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Business environments are complex and evolve dynamically to react to environmental or contextual changes. Nowadays, many businesses use business processes to describe and automate their operations. However, current business process systems are based on executing statically defined workflows, which do not naturally allow the handling of emergent needs. In this work we are developing mechanisms to allow for a dynamic adaptation of workflows, and consider assurances that the derived workflows still achieve the main aims of the originals. Specifically, these mechanisms are self-adaptive workflows, based on policies, and self-managed adaptations, based on the refinement checking of an underlying formal model. The formal model, developed using the process algebra known as communicating sequential processes (CSP), allows for checking the correctness of desired adaptations at system runtime and when the adaptation is being attempted. In this paper we present the overview of our approach.

In this chapter, we propose the structural model in terms of the Stair Tree model and barrier option to evaluate the fair deposit insurance premium in accordance with the constraints of the deposit insurance contracts and the consideration of bankruptcy costs. First, we show that the deposit insurance model in Brockman and Turle (2003) is a special case of our model. Second, the simulation results suggest that insurers should adopt a forbearance policy instead of a strict policy for closure regulation to avoid losses from bankruptcy costs. An appropriate deposit insurance premium can alleviate potential moral hazard problems caused by a forbearance policy. Our simulation results can be used as reference in risk management for individual banks and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Climate change is the outstanding survival and ethical issue of our time, and requires urgent action if our descendants are to inherit a livable world. Substantial opportunities exist in the transition to a renewable economy provided through climate action. Reliable, relevant, and accessible information is key…

The Energy Efficiency Finance Task Group (EEFTG) aims to enhance capital flows for energy efficiency investments in the G20 countries and the European Union. Launched in 2015, EEFTG is an initiative of the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (?), an intergovernmental organization based in Paris, France. With the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) as part of its secretariat, EEFTG’s mission is to support G20 economies to build robust, investment-grade policy and investment frameworks by engaging with financial institutions to help them build their capacity, instruments and interests in energy efficiency. In addition, EEFTG serves as a forum for G20 policymakers to share their most successful practices with each other and with members of the private and public finance community, industry, and international organizations.

In response to the sustainability challenges that the Los Angeles region is facing due to the climate crisis and an increasing population, UCLA launched the first university-led Grand Challenge in 2013 — the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, thriving in a hotter Los Angeles. The long-term goals of this Grand Challenge are to transition Los Angeles County to 100% renewable energy, 100% local water, and enhanced ecosystem health by the year 2050. UCLA is leading this effort by coordinating research across disciplines, educating and training students to be the next-generation of problem solvers, and engaging stakeholders to create policy recommendations, technology breakthroughs, and partnerships that result in scalable urban sustainability solutions. Los Angeles County’s diversity in sustainability challenges, landscapes, and cultures make solutions implemented in Los Angeles relevant for megacities across the globe.

Faith communities can be important moral constituencies for action on climate change. The Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions (FACS) is a grassroots advocacy movement in Northern Virginia that motivates concrete actions by members of more than 75 diverse congregations to move the region to zero carbon emissions by 2050. We organize the concern that people of all faith traditions have toward care for creation into focused advocacy and leadership by example. FACS, a 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization, mobilizes clergy and lay members of Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, mainline and evangelical Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, Friends, Unitarian Universalist, and Buddhist faith communities, as well as people unaffiliated with specific faith traditions. We are creating practical, replicable models of local interfaith grassroots organizations that work locally to build healthy, resilient, and thriving communities in which environmentally sound choices become the default, first choices of individuals, corporations, and the public sector.

This chapter describes how economic models are used to answer questions about policy changes, specifically in the context of a carbon fee-and-dividend system. A carbon fee-and-dividend is a price on carbon dioxide emissions that returns the revenues gained to ordinary households in the form of a monthly check. The chapter describes, in nontechnical terms, the economic models and modeling processes involved and how they are similar and different from climate models…

The first chapter provides an overview of our research on connecting the various aspects of technology that now shapes the Sharing as well as the Digital Economies. It underscores the integration of IoT, blockchain, and AI into a decentralized intelligence system that has profound possibilities to employ data in innovative ways. The explosion of data has the potential to transform how we view our current processes and possibilities. How we use and analyze data has become significantly important to our economics, and we discuss its transformative adoption in our industries and policy to enable its development. As we grapple with technology’s inherent risks, we describe how it can be used as a moral agent. It also describes the structure of the book, where each chapter elaborates on a specific application in a particular economic sector.

