Ubiquitous and smart system approaches to infrastructure planning : learnings from Korea, Japan and Hong Kong

The robust economic growth across South East Asia and the significant advances in nano-technologies in the past two decades have resulted in the creation of intelligent urban infrastructures. Cities like Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong have been competing against each other to develop the first ‘ubiquitous city’, a strategic global node of science and technology that provides all municipal services for residents and visitors via ubiquitous infrastructures. This chapter scrutinises the development of ubiquitous and smart infrastructure in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. These cases provide invaluable learnings for policy-makers and urban and infrastructure planners when considering adopting these systems approaches in their cities.

Characterising creativity : a holistic methodology for the assessment of creative works

This paper reports on the early stages of a design experiment in educational assessment that challenges the dichotomous legacy evident in many assessment activities. Combining social networking technologies with the sociology of education the paper proposes that assessment activities are best understood as a negotiable field of exchange. In this design experiment students, peers and experts engage in explicit, "front-end" assessment (Wyatt-Smith, 2008) to translate holistic judgments into institutional, and potentiality economic capital without adhering to long lists of pre-set criteria. This approach invites participants to use social networking technologies to judge creative works using scatter graphs, keywords and tag clouds. In doing so assessors will refine their evaluative expertise and negotiate the characteristics of creative works from which criteria will emerge (Sadler, 2008). The real-time advantages of web-based technologies will aggregate, externalise and democratise this transparent method of assessment for most, if not all, creative works that can be represented in a digital format.

Dancing with nature : rhythm and harmony in extreme sport participation

Research on extreme sports has downplayed the importance of the athletes' connection to the natural world. This neglect stems, in part, from the assumption that these activities derive their meaning primarily from risk. The authors' long-term research reveals that the interplay between adventure athletes and the natural world is, in fact, crucial for many participants. This study used hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis of first-hand accounts of these sports and interviews with 15 veteran participants. These included BASE jumpers, big-wave surfers, extreme skiers, waterfall kayakers, extreme mountaineers and solo rope-free climbers. Participants spoke extensively about developing a deep relationship with the natural world akin to an intimate 'dance' between actively engaged partners. Our experience-based analysis has found that extreme sports aficionados do not simply view the natural world as a commodity, a stage for risk taking, or vehicle for self-gratification. On the contrary, for veteran adventure athletes the natural world acts as a facilitator to a deeper, more positive understanding of self and its place in the environment. For some, nature was described as omnipresent and ubiquitous, and a source of innate power and personal meaning. The authors explore how these findings may augment the delivery of more 'ecocentric' programmes in the outdoor adventure field.

Public awareness of “green” and “energy efficient” residential property : an empirical survey based on data from New Zealand

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the buyer awareness and acceptance of environmental and energy efficiency measures in the New Zealand residential property markets. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of consumer behaviour in the residential property market in relation to green housing issues ---------- Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an extensive survey of Christchurch real estate offices and was designed to gather data on the factors that were considered important by buyers in the residential property market. The survey was designed to allow these factors to be analysed on a socio-economic basis and to compare buyer behaviour based on property values. ---------- Findings – The results show that regardless of income levels, buyers still consider that the most important factor in the house purchase decision is the location of the property and price. Although the awareness of green housing issues and energy efficiency in housing is growing in the residential property market, it is only a major consideration for young and older buyers in the high income brackets and is only of some importance for all other buyer sectors of the residential property market. Many of the voluntary measures introduced by Governments to improve the energy efficiency of residential housing are still not considered important by buyers, indicating that a more mandatory approach may have to be undertaken to improve energy efficiency in the established housing market, as these measures are not valued by the buyer. ---------- Originality/value – The paper confirms the variations in real estate buyer behaviour across the full range of residential property markets and the acceptance and awareness of green housing issues and measures. These results would be applicable to most established and transparent residential property markets.

