Circular economy and economic development in the European Union: a review and bibliometric analysis

Increased changes in the climate and ecosystems call for a sustainable economic development, where economic growth should be compatible with the environment goals. In order to do this, it is urgent to find new ways of life and new production systems that make our ecological footprint compatible with global sustainability. The concept of the circular economy has brought relevant contributions to this problem. The central objective of the study presented here is to highlight the main insights presented through scientific literature about the concept of the circular economy within the European Union. In practice, the intention is to show what has already been done about this topic and what can/should be implemented in the future. To achieve these objectives, 144 articles were considered from the Web of Science (Core Collection) for the topics “circular economy” and “European Union”. These documents were, firstly, analysed through a proper literature review and later explored through bibliometric analysis, considering bibliographic data and the VOSviewer software. As the main findings have revealed, the increased importance of this concept within the European Union is recognized. However, this paper also identifies several challenges in the literature, namely the concentration of the identified publications in certain countries, organizations, and authors.This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology,I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/00681/2020. Paulo Mourão acknowledges the following:Thispaper is financed by National Funds of the FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project«UIDB/03182/2020

Corruption and inflation in agricultural production: the problem of the chicken and the egg

Corruption and inflation are two economic problems with serious social consequences. This paper analyzes the link between these two problems, focusing on the case of 19 prices observed for agricultural products in 90 countries since 2000. Using ‘panel data cointegration’ techniques, we conclude that, in most cases, there is a long-term relationship between inflation and corruption. The direction of causality favors the hypothesis that the inflation of agricultural products promotes incentives that lead to an increase in corruption levels. These results have important implications in terms of fighting corruption, giving special attention to controlling inefficiencies in agricultural markets that lead to higher prices that are then tapped into corruption mechanisms.This research was funded by National Funds through the FCT-Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/00681/2020

Investigating environmental degradation theologically : a challenge for the Igreja Uniao Baptista de Mocambique, (Union Baptist Church of Mozambique) with particular focus on the city of Nampula

Consent form, persmission letter and declaration translated into Portuguese. Interview schedule translated into Makhua and PortugueseEconomically, Mozambique is one of the poorest countries globally. Given to its poor state, Mozambique remains environmentally deteriorated. Fortunately, the Mozambican government has embarked on environmental programmes as a strategy for ecological management. However, these strategies seem irrelevant due to ineffective implementation of such programmes. It lacks local community awareness, involvement and participation. The church lacks eco-theology as well as theology that can protect nature and people’s struggles. This study investigated the policies and their implementation towards environmental management in Mozambique. The study also discussed church’s role and proposed a comprehensive theology towards the environment in the city of Nampula. Nampula city is one of the busiest cities in the province and in the northern region of Mozambique due to its business attractions. This study was limited to the Union Baptist Church of Nampula. The data collection was based on two approaches, fieldwork and literature analysis. Fieldwork approach resulted in 20 Nampula citizens’ residents being interviewed. The finding showed that environmental crisis is a socio-economic, political and religious problem of concern. It also revealed that the citizens of Nampula face detrimental and environmental health impacts caused by a weak waste management policy. The incapacity of the implementation of waste management policy, deficiency in the enforcement of awareness and local people input contribute for ecological crisis, leading for water pollution and health problems. The ambiguity of making ecological regulations and resources available worsens ecological crisis. When such regulations are drafted and promulgated without local people’s participation, it may indicate that the law-makers exclude local knowledge about environment into the scientific debate. This can lead local people to resist and not participate even when they are called for. Hence, the research has shown that to make a dynamic ecological policy and an effective waste management, a combination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches are needed. A top-down approach guarantees constant framework while the bottom-up approach encourages local community involvement. In this study, the significance of local community involvement, church advocacy, and pressure in making waste management policy function constitute a key finding. Without active involvement of local people in planning, designing, implementing, monitoring, evaluating, and the decision-making process participation, the earth management may never take place. Therefore, the challenge remains for the government, the church, and the private sector to draw and define methods to attain economic development, protect ecological and civil society.Christian Spirituality, Church History and MissiologyM. Th. (Missiology

Defining an architecture for a ubiquitous group decision support system

Supporting group decision-making in ubiquitous contexts is fundamental while developing Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). Here we propose an architecture that assures ubiquity and allows the development of a system which can be used anywhere at any time and through almost any sort of electronic device. Our approach can be used by developers that intend to build Ubiquitous Group Decision Support Systems (UbiGDSS). It uses three main components that are interconnected and that will allow to collect and preserve the amount and quality of intelligence generated in face-to-face meetings.This work was supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD Grant with the Reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Including credibility and expertise in group decision-making process: an approach designed for UbiGDSS

Supporting group decision-making when the decision-makers are spread around the world is a complex process. The mechanisms of automated negotiation, such as argumentation, can be used in Ubiquitous Group Decision Support Systems to help decision-makers find a solution based on their preferences. However, there are some other important issues that affect the decisionmaking process beyond typical preferences over criteria and alternatives. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that will allow agents to reason about self-expertise and other decision makers’ credibility. This way, we intend agents to achieve better quality and more consensual decisions. Our algorithm includes not only the decision-maker’s preferences but also his intentions in the process. By using the proposed model, agents achieved a stronger consensus in all scenarios that were considered and higher satisfaction levels in the most complex scenarios.This work was supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD Grant with the Reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Introducing dynamic argumentation to UbiGDSS

