Real Time And Deliberative Decision Making

Decision-making tools are needed to support environmental management in an increasingly global economy. Addressing threats and identifying actions to mitigate those threats necessitates an understanding of the basic risk assessment paradigm and the tools of risk analysis to assess, interpret, and communicate risks. It also requires modification of the risk paradigm itself to incorporate a complex array of quantitative and qualitative information that shapes the unique political and ecological challenges of different countries and regions around the world. This book builds a foundation to characterize and assess a broad range of human and ecological stressors, and risk management approaches to address those stressors, using chemical risk assessment methods and multi-criteria decision analysis tools. Chapters discuss the current state-of-knowledge with regard to emerging stressors and risk management, focusing on the adequacy of available systematic, quantitative tools to guide vulnerability and threat assessments, evaluate the consequences of different events and responses, and support decision-making. This book opens a dialogue on aspects of risk assessment and decision analysis that apply to real-time (immediate) and deliberative (long-term) risk management processes.

There was a time when AI was seen by many as science fiction, i.e., the healthy endeavour of speculating about the future. Now the future is here. AI has passed from being a visionary discipline to lying at the core of many commercial enterprises. AI programs scattered through the web influence nowadays our lives: by extracting profiles and offering tailored advertisement, helping us in our searches, establishing social networks, providing entertainment...And not just in the net, but also in the physical world. In Japan there are robots that guide customers through marketplaces advising them where to find the product matching their needs, and realistic replicas of university professors allow them to teach their lectures a hundred kilometres away from the classroom. Not to speak about intelligent prostheses and remote high-precision surgery. In the Catalan-speaking world there are no robots in marketplaces yet, but it is coming. Recently, the first commercial humanoid robot was built. Since AI technology is becoming reasonably mature, companies are progressively relying on it. The Catalan Association for Artificial Intelligence (ACIA) tries to promote synergies within the research community and also between the different actors playing a role in the development of AI: from universities to industry, from governmental departments to the information society, from entertainment enterprises to citizen services.

For the past decade, the U.S. Marine Corps and its sister services have been engaged in what has been termed "hybrid warfare," which ranges from active combat to civilian support. Hybrid warfare typically occurs in environments where all modes of war are employed, such as conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, disruptive technologies, and criminality to destabilize an existing order. In August 2010, the National Research Council established the Committee on Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders to produce Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders. This report examines the operational environment, existing abilities, and gap to include data, technology, skill sets, training, and measures of effectiveness for small unit leaders in conducting enhanced company operations (ECOs) in hybrid engagement, complex environments. Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders also determines how to understand the decision making calculus and indicators of adversaries. Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders recommends operational and technical approaches for improving the decision making abilities of small unit leaders, including any acquisition and experimentation efforts that can be undertaken by the Marine Corps and/or by other stakeholders aimed specifically at improving the decision making of small unit leaders. This report recommends ways to ease the burden on small unit leaders and to better prepare the small unit leader for success. Improving the Decision Making Abilities of Small Unit Leaders also indentifies a responsible organization to ensure that training and education programs are properly developed, staffed, operated, evaluated, and expanded.

This book explains deliberative constitution-making with a special focus on the connections between participation, representation and legitimacy and provides a general overview of what the challenges and prospects of deliberative constitution-making are today. It seeks to provide a more complete picture of what is at stake as a political trend in various places in the world, both theoretically and empirically grounded. Distinctively, the book studies not only established democracies and well-known cases of deliberative constitution-making but also such practices in authoritarian and less consolidated democratic settings and departs from a traditional institutional perspective to have a special focus on actors, and in particular underrepresented groups. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of deliberative democracy, constitutional politics, democratization and autocratization studies, citizen participation and more broadly to comparative politics, public administration, social policy and law.

This book is a token of appreciation for Professor Gregory E. Kersten (1949–2020), one of the most prominent and active researchers and scholars in the broadly perceived field of collective decisions, notably negotiations, the author of numerous influential papers, books, and edited volumes, a great scientist, mentor, and a loyal friend and colleague. This book contains some papers in the fields of group and collective decisions, voting, social choice, negotiations, and related topics, with examples of real applications. The authors are top researchers and scholars from all over the world whose life and academic career has been inspired and influenced by Professor Kersten.

Robotics research, especially mobile robotics is a young field. Its roots include many engineering and scientific disciplines from mechanical, electrical and electronics engineering to computer, cognitive and social sciences. Each of this parent fields is exciting in its own way and has its share in different books. This book is a result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. It presents a collection of a wide range of research results in robotics scientific community. We hope you will enjoy reading the book as much as we have enjoyed bringing it together for you.

This lecture provides an introduction to the field of mobile robotics and the intersection between multiple robotics-related disciplines including electrical, mechanical, computer, software engineering and computer science. It is intended for an upper-level undergraduate or first-year graduate students interested in mobile robotics and artificial intelligence with some experience in object-oriented programming and controls. Focus areas will include robotics history, hardware, control and software. Specific topics include robot components, effectors and actuators, locomotion, kinematics, sensors, feedback control, control architectures, representation, navigation, localization and mapping. The end of each chapter includes review questions as well as exercises to provide applications for the concepts as well as opportunities for further study. Table of Contents: Introduction / Hardware / Control / Software

Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is the study of methods and procedures by which concerns about multiple conflicting criteria can be formally incorporated into the management planning process. A key area of research in OR/MS, MCDM is now being applied in many new areas, including GIS systems, AI, and group decision making. This volume is in effect the third in a series of Springer books by these editors (all in the ISOR series), and it brings all the latest developments in MCDM into focus. Looking at developments in the applications, methodologies and foundations of MCDM, it presents research from leaders in the field on such topics as Problem Structuring Methodologies; Measurement Theory and MCDA; Recent Developments in Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization; Habitual Domains and Dynamic MCDM in Changeable Spaces; Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis; and many more chapters.