Academic literature on the topic 'Three-way Decision'

Although causality is rarely discussed in texts on decision-making, decisions often depend on causal knowledge and causal reasoning. This chapter reviews what is known about how people integrate causal considerations into their choice processes. It first introduces causal decision theory, a normative theory of choice based on the idea that rational decision-making requires considering the causal structure underlying a decision problem. It then provides an overview of empirical studies that explore how causal assumptions influence choice and test predictions derived from causal decision theory. Next it reviews three descriptive theories that integrate causal thinking into decision-making, each in a different way: the causal model theory of choice, the story model of decision-making, and attribution theory. It discusses commonalities and differences between the theories and the role of causality in other decision-making theories. It concludes by noting challenges that lie ahead for research on the role of causal reasoning in decision-making.

Can findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience about the neural mechanisms involved in decision-making tell us anything useful about the commonly-understood mental phenomenon of making voluntary choices? Two philosophical objections are considered. First, that the neural data is subpersonal, and so cannot enter into illuminating explanations of personal-level phenomena like voluntary action. Secondly, that mental properties are multiply realized in the brain in such a way as to make them insusceptible to neuroscientific study. The chapter argues that both objections would be weakened by the discovery of empirical generalizations connecting subpersonal properties with personal-level phenomena. It gives three case studies that furnish evidence to that effect. It argues that the existence of such interrelations is consistent with a plausible construal of the personal-subpersonal distinction. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that the notion of subpersonal representation relied on in cognitive neuroscience illicitly imports personal-level phenomena like consciousness or normativity, or is otherwise explanatorily problematic.

This chapter discusses authentic decision-making as it relates to depression based on three parallel concepts found in philosophy, psychology, and the law. Since major depression is characterized (amongst other things) by ‘symptoms of sadness and diminished interest or pleasure’, ‘feelings of worthlessness/excessive/inappropriate guilt’ and a ‘cognitive triad of pessimism regarding the self, the world and the future’, the chapter explores whether an individual who has these symptoms can act on a judgment, thought, or belief in a way that lacks authenticity. It first explains, in philosophical terms, why autonomous decision-making presupposes a ‘personal identity’, before outlining a series of clinical observations suggesting that competence to make a decision requires an ‘appreciative ability’. It also considers whether the legal test for the capacity to make a decision has a component that is equivalent to ‘personal identity’ or an ‘appreciative ability’.

This book advances research on the collective action dilemma in protest movements by examining protest mobilization leading up to, and during, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and 2013 June 30th Coup in Cairo, Egypt. The book is organized chronologically and touches on why and how people make the decision to protest or not protest during different periods of the revolutionary process. The overarching question is: Why and how do individuals who are not members of political groups or organizers of political movements choose to engage or not engage in anti-government protest under a repressive regime? In answering the question, the book argues that individual decisions to protest or not protest are based on the intersection of the following three factors: political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures, and framing processes. It further demonstrates that the way these decisions to protest or not protest take place is through emotional mechanisms that are activated by specific combinations of these factors. The goal of the book is to investigate the relationship between key structural factors and the emotional responses they produce. By examining 170 interviews with individuals who either protested or did not protest, it explores how social media, violent government repression, changes in political opportunities, and the military influenced individual decisions to protest or not protest.

Choice is a key concept of our time. It is a foundational mechanism for every legal order in societies that are, politically, constituted as democracies and, economically, built on the market mechanism. Thus, choice can be understood as an atomic structure that grounds core societal processes. In recent years, however, the debate over the right way to theorise choice—for example, as a rational or a behavioural type of decision making—has intensified. This collection therefore provides an in-depth discussion of the promises and perils of specific types of theories of choice. It shows how the selection of a specific theory of choice can make a difference for concrete legal questions, in particularly in the regulation of the digital economy or in choosing between market, firm, or network. In its first part, the volume provides an accessible overview of the current debates about rational versus behavioural approaches to theories of choice. The remainder of the book structures the vast landscape of theories of choice along three main types: individual, collective, and organisational decision making. As theories of choice proliferate and become ever more sophisticated, however, the process of choosing an adequate theory of choice becomes increasingly intricate, too. This volume addresses this selection problem for the various legal arenas in which individual, organisational, and collective decisions matter. By drawing on economic, technological, political, and legal points of view, the volume shows which theories of choice are at the disposal of the legally relevant decision maker, and how they can be implemented for the solution of concrete legal problems.

