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The Kurdish independence movement is in retreat. Contributing factors for this withdrawal are the new outbreak of the Kurdish war in Turkey, the structural weakening of the autonomous region "Rojava" in Syria, proclaimed by the DUP, and the setbacks in Iraqi Kurdistan, caused by political and economic blockades. The Kurdish autonomy projects will be reduced to a minimum. The independence referendum in Iraq and the Iraqi and Shiite militias' military response are indicative of the reluctance of the Middle-Eastern ruling forces to accept political and ethnical pluralism. External actors as the USA, the EU and the UN, support the return of the "strong" state in order to support regional stability. Kurdish elites and their political organisations are facing a crisis of their own. The Kurdistan Workers' Party propagates postmodern concepts of a post-nation state in a region requiring stable political structures more than ever before. In Iraqi Kurdistan ongoing internal fighting between the main actors sets back Nation and State building processes by decades. All these factors are part of a phase of transition aiming at a new regional order, whose outlines can't be anticipated yet.
A practical how-to guide for more effective planningthrough multi-actor modelling Careful planning is the cornerstone of a successful initiative, and any plan, policy, or business strategy can only be successful if it has the support of different actors. These actors may beactively pursuing their own agendas, so the plan must not only offer an optimal solution to theproblem, but must also fit the needs and abilities of the actors involved. Actor and Strategy Models: Practical Applications and Step-wise Approaches provides a primer on multi-actormodelling, based on the fundamental premise that actor strategies are explained by investigatingwhat actors can do, think, and want to achieve. Cover...
Here are the refereed proceedings of the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context. The 42 papers deal with the interdisciplinary topic of modeling and using context from various perspectives, including computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, linguistics, organizational science, philosophy, and psychology. In addition, readers discover applications in areas such as medicine and law.
We wondered what made the project a success.
This book starts with the basic concepts of Fuzzy Logic: the membership function, the intersection and the union of fuzzy sets, fuzzy numbers, and the extension principle underlying the algorithmic operations. Several chapters are devoted to applications of Fuzzy Logic in Operations Research: PERT planning with uncertain activity durations, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with vague preferential statements, and Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) with weighted degrees of satisfaction. New items are: Fuzzy PERT using activity durations with triangular membership functions, Fuzzy SMART with a sensitivity analysis based upon Fuzzy Logic, the Additive and the Multiplicative AHP with a sim...
This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among...
Bridging Boundaries: Making Scale Choices in Multi-Actor Policy Analysis on Water Management synthesizes different perspectives on scale choices (spatial boundary setting, temporal boundary setting and selection of level of aggregation) in policy analysis. Scale choices influence the content of a study (the problems on the agenda, the options found and the impacts addressed) and the process (actors involved, their dedication and criticalness). Scale choices are not politically neutral: they may have advantages or disadvantages for certain actors by putting their urgent problems and their preferred options on the agenda, while they may hide or stress positive or negative impacts of options. Yet, little is known about the specific effects of scale choices and how they are made in practice. In this research, the making of scale choices is studied in two cases in practice: the Long Term Vision Study of the Scheldt Estuary and the Water Shortage Study of the Netherlands. Scale choices appear to be an important framing instrument that can be used by the policy analyst.
Special Offer: Water Framework Directive Series Set. Visit www.iwapublishing.com to buy all four titles including Volume 3 and save £100! Water resources planning and management and the development of appropriate policies requires methodologies and tools that are able to support systematic, integrative and multidisciplinary assessments at various scales. It also requires the quantification of various uncertainties in both data and models, and the incorporation of stakeholders participation and institutional mechanisms into the various tools and risk assessment methodologies, to help decision makers understand and evaluate alternative measures and decisions. This requirement has been explici...
As the study of environmental policy and justice becomes increasingly significant in today’s global climate, standard statistical approaches to gathering data have become less helpful at generating new insights and possibilities. None of the conventional frameworks easily allow for the empirical modeling of the interactions of all the actors involved, or for the emergence of outcomes unintended by the actors. The existing frameworks account for the "what," but not for the "why." Heather E. Campbell, Yushim Kim, and Adam Eckerd bring an innovative perspective to environmental justice research. Their approach adjusts the narrower questions often asked in the study of environmental justice, e...