El endeudamiento de las Comunidades Autónomas: Límites y problemas en el contexto de la crisis económica

La persistència de la crisi econòmica a Espanya ha col•locat el dèficit i l’endeutament de les administracions públiques en un lloc central del debat polític i econòmic. En un escenari tan descentralitzat com l’espanyol, tot i reconeixent el protagonisme del deute estatal, una part del creixement del dèficit i de l’endeutament s’explica per les dificultats de les Comunitats autònomes per finançar els serveis que en depenen. L’article descriu les característiques dels desequilibris dels comptes públics de les comunitats en el context de l’Estat espanyol, així com les limitacions normatives en el finançament de les despeses amb deute. Per altra banda, s’ofereixen algunes explicacions d’aquests desequilibris, en bona part, vinculades a la mateixa crisi, tot i que, en opinió dels autors, hi ha altres factors que cal tenir en compte per explicar els desajustos: el pes de les despeses en serveis de benestar bàsics i de forta demanda (sanitat o educació), les polítiques expansives destinades a combatre la crisi en l’etapa inicial, l’existència d’abundants ingressos, considerats com a extraordinaris pels gestors públics (tributs associats al boom immobiliari) i el seu enfonsament amb la crisi, l’endeutament creixent a través d’empreses públiques, i, entre altres causes, l’absència de mecanismes efectius d’exigència de responsabilitats destinats a evitar els excessos de despesa produïts en algunes comunitats.La persistencia de la crisis económica en España ha colocado al déficit y al endeudamiento de las administraciones públicas en un lugar central del debate político y económico. En un escenario tan descentralizado como el español, aún reconociendo el protagonismo de la deuda estatal, una parte del crecimiento del déficit y del endeudamiento se explica por las dificultades de las Comunidades autónomas para financiar los servicios que de ellas dependen. El artículo describe las características de los desequilibrios de las cuentas públicas de las Comunidades en el contexto del Estado español, así como las limitaciones normativas a la financiación de los gastos con deuda. Por otra parte, se ofrecen algunas explicaciones de tales desequilibrios, en buena parte vinculadas a la propia crisis, aunque en opinión de los autores, otros factores deben ser tenidos en cuenta para explicar los desajustes: el peso de los gastos en servicios de bienestar básicos y con fuerte demanda (sanidad o educación), las políticas expansivas destinadas a combatir la crisis en su etapa inicial, la existencia de abundantes ingresos, considerados como extraordinarios por los gestores públicos (tributos asociados al boom inmobiliario) y su hundimiento con la crisis, el creciente endeudamiento a través de empresas públicas, y, entre otras causas, la ausencia de mecanismos efectivos de exigencia de responsabilidades destinados a evitar los excesos de gasto producidos en algunas comunidades.In Spain, as a consequence of the persistence of the economic crisis, the deficit and debt of the public administrations have become a main issue on the current economic and political debates In the case of a highly decentralized scenario, such it is the Spanish one, even if we recognize the principal role of Central Government´s debt, a large part of the increased Autonomous Communities’ deficit and indebtedness is explained by the difficulties they have to face in financing services they have to cover. The paper describes the main characteristics of public accounts’ disequilibria in Spain and the regulatory limits established to make use of public debt. Also, the article offers different explanations of those disequilibria, putting the emphasis on those linked to the crisis: i.e. the increasing weight of basic welfare services covered by the Autonomous Communities (such as public health and as education); as the expansive policies implemented to fight the initial effects of the crisis; as the existence of previous and large “extraordinary” resources coming from the housing sector and its consequent collapse; as growth of the debt of the autonomous-community quangos and as the lack of effective accountability mechanisms addressed to control the expenditures of the autonomous communities

Analysis of professionals and family foster care on advantages and difficulties of visits between foster children and their biological families