Dr. Williams contends that over the last 20 years a change has occurred in organizations that has created a syndrome of dysfunctions that are neither good for businesses nor for the people who work in them. Williams sees businesses as living entities, and argues that how they act and react will have an impact on their employees, and often a devastating impact. In much the same way as businesses make decisions, people make choices, and seldom are these decisions and choices congruent. Unless disparate self-interests and goals can be reconciled—unless a partnership can be restored between people and their organizations—not only will employees be damaged, but the success of their organization, upon which they depend for their livelihoods, will be jeopardized. How this dangerous situation came about, what it means, and how it can be remedied is the subjet of Dr. Williams' book. Research-based and always in touch with the realities of commerce, Dr. Williams will make business people aware that organizations and their people must become reunited, and then show them how it can be done. Dr. Williams makes clear he is not simply speculating or theorizing. His goal is to make management aware of the dysfunctions that are damaging their organizations, and how these are reflected in the behaviors of their employees. When he calls for a focus on humanity, spirit, and context, Dr. Williams is actually offering a workable, real-world strategy to breathe new life into organizations of all kinds—a strategy he calls The Trinity Process. Its purpose: to help management restore the essential partnership between organizational entities and the people who make them succeed or fail. In Part One he shows what it means to be part of any organization and, with anecdotes and cases from his own research, helps readers grasp the dynamics of their own organizations. In Part Two he proposes new or reframed paradigms that provide an underpinning for the reestablishment of equality between organizations and their employees. Then, in Part Three he presents The Trinity Process itself. The result is a remarkably lucid, readable, engrossing exploration of organizational life today, important reading for decision makers in all types of organizations, public as well as private, and for academics concerned with how organizations behave.

Abstract The gas industry and its regulators are preparing for risk-based management of failure control in pipelines, compared to the command-and-control management strategies currently used. Three major issues arise in introducing risk-based management: (1) identifying risk factors that must be addressed; (2) gathering data to assess those risk factors; (3) determining the optimum way(s) to analyze the data and present the results. This paper discusses the construction and application of a decision tool built for a major utility's evaluations of gas pipe lines. The tool addresses the three major issues by carefully choosing risk factors, "case study" gathering of data, and flexible weighting of factors for decision support The tool allowed the utility to begin risk management with minimum investment and maximum flexibility.

The increasing global population has resulted in the scramble for more energy. Hydrogen offers a new revolution to energy systems worldwide. Considering its numerous uses, research interest has grown to seek sustainable production methods. However, hydrogen production must satisfy three factors, i.e., energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability, referred to as the energy trilemma. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the sustainability of hydrogen production pathways through the use of a Multi-Criteria Decision- Making model. In particular, a modified Simultaneous Evaluation of Criteria and Alternatives (SECA) model was employed for the prioritization of 19 options for hydrogen production. This model simultaneously determines the overall performance scores of the 19 options and the objective weights for the energy trilemma in a South African context. The results obtained from this study showed that environmental sustainability has a higher objective weight value of 0.37, followed by energy security with a value of 0.32 and energy equity with the least at 0.31. Of the 19 options selected, steam reforming of methane with carbon capture and storage was found to have the highest overall performance score, considering the trade-offs in the energy trilemma. This was followed by steam reforming of methane without carbon capture and storage and the autothermal reforming of methane with carbon capture and storage. The results obtained in this study will potentially pave the way for optimally producing hydrogen from different feedstocks while considering the energy trilemma and serve as a basis for further research in sustainable process engineering.

In War-Algorithm Accountability (August 2016), we introduce a new concept—war algorithms—that elevates algorithmically-derived “choices” and “decisions” to a, and perhaps the, central concern regarding technical autonomy in war. We thereby aim to shed light on and recast the discussion regarding “autonomous weapon systems” (AWS). We define “war algorithm” as any algorithm that is expressed in computer code, that is effectuated through a constructed system, and that is capable of operating in relation to armed conflict. In introducing this concept, our foundational technological concern is the capability of a constructed system, without further human intervention, to help make and effectuate a “decision” or “choice” of a war algorithm. Distilled, the two core ingredients are an algorithm expressed in computer code and a suitably capable constructed system. Through that lens, we link international law and related accountability architectures to relevant technologies. We sketch a three-part (non-exhaustive) approach that highlights traditional and unconventional accountability avenues. We focus largely on international law because it is the only normative regime that purports—in key respects but with important caveats—to be both universal and uniform. In this way, international law is different from the myriad domestic legal systems, administrative rules, or industry codes that govern the development and use of technology in all other spheres. By not limiting our inquiry only to weapon systems, we take an expansive view, showing how the broad concept of war algorithms might be susceptible to regulation—and how those algorithms might already fit within the existing regulatory system established by international law.

This report is the outcome of an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)regional public good (RPG) that different Latin American and Caribbean countries helped to create by identifying the information they needed to perfect the decision-making process on matters of trade and integration. The mechanism that the IDB foresaw is a three-way process, in which decisions are made in partnership with technical institutions and countries, which share their experience and knowledge of social demands. In this case, the countries of the region played a key role in designing an opinion poll on trade and integration, the results of which we compare with national statistical indicators. This was made possible by the strategic partnership between the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (IDB/INTAL), part of the Integration and Trade Sector, and Latinobarómetro, marking the start of the dialogue between two databases with very specific features. The first of these is the highly complete information on trade and integration that INTAL has acquired over its 51-year history. The second, the public perceptions that Latinobarómetro, a pioneering public opinion poll, has been measuring in the region for over two decades. Cross-referencing the results of over 20,000 exclusive surveys that were carried out in 18 Latin American countries with national statistics has helped create a powerful tool for designing integration and trade strategies. Comparing citizens' opinions and national statistics allows researchers to find correlations and asymmetries between public perceptions and the region's actual performance, thus contributing to improving planning and impact assessment in public policy design. We believe that integration processes should reflect both dimensions: they must not overlook classic indicators but they also need to include the voice of the people of Latin America, which is an essential part of any regional strategy seeking to construct a form of governance that is underpinned by the demands of society.