This chapter — among the few in the world — examined how well the households were prepared to contain COVID-19 in Vietnam under the first national social distancing in late April 2020 by mapping their related indicators presenting living conditions. It used the provincial data from Vietnam’s Population and Housing Census 2019. Following Jones et al. (2020)’s approach, it constructed various readiness indicators for households in 63 provinces/cities in Vietnam in order to see how they were ready for the social distancing period. The results showed that Vietnam’s social distancing in late April 2020 was successful because it was applicable and implementable along with readiness of all households with sufficient resources. At the provincial level, however, there were differences in readiness levels, in which some provinces were consistently lower than the other. As such, supplementing social assistance policies during the social distancing period was timely and appropriate. This chapter concluded that, given its position as a middle-income country with limited resources and a population of nearly 97 million, Vietnam has been among the few countries in the world to successfully contain COVID-19 in a short time. Early interventions and timely social assistance measures combined with house-holds’ readiness strongly determined Vietnam’s success.

The vital factors which can facilitate the development of Startups and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in markets are the appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks. However, there is a difference in the frameworks which may contribute to different levels of development of startups and SMEs in different countries. This chapter thus focuses on the comparative study of the frameworks of selected countries to display their possible challenges in those countries. The chapter shows that governments in Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand adopt different regulatory frameworks which help stimulate the creation of startups and SMEs. It provides comparisons of the frameworks in those four countries, and also presents that there are challenges from these regulatory frameworks for startups and SMEs developing there.

Scientists and policymakers alike have increasingly been interested in exploring ways to advance algorithmic fairness, recognizing not only the potential utility of algorithms in biomedical and digital health contexts but also that the unique challenges that algorithms—in a datafied culture such as the United States—pose for civil rights (including, but not limited to, privacy and nondiscrimination). In addition to the technical complexities, separation of powers issues are making the task even more daunting for policymakers—issues that might seem obscure to many scientists and technologists. While administrative agencies (such as the Federal Trade Commission) and legislators have been working to advance algorithmic fairness (in large part through comprehensive data privacy reform), recent judicial activism by the Roberts Court threaten to undermine those efforts. Scientists need to understand these legal developments so they can take appropriate action when contributing to a biomedical data ecosystem and designing, deploying, and maintaining algorithms for digital health. Here I highlight some of the recent actions taken by policymakers. I then review three recent Supreme Court cases (and foreshadow a fourth case) that illustrate the radical power grab by the Roberts Court, explaining for scientists how these drastic shifts in law will frustrate governmental approaches to algorithmic fairness and necessitate increased reliance by scientists on self-governance strategies to promote responsible and ethical practices.

Social enterprises have intense interaction with their local communities and “are explicitly committed to generating social value in perpetuity” (Katz & Page, 2010). They bring cohesiveness and trust to their host communities and they are the civil society’s way of becoming the “primary stakeholders” (Cornwall, 2003) in development agendas. These are the aspects of societal living that Ostrom (2008) demonstrates through her research on local self-reliance and the development of a concerned civil society, which takes initiative for the management of its own resources. The analysis done in this chapter demonstrates the interplay of the social enterprise and public policy. Ostrom’s (2008) framework of seven design principles, which provide a normative reference for local self-governance initiatives, is mapped onto four social enterprise cases, selected for their extent of community engagement and self-regulation. This chapter follows a case-based methodology, with an analysis of four diverse types of social enterprises, within the Indian context. A discussion of the design principles, within the social enterprise framework, is followed by the analysis of these cases. Each of the enterprises has a different level and style of community engagement and we use the design principles to demonstrate the effectiveness of their community participation. The case analysis demonstrates a way for policymakers to integrate and support the social enterprise as a crucial part of participatory development. Moreover, it aids entrepreneurs in evaluating the degree to which their host communities are invested in a truly participatory experience.

The theme of Topic Study Group 40 (TSG-40) at the 14^th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-14) (Shanghai, China) is Research and Development on Mathematics Curriculum. TSG-40 was held worldwide on-line style in three sessions of July 13, July 16, and July 17, 2021. This article reports a concise summary of TSG-40 including its organization, theme and description, the list of presentations and program overview, the summary of presentations in the theme of four topics at TSG-40, and future directions and suggestions in the area of research and development on mathematics curriculum.

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze the barriers in the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in China and present recommendations on ways to address these challenges in tobacco control in China.

Methods: We review the available literature on progress and explore the barriers and challenges that impede a speedier pace in the adoption of the effective tobacco control measures, and present recommendations based on in-depth knowledge of decision-making process on the implementation of FCTC in China.

