Catching the future : Applying Bayesian belief networks to exploratory scenario storylines to assess long‐term changes in Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras, Clupeidae) and salmon (Salmo salar, Salmonidae) fisheries

Fisheries management aims to ensure that the fishing activities are environmentally sustainable in the long term, while also achieving the economic, social and food security related management objectives. To facilitate this, both the ecological and human dimensions of sustainability need to be included in fisheries assessment. In addition, assessing long-term sustainability calls for taking into account plausible changes in the surrounding societal conditions that shape the characteristics of the fisheries governance system, as well as the ecological conditions. The paper uses a combination of qualitative exploratory scenario storylines (ESS) and Bayesian belief networks (BBN) to integrate the environmental, economic, social and food security dimensions in an interdisciplinary assessment of the future sustainability of Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras, Clupeidae) and salmon (Salmo salar, Salmonidae) fisheries. First, four alternative ESS were created based on plausible changes in societal drivers. The ESS were then formulated into a BBN to (a) visualize the assumed causalities, and (b) examine quantitatively how changes in the societal drivers affect the social-ecological fisheries system and ultimately the fisheries management objectives. This type of probabilistic scenario synthesis can help in thinking qualitative scenarios in a quantitative way. Moreover, it can increase understanding on the causal links between societal driving forces and the complex fisheries system and on how the management objectives can be achieved, thereby providing valuable information for strategic decision-making under uncertainty.Peer reviewe

Postmodernism and Networks of Cyberterrorists

This article exemplifies the very notion that cyberterrorist networks are postmodern types of networks, where no leadership is needed, no center exists, and where communication is ultra-flexible and quasi-limitless. As opposed to conventional terrorist organizations, with their hierarchical structures that are vertically designed, cyberterrorist organizations are actually not organizations. They do not exhibit an intrinsically group or design nature. Rather, they are volatile and unexpected, a very postmodern attribute. The postmodern concept of hyperreal is described in this analysis. Hyperreal suggests a reality that supersedes the world. As such, cyberspace is the new public sphere and it is postmodern; it treasures the concept of the public while disengaging it from any particular time or place. As a result, the postmodern map of cyberspace becomes the totality itself, superseding the world. Hyperreal also implies that cyberspace enables the self to become fluid, a flow of identity that converges under the sign of the virtual environment. As such, this article purports itself to define postmodernism and to discuss its application to cyberspace with respect to (1) Baudrillard\u27s hyperreal/real continuum, (2) the fragmentation, fluidity, and decentralization of the self, (3) postmodernism and cyberterrorism, (4) the organizational challenges faced by cybersecurity and law enforcement agents, and (5) the absence of leadership in cyberterrorist networks