Supporting and representing the group decision-making process is a complex task that requires very specific characteristics. The current existing argumentation models cannot make good use of all the advantages inherent to group decision-making. There is no monitoring of the process or the possibility to provide dynamism to it. These issues can compromise the success of Group Decision Support Systems if those systems are not able to provide freedom and all necessary mechanisms to the decision-maker. We investigate the use of argumentation in a completely new perspective that will allow for a mutual understanding between agents and decision-makers. Besides this, our proposal allows to define an agent not only according to the preferences of the decision-maker but also according to his interests towards the decision-making process. We show that our definition respects the requirements that are essential for groups to interact without limitations and that can take advantage of those interactions to create valuable knowledge to support more and better.This work has been supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foun-dation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012 and by Project MANTIS - Cyber Physical System Based Proactive Collaborative Maintenance (ECSEL JU Grant nr. 662189).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dealing with agents’ behaviour in the decision-making process

Gathering a group of managers or executives (decision-makers) in a same place and at a same time is not an easy task. In fact, the decision-makers’ schedule is so tight that it becomes necessary to develop tools that will aid in the communication and in the decision-making process. The intelligent systems (IS) can be the solution to overcome these necessities. In literature, there have been appearing more and more IS that make use of multi agent systems (MAS) in order to represent real decision-makers in this type of systems. In our work we address the problem of how agents should behave during the decision-making process and what strategies they can follow to represent the interests of the decision-maker. We intend to define valid behaviours for agents in group decision-making context and to relate the theoretical behaviours definition with usual attitudes and acts that are relevant for this context. We define two dimensions and relate them with two facets based on the Five Factor Model. Then we propose the behaviours classification according three different levels (low, moderate and high) for each one of the dimensions. We use the value of the personality trait correspondent to each facet in order to classify our behaviours in the scale.This work is part-funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124- FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEISII/1386/2012) and SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Defining agents’ behaviour for negotiation contexts

Agents who represent participants in the group decision-making context require a certain number of individual traits in order to be successful. By using argumentation models, agents are capable to defend the interests of those who they represent, and also justify and support their ideas and actions. However, regardless of how much knowledge they might hold, it is essential to define their behaviour. In this paper (1) is presented a study about the most important models to infer different types of behaviours that can be adapted and used in this context, (2) are proposed rules that must be followed to affect positively the system when defining behaviours and (3) is proposed the adaptation of a conflict management model to the context of Group Decision Support Systems. We propose one approach that (a) intends to reflect a natural way of human behaviour in the agents, (b) provides an easier way to reach an agreement between all parties involved and (c) does not have high configuration costs to the participants. Our approach will offer a simple yet perceptible configuration tool that can be used by the participants and contribute to more intelligent communications between agents and makes possible for the participants to have a better understanding of the types of interactions experienced by the agents belonging to the system.This work is part-funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEISII/1386/2012) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) with the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The effect of decision satisfaction prediction in argumentation-based negotiation

Supporting group decision-making is a complex process, especially when decision-makers have no opportunity to gather at the same place and at the same time. Besides that, finding solutions may be difficult in case representing agents are not able to understand the process and support the decision-maker accordingly. Here we propose a model and an algorithm that will allow the agent to analyse tendencies. This way we intend that agents can achieve decisions with more quality and with higher levels of consensus. Our model allows the agent to redefine his objectives to maximize both his and group satisfaction. Our model proved that agents that use it will obtain higher average levels of consensus and satisfaction. Besides that, agents using this model will obtain those higher levels of consensus and satisfaction in most of the times compared to agents that do not use it.This work has been supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foun-dation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012 and by Project MANTIS - Cyber Physical System Based Proactive Collaborative Maintenance (ECSEL JU Grant nr. 662189).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A general template to configure multi-criteria problems in Ubiquitous GDSS

The study of multi-criteria problems adapted to the context of Ubiquitous Group Decision Support Systems (UbiGDSS) is covered in the literature through very different perspectives and interests. There are scientific studies related to the multi-criteria problems that lie across argumentation-based negotiation, multi-agent systems, dialogues, etc. However, to perform most of these studies, a high amount of information is required. The usage of so much data or information that is difficult to collect or configure can bring good results in theoretical scenarios but can be impossible to use in the real world. In order to overcome these issues, we present in this paper a general template to configure multi-criteria problems adapted for the contexts of UbiGDSS that intends to be easy and fast to configure, appellative, intuitive, permits to collect a lot of data and helps the decision-maker transmitting his beliefs and opinions to the system. Our proposal includes three sections: Problem Data, Personal Configuration and Problem Configuration. We have developed a prototype with our template with the purpose to simulate the configuration of a multi-criteria problem. We invited real decision-makers to use our prototype in a simulated scenario and asked to them to fulfil a survey in the end in order to study our hypotheses. Our general template achieved good results and proved to be very perceptible and fast to configure.This work is part-funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEISII/1386/2012) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) with the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio