A pixel level evaluation of five multitemporal global gridded population datasets: a case study in Sweden, 1990–2015

Population and Environment - Human activity is a major driver of change and has contributed to many of the challenges we face today. Detailed information about human population distribution is...     

Supporting unaccompanied asylum‐seeking young people: The experience of foster care

Although research on the experiences of unaccompanied asylum‐seeking young people in the UK has grown steadily in recent years, their experience of fostering and of the role played by foster carers in helping their adjustment have been neglected. This paper reports findings from the first UK study into these experiences, describing issues arising from initial assessment and preparation for fostering and the ways in which young people and foster carers adjusted to their lives together. It assesses the progress made by young people during placement, the strategies that appeared helpful to relationship building, and the extent to which young people had become integrated within the wider network of family relationships. Given that most young people first arrive as teenagers, it also considers the ways in which foster carers and social workers helped young people prepare for adult life in the context of uncertainties arising from the asylum process.     

From design to operations: a process management life-cycle performance measurement system for Public-Private Partnerships

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) have become a critical vehicle for delivering infrastructure worldwide. Yet, the use of such a procurement strategy has received considerable criticism, as they have been prone to experiencing time/cost overruns and during their operation poorly managed. A key issue contributing to the poor performance of PPPs is the paucity of an effective and comprehensive performance measurement system. There has been a tendency for the performance of PPPs to be measured based on their ex-post criteria of time, cost and quality. Such criteria do not accommodate the complexities and lifecycle of an asset. In addressing this problem, the methodology of sequential triangulation is used to develop and examine the effectiveness of a ‘Process Management Life Cycle Performance Measurement System’. The research provides public authorities and private-sector entities embarking on PPPs with a robust mechanism to effectively measure, control and manage their projects’ life cycle performances, ensuring the assets are ‘future proofed’.     

A Probabilistic Model of the Economic Risk to Britain's Railway Network from Bridge Scour During Floods

Scour (localized erosion by water) is an important risk to bridges, and hence many infrastructure networks, around the world. In Britain, scour has caused the failure of railway bridges crossing rivers in more than 50 flood events. These events have been investigated in detail, providing a data set with which we develop and test a model to quantify scour risk. The risk analysis is formulated in terms of a generic, transferrable infrastructure network risk model. For some bridge failures, the severity of the causative flood was recorded or can be reconstructed. These data are combined with the background failure rate, and records of bridges that have not failed, to construct fragility curves that quantify the failure probability conditional on the severity of a flood event. The fragility curves generated are to some extent sensitive to the way in which these data are incorporated into the statistical analysis. The new fragility analysis is tested using flood events simulated from a spatial joint probability model for extreme river flows for all river gauging sites in Britain. The combined models appear robust in comparison with historical observations of the expected number of bridge failures in a flood event. The analysis is used to estimate the probability of single or multiple bridge failures in Britain's rail network. Combined with a model for passenger journey disruption in the event of bridge failure, we calculate a system‐wide estimate for the risk of scour failures in terms of passenger journey disruptions and associated economic costs.     

Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

Factors related to attitudes toward diversity in Australia,Malaysia, and Puerto Rico

In this study, we tested social identity complexity theory (Roccas & Brewer, 2002) in relation to attitudes toward diversity and the associated variables of patriotism, nationalism, religiosity, aggression, and sense of self (well-being) in a cross-cultural study of 398 Malaysian, 239 Australian, and 201 Puerto Rican students. Puerto Ricans reported the most positive attitudes toward diversity, followed by Australians, and finally Malaysians. For Puerto Ricans, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive correlation with constructive patriotism and a negative correlation with blind patriotism. For Australians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive association with constructive patriotism, a negative association with traditional nationalism, and a negative association with physical aggression. For Malaysians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by positive relationships with all of the following variables: constructive patriotism, traditional nationalism, verbal aggression, hostility, and the need to bolster self through idealizing others. These results support social identity complexity theory and partially support associated predictions for Australians, Puerto Ricans, and some of the predictions for Malaysians. The results are explained in terms of local cultural contexts that may not easily be understood by a simple understanding of the variables that were measured.     

Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Toward a Theory and Practice of Organizational Listening

While there is an important and growing body of research literature on listening, it is predominantly focused on interpersonal listening. Meanwhile, in contemporary industrial and postindustrial societies, organizations play a central role in society and the lives of citizens. People need to interact on a daily basis with government departments and agencies, corporations, and a plethora of nongovernment and nonprofit organizations. Despite theorization of the disciplinary practices of public relations and corporate, organizational, government, and political communication as two-way communication involving dialogue and engagement with stakeholders and publics, a transdisciplinary literature review of these fields reveals that little attention is paid to listening. In addition to identifying this gap in the literature, this article reports empirical research that shows organizations listen sporadically, often poorly, and sometimes not at all. To address this socially and politically significant gap, this analysis makes recommendations as a contribution to a theory and practice of organizational listening.     

Discussion of “Nonparametric Bayesian Inference in Applications”: Bayesian nonparametric methods in econometrics

The use of Bayesian nonparametrics models has increased rapidly over the last few decades driven by increasing computational power and the development of efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. We review some applications of these models in economic applications including: volatility modelling (using both stochastic volatility models and GARCH-type models) with Dirichlet process mixture models, uses in portfolio allocation problems, long memory models with flexible forms of time-dependence, flexible extension of the dynamic Nelson-Siegel model for interest rate yields and multivariate time series models used in macroeconometrics.