Geographic maps have been of military and economic importance throughout the ages. Rulers have commissioned maps to control the financial, economic, political, and military aspects of their sovereign entities. Large scale projects like the Ordnance Survey in the UK in the late 18th century, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition a few decades later to map the American West, are early examples of trailblazing efforts to create accurate modern maps of high strategic importance. Digitalization, globalization, and a larger urban and educated workforce necessitate a new understanding of the world, beyond traditional maps based on geographic features. Many of today's most critical threats know no geographic borders. For instance, cyber attacks can be orchestrated through globally distributed bot networks; just-in-time manufacturing relies on the free flow of goods across jurisdictions; global markets and the infrastructures that support them relay information and price signals globally within seconds. A lack of understanding financial interdependencies was clearly demonstrated by the freezing of credit markets in the last financial crisis and the uncertainty created by Brexit. Ten years after the financial crisis, we are still only beginning to map, model and visualise these critical maps of the financial world. We call for attention to work on a large scale project of "Financial Cartography" to address this gap. In financial cartography, we replace geographic proximity with logical proximity, such as financial interdependence, similarity (e.g., of portfolio or income streams), a flow of transactions or a magnitude of exposures. Similar to geographic maps, financial maps will find many important uses across business, government and military domains. Critically, they are needed for protection and projection of state power, for optimizing and managing risks in business, and in making policy decisions related to the major challenges of climate change, mass migration and geopolitical instability. Fundamentally, cartography is a way that reality can be modeled to communicate information on “big data” sets. Cartography allows one to simplify and reduce the complexity of the data to highlight salient features of the data, and to filter out noise. This makes maps ideal devices to increase the bandwidth by which information can be communicated to its users, for making quick decision based on complex data. In the following pages, we make a case and provide starting points for a research agenda around "Financial Cartography" in three interrelated parts: Maps of Trade Networks Maps of Financial Markets and Maps of Financial Market Infrastructures

Executive Summary This report describes a series of experiments carried out by PRICE Lab, a research programme at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) jointly funded by the Central Bank of Ireland, the Commission for Energy Regulation, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and the Commission for Communications Regulation. The experiments were conducted with samples of Irish consumers aged 18-70 years and were designed to answer the following general research question: At what point do products become too complex for consumers to choose accurately between the good ones and the bad ones? BACKGROUND AND METHODS PRICE Lab represents a departure from traditional methods employed for economic research in Ireland. It belongs to the rapidly expanding area of ‘behavioural economics’, which is the application of psychological insights to economic analysis. In recent years, behavioural economics has developed novel methods and generated many new findings, especially in relation to the choices made by consumers. These scientific advances have implications both for economics and for policy. They suggest that consumers often do not make decisions in the way that economists have traditionally assumed. The findings show that consumers have limited capacity for attending to and processing information and that they are prone to systematic biases, all of which may lead to disadvantageous choices. In short, consumers may make costly mistakes. Research has indeed documented that in several key consumer markets, including financial services, utilities and telecommunications, many consumers struggle to choose the best products for themselves. It is often argued that these markets involve ‘complex’ products. The obvious question that arises is whether consumer policy can be used to help them to make better choices when faced with complex products. Policies are more likely to be successful where they are informed by an accurate understanding of how real consumers make decisions between products. To provide evidence for consumer policy, PRICE Lab has developed a method for measuring the accuracy with which consumers make choices, using techniques adapted from the scientific study of human perception. The method allows researchers to measure how reliably consumers can distinguish a good deal from a bad one. A good deal is defined here as one where the product is more valuable than the price paid. In other words, it offers good value for money or, in the jargon of economics, offers the consumer a ‘surplus’. Conversely, a bad deal offers poor value for money, providing no (or a negative) surplus. PRICE Lab’s main experimental method, which we call the ‘Surplus Identification’ (S-ID) task, allows researchers to measure how accurately consumers can spot a surplus and whether they are prone to systematic biases. Most importantly, the S-ID task can be used to study how the accuracy of consumers’ decisions changes as the type of product changes. For the experiments we report here, samples of consumers arrived at the ESRI one at a time and spent approximately one hour doing the S-ID task with different kinds of products, which were displayed on a computer screen. They had to learn to judge the value of one or more products against prices and were then tested for accuracy. As well as people’s intrinsic motivation to do well when their performance on a task like this is tested, we provided an incentive: one in every ten consumers who attended PRICE Lab won a prize, based on their performance. Across a series of these experiments, we were able to test how the accuracy of consumers’ decisions was affected by the number and nature of the product’s characteristics, or ‘attributes’, which they had to take into account in order to distinguish good deals from bad ones. In other words, we were able to study what exactly makes for a ‘complex’ product, in the sense that consumers find it difficult to choose good deals. FINDINGS Overall, across all ten experiments described in this report, we found that consumers’ judgements of the value of products against prices were surprisingly inaccurate. Even when the product was simple, meaning that it consisted of just one clearly perceptible attribute (e.g. the product was worth more when it was larger), consumers required a surplus of around 16-26 per cent of the total price range in order to be able to judge accurately that a deal was a good one rather than a bad one. Put another way, when most people have to map a characteristic of a product onto a range of prices, they are able to distinguish at best between five and seven levels of value (e.g. five levels might be thought of as equivalent to ‘very bad’, ‘bad’, ‘average’, ‘good’, ‘very good’). Furthermore, we found that judgements of products against prices were not only imprecise, but systematically biased. Consumers generally overestimated what products at the top end of the range were worth and underestimated what products at the bottom end of the range were worth, typically by as much as 10-15 per cent and sometimes more. We then systematically increased the complexity of the products, first by adding more attributes, so that the consumers had to take into account, two, three, then four different characteristics of the product simultaneously. One product might be good on attribute A, not so good on attribute B and available at just above the xii | PRICE Lab: An Investigation of Consumers’ Capabilities with Complex Products average price; another might be very good on A, middling on B, but relatively expensive. Each time the consumer’s task was to judge whether the deal was good or bad. We would then add complexity by introducing attribute C, then attribute D, and so on. Thus, consumers had to negotiate multiple trade-offs. Performance deteriorated quite rapidly once multiple attributes were in play. Even the best performers could not integrate all of the product information efficiently – they became substantially more likely to make mistakes. Once people had to consider four product characteristics simultaneously, all of which contributed equally to the monetary value of the product, a surplus of more than half the price range was required for them to identify a good deal reliably. This was a fundamental finding of the present experiments: once consumers had to take into account more than two or three different factors simultaneously their ability to distinguish good and bad deals became strikingly imprecise. This finding therefore offered a clear answer to our primary research question: a product might be considered ‘complex’ once consumers must take into account more than two or three factors simultaneously in order to judge whether a deal is good or bad. Most of the experiments conducted after we obtained these strong initial findings were designed to test whether consumers could improve on this level of performance, perhaps for certain types of products or with sufficient practice, or whether the performance limits uncovered were likely to apply across many different types of product. An examination of individual differences revealed that some people were significantly better than others at judging good deals from bad ones. However the differences were not large in comparison to the overall effects recorded; everyone tested struggled once there were more than two or three product attributes to contend with. People with high levels of numeracy and educational attainment performed slightly better than those without, but the improvement was small. We also found that both the high level of imprecision and systematic bias were not reduced substantially by giving people substantial practice and opportunities to learn – any improvements were slow and incremental. A series of experiments was also designed to test whether consumers’ capability was different depending on the type of product attribute. In our initial experiments the characteristics of the products were all visual (e.g., size, fineness of texture, etc.). We then performed similar experiments where the relevant product information was supplied as numbers (e.g., percentages, amounts) or in categories (e.g., Type A, Rating D, Brand X), to see whether performance might improve. This question is important, as most financial and contractual information is supplied to consumers in a numeric or categorical form. The results showed clearly that the type of product information did not matter for the level of imprecision and bias in consumers’ decisions – the results were essentially the same whether the product attributes were visual, numeric or categorical. What continued to drive performance was how many characteristics the consumer had to judge simultaneously. Thus, our