Participation in environmental decision-making: reflecting on planning and community benefits for major wind farms

The notion of public participation in environmental decision-making remains ambiguous and unsettled. This article critically reflects on the conceptual nature of participation, focusing on wind energy developments. It points to an overlooked, but conceptually significant, distinction between models of engagement directed to ‘participation’ and those aimed at ‘public acceptance’. By simply offering a shadow of participation, models of public acceptance are problematic and make the normative and substantive justification of the decision inevitably more fragile. Analysing two major wind projects in England and Wales and their underlying legal and policy framework, the article explores the role of mitigation measures and the under-researched potential for developer-led community benefits to provide participatory space. In the light of logic of acceptance, it suggests that the participatory orientation of mitigation measures within planning law should be acknowledged and strengthened, while the potential for community benefits to constitute alternative fora for community participation should be explored

SEGCloud: Semantic Segmentation of 3D Point Clouds

3D semantic scene labeling is fundamental to agents operating in the real world. In particular, labeling raw 3D point sets from sensors provides fine-grained semantics. Recent works leverage the capabilities of Neural Networks (NNs), but are limited to coarse voxel predictions and do not explicitly enforce global consistency. We present SEGCloud, an end-to-end framework to obtain 3D point-level segmentation that combines the advantages of NNs, trilinear interpolation(TI) and fully connected Conditional Random Fields (FC-CRF). Coarse voxel predictions from a 3D Fully Convolutional NN are transferred back to the raw 3D points via trilinear interpolation. Then the FC-CRF enforces global consistency and provides fine-grained semantics on the points. We implement the latter as a differentiable Recurrent NN to allow joint optimization. We evaluate the framework on two indoor and two outdoor 3D datasets (NYU V2, S3DIS, KITTI, Semantic3D.net), and show performance comparable or superior to the state-of-the-art on all datasets.Comment: Accepted as a spotlight at the International Conference of 3D Vision (3DV 2017

Participation in a time of climate crisis

The climate crisis puts real pressure on legal guarantees of public participation in decision making. This pressure comes from a number of directions, but we are particularly concerned with the technocratic erosion of routines of participation, in a turn to expertise rather than democracy for legitimate decision making. At the same time, populists resist the constraints imposed on their power by legal rights of participation. We argue, however, that the climate crisis, while putting pressure on participation, also reinforces its necessity, and the limitations of technocratic decision making. Politics is unavoidable, even and especially in a crisis. Law, or its silence, contributes to the context, the place, and the meaning of participation, and we study its strangely underexplored role in shaping participation on the ground

The community as a resource to educate primary school children

The global financial crisis, increase in migration from troubled zones and the resulting more diverse multicultural and multilingual social settings across Europe have led to greater societal demands. As countries combat financial deficits and cut public spending, support to those in need decreases. Social inclusion has become one of governments’ crucial societal challenges. Those hit hardest by the current crisis are the most vulnerable, particularly children and youths, who experience an increase in unemployment and decrease in general well-being and emotional health across all ages 1. Schools, together with the community, can work together to help tackle this challenge without additional financial burden. This paper presents research results from the transnational study INCLUD-ED funded within the FP6 programme of the European Commission. This project focuses on how educational practices involving the community can promote social cohesion without additional costs. Six schools in five European countries with a successful track record of transforming children’s academic performance were researched through a longitudinal study over a period of four years. A number of positive transformative approaches leading to better academic performance, positive attitudes and tolerance amongst schoolchildren have been identified. Different dimensions of community involvement: family education; participation in decision-making; participation in school and curriculum and evaluation; as well as participation in the classroom have all had a significant educational impact. The research has also shown that community involvement led to benefits beyond the school walls with impact on improved housing, employment, health, social and political participation within the neighbouring communities.peer-reviewe

Educating practices at primary school level and new forms of positive welfare for families

The research reported here is part of the FP6 Integrated Project INCLUD-ED funded by the European Commission.The global financial crisis across Europe has created great societal demands. Social inclusion has become one of the main challenges of the millennium with those hit hardest being the most vulnerable people. It is at such times that it becomes crucial to provide positive welfare. This article presents research results from a transnational study, INCLUD-ED, an FP6 project of the European Commission, which focuses on educational practices promoting social cohesion as a form of positive welfare. The research focuses on six successful schools in five countries that have demonstrated that they can transform children’s academic performance as well as have an impact on the community itself. A number of positive transformative approaches beyond better academic performance included a spill over of benefits to the schools’ neighbouring communities and an increase in social cohesion and community in health, housing, employment and social and political participation was also identified.peer-reviewe