Contact between a foster child and birth parents play an important role in relation to the foster child’s wellbeing. The main aim of this study is to give voice to social workers and foster families about contact visits. This research is part of a project financed by the regional government of Andalusia (Spain) (SEJ-7106) regarding contact visits in foster care. Two focus groups were organized, one with 8 social workers from four foster care agencies and another with 8 foster carers (4 were recruited through the Association of Foster Families in Andalusia and 4 through fostering agencies). Access to foster care agencies and foster families was obtained through the official Andalusian Child Protective Services (SPM). The focal groups were audio-recorded. Transcripts (of the two focus groups gave rise to primary documents for the hermeneutic unit under study. All this information was exported from an Excel database to the ATLAS.ti v7.0 software. The transcripts were examined using an inductive method of open coding in order to identify themes among participants’ responses. Results show that both groups agreed on the utility of visits to maintain the children’s attachment to their birth family, to bring a greater sense of continuity to the children’s life story, to enhance the psychological wellbeing of the foster children and to know the real situation of their birth family. In relation to the difficulties remarked in the course of the visits, one of the issues mentioned by both groups refers to a lack in the coordination among the social workers, the SPM and the foster families involved. The other issue brings together several complaints to the SPM, such as the fact of not providing information about taking decisions regarding the future of the child; the lack of support and preparation of the foster carers, the children and the birth families about visits; as well as the shortage of social workers and economic aids provided by the SPM. The conclusions of this study highlight the need to improve contact visits by developing intervention strategies targeted at all those involved (foster children, family foster care, birth family and social workers). These findings have important implications for practice.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Automatically Updating a Dynamic Region Connection Calculus for Topological Reasoning

Proceedings of: Workshop on User-Centric Technologies and Applications (CONTEXTS 2011), Salamanca, Spain, April 6-8, 2011During the last years ontology-based applications have been thought without taking in account their limitations in terms of upgradeability. In parallel, new capabilities such as topological sorting of instances with spatial characteristics have been developed. Both facts may lead to a collapse in the operational capacity of this kind of applications. This paper presents an ontology-centric architecture to solve the topological relationships between spatial objects automatically. The capability for automatic assertion is given by an object model based on geometries. The object model seeks to prioritize the optimization using a dynamic data structure of spatial data. The ultimate goal of this architecture is the automatic storage of the spatial relationships without a noticeable loss of efficiency.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/ TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad

Interactive Video Annotation Tool

Proceedings of: Forth International Workshop on User-Centric Technologies and applications (CONTEXTS 2010). Valencia, 7-10 September , 2010.Abstract: Increasingly computer vision discipline needs annotated video databases to realize assessment tasks. Manually providing ground truth data to multimedia resources is a very expensive work in terms of effort, time and economic resources. Automatic and semi-automatic video annotation and labeling is the faster and more economic way to get ground truth for quite large video collections. In this paper, we describe a new automatic and supervised video annotation tool. Annotation tool is a modified version of ViPER-GT tool. ViPER-GT standard version allows manually editing and reviewing video metadata to generate assessment data. Automatic annotation capability is possible thanks to an incorporated tracking system which can deal the visual data association problem in real time. The research aim is offer a system which enables spends less time doing valid assessment models.Publicad

A General Purpose Context Reasoning Environment to Deal with Tracking Problems: An Ontology-based Prototype

Proceedings of: 6th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems (HAIS 2011). Wroclaw, Poland, May 23-25, 2011The high complexity of semantics extraction with automatic video analysis has forced the researchers to the generalization of mixed approaches based on perceptual and context data. These mixed approaches do not usually take in account the advantages and benefits of the data fusion discipline. This paper presents a context reasoning environment to deal with general and specific tracking problems. The cornerstone of the environment is a symbolic architecture based on the Joint Directors of Laboratories fusion model. This architecture may build a symbolic data representation from any source, check the data consistency, create new knowledge and refine it through inference obtaining a higher understanding level of the scene and providing feedback to autocorrect the tracking errors. An ontology-based prototype has been developed to carry out experimental tests. The prototype has been proved against tracking analysis occlusion problems.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/ TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad

Influence of noise level and seniority in the workplace on the SAL, ELI and percentage of hearing loss indices in the diagnosis and prevention of hearing loss in the working population

Introduction: This research relates the most important work-related factors affecting the development of hearing loss to the main methods used as medical assessment criteria in the diagnosis of occupational deafness. These criteria are the Speech Average Loss Index (SAL), the Early Loss Index (ELI) and the Percentage of Hearing Loss, and are applied to data obtained from audiograms performed on workers in occupational medical examinations. Method: Depending on the assessment method selected, these often return different results in grading an individual's hearing status and predicting how it will evolve. To address this problem, medical examinations (including audiograms) were carried out on a heterogeneous sample of 1,418 workers in Spain, from which demographic or personal data (gender, age, etc.), occupational data (noise level to which each individual is exposed, etc.) and other non-work-related factors (exposure to noise outside work, family history, etc.) were also gathered. Using Bayesian Networks, the conditional probability of an individual developing hearing loss was obtained taking into account all these factors and, specifically, noise level and length of service in the workplace. Sensitivity analyses were also carried out using the three scales (SAL, ELI and Percentage Hearing Loss Index), proving their suitability as tools the diagnosis and prediction of deafness. These networks were validated under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) criterion and in particular by the Area Under the Curve (AUC). Results: The results show that all three methods are deficient in so far as detecting preventive hearing problems related to noise in most workplaces. Conclusions: The most restrictive methods for detecting possible cases of deafness are the SAL index and the Percentage Loss Index. The ELI index is the least restrictive of the three methods, but it is not able to discriminate the causes of hearing problems in an individual caused by exposure to noise, either by its intensity level or by the time of exposure to noise. Practical Applications: The use of the three methods in the field of occupational risk prevention is extremely limited and it seems reasonable to think that there is a need for the construction of new scales to correct or improve the existing ones