Expert elicitation and its interface with technology : a review with a view to designing Elicitator

Expert knowledge is valuable in many modelling endeavours, particularly where data is not extensive or sufficiently robust. In Bayesian statistics, expert opinion may be formulated as informative priors, to provide an honest reflection of the current state of knowledge, before updating this with new information. Technology is increasingly being exploited to help support the process of eliciting such information. This paper reviews the benefits that have been gained from utilizing technology in this way. These benefits can be structured within a six-step elicitation design framework proposed recently (Low Choy et al., 2009). We assume that the purpose of elicitation is to formulate a Bayesian statistical prior, either to provide a standalone expert-defined model, or for updating new data within a Bayesian analysis. We also assume that the model has been pre-specified before selecting the software. In this case, technology has the most to offer to: targeting what experts know (E2), eliciting and encoding expert opinions (E4), whilst enhancing accuracy (E5), and providing an effective and efficient protocol (E6). Benefits include: -providing an environment with familiar nuances (to make the expert comfortable) where experts can explore their knowledge from various perspectives (E2); -automating tedious or repetitive tasks, thereby minimizing calculation errors, as well as encouraging interaction between elicitors and experts (E5); -cognitive gains by educating users, enabling instant feedback (E2, E4-E5), and providing alternative methods of communicating assessments and feedback information, since experts think and learn differently; and -ensuring a repeatable and transparent protocol is used (E6).

Improving accuracy and intelligibility of decisions

Intelligible and accurate risk-based decision-making requires a complex balance of information from different sources, appropriate statistical analysis of this information and consequent intelligent inference and decisions made on the basis of these analyses. Importantly, this requires an explicit acknowledgement of uncertainty in the inputs and outputs of the statistical model. The aim of this paper is to progress a discussion of these issues in the context of several motivating problems related to the wider scope of agricultural production. These problems include biosecurity surveillance design, pest incursion, environmental monitoring and import risk assessment. The information to be integrated includes observational and experimental data, remotely sensed data and expert information. We describe our efforts in addressing these problems using Bayesian models and Bayesian networks. These approaches provide a coherent and transparent framework for modelling complex systems, combining the different information sources, and allowing for uncertainty in inputs and outputs. While the theory underlying Bayesian modelling has a long and well established history, its application is only now becoming more possible for complex problems, due to increased availability of methodological and computational tools. Of course, there are still hurdles and constraints, which we also address through sharing our endeavours and experiences.

Prioritizing land and sea conservation investments to protect coral reefs

Background: Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems.----- ----- Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land-and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria.----- ----- Conclusions/Significance: Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.

Responsibility to Protect and Sovereignty

The responsibility to protect ('R2P') principle articulates the obligations of the international community to prevent conflict occurring, to intervene in conflicts, and to assist in rebuilding after conflicts. The doctrine is about protecting civilians in armed conflicts from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. This book examines interventions in East Timor, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Kosovo. The chapters explore and question UN debates with respect to the doctrine both before and after its adoption in 2005; contrasting state attitudes to international military intervention; and what takes place after intervention. It also discusses the ability of the Security Council to access reliable information and credible and transparent processes to enable it to make a determination on the occurrence of atrocities in a Member State. Questioning whether there is a need to find a closer operational link between the responsibilities to prevent and react and a normative link between R2P and principles of international law, the contributions examine the effectiveness of the framework of R2P for international decision-making in response to mass atrocity crimes and ask how an international system to deal with threats and mass atrocities can be developed in the absence of a central authority. This book will be valuable to those interested in international law, human rights, and security, peace and conflict studies

Public, private, or hybrid? What the upstream oil and gas industry can learn from other sectors about ‘the cloud’

Despite the compelling case for moving towards cloud computing, the upstream oil & gas industry faces several technical challenges—most notably, a pronounced emphasis on data security, a reliance on extremely large data sets, and significant legacy investments in information technology (IT) infrastructure—that make a full migration to the public cloud difficult at present. Private and hybrid cloud solutions have consequently emerged within the industry to yield as much benefit from cloud-based technologies as possible while working within these constraints. This paper argues, however, that the move to private and hybrid clouds will very likely prove only to be a temporary stepping stone in the industry’s technological evolution. By presenting evidence from other market sectors that have faced similar challenges in their journey to the cloud, we propose that enabling technologies and conditions will probably fall into place in a way that makes the public cloud a far more attractive option for the upstream oil & gas industry in the years ahead. The paper concludes with a discussion about the implications of this projected shift towards the public cloud, and calls for more of the industry’s services to be offered through cloud-based “apps.”

