Deciding with Thresholds: Importance Measures and Value of Information

Risk‐informed decision making is often accompanied by the specification of an acceptable level of risk. Such target level is compared against the value of a risk metric, usually computed through a probabilistic safety assessment model, to decide about the acceptability of a given design, the launch of a space mission, etc. Importance measures complement the decision process with information about the risk/safety significance of events. However, importance measures do not tell us whether the occurrence of an event can change the overarching decision. By linking value of information and importance measures for probabilistic risk assessment models, this work obtains a value‐of‐information‐based importance measure that brings together the risk metric, risk importance measures, and the risk threshold in one expression. The new importance measure does not impose additional computational burden because it can be calculated from our knowledge of the risk achievement and risk reduction worth, and complements the insights delivered by these importance measures. Several properties are discussed, including the joint decision worth of basic event groups. The application to the large loss of coolant accident sequence of the Advanced Test Reactor helps us in illustrating the risk analysis insights.     

Rank and response: A field experiment on peer information and water use behavior

Perception of peer rank, or how we perform relative to our peers, can be a powerful motivator. While research exists on the effect of social information on decision making, there is less work on how ranked comparisons with our peers influence our behavior. This paper outlines a field experiment conducted with 3896 households in Castro Valley, California, which uses household mailers with various forms of social information and peer rank messaging to motivate water conservation. The experiment tests the effect of a visible peer rank on water use, and how the competitive framing of rank information influences behavioral response. The results show that households with relatively low or high water use in the pre-treatment period responded differently to how rank information was framed. I find that a neutrally-framed peer rank caused a small “boomerang effect” (i.e., an increase in average water use) for low water use households, but this effect was eliminated by competitive framing. At the same time, a competitively-framed peer rank demotivated high water use households, increasing their average water use over the full period of the experiment. This result is supported by evidence that the competitive frame on rank information increased water use for households who ranked “last” in the peer group – a detrimental “last place effect” from competitively-framed rankings.     

The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre‐existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic‐relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in‐depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post‐2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.     

Reconstruction of populations by stochastic optimization: Sensitivity analysis

The reconstruction of populations by stochastic optimization solves the nontrivial problem of finding demographic flows from population registers or vital statistics and censuses, if available. These flows allow the reconstruction of stocks (age pyramids and vital statistics). After a review of reconstruction methods, the sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of the method by stochastic optimization to flawed or missing values, to the length of the reconstruction period, and to variations in the actual demographic flows.     

Evaluation of multi-objective optimization approaches for solving green supply chain design problems

This paper evaluates the applicability of different multi-objective optimization methods for environmentally conscious supply chain design. We analyze a case study with three objectives: costs, CO₂ and fine dust (also known as PM – Particulate Matters) emissions. We approximate the Pareto front using the weighted sum and epsilon constraint scalarization methods with pre-defined or adaptively selected parameters, two popular evolutionary algorithms, SPEA2 and NSGA-II, with different selection strategies, and their interactive counterparts that incorporate Decision Maker׳s (DM׳s) indirect preferences into the search process. Within this case study, the CO₂ emissions could be lowered significantly by accepting a marginal increase of costs over their global minimum. NSGA-II and SPEA2 enabled faster estimation of the Pareto front, but produced significantly worse solutions than the exact optimization methods. The interactive methods outperformed their a posteriori counterparts, and could discover solutions corresponding better to the DM preferences. In addition, by adjusting appropriately the elicitation interval and starting generation of the elicitation, the number of pairwise comparisons needed by the interactive evolutionary methods to construct a satisfactory solution could be decreased.     

股权众筹是否真的那么美--基于美国制度缺陷的再思考

股权众筹作为初创企业采用的一种利用互联网向大众募集小额资本的融资方式，以“脱媒式”对接投融资双方的优势，利用互联网的人群聚集与信息广泛传播效应，降低投融资方之间沟通成本，有助于投融资意向的快速达成。2012年美国JOBS法案的高调出台，吸引了全球范围内的广泛关注。但股权众筹制度在美国已受到诸多批判，除信息披露要求弱化引发的欺诈风险增加外，在注重前端融资效率的同时却忽略了投资端的设计和保护，尤其是众筹股权的流通和退出问题等。美国立法与实践领域对于这些问题尚未取得彻底的突破。股权众筹以美国模式为样板引入中国，在遭遇中国固有法律体系及制度的困扰后，中国股权众筹实践陷入更多困境。通过对美国相关制度出台的背景及存在的不足进行分析，对照中国实践，锁定实践中产生的新问题，并深入探讨现有解决路径能否真正缓解这些不足，以期对股权众筹制度重新进行明确的定位。     

Information society and digital divide in South Africa: results of longitudinal surveys

Integration into the information society implies that information plays an increasingly important role in all sectors of society and holds distinct social and economic benefits. Discourses on the information society are, however, also associated with the digital divide and inequalities in access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Within sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa is often regarded as one of the most information-integrated societies due to widespread mobile phone ownership, among other things. However, while ICT access has been emphasized, research also points to the role of demographic, socio-economic and cultural factors such as ethnicity, income, education and gender. This article discusses the results of questionnaire surveys conducted by Afrobarometer among probability South African samples in 2008 and 2011. The results indicate that individual Internet use and mobile Internet access were lower than estimated in the literature. Furthermore, gender gaps, as well as considerable gaps between population groups and educational levels, were found in Internet and computer use, mobile ownership and access to mobile Internet and accessing news via the Internet. Conclusions regarding strategies for bridging the digital divide and integrating South Africa into the information society are discussed.     

高等学校财务信息公开问题研究--以江西省98所普通高等学校为例

高等学校财务信息公开不仅是促进我国高等学校提高财务管理水平的一个重要途径，也是社会各界了解我国高等学校运营状况的一个窗口。以江西省98所普通高等学校为样本，分析高等学校财务信息公开的现状及存在的问题，并提出我国高等学校财务信息公开的解决途径。     

信息技术时代:哲学社会科学研究面临的挑战及其应对措施

本文从信息时代的来临入手,分析了信息时代对哲学社会科学研究的挑战,最后,思考哲学社会科学研究机构如何应对信息的挑战。     

网络空间个人信息保护的民事法律责任

网络空间个人信息权利保护日益受到重视,个人信息保护的义务及民事法律责任在学界却没有引起足够的关注。由于网络空间个人信息保护的特殊性,从本质上看是个人信息利用中的保护。个人信息保护的义务主体应进行类型化的研究,并赋予主体积极的义务。根据网络空间个人信息收集与利用情况的不同,网络空间个人信息保护的民事法律责任应当包括合同责任与侵权责任。网络空间个人信息侵权责任的归责原则是一个多元化的体系,便于信息主体的权利救济。结合我国法治建设的具体情况和信息产业的发展,网络空间个人信息保护宜采用综合立法的模式。