findings were not the result of people failing to perceive or take in information accurately. Rather, the limiting factor in consumers’ capability was how many different factors they had to weigh against each other at the same time. In most of our experiments the characteristics of the product and its monetary value were related by a one-to-one mapping; each extra unit of an attribute added the same amount of monetary value. In other words, the relationships were all linear. Because other findings in behavioural economics suggest that consumers might struggle more with non-linear relationships, we designed experiments to test them. For example, the monetary value of a product might increase more when the amount of one attribute moves from very low to low, than when it moves from high to very high. We found that this made no difference to either the imprecision or bias in consumers’ decisions provided that the relationship was monotonic (i.e. the direction of the relationship was consistent, so that more or less of the attribute always meant more or less monetary value respectively). When the relationship involved a turning point (i.e. more of the attribute meant higher monetary value but only up to a certain point, after which more of the attribute meant less value) consumers’ judgements were more imprecise still. Finally, we tested whether familiarity with the type of product improved performance. In most of the experiments we intentionally used products that were new to the experimental participants. This was done to ensure experimental control and so that we could monitor learning. In the final experiment reported here, we used two familiar products (Dublin houses and residential broadband packages) and tested whether consumers could distinguish good deals from bad deals any better among these familiar products than they could among products that they had never seen before, but which had the same number and type of attributes and price range. We found that consumers’ performance was the same for these familiar products as for unfamiliar ones. Again, what primarily determined the amount of imprecision and bias in consumers’ judgments was the number of attributes that they had to balance against each other, regardless of whether these were familiar or novel. POLICY IMPLICATIONS There is a menu of consumer polices designed to assist consumers in negotiating complex products. A review, including international examples, is given in the main body of the report. The primary aim is often to simplify the consumer’s task. Potential policies, versions of which already exist in various forms and which cover a spectrum of interventionist strength, might include: the provision and endorsement of independent, transparent price comparison websites and other choice engines (e.g. mobile applications, decision software); the provision of high quality independent consumer advice; ‘mandated simplification’, whereby regulations stipulate that providers must present product information in a simplified and standardised format specifically determined by regulation; and more strident interventions such as devising and enforcing prescriptive rules and regulations in relation to permissible product descriptions, product features or price structures. The present findings have implications for such policies. However, while the experimental findings have implications for policy, it needs to be borne in mind that the evidence supplied here is only one factor in determining whether any given intervention in markets is likely to be beneficial. The findings imply that consumers are likely to struggle to choose well in markets with products consisting of multiple important attributes that must all be factored in when making a choice. Interventions that reduce this kind of complexity for consumers may therefore be beneficial, but nothing in the present research addresses the potential costs of such interventions, or how providers are likely to respond to them. The findings are also general in nature and are intended to give insights into consumer choices across markets. There are likely to be additional factors specific to certain markets that need to be considered in any analysis of the costs and benefits of a potential policy change. Most importantly, the policy implications discussed here are not specific to Ireland or to any particular product market. Furthermore, they should not be read as criticisms of existing regulatory regimes, which already go to some lengths in assisting consumers to deal with complex products. Ireland currently has extensive regulations designed to protect consumers, both in general and in specific markets, descriptions of which can be found in Section 9.1 of the main report. Nevertheless, the experiments described here do offer relevant guidance for future policy designs. For instance, they imply that while policies that make it easier for consumers to switch providers may be necessary to encourage active consumers, they may not be sufficient, especially in markets where products are complex. In order for consumers to benefit, policies that help them to identify better deals reliably may also be required, given the scale of inaccuracy in consumers’ decisions that we record in this report when products have multiple important attributes. Where policies are designed to assist consumer decisions, the present findings imply quite severe limits in relation to the volume of information consumers can simultaneously take into account. Good impartial Executive Summary | xv consumer advice may limit the volume of information and focus on ensuring that the most important product attributes are recognised by consumers. The findings also have implications for the role of competition. While consumers may obtain substantial potential benefits from competition, their capabilities when faced with more complex products are likely to reduce such benefits. Pressure from competition requires sufficient numbers of consumers to spot and exploit better value offerings. Given our results, providers with larger market shares may face incentives to increase the complexity of products in an effort to dampen competitive pressure and generate more market power. Where marketing or pricing practices result in prices or attributes with multiple components, our findings imply that consumer choices are likely to become less accurate. Policymakers must of course be careful in determining whether such practices amount to legitimate innovations with potential consumer benefit. Yet there is a genuine danger that spurious complexity can be generated that confuses consumers and protects market power. The results described here provide backing for the promotion and/or provision by policymakers of high-quality independent choice engines, including but not limited to price comparison sites, especially in circumstances where the number of relevant product attributes is high. A longer discussion of the potential benefits and caveats associated with such policies is contained in the main body of the report. Mandated simplification policies are gaining in popularity internationally. Examples include limiting the number of tariffs a single energy company can offer or standardising health insurance products, both of which are designed to simplify the comparisons between prices and/or product attributes. The present research has some implications for what might make a good mandate. Consumer decisions are likely to be improved where a mandate brings to the consumer’s attention the most important product attributes at the point of decision. The present results offer guidance with respect to how many key attributes consumers are able simultaneously to trade off, with implications for the design of standardised disclosures. While bearing in mind the potential for imposing costs, the results also suggest benefits to compulsory ‘meta-attributes’ (such as APRs, energy ratings, total costs, etc.), which may help consumers to integrate otherwise separate sources of information. FUTURE RESEARCH The experiments described here were designed to produce findings that generalise across multiple product markets. However, in addition to the results outlined in this report, the work has resulted in new experimental methods that can be applied to more specific consumer policy issues. This is possible because the methods generate experimental measures of the accuracy of consumers’ decision-making. As such, they can be adapted to assess the quality of consumers’ decisions in relation to specific products, pricing and marketing practices. Work is underway in PRICE Lab that applies these methods to issues in specific markets, including those for personal loans, energy and mobile phones.

