Deliberation Representation Equity Research Approaches Tools And Algorithms For Participatory Processes

In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. This book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences.

What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens' input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and GOran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences.

Software methodologies, tools and techniques have become an ever more important part of our lives, and are crucial to the decision-making processes that affect us every day. This book presents papers from the 19th International Conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodology Tools, and Techniques (SoMeT20), held in Kitakyushu, Japan from 22–24 September 2020. The SoMeT conferences bring together researchers and practitioners to share their original research results and experience of practical developments in software science and related new technologies, and this book explores new trends and theories that highlight the direction and development of intelligent software methodologies, tools and techniques. It covers newly developed techniques, enhanced methodologies, software related solutions and recently developed tools, as well as indicating the direction of future research, and the 40 revised papers included here have been selected by the SoMeT20 international reviewing committee on the basis of technical soundness, relevance, originality, significance, and clarity. The book is divided into 5 chapters: artificial intelligence techniques on software engineering, and requirement engineering; software methods for informatics, medical informatics and bio-medicine applications; applied software tools, techniques and related software engineering models; intelligent-software systems design, software quality, software evolution and validation techniques; and knowledge science and intelligent computing. Providing an overview of the state-of-the-art in software science and its supporting technology, this book will be of interest to all those working in the field.

This book explores total information awareness empowered by social media. At the FBI Citizens Academy in February 2021, I asked the FBI about the January 6 Capitol riot organized on social media that led to the unprecedented ban of a sitting U.S. President by all major social networks. In March 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared before Congress to face criticism about their handling of misinformation and online extremism that culminated in the storming of Capitol Hill. With more than three billion monthly active users, Facebook family of apps is by far the world's largest social network. Facebook as a nation is bigger than the top three most populous countries in the world: China, India, and the United States. Social media has enabled its users to inform and misinform the public, to appease and disrupt Wall Street, to mitigate and exacerbate the COVID-19 pandemic, and to unite and divide a country. Mark Zuckerberg once said, "We exist at the intersection of technology and social issues." He should have heeded his own words. In October 2021, former Facebook manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen testified at the U.S. Senate that Facebook's products "harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy." This book offers discourse and practical advice on information and misinformation, cybersecurity and privacy issues, cryptocurrency and business intelligence, social media marketing and caveats, e-government and e-activism, as well as the pros and cons of total information awareness including the Edward Snowden leaks. "Highly recommended." - T. D. Richardson, Choice Magazine "A great book for social media experts." - Will M., AdWeek "Parents in particular would be well advised to make this book compulsory reading for their teenage children..." - David B. Henderson, ACM Computing Reviews

The growth of a global digital economy has enabled rapid communication, instantaneous movement of funds, and availability of vast amounts of information. With this come challenges such as the vulnerability of digitalized sociotechnological systems (STSs) to destructive events (earthquakes, disease events, terrorist attacks). Similar issues arise for disruptions to complex linked natural and social systems (from changing climates, evolving urban environments, etc.). This book explores new approaches to the resilience of sociotechnological and natural-social systems in a digital world of big data, extraordinary computing capacity, and rapidly developing methods of Artificial Intelligence. Most of the book’s papers were presented at the Workshop on Big Data and Systems Analysis held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria in February, 2020. Their authors are associated with the Task Group “Advanced mathematical tools for data-driven applied systems analysis” created and sponsored by CODATA in November, 2018. The world-wide COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the vulnerability of our healthcare systems, supply chains, and social infrastructure, and confronts our notions of what makes a system resilient. We have found that use of AI tools can lead to problems when unexpected events occur. On the other hand, the vast amounts of data available from sensors, satellite images, social media, etc. can also be used to make modern systems more resilient. Papers in the book explore disruptions of complex networks and algorithms that minimize departure from a previous state after a disruption; introduce a multigrammatical framework for the technological and resource bases of today’s large-scale industrial systems and the transformations resulting from disruptive events; and explain how robotics can enhance pre-emptive measures or post-disaster responses to increase resiliency. Other papers explore current directions in data processing and handling and principles of FAIRness in data; how the availability of large amounts of data can aid in the development of resilient STSs and challenges to overcome in doing so. The book also addresses interactions between humans and built environments, focusing on how AI can inform today’s smart and connected buildings and make them resilient, and how AI tools can increase resilience to misinformation and its dissemination.

There are basically two categories of books on decision-making. One tells stories of how intuition guides decision-making. The other delineates a formal approach, based on decision-trees or matrices, often impenetrable to real-life decision makers. This book combines the best elements of both perspectives in a way that can be easily understood by all who are struggling with complex decisions, either as individuals or as organisations. It demonstrates how intuition and psychological insights can be harnessed to design relevant models and decision strategies, and describes how goals can be adequately formed and operationalised. Finally, the book integrates these processes in an analytical framework for decision-making.

Food, water and society: what is managed by whom, and with what impacts? Our food supply chains are at risk. Water resources--sometimes scarce, often damaged, and always under-valued--are among the major reasons why food and water security rank high every year in the World Economic Forum's major global risk analysis. A stable and sustainable food system is critical to society's survival. This Handbook shows that keeping the food system stable comes at the expense of the environment, especially of water resources and those who consume and manage them. The way the food system operates reflects hard political realities. Rather than pay for the environmental costs of sustainable production, society expects food at ever lower prices. Governments reflect their electorates in this regard. Given that farm production may account for as little as 10% of the food value chain in wealthy economies, it is striking that governments have been unwilling (or unable) to put in place the essential laws and accountability that would enable famers to ensure both production and stewardship. Corporate food traders, food manufacturers, and retailers on the other hand operate in markets that make profits and pay taxes. But these corporations are not contractually bound to utilize highly nutritious, sustainably produced food commodities. The articles in this Oxford Handbook have been written by water and food system scientists and professionals, including farmers, rarely heard voices who understand the problems of food producers, food manufacturers, and regulating markets and public policy. The articles address the blind spots of society and its public policymakers, demonstrating the importance of informing society about the consequences of its food preferences and the heroic challenges it is beginning to face. The damage we are doing to our water and soil ecosystems is as important as the damage we do to the atmosphere. Impressed by the technical and organizational advances of the past two centuries, the contributors featured in this book also take note of where economic inefficiencies and cultural deadlock in a 4,000 year old system are putting our critical food supply chains at risk.