Los Almendros (La Roda): a new Paleolithic site in Albacete

El yacimiento de Los Almendros se ubica en la localidad manchega de La Roda (Albacete). El material lítico estudiado fue recogido utilizando un sistema radial de sectorización que cubría 2500 metros cuadrados de una superficie problemática, con zonas de abundante monte bajo, y otras, más despejadas. En total se hallaron 1004 restos líticos, fundamentalmente en cuarcita. De ellos, 163 son útiles, destacando las raederas, lascas retocadas, y raspadores. Una primera aproximación a las características de la industria lítica nos ha permitido sugerir su atribución crono-cultural al tecno-complejo Musteriense.The site of Los Almendros is located in La Roda (Albacete). The lithic material studied was gathered through a radial sectorization collecting system which covered a problematic surface of 2500 m2, including zones of abundant scrubland and others clearer. A total amount of 1004 lithic pieces were registred, mainly in quartzite, 163 of which were tools. The side-scrapers, retouched flakes, and scrapers are the most numerous. A first approach to the features of the lithic industry has allowed us to suggest the crono-cultural attribution of this site to a Mousterian period

The voice of birth families to improve visits in foster care

In foster care, contact visits with birth families play an important role in relation to the child’s wellbeing, and they may impact on placement outcomes. However, the views of birth parents with respect to such visits have largely been unexplored. This research is part of a project financed by the regional government of Andalusia (SEJ-7106) regarding contact visits in foster care. This study aims to give voice to parents and gather their views about contact visits, including how they might be improved. Participants were 23 birth families who had contact visits with 35 children in non-kinship foster care. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted in order to explore two key aspects: the parents’ opinions regarding the contact visits and the main areas they felt needed improving. The interviews were transcribed and the transcripts were examined using an inductive method of open coding to identify themes among participants’ responses. The main themes to emerge concerned their general view of contact visits and the organization of visits. The paper discusses the study’s implications of the findings for practice.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Data fusion to improve trajectory tracking in a Cooperative Surveillance Multi-Agent Architecture

13 pages, 12 figures.In this paper we present a Cooperative Surveillance Multi-Agent System (CS-MAS) architecture extended to incorporate dynamic coalition formation. We illustrate specific coalition formation using fusion skills. In this case, the fusion process is divided into two layers: (i) a global layer in the fusion center, which initializes the coalitions and (ii) a local layer within coalitions, where a local fusion agent is dynamically instantiated. There are several types of autonomous agent: surveillance–sensor agents, a fusion center agent, a local fusion agent, interface agents, record agents, planning agents, etc. Autonomous agents differ in their ability to carry out a specific surveillance task. A surveillance–sensor agent controls and manages individual sensors (usually video cameras). It has different capabilities depending on its functional complexity and limitations related to sensor-specific aspects. In the work presented here we add a new autonomous agent, called the local fusion agent, to the CS-MAS architecture, addressing specific problems of on-line sensor alignment, registration, bias removal and data fusion. The local fusion agent is dynamically created by the fusion center agent and involves several surveillance–sensor agents working in a coalition. We show how the inclusion of this new dynamic local fusion agent guarantees that, in a video-surveillance system, objects of interest are successfully tracked across the whole area, assuring continuity and seamless transitions.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM MADRINET S-0505 /TIC/0255 and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad

A Structured Representation to the Group Behavior Recognition Issue

Proceedings of: Workshop on User-Centric Technologies and Applications (CONTEXTS 2011), Salamanca, April 6-8, 2011The behavior recognition is one of the most prolific lines of research in recent decades in the field of computer vision. Within this field, the majority of researches have focused on the recognition of the activities carried out by a single individual, however this paper deals with the problem of recognizing the behavior of a group of individuals, in which relations between the component elements are of great importance. For this purpose it is exposed a new representation that concentrates all necessary information concerning relations peer to peer present in the group, and the semantics of the different groups formed by individuals and training (or structure) of each one of them. The work is presented with the dataset created in CVBASE06 dealing the European handball.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/ TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad