Understanding Risk: Recent Contributions from the Journal of Risk and Governance

Following on from the format of the previous Book Understanding Risk: Contributions from the Journal of Risk and Governance, this collection of recent contributions (including work by the editor) this book is divided in three sections .  The first section examines issues relating to corporate governance in the private sector, with emphasis being placed on issues of 'Board Decision Making,' Earnings Management and Audit Committee Effectiveness'  and ' Corporate Governance Failures.'  These contributions are complemented by the second sections which looks at governance and risk issues affecting the public sector, with a focus being places on 'Public Private Partnerships' and regulation of activities in the Life Sciences.'  Section three focuses on societal risk management in relation to health, safety and the environment.  In this context, contributions are presented in relation to major debates surrounding 'Rising Trends in Cancer Cases,' dilemmas surrounding 'Medical Self Help,' 'Mental Health Policy' and the use of 'Information Technology in Health Care.'

Risk and the Politics of Public Health:A Critical Review

Twentieth century public health initiatives have been crucially informed by perceptions and constructions of risk. Notions of risk identification, assessment and mitigation have guided political and institutional actions even before these concepts became an explicit part of the language of public administration and policy making. Past analyses investigating the link between risk perceptions and public health are relatively rare, and where researchers have investigated this nexus, it has typically been assumed that the collective identification of health risks has led to progressive improvements in public health activities.
Risk and the Politics of Public Health addresses this gap by presenting a detailed critical historical analysis of the evolution of risk thinking within medical and health related discourses. Grouped around the four core themes of 'immigration', 'race', 'armed conflict' and 'detention and prevention' this book highlights the innovative capacity of risk related concepts as well as their vulnerability to the dysfunctional effects of dominant social ideologies. Risk and the Politics of Public Health is an essential reference for those who seek to understand the interplay of concepts of risk and public health throughout history as well as those who wish to gain a critical understanding of the social dynamics which have underpinned, and continue to underpin, this complex interaction.

Multi-UAVs formation autopilot design and performance analysis under interconnection topologies

This paper employs a unique extension-decomposition-aggregation (EDA) scheme to solve the formation flight control problem for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The corresponding decentralised longitudinal and lateral formation autopilots are novelly designed to maintain the overall formation stability when encountering changes of the formation error and topologies. The concept of propagation layer number (PLN) is also proposed to provide an intuitive criterion to judge which type of formation topology is more suitable to minimise formation error propagation (FEP). The criterion states that the smaller the PLN of the formation is, the quicker the response to the formation error is. A smaller PLN also means that the resulting topology provides better prevention to the FEP. Simulation studies of formation flight of multiple Aerosonde UAVs demonstrate that the designed formation controller based on the EDA strategy performs satisfactorily in maintaining the overall formation stable, and the bidirectional partial-mesh topology is found to provide the best overall response to the formation error propagation based on the PLN criterion.

Design, analysis and performance of a polymer-carbon nanotubes based economic solar collector

A low cost flat plate solar collector was developed by using polymeric components as opposed to metal and glass components of traditional flat plate solar collectors. In order to improve the thermal and optical properties of the polymer absorber of the solar collector, Carbon Nanotubes (CNT) were added as a filler. The solar collector was designed as a multi-layer construction with an emphasis on low manufacturing costs. Through the mathematical heat transfer analysis, the thermal performance of the collector and the characteristics of the design parameters were analyzed. Furthermore, the prototypes of the proposed collector were built and tested at a state-of-the-art solar simulator facility to evaluate its actual performance. The inclusion of CNT improved significantly the properties of the polymer absorber. The key design parameters and their effects on the thermal performance were identified via the heat transfer analysis. Based on the experimental and analytical results, the cost-effective polymer-CNT solar collector, which achieved a high thermal efficiency similar to that of a conventional glazed flat plate solar panel, was successfully developed.

Global Systemic Risk and International Regulatory Coordination: Squaring Sovereignty and Financial Stability

In recent years much attention has been given to systemic risk and maintaining financial stability. Much of the focus, rightly, has been on market failures and the role of regulation in addressing them. This article looks at the role of domestic policies and government actions as sources of global instability. The global financial system is built upon global markets controlled by national financial and macroeconomic policies. In this context, regulatory asymmetries, diverging policy preferences, and government failures add a further dimension to global systemic risk not present at the national level.
Systemic risk is a result of the interplay between two independent variables: an underlying trigger event, in this analysis a domestic policy measure, and a transmission channel. The solution to systemic risk requires tackling one of these variables. In a domestic setting, the centralization of regulatory power into one single authority makes it easier to balance the delicate equilibrium between enhancing efficiency and reducing instability. However, in a global financial system in which national financial policies serve to maximize economic welfare, regulators will be confronted with difficult policy and legal tradeoffs.
We investigate the role that financial regulation plays in addressing domestic policy failures and in controlling the danger of global financial interdependence. To do so we analyse global financial interconnectedness, and explain its role in transmitting instability; we investigate the political economy dynamics at the origin of regulatory asymmetries and government failures; and we discuss the limits of regulation.