Competency and capacity : the legal and medical interface

Balancing the competing interests of autonomy and protection of individuals is an escalating challenge confronting an ageing Australian society. Legal and medical professionals are increasingly being asked to determine whether individuals are legally competent/capable to make their own testamentary and substitute decision-making, that is financial and/or personal/health care, decisions. No consistent and transparent competency/capacity assessment paradigm currently exists in Australia. Consequently, assessments are currently being undertaken on an ad hoc basis which is concerning as Australia’s population ages and issues of competency/capacity increase. The absence of nationally accepted competency/capacity assessment guidelines and supporting principles results in legal and medical professionals involved with competency/capacity assessment implementing individual processes tailored to their own abilities. Legal and medical approaches differ both between and within the professions. The terminology used also varies. The legal practitioner is concerned with whether the individual has the legal ability to make the decision. A medical practitioner assesses fluctuations in physical and mental abilities. The problem is that the terms competency and capacity are used interchangeably resulting in confusion about what is actually being assessed. The terminological and methodological differences subsequently create miscommunication and misunderstanding between the professions. Consequently, it is not necessarily a simple solution for a legal professional to seek the opinion of a medical practitioner when assessing testamentary and/or substitute decision-making competency/capacity. This research investigates the effects of the current inadequate testamentary and substitute decision-making assessment paradigm and whether there is a more satisfactory approach. This exploration is undertaken within a framework of therapeutic jurisprudence which promotes principles fundamentally important in this context. Empirical research has been undertaken to first, explore the effects of the current process with practising legal and medical professionals; and second, to determine whether miscommunication and misunderstanding actually exist between the professions such that it gives rise to a tense relationship which is not conducive to satisfactory competency/capacity assessments. The necessity of reviewing the adequacy of the existing competency/capacity assessment methodology in the testamentary and substitute decision-making domain will be demonstrated and recommendations for the development of a suitable process made.

Copyright and computer generated materials : is it time to reboot the discussion about authorship?

Computer generated materials are ubiquitous and we encounter them on a daily basis, even though most people are unaware that this is the case. Blockbuster movies, television weather reports and telephone directories all include material that is produced by utilising computer technologies. Copyright protection for materials generated by a programmed computer was considered by the Federal Court and Full Court of the Federal Court in Telstra Corporation Limited v Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd. The court held that the White and Yellow pages telephone directories produced by Telstra and its subsidiary, Sensis, were not protected by copyright because they were computer-generated works which lacked the requisite human authorship. The Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) does not contain specific provisions on the subsistence of copyright in computer-generated materials. Although the issue of copyright protection for computer-generated materials has been examined in Australia on two separate occasions by independently-constituted Copyright Law Review Committees over a period of 10 years (1988 to 1998), the Committees’ recommendations for legislative clarification by the enactment of specific amendments to the Copyright Act have not yet been implemented and the legal position remains unclear. In the light of the decision of the Full Federal Court in Telstra v Phone Directories it is timely to consider whether specific provisions should be enacted to clarify the position of computer-generated works under copyright law and, in particular, whether the requirement of human authorship for original works protected under Part III of the Copyright Act should now be reconceptualised to align with the realities of how copyright materials are created in the digital era.

Taxonomy and redescription of the Yellow-footed Antechinus, Antechinus flavipes (Waterhouse) (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae)