Results: The pace of progress in China is too slow. China faces intractable political, structural, economic and social barriers in tobacco control, which make the wholehearted implementation of FCTC measures a painstaking process.

Discussion: The authors recommend a comprehensive approach to speed up the implementation of tobacco control measures. This includes strong political leadership from the top, structural changes to the tobacco industry and government oversight of the tobacco industry, as well as advocacy and support for tobacco control from civil society at the grassroots level. (Global Health Promotion, 2014; 20(4): 13–22).

Mental health issues can emerge at any age, with incidence particularly common in childhood and young adulthood. The personal and economic consequences can last the life-course, and spillover into family and wider community impacts. Mental health issues are among the most challenging of all illnesses because of the breadth, durability, and complexity of impact.

We describe prevalence, mortality and disability, and discuss challenges arising in the mental health field, each with economic implications. We report expenditure levels, and we discuss issues that arise in financing mental health interventions. Numerous methodological and practical challenges arise when conducting economic evaluation in the mental health field. We describe how evidence from cost-effectiveness and other analyses contribute to better resource utilization decisions.

Throughout the chapter, we argue how most mental health problems are complicated, and have many negative and often distressing consequences for the individuals who are unwell, their families, and the wider society. This complexity often makes them expensive, and the durability and wide sphere of impact add to the economic consequences. Given the pervasive scarcity of resources, decision-makers must think through the economic case for strategies or treatments that might address mental health needs.

This chapter examined historical occurrence of natural disasters, policy frameworks related to disasters, implementation arrangements and challenges, national and household resources to natural disasters in Malawi. It is found that Malawi has an updated national disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy that is coordinated by the Department of Disaster Risk management and Affairs within the Office of President and Cabinet. The policy is linked to various related sectoral policies and to national growth and development strategy. There are various committees established at various levels that deliberate on issues related to disaster risk reduction and management. At national level, priority areas have been identified. In addition, the chapter concluded that household strategies such as crop diversification, irrigation farming and income generating activities have positive and significant contribution on reducing disaster risk to household food production and let alone welfare.

Building maintenance is considered as an invaluable process in preserving buildings’ continual use and retaining their value and quality. The fast development of building maintenance industry has resulted in the participation of governments in its practices. Learning from their practices can benefit building maintenance stakeholders significantly. However, there is still a lack of systematic review of the current building maintenance practices of governments for the purpose of organizational learning. The study aims to address this research gap by delivering a review of building maintenance practices in developed economics. The research benefits building maintenance stakeholders by delivering them knowledge regarding governments’ maintenance practices in the industry.

Web services are becoming increasingly popular for implementing business software systems, partly due to the flexibility offered as functionality can be dynamically changed or extended by adding or replacing services. A proposed approach to speed up service discovery is to group functionally similar web services into so-called communities. However, the state-of-the-art development protocol of web service communities lacks ability to accommodate web services which do not completely satisfy the expectations of the community. This paper explains why it may be useful to have a more flexible approach where new services may be allowed into a community even if they initially appear not to fully comply with the community's expectations. A policy based negotiation approach is proposed, allowing the community master service to automatically include new services in a flexible manner. The approach is supported by an implemented tool prototype and illustrated by an example.

An expansion of inbound tourism increases the demand for locally produced non-traded goods and services, thereby raising the relative prices of them. In the short run, the increase in tourism can bring benefits in terms of raising tax revenues, increasing sectoral employment and improving environmental quality. Nonetheless, in the long run, costs for the increase in tourism may arise. A tourism boom can cause ‘Dutch Disease’ in lowering capital formation of the non-tourism sectors. Moreover, the expansion of tourism can reduce foreign reserves of the economy. Therefore, how to balance the short-run benefits versus long-run costs is of concern to policy makers in attracting international tourists to the economy.

While Digital Libraries (DLs) are moving towards universally accessible collections of human knowledge, considerable advances are needed in DL methodologies and technologies to make this happen. Interoperability between DLs is a crucial requirement to achieve this goal. The European project, DL.org, is focused on advancing the state of the art in this area by proposing solutions, fostering best practices and shared standards, drawing on the knowledge acquired during the DELOS Network of Excellence, and harnessing the expertise of DL domain stakeholder communities. By serving this goal, DL.org is paving the way for the embedding of new research achievements into real-world systems, opening up new cross-domain research perspectives and supporting the advancement of the European Information Space for the knowledge-based economy.