In an innovative venture, the research team embarked on a mission to redefine urban traffic flow by introducing an automated way to manage traffic light timings. This project integrates two critical technologies, Deep Q-Networks (DQN) and Auto-encoders, into reinforcement learning, with the goal of making traffic smoother and reducing the all-too-common road congestion in simulated city environments. Deep Q-Networks (DQN) are a form of reinforcement learning algorithms that learns the best actions to take in various situations through trial and error. Auto-encoders, on the other hand, are tools that help simplify complex data, making it easier for the DQN to understand and make decisions. To enhance the accuracy of these decisions, the research team chose average vehicle speed as a crucial indicator of traffic flow and employed HyperOPT, a method for fine-tuning the system’s hyper-parameters. The team put their method to the test in three different traffic scenarios: controlling a single intersection, managing multiple intersections, and overseeing protected left-turn signals. The results were clear and promising. The innovative system significantly improved traffic conditions by either reducing the average wait time atlights or increasing the overall speed of vehicles passing through intersections. This research not only presents a leap forward in traffic management but also offers a glimpse into a future where road congestion could be significantly alleviated. By employing cutting-edge AI and data processing techniques, the project stands as a testament to the potential for smart cities where traffic flow is optimized, making commutes faster and safer for everyone.

In the framework of the D.Rad project, WP10 – entitled Civic education as preventive measure and inclusionary practice – seeks to prevent youth radicalisation through civic education and to identify new pedagogical methods and interactive, participatory tools for building pro-social resilience to radical ideologies. We consider as ‘civic education programs’ all those initiatives of instruction that aim at affecting “people’s beliefs, commitments, capabilities, and actions as members or prospective members of communities”1, as well as foster critical thinking and promoting “civic engagement and support democratic and participatory governance”2. Such programs have been found “to help shape personal efficacy (i.e., an individual’s belief in their ability to effect change, political participation, and tolerance”3. Furthermore, “educational tools as such have proven to foster individuals' desistance from terrorist groups and ideologies by broadening the scope of their political values, ideals, and concepts (e.g., justice, honor, freedom) and by introducing alternative perspectives and worldviews”4. In D.rad’s WP10, the focus is on civic education programs that adopt a participatory approach. This means involving all participants in expressing their ideas and bringing about change. Specifically, these methods empower marginalized voices, promoting civic engagement, problem-solving, and networking. Using techniques like role-plays and interactive tools, these programs foster critical thinking, empathy, democratic literacy, active citizenship, resilience, and socio-emotional learning. Critical thinking involves making reliable judgments based on sound information. It includes steps like asking questions, gathering relevant data, and considering various perspectives. Research shows a positive link between critical thinking and personal efficacy. Empathy is vital in civic and peace education. It means understanding and resonating with others' emotions. Pedagogical approaches like group work and cooperative tasks nurture empathy, as well as exposure to diverse choices and scenarios. Democratic literacy involves recognizing, valuing, and respecting all individuals as legitimate members of society. Non-formal education, like theatre, is a powerful way to engage communities in raising awareness and fostering democratic literacy. Active citizenship means actively participating in one's local community with values like respect, inclusion, and assistance. Educational programs equip participants with skills and knowledge for resilient societies built on trust. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges, a crucial skill in personal development against extremist ideologies. Research links resilience to pro-social behaviour and life satisfaction. Civic education fosters pro-social behaviour through empathy and voluntary actions that benefit others. Socio-emotional learning (SEL) includes five key components: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, social awareness, and relationship skills. Through SEL, individuals understand and regulate emotions, set positive goals, show empathy, build healthy relationships, and make responsible choices. Effective SEL training leads to improved academic performance and positive attitudes. It reduces disruptive behaviours and disciplinary issues. Educators prioritize SEL through activities that encourage communication, cooperation, emotional regulation, empathy, and self-control. Against this background, the final goal of WP10 was to foster social cohesion, democratic literacy, active citizenship and a shared sense of belonging to counteract tendencies of grievance, alienation and polarisation through the development of a participatory role-play targeting community organizations, youth centres, social/educational workers and interested citizens. WP10 was carried out in three parallel and complementary phases:- project partners involved in the WP (EURAC – Bolzano/Bozen, AUP – Paris, FUB – Berlin, BILGI – Istanbul and PRONI – Brcko) analysed civic education programs implemented in their countries to combat radicalisation and violent extremism in order to highlight approaches, practices and challenges that needed to be taken into account in the development of WP10’s toolkit; EURAC complemented such analysis with an overall recognition of existing programmes at EU level and beyond; - WP partners also contacted experts (academics, practitioners, NGO-leaders, public officers at the Ministry of Justice, social workers) in the field of de-radicalisation, civic-education, cultural mediation and theatrical methods to provide both feedback on challenges faced in past projects and opinions on the role-play developed in the framework of WP10; - EURAC, assisted by project partners and external experts developed a role-play as a preventive tool for youth radicalisation; WP partners then tested the role-play in their respective countries to collect feedback on its implementation and effectiveness. The role-play thus developed, called “In Search of the Lost Past”, is a civic education game encourages participants to reflect on available choices, avoiding adverse and/or violent outcomes. It aims to enhance critical thinking skills in problem-solving and understanding diverse perspectives. Accordingly, it fosters open-mindedness and respect for diversities and alternative worldviews while expanding participants' understanding of values, ideals, and concepts like justice, honour, and freedom. Participants collectively reconstruct stories through backwards journeys, starting from possible endings and envisioning earlier events from assigned character viewpoints. Through embodying diverse profiles and exploring various choice pathways, this reverse storytelling method prompts contemplation on decisions and their nuanced repercussions. Although all stories share a common finale, participants shape unique, parallel narratives based on distinct character perspectives. This imaginative process elucidates how personal experiences shape worldviews and life trajectories. This imaginative process serves to illuminate how personal experiences contribute to the formation of worldviews and life trajectories. Post-activity discussions centre around the decisions made and their far-reaching implications, emphasizing alternative approaches to challenging issues. Stepping into different mindsets not only cultivates empathy but also fortifies critical analysis skills among participants. "In Search of the Lost Past" serves as a dynamic platform for exploring and understanding the complex interplay of choices, perspectives, and outcomes. Reconstructing the past helps us be open to new and diverse futures.

