Strengthening impact assessment: a call for integration and focus

We suggest that the impact assessment community has lost its way based on our observation that impact assessment is under attack because of a perceived lack of efficiency. Specifically, we contend that the proliferation of different impact assessment types creates separate silos of expertise and feeds arguments for not only a lack of efficiency but also a lack of effectiveness of the process through excessive specialisation and a lack of interdisciplinary practice. We propose that the solution is a return to the basics of impact assessment with a call for increased integration around the goal of sustainable development and focus through better scoping. We rehearse and rebut counter arguments covering silo-based expertise, advocacy, democracy, sustainability understanding and communication. We call on the impact assessment community to rise to the challenge of increasing integration and focus, and to engage in the debate about the means of strengthening impact assessment

Exploitation in Affect Detection in Open-ended Improvisational Text

We report progress on adding affectdetection to a program for virtual dramatic improvisation, monitored by a human director. We have developed an affect-detection module to control an automated virtual actor and to contribute to the automation of directorial functions. The work also involves basic research into how affect is conveyed through metaphor. The project contributes to the application of sentiment and subjectivity analysis to the creation of emotionally believable synthetic agents for interactive narrative environments.

Developments in Affect Detection in Edrama

We report work 1 in progress on adding affect-detection to an existing program for virtual dramatic improvisation, monitored by a human director. To partially automate the directors ’ functions, we have partially implemented the detection of emotions, etc. in users ’ text input, by means of pattern-matching, robust parsing and some semantic analysis. The work also involves basic research into how affect is conveyed by metaphor.

Domain-transcending mappings in a system for metaphorical reasoning

We illustrate how the use of metaphorical views for reasoning with metaphor requires the mapping of information such as event shape, event rate and mental/emotional states from the source domain to the target domain. Such mappings are domain-independent and can be implemented by means of rules we call View Neutral Mapping Adjuncts (VNMAs). We give a list of the main VNMAs that appear to be required, and show how they can be incorporated into a pre-existing system (ATT-Meta) for metaphorical reasoning.