapter, we describe a research effort at developing an e-health system for clinical decision support and knowledge sharing across organizational and geographical boundaries using the practice theoretical approach. The chapter concludes with a roadmap for the critical goal of designing healthcare knowledge management systems and user interfaces that meet the information, collaboration and workflow needs of healthcare professionals at the point of care

The emergence of educational technology

10.1007/978-0-387-09657-5_6IFIP International Federation for Information Processing26999-11