In the 21st century, business engagements are becoming increasingly global, and global teams are now an established form of organising work in multinational organisations. As a result, managing cultural diver-sity within a global team has become an essential part of ensuring motivation, creativity, innovation and efficiency in today’s business world.Global teams are typically composed of a diversity of experiences, frames of references, competencies, information and, not least, cultural backgrounds. As such, they hold a unique potential for delivering high performance in terms of innovative and creative approaches to global management tasks; however, in-stead of focusing on the potentials of cultural diversity, practitioners and studies of global teams tend to approach cultural diversity as a barrier to team success. This study explores some of the barriers that cultural diversity poses but also discusses its potential to leverage high performance in a global context.Our study highlights the importance of how team leaders and team members perceive ‘culture’ as both a concept and a social practice. We take issue with a notion of culture as a relatively fixed and homogeneous set of values, norms and attitudes shared by people of national communities; it is such a notion of culture that tends to underlie understandings that highlight the irreconcilability of cultural differences.Applying a more dynamic and context-dependent approach to culture as a meaning system that people negotiate and use to interpret the world, this study explores how global leadership teams can best reap the benefits of cultural diversity in relation to specific challenging areas of intercultural team work, such as leadership style, decision making, relationship building, strategy process, and communication styles. Based on a close textual interpretation of 31 semi-structured interviews with members of global leader-ship teams in eight Danish-owned global companies, our study identified different discourses and per-ceptions of culture and cultural diversity. For leaders of the global leadership teams (Danish/European) and other European team members, three understandings of cultural diversity in their global teams were prominent:1)Cultural diversity was not an issue2)Cultural diversity was acknowledged as mainly a liability. Diversities were expressed through adifference in national cultures and could typically be subsumed under a relatively fixed numberof invariable and distinct characteristics.3)Cultural diversity was an asset and expressions of culture had to be observed in the situationand could not simply be derived from prior understandings of cultural differences.A clear result of our study was that those leaders of global teams who drew on discourses of the Asian ‘Other’ adherred to the first two understandings of cultural diversity and preferred leadership styles that were either patriarchal or self-defined as ‘Scandinavian’. Whereas those leaders who drew on discourses of culture as dynamic and negotiated social practices adhered to the third understanding of cultural di-versity and preferred a differentiated and analytical approach to leading their teams.We also focused on the perceptions of team members with a background in the country in which the global teams were co-located. These ‘local’ team members expressed a nuanced and multifaceted perspective on their own cultural background, the national culture of the company, and their own position within the team, which enabled them to easily navigate between essentialist perceptions of culture while maintain-ing a critical stance on the existing cultural hegemonies. They recognised the value of their local knowledge and language proficiency, but, for those local members in teams with a negative or essentialist view of cultural diversity, it was difficult to obtain recognition of their cultural styles and specific, non-local competences. 3Our study suggeststhat the way global team members perceive culture, based on dominant societal dis-courses of culture, significantly affects the understandings of roles and positions in global leadership teams. We found that discourses on culture were used to explain differences and similarities between team members, which profoundly affected the social practicesand dynamics of the global team. We con-clude that only global teams with team leaders who are highly aware of the multiple perspectives at play in different contexts within the team hold the capacity to be alert to cultural diversity and to demonstrate agility in leveraging differences and similarities into inclusive and dynamic team practices.

Climate resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate (C2ES, 2022). Mitigation focuses on reducing the human impacts contributing to climate change (Burton, 2007, cited in Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). Adaptation is about increasing people’s adaptive capacity, reducing the vulnerability of communities and managing risks (Anderson, 2012). Anderson further defines adaptation as not just being able to adapt from one stable climate to another but having the skills to adapt to uncertainty and make informed decisions in a changing environment. While ‘climate change’ is the term used throughout these briefs, it should be read as a shorthand for a more inclusive approach, which also captures associated environmental degradation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned, in their latest report, that global surface temperatures will continue to increase until 2050 (IPCC, 2021, p. 17). This will take place regardless of human intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also warns that the traditional technocratic approaches are insufficient to tackle the challenge of climate change, and that greater focus on the structural causes is needed. High- and upper-middle-income countries have been persistently shown to be the biggest contributors to the global carbon dioxide emissions, with lower income countries facing the most disruptive climate hazards, with Africa countries particularly vulnerable (CDP, 2020; IPCC, 2021). The vulnerability of low-income contexts exacerbates this risk, as there is often insufficient infrastructure and resources to ensure resilience to climate hazards (IPCC, 2021). For decades, advocates of climate change education have been highlighting the potential of education to help mitigate against climate change, and support adaptation efforts. However, implementation has been patchy, with inconsistent approaches and a lack of evidence to help determine the most effective way forward.This paper is divided into three sections, drawing together evidence on the key aspects of system reform,green and resilient infrastructure and Curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teacher development.

