Status Quo Analysis of the Flathead River Conflict

Status quo analysis algorithms developed within the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution are applied to an international river basin conflict involving the United States and Canada to assess the likeliness of various compromise resolutions. The conflict arose because the state of Montana feared that further expansion of the Sage Creek Coal Company facilities in Canada would pollute the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia into Montana. Significant insights not generally available from a static stability analysis are obtained about potential resolutions of the conflict under study and about how decision makers’ interactions may direct the conflict to distinct resolutions. Analyses also show how political considerations may affect a particular decision maker’s choice, thereby influencing the evolution of the conflict

Water Supply Planning under Interdependence of Actions: Theory and Application

An ongoing water supply planning problem in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is studied to select the best water supply combination, within a multiple-objective framework, when actions are interdependent. The interdependencies in the problem are described and shown to be essential features. The problem is formulated as a multiple-criteria integer program with interdependent actions. Because of the large number of potential actions and the nonconvexity of the decision space, it is quite difficult to find nondominated subsets of actions. Instead, a modified goal programming technique is suggested to identify promising subsets. The appropriateness of this technique is explained, and the lessons learned in applying it to the Waterloo water supply planning problem are described

Identifying Potential Conflict in Land-Use Planning Using a Values-Centered E-Participation Tool: A Canadian Case Study in Aggregate Mining

An innovative e-participation tool is used to facilitate the articulation of value-laden assumptions, and to identify key points of likely conflict in an aggregate mining controversy in Ontario, Canada. The expert model developed using ‘Public to Public Decision Support System (P2P-DSS) reflects a perspective that differs significantly from public perceptions in terms of the social values that influence rejection of a permit amendment application. By facilitating two-way communication about values assumptions P2P-DSS generates a novel dataset that can support pro-active conflict management and contribute to a shared understanding between government decision-makers and public citizens

Développements récents dans la modélisation de la persistance à long terme

Afin de modéliser efficacement la persistance dans les séries chronologiques rencontrées en hydrologie, des développements récents autour du modèle fractionnaire auto-régressif à moyenne mobile (FARMA) (fractional autoregressive-moving average model) sont présentés. On s'intéresse particulièrement ici à de nouvelles procédures permettant d'estimer les paramètres du modèle FARMA d'une manière efficace au point de vue calcul. Pour obtenir les distributions d'échantillons des estimateurs des paramètres à partir de petits échantillons, une technique faisant appel au bootstrap peut être utilisée. Des applications pratiques à des séries de débits en rivière, de précipitations et de températures, montrent l'utilité des modèles FARMA.In order to model effectively persistence in hydrologic tune series, recent developments in fractional autoregressive-moving average (FARMA) models are presented. A time series possesses persistence or long memory if it has an autocorrelation structure that attenuates slowly to zero with increasing lags. Based on the controversy surrounding the Hurst phenomenon, some hydrologists claim that it is important to employ stochastic models which have the ability to model long memory when it is present in a given time series. Fractional Gaussian noise models and approximations thereof were developed within the field of hydrology in order to be able to model long memory. However, a particularly flexible set of models having the capability to describe long memory is the FARMA family of models, which constitutes a direct generalization of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models.In particular, like an ARIMA model, a FARMA model contains autoregressive and moving average parameters. Whereas the differencing operator d is restricted to be zero or take on positive integer values in an ARIMA model, the parameter d in a FARMA model can have real values and is estimated along with the other model parameters. For a specified range of values for the d parameter, a FARMA model has long memory. Besides reviewing the background and main theoretical properties of FARMA models, simulation and forecasting techniques are presented. Additionally, procedures for estimating the parameters of a FARMA model are given and a bootstrapping technique is described to obtain the small sample distributions of the estimated parameters.To explain how to apply FARMA models in practice and demonstrate their usefulness, they are fitted to riverflow, precipitation and temperature time series

Status quo analysis of the Flathead River conflict. Water Resources Research

Status quo analysis algorithms developed within the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution are applied to an international river basin conflict involving the United States and Canada to assess the likeliness of various compromise resolutions. The conflict arose because the state of Montana feared that further expansion of the Sage Creek Coal Company facilities in Canada would pollute the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia to Montana. Significant insights not generally available from a static stability analysis are obtained about potential resolutions of the conflict under study and about how decision makers’ interactions may direct the conflict to distinct resolutions. Analyses also show how political considerations may affect a particular decision maker’s choice, thereby influencing the evolution of the conflict

The dark core and leaders : leaders self-reported personality and workplace behaviours

1 online resource (88 unnumbered pages) : chartsIncludes abstract and appendices.Includes bibliographical references (unnumbered pages 47-67).Using a recently developed measure of the Dark Core at Work (DCW) I had two objectives in my research. First, based on a sample of 302 leaders, I aimed to establish a relationship between leaders’ scores on the DCW scale and organizationally relevant outcomes (e.g., toxic leadership). Second, I assessed whether the DCW scale provided incremental prediction in organizationally relevant outcomes compared to an established measure of the Dark Tetrad at Work (DTW) and the H-H scale of the HEXACO. I found that the DCW was related to all organizational outcomes except for organizational citizenship. Further, the DCW accounted for incremental variance above and beyond the H-H subscale and the DTW scales for all outcomes except for organization oriented organizational citizenship behaviours. Establishing a context specific measure of the Dark Core provides researchers of workplace behaviour with a measure to assess the Dark Core at work

An integrated multiple criteria preference ranking approach to the Canadian west coast port congestion conflict

An integrative conflict analysis approach, incorporating an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based preference ranking method into the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR), is employed to investigate the Canadian west coast port congestion dispute. The Canadian west coast has historically been an important gateway connecting North America to Asia thanks to its specific geographical and strategic location. Despite successful operations and maintenance of the port facilities to handle international trade during the past few decades, the west coast is now facing increasing congestion problems, resulting in significant delays in transporting goods from the west coast to other parts of Canada and the USA. The strategic analyses carried out in this research suggest potential resolutions in which Canada would expand port facilities at various locations, encouraging traders to continue choosing the Canadian west coast as one of their trade gateways to North America

A matrix-based approach to searching colored paths in a weighted colored multidigraph

An algebraic approach to finding all edge-weighted-colored paths within a weighted colored multidigraph is developed. Generally, the adjacency matrix represents a simple digraph and determines all paths between any two vertices, and is not readily extendable to colored multidigraphs. To bridge the gap, a conversion function is proposed to transform the original problem of searching edge-colored paths in a colored multidigraph to a standard problem of finding paths in a simple digraph. Moreover, edge weights can be used to represent some preference attribute. Its potentially wide realm of applicability is illustrated by a case study: status quo analysis in the graph model for conflict resolution. The explicit matrix function is more convenient than other graphical representations for computer implementation and for adapting to other applications. Additionally, the algebraic approach reveals the relationship between a colored multidigraph and a simple digraph, thereby providing new insights into algebraic graph theory

Generalized metarationalities in the graph model for conflict resolution

AbstractA metarational tree is defined within the graph model for conflict resolution paradigm, providing a general framework within which rational behavior in models with two decision makers (DMs) can be described more comprehensively. A new definition of stability for a DM that depends on the total number, h, of moves and counter-moves allowed is proposed. Moreover, the metarational tree can be refined so that all moves must be unilateral improvements, resulting in a new set of stability definitions for each level of the tree. Relationships among stabilities at various levels of the basic and refined trees are explored, and connections are established to existing stability definitions including Nash stability, general metarationality, symmetric metarationality, sequential and limited-move stability, and policy equilibria