We provide a taxonomic redescription of the ubiquitous and variable dasyurid marsupial Yellow-footed Antechinus, Antechinus flavipes (Waterhouse), which comprises three currently recognized subspecies whose combined geographic distribution spans almost the length and breadth of Australia. A. flavipes leucogaster Gray is confined to south-west Western Australia; A. flavipes flavipes is distributed in south-eastern Australia across four states—South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland; A. flavipes rubeculus Van Dyck is confined to the wet tropics of Queensland. A. flavipes is readily distinguished from all extant congeners based on external morphology by the following combination of features: a grey head; orange-yellow toned flanks/rump, feet and tail base; pale eye-rings and a darkened tail tip. A. flavipes skulls are stout, being broad at the level of the rear upper molars, have small palatal vacuities and small entoconid cusps on the lower molars. However, notable differences among subspecies of A. flavipesprevent any obvious collection of skull characters being diagnostic for species-level discrimination among congeners. A. flavipes rubeculus is the largest of the three subspecies of Yellow-footed Antechinus and most similar in skull morphology to A. leo, A. bellus and A. godmani—all four species are geographically limited to tropical Australia. A. f. rubeculus is notably larger in many characters than its conspecifics: A. f. flavipes, the next largest, and A. f. leucogaster, the smallest of the group. A. f. flavipes and A. f. leucogaster diverge significantly at only a few skull characters, and both subspecies have cranial morphological affinities with the recently discovered A. mysticus, most notably A. f. leucogaster. Phylogenies generated from mt- and nDNA data strongly support Antechinus flavipes as monophyletic with respect to other members of the genus; within A. flavipes, each of the three recognized subspecies form distinctive monophyletic clades.

The past, present and future of carbon labelling for construction materials – a review

Global climate change is one of the most significant environmental issues that can harm human development. One central issue for the building and construction industry to address global climate change is the development of a credible and meaningful way to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050, the first international GHG standard, has been proven to be successful in standardizing the quantification process, its contribution to the management of carbon labels for construction materials is limited. With the recent publication of ISO 14067: Greenhouse gases – carbon footprint of products – requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication in May 2013, it is necessary for the building and construction industry to understand the past, present and future of the carbon labelling practices for construction materials. A systematic review shows that international GHG standards have been evolving in terms of providing additional guidance on communication and comparison, as well as less flexibility on the use of carbon labels. At the same time, carbon labelling schemes have been evolving on standardization and benchmarking. In addition, future actions are needed in the aspect of raising consumer awareness, providing benchmarking, ensuring standardization and developing simulation technologies in order for carbon labelling schemes for construction materials to provide credible, accurate and transparent information on GHG emissions.

Assessing capacity in the context of testamentary, enduring power of attorney, and advance care directive documents in Australia

Balancing the competing interests of autonomy and protection of individuals is an escalating challenge confronting an ageing Australian population. Legal and medical professionals are increasingly being asked to determine whether individuals are legally capable to make their own testamentary, financial and/or personal/health care decisions. Diseases such as dementia impact upon cognition which necessitates collaboration between the legal and medical professions to satisfactorily assess the effect of such mentally disabling conditions upon legal competency. Terminological and methodological differences exist between the two professions when assessing capacity in this context which subsequently create miscommunication and misunderstanding. Consequently, it is not necessarily a simple solution for a legal professional to seek the opinion of a medical practitioner. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that no consistent and transparent capacity assessment paradigm currently exists in Australia. Assessments are instead being undertaken on an ad hoc basis dependent upon the skill set of the legal and/or medical professionals involved. A qualitative study seeking the views of legal and medical professionals who practise in this area has been conducted. This incorporated a review of the relevant literature and surveys which informed the semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 legal and 20 medical practitioners. Practitioners were asked whether there is a standard approach to assessment and whether national guidelines would assist. The general consensus was that uniform guidelines would be advantageous. The research also canvassed practitioner views as to the state of the relationship between the professions when assessing capacity. Three promising practices have emerged from this research: first, is the need for the development of national guidelines and supporting principles to satisfactorily assess capacity; second, is the possibility of strengthening the relationship between legal and medical professionals to assist in the satisfactory assessment of legal capacity; and third, the need for increased community education.

Global outsourcing, production and logistics

Supply chains are the core of most industrial networks in which your business operates. They provide the pipeline through which the products and services flow from supplier to customer across each element within the business activity system. Global supply chain relationships have become the basis for many industries with an international network of firms engaged in the supply of goods and services that must be produced to quality standards in one country and delivered just-in-time for assembly or integration into further production processes in another country, frequently many thousands of miles apart. This topic examines the nature of supply chain management and their role in strategic networking. The previous learning tasks have focused on having the correct internal mechanism to effectively manage the inputs and outputs of the organisation by implementing an effective and transparent management system. This learning task takes a look at how management intent strategy and innovation are used to measure the external factors that influence the overall performance of the organisation and develop new strategies by understanding the business cycle and the people within your market environment.