Existing and emerging applications of artificial intelligence in armed conflicts and other systems reliant upon war algorithms and data span diverse areas. Natural persons may increasingly depend upon these technologies in decisions and activities related to killing combatants, destroying enemy installations, detaining adversaries, protecting civilians, undertaking missions at sea, conferring legal advice, and configuring logistics. In intergovernmental debates on autonomous weapons, a normative impasse appears to have emerged. Some countries assert that existing law suffices, while several others call for new rules. Meanwhile, the vast majority of efforts by States to address relevant systems focus by and large on weapons, means, and methods of warfare. Partly as a result, the broad spectrum of other far-reaching applications is rarely brought into view. One normatively grounded way to help identify and address relevant issues is to elaborate pathways that States, international organizations, non-state parties to armed conflict, and others may pursue to help secure greater respect for international law. In this commentary, I elaborate on three such pathways: forming and publicly expressing positions on key legal issues, taking measures relative to their own conduct, and taking steps relative to the behavior of others. None of these pathways is sufficient in itself, and there are no doubt many others that ought to be pursued. But each of the identified tracks is arguably necessary to ensure that international law is — or becomes — fit for purpose. By forming and publicly expressing positions on relevant legal issues, international actors may help clarify existing legal parameters, pinpoint salient enduring and emerging issues, and detect areas of convergence and divergence. Elaborating legal views may also help foster greater trust among current and potential adversaries. To be sure, in recent years, States have already fashioned hundreds of statements on autonomous weapons. Yet positions on other application areas are much more difficult to find. Further, forming and publicly expressing views on legal issues that span thematic and functional areas arguably may help States and others overcome the current normative stalemate on autonomous weapons. Doing so may also help identify — and allocate due attention and resources to — additional salient thematic and functional areas. Therefore, I raise a handful of cross-domain issues for consideration. These issues touch on things like exercising human agency, reposing legally mandated evaluative decisions in natural persons, and committing to engage only in scrutable conduct. International actors may also take measures relative to their own conduct. To help illustrate this pathway, I outline several such existing measures. In doing so, I invite readers to inventory and peruse these types of steps in order to assess whether the nature or character of increasingly complex socio-technical systems reliant upon war algorithms and data may warrant revitalized commitments or adjustments to existing measures — or, perhaps, development of new ones. I outline things like enacting legislation necessary to prosecute alleged perpetrators of grave breaches, making legal advisers available to the armed forces, and taking steps to prevent abuses of the emblem. Finally, international actors may take measures relative to the conduct of others. To help illustrate this pathway, I outline some of the existing steps that other States, international organizations, and non-state parties may take to help secure respect for the law by those undertaking the conduct. These measures may include things like addressing matters of legal compliance by exerting diplomatic pressure, resorting to penal sanctions to repress violations, conditioning or refusing arms transfers, and monitoring the fate of transferred detainees. Concerning military partnerships in particular, I highlight steps such as conditioning joint operations on a partner’s compliance with the law, planning operations jointly in order to prevent violations, and opting out of specific operations if there is an expectation that the operations would violate applicable law. Some themes and commitments cut across these three pathways. Arguably, respect for the law turns in no small part on whether natural persons can and will foresee, understand, administer, and trace the components, behaviors, and effects of relevant systems. It may be advisable, moreover, to institute ongoing cross-disciplinary education and training as well as the provision of sufficient technical facilities for all relevant actors, from commanders to legal advisers to prosecutors to judges. Further, it may be prudent to establish ongoing monitoring of others’ technical capabilities. Finally, it may be warranted for relevant international actors to pledge to engage, and to call upon others to engage, only in armed-conflict-related conduct that is sufficiently attributable, discernable, and scrutable.

Examines non-conventional techniques for monitoring curvatures, displacement, or strains in buried pipelines. Internal devices, external devices, and fiber optic techniques were examined. Feasibility of each system is discussed and the most promising are identified. Two companion studies 'Guidelines Pipeline Strain Monitoring by Conventional Means' (Reference 1) and 'A Proposed Model for the Intervention Decision Making Process in Pipeline Movement Situations' (Reference 2) have already been completed, and an effort to determine appropriate failure criteria for pipelines in areas of soil instability is currently underway. The objective of this study is to describe methods of pipeline monitoring which are, for the most part, still in the conceptual and/or development phases. It is very likely that the techniques described herein will require extensive validation efforts and significant financial support before they will become reliable tools for routine use Improved pipeline strain monitoring techniques are needed because the conventional techniques (strain gages, inclinometers, and topographical surveying) meet all of the industry's needs. The conventional techniques are expensive, labor intensive, and require access to the pipeline for installation . As such they are limited in use to localized trouble spots that are known to be a problem. None of these techniques could be practically applied to a whole pipeline for any-time monitoring. Techniques that will better satisfy the industry's needs must be adequately sensitive, applicable to the whole pipeline, available at all times (or at least at reasonably frequent intervals), and capable of use without the need to excavate the pipeline or to interfere with its operation.Several non-conventional techniques for monitoring curvatures, displacements, or strains in buried pipelines that may meet these requirements are discussed herein. These fall into three generic classes: internal devices (instrumented pigs), external devices (involving moving a detecting device over the pipeline right-of-way), fiber-optic cables attached to the pipeline over its entire length.