Science education in Europe : pedagogical challenges

In 2007, the Rocard report highlighted concerns with the type of science education presented in European classrooms. Despite research on consrtructivism research teaching science remained mainly through a ‘transmission approach’ whereby the teacher passed on all the scientific knowledge that students had to then assimilate. The result was a combination of active teachers and passive students. Furthermore, whereas science became more poignant in everyday life and science related careers increased, students’ interest and specialization in the field decreased drastically, creating a significant disparity between supply and demand. In this perspective, research and science educators have acknowledged the need for a change in both the quality and methodology of teaching science wherein students are given the opportunity to explore and engage in science and in doing so, to be the drivers of their own learning. The European Commission has taken on the responsibility to support professors and academics working in this field, to adopt this inquiry based learning approach (IBSE) by financing projects such as PRI-SCI-NET, which focuses on equipping educators, particularly teachers, with the tools, skills, networking and collaboration opportunities to further enhance their repertoire. This paper focuses on the methodology and objectives of PRI-SCI-NET in addressing science education at primary level.peer-reviewe

Pri-Sci-Net - a project promoting inquiry-based learning in primary science : experiences of young children inquiring

The project Pri-Sci-Net has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007 /13) under grant agreement No.266647. Any opinion expressed is solely of the authors and does not reflect that held by the European Commission.One of the challenges of Science Education in the 21st century is that of engaging learners in meaningful learning. Learning science from books does not equip them with the skills and competences necessary to become scientists. The European Commission has recognized this challenge and advocated inquiry-based learning as the main pedagogy to be adopted for teaching science. This paper presents the work in progress of the FP7 project Pri-Sci-Net which aims to promote inquirybased learning approaches at primary level of education with children from age 3-11 years across Europe. There needs to be a shared understanding among teachers of inquiry with reference to young children, and consequently identifying the required pedagogical skills. In addition, teachers needresources which they can gain through sharing their experiences with other teachers. The paper puts forward a vision for inquiry-based learning, highlights the need for the training teachers, and explores the potential of a virtual platform which can promote CPD for the use of IBSE among teachers.peer-reviewe

Public participation and appeal rights in decision-making on wind energy infrastructure: a comparative analysis of the Danish and English legal framework

This article is concerned with public participation and its linkages with appeal rights in planning decisions for major onshore wind farms in England and Denmark. We are particularly interested in how the legal framework shapes the scope of participation and appeals and, more specifically, whether a third party right to appeal (TPRA) has a participatory potential beyond the initial decision-making process. Despite structural differences, our analysis shows that in both countries the legal frameworks limit the participatory potential of administrative appeals, either through a restricted third party access to appeal mechanisms or through a restricted scope of review in appeals. Even where access is unrestricted, TPRA can hardly constitute an extension of participation, unless the scope for review is equally extended. Thus, reliance on TPRA as a participatory tool would require changes to the legal framework in both jurisdictions

Cost-minimization analysis to support the HTA of Radiofrequency Echographic Multi Spectrometry (REMS) in the diagnosis of osteoporosis

This study aims at evaluating the costs of REMS vs. the conventional ionizing technology (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, DXA) for the diagnosis of osteoporosis from the perspective of the Italian National Health Service (NHS) using a cost-minimization analysis (CMA)

what type of clinical evidence is needed to assess medical devices

The objective of this mini-review is to discuss the role of real-world studies as a source of clinical evidence when experimental studies, such as randomised controlled trials (RCTs), are not available. Waiting for RCT evidence when the technology is diffusing could be anti-economical, inefficient from the policy perspective and methodologically questionable.We explain how real-world studies could provide relevant evidence to decision makers. Matching techniques are discussed as a viable solution for bias reduction.We describe a case study concerning a cost-effectiveness analysis based on real-world data of a technology already in use: Mitraclip combined with medical therapy versus medical therapy alone in patients with moderate-to-severe mitral regurgitation. The CEA has encountered the scepticism of most reviewers, due not to the statistical methodology but to the fact that the study was observational and not experimental. Editors and reviewers converged in considering real-world economic evaluations premature in the absence of a RCT, even if in the meantime the technology had been implanted >30 000 times. We believe there is a need to acknowledge the importance of real-world studies, and engage the scientific community in the promotion and use of clinical evidence produced through observational studies