Partnership Funding in flood risk management: multi-level stakeholder engagement - a question of roles and power

The paper examines the new flood risk policy discussion in England and Wales. The summer floods in England in 2007 caused large damages to the environment, economy and humanity. Following this key flood event, the Government has started to redefine the national flood and coastal risk management policy in England and Wales. The key issue in the new policy agenda is to encourage the responsibilities of local authorities and reduce the central role of flood risk management. This decentralisation in flood risk management has a series of consequences in the development of new governance structures. The main reason for this shift from central to local level is the belief that local authorities deal with public administration tasks in a more efficient way. Nevertheless, the main problem is the gap between the delegated tasks and the lack of transfer of resources, especially the issue concerning funding is still unclear and unresolved. This constraint will go with fiscal and administration cuts. The consequences will be (1) ‘hollowing out’ of the Government with the downscaling of the responsibility towards local actors and (2) without proportional transfer of resources to local authorities they will not be able to deal with new tasks. Therefore, in practice there are many limitations, barriers and concerns with the new policy direction

Partnership funding in flood risk management: new localism debate and policy in England

The new flood risk policy discussion in England has started to redefine national policy regarding flood and coastal risk management. The key issue in the new policy agenda is to encourage the responsibilities of local authorities in flood risk management, which involve defining local strategies to manage local risks. This downscaling process in flood risk management has a series of consequences in the development of new governance structures and institutions as well as new working relations and intervention strategies. Nevertheless, the main problem is the gap between the downscaling of responsibility and the transfer of resources; in particular the question concerning funding and social capacity. In this way, the focus of policy discussion refers to two main aspects: (a) the equitable sharing of risk-burdens between public authorities, private companies and individuals and (b) how to encourage government agencies and nongovernment agents to take over responsibility for certain tasks from central government. The aim of this paper is to discuss the new funding regime for English flood risk management policy under the new policy paradigm

Approximate Degree, Secret Sharing, and Concentration Phenomena

The epsilon-approximate degree deg~_epsilon(f) of a Boolean function f is the least degree of a real-valued polynomial that approximates f pointwise to within epsilon. A sound and complete certificate for approximate degree being at least k is a pair of probability distributions, also known as a dual polynomial, that are perfectly k-wise indistinguishable, but are distinguishable by f with advantage 1 - epsilon. Our contributions are: - We give a simple, explicit new construction of a dual polynomial for the AND function on n bits, certifying that its epsilon-approximate degree is Omega (sqrt{n log 1/epsilon}). This construction is the first to extend to the notion of weighted degree, and yields the first explicit certificate that the 1/3-approximate degree of any (possibly unbalanced) read-once DNF is Omega(sqrt{n}). It draws a novel connection between the approximate degree of AND and anti-concentration of the Binomial distribution. - We show that any pair of symmetric distributions on n-bit strings that are perfectly k-wise indistinguishable are also statistically K-wise indistinguishable with at most K^{3/2} * exp (-Omega (k^2/K)) error for all k < K <= n/64. This bound is essentially tight, and implies that any symmetric function f is a reconstruction function with constant advantage for a ramp secret sharing scheme that is secure against size-K coalitions with statistical error K^{3/2} * exp (-Omega (deg~_{1/3}(f)^2/K)) for all values of K up to n/64 simultaneously. Previous secret sharing schemes required that K be determined in advance, and only worked for f=AND. Our analysis draws another new connection between approximate degree and concentration phenomena. As a corollary of this result, we show that for any d deg~_{1/3}(f). These upper and lower bounds were also previously only known in the case f=AND

Partnership approaches in flood risk management: lessons from the Eastern Alps

In the past decades flood risk management has taken a paradigm shift away from a structural, securitybased approach towards more an integrated, risk-based approach. While the ‘traditional’ approach was informed by afirm belief in controlling rivers via engineering solutions, flood risk management today increasingly acknowledgesthe importance of providing ‘more space for the rivers’. The new policy agenda has been implemented to enhance the development of catchment-wide management plans in flood risk management and at the same time to reduce the controlling role of central national governments. The aim of the paper is to examine the new role of these local authorities and organisations in flood risk management as well as how the nature of partnerships are established and operate, focusing especially on the main barriers and challenges. The current goal of this partnership approach lies with the conservation of regionally important retention areas for protective measures on an inter-local level. An important issue is that of compensation measures between upstream and downstream communities, which at present is causing many conflicts. We conclude that although a catchment-wide management approach may be seen as an ‘optimal’ solution for flood risk management. However, in practice there are many limitations and barriers in establishing these collaborations and making them effective

Evolving interregional co-operation in flood risk management: distances and types of partnership approaches in Austria

Flood risk management and policy in Europe are changing, so the role of local and catchment-wide flood risk management plans are now key contemporary issues in flood policy. A new policy agenda is to enhance inter-local solutions instead of local flood alleviation schemes. This paper analyses the new role of those local authorities and stakeholders in flood risk management as well as how the nature of the partnerships are established and operate, focusing especially on the main barriers and challenges. This paper examines catchment-based flood risk management in Austria. Catchment-based flood risk management was analysed in three different Austrian regions (Aist in Upper Austria, Triesting-Tal in Lower Austria and Ill-Walgau in Vorarlberg). The current functions of a partnership approach in flood risk prevention lie within the selection of sites for conservation of regionally important retention areas, harmonising spatial planning instruments and awareness-raising for protective measures on an inter-local level. The empirical results are currently characterized by a lack of sufficient co-operation between the members as well as with the regional authorities. The three case studies show different backgrounds and developments. The results show that the inter-local co-operation process is in no cases fully achieved. Some of the case studies show a higher integration in one field than others

Light-bulb moments in professional discourse during study abroad exchanges

Systemic Functional Linguistics is about using language to negotiate meaning. One of the key meaning negotiation situations for language learners in schools and colleges is the experience of exchange visits to the countries where the language is spoken. Bound up with this is the students‟ abilities to deal with intercultural communication and cultural differences. This paper synthesises the key findings of a small-scale case study investigating a one-week school exchange between pupils from Germany and Italy and their experience of „light-bulb moments‟. Light-bulb moments are a positive, ethically more appropriate and target group-oriented re-conceptualisation of critical incidents, which focuses on recognition and understanding through encountering, understanding and managing difference. Thus, through an emic approach, this study explores the kind of light-bulb moments pupils experience during their stay abroad, how they influence pupils‟ professional discourse exchanges and their Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and what strategies pupils employ to deal with these situations. Qualitative data are gathered from all three stages of the study abroad experience. These show that light-bulb moments and the discourse strategies employed contribute to ICC in terms of inter/intra-linguistic, inter/intra-social or inter/intra-cultural aspects and open up opportunities for reflection and raising awareness. To deal with these situations, pupils develop „light- bulb moment strategies‟, which tend to be non-verbal (more intra- than interpersonal) rather than verbal. Comparing the findings of light-bulb moments in this study with previous research on critical incidents provides evidence to reimagine the concept of „critical incidents‟ and introduce the concept of „light-bulb moments‟ for school exchanges instead. The same understandings can also be adapted to apply to business and professional discourse analysis of language use, content and lexis

Improving introspection to inform free will regarding the choice by healthy individuals to use or not use cognitive enhancing drugs

A commentary in Nature entitled "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy" (Greely et al 2008 Nature 456: 702–705) offers an opportunity to move toward a humane societal appreciation of mind-altering drugs. Using cognitive enhancing drugs as an exemplar, this article presents a series of hypotheses concerning how an individual might learn optimal use. The essence of the proposal is that individuals can cultivate sensitivity to the effects of ever-smaller amounts of psychoactive drugs thereby making harm less likely and benign effects more probable. Four interrelated hypotheses are presented and briefly discussed. 1. Humans can learn to discriminate ever-smaller doses of at least some mind-altering drugs; a learning program can be designed or discovered that will have this outcome. 2. The skill to discriminate drugs and dose can be generalized, i.e. if learned with one drug a second one is easier and so on. 3. Cultivating this skill/knack would be beneficial in leading to choices informed by a more accurate sense of mind-body interactions. 4. From a philosophical point of view learning the effects of ever-smaller doses of psychoactive agents offers a novel path into and to transcend the objective/subjective barrier and the mind/body problem

Can a sociolinguistic perspective of Second Language Acquisition solve 'the longstanding human curiosity' of learning languages?

The present paper looks into SLA research which has been overwhelmed with multitude of competing theories, thus making it plausible that none of them alone can explain the complex issue to a satisfying extent. Following the search for complementarity, this study seeks to show how a sociolinguistic approach contributes to the understanding of SLA, by pointing to gains as well as to limitations of applying only such an approach. Responding to the appeal for an enhancement of using sociolinguistic as well as socio- cognitive theories, this paper pursues this endeavour by critically analysing a sociolinguistic approach and zooming in on research on two articles – by Soltani (2018) and Anderson (2017) – about study abroad in Anglophone countries. The author argues that although the two studies are focused on a specific group of learners in specific circumstances and might not have contributed to an improvement in a narrow view of SLA, they have highlighted the need to put cognitive theories into a socialisation perspective and to recognise that similar issues might arise when other target groups such as EFL secondary school students go abroad on a school exchange and are confronted with socialisation into family, school or peers. The paper concludes that if sociolinguistic approaches seek a holistic account of the complexities of second language learning, they should adapt to new developments and collaborate with cognitive theories