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741. Abstraction-decomposition space for critical infrastructure systems: A framework for infrastructure planning and resilience policies

Author:
Stig Rune Sellevåg
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
The objective of this work has been to propose a framework that will aid governments with the development of more coherent and effective infrastructure planning and resilience policies through a system-of-systems approach that is grounded in theory for complex sociotechnical systems. The framework has been developed by using a work domain analysis (WDA). The WDA consists of an abstraction hierarchy analysis and a part-whole decomposition. Together, the abstraction hierarchy and the part-whole description form the abstraction-decomposition space (ADS) for which the system constraints apply. By imposing constraints, the WDA promotes design for adaptation where actors within the system are allowed to adapt their behaviour as they find appropriate without violating the system’s constraints. The proposed ADS consists of five levels of abstraction and four levels of decomposition. By applying the ADS, it will aid decision making related to the overall purposes of the critical infrastructure system, the values and priority measures that are used to assess the system’s progress towards the functional purposes, as well as formulation of infrastructure needs that are necessary to achieve the functional purposes. The framework is formative in the sense that it reveals how work can be done in the critical infrastructure system. This is important because it is not feasible to prescribe, describe and risk assess all possibilities for action that are available in complex sociotechnical systems, especially when dealing with unforeseen events. Future research should focus on finding science-based yet useful in practice ways for establishing values and priority measures that encompass sustainability issues and resilience standards.
Topic:
Security, National Security, Infrastructure, Resilience, Economic Security, and Adaptation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

742. The role of citizens and geoinformation in providing alerts and crisis information to the public

Author:
Fatime Balog and Tibor Babos
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
Mankind has been facing constant threats and challenges from natural and civilisational disasters for centuries. The fundamental responsibility of states is to protect the lives, health, and property of their citizens. However, protection against natural and civilisational disasters is a complex task in which the population also has to take part, and the availability of geoinformation is a prerequisite for effective protection. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the combined power of both citizens and technology in the task of alerting and informing the public of the opportunities offered by virtual crowdsourcing, Web 2.0, the role of geoinformation, crisis maps, and drones through the application of a qualitative method, by analysing case studies and by searching for internal connections between different phenomena. Citizens around the world can collaborate and contribute to the sharing and collection of geoinformation to create real-time, interactive maps. These so-called crisis maps support intervention organisations in obtaining information, and they can also be used as sources of information. The use of Web 2.0, crisis maps and drones, as well as the emergence of digital humanitarian volunteering, have fundamentally changed the role of the public when it comes to responding to disasters, including alerting them using geoinformation.
Topic:
Cybersecurity, Citizenship, Crisis Management, and Crowdsourcing
Political Geography:
Global Focus

743. High power wireless power transfer for the future of the battlefield challenges

Author:
Mohamed Zied Chaari, Rashid Al-Rahimi, and Otman Aghzout
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
A significant challenge for the military lab is to reduce the weight of a combatant’s battery on the battlefield. Soldiers use electronic devices powered by wearable batteries in landings, operational combat with the enemy, and defensive exercises. Soldiers should always fully charge their wearable batteries before carrying them. The average weight of the battery is approximately 20 kilograms. During military operations, fighters have numerous electronic devices, such as night-vision goggles, headphones, LMR, navigation systems, VHF radios, and sensors. There is a high probability that fighters will lose their lives if the battery they take is uncharged or empty. Many research studies have tried to increase fighting time and maintain soldier life and links based on these devices. In this work, a wireless power transmission system with an RF microwave station and RF/DC converter circuit incorporated into a bulletproof vest will be designed. This system can harvest RF microwave energy to recharge or energize the wearable battery during a military operation. The challenge here is to develop a compact device that can capture the maximum RF strength to charge batteries carried by soldiers. The proposed device therefore considers all parameters to provide sufficient energy to power a computer at 13 watts. The strength of the RF power varies with the distance between the microwave power station Pin = 100 W and the receiver circuit.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Armed Forces, and Military
Political Geography:
Global Focus

744. Heroes on Strike: Trends in Global Health Worker Protests During COVID-19

Author:
Sorcha A. Brophy, Veena Sriram, Haotian Zong, Chloei Andres, Maria Paz Mawyin, and Narayanan GL
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Accountability Research Center (ARC), American University
Abstract:
This Accountability Note describes global trends in health worker protests between March 11, 2020 and March 10, 2021. We argue that the frequent characterization of health workers as heroes of the pandemic obscures the fact that health workers themselves describe the challenges they face during this time as violations of their rights as workers, highlighting the obligations of their employers to provide working conditions and remuneration that justify the risk they assume. Using data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project, we first provide a global overview of the growth in health worker protest activity in the March 2020–2021 period as compared to the March 2019–2020 period. Health workers engaged in protest activity with greater frequency during the first year of the pandemic than during the prior year. The eighty-five countries included in the ACLED data set in both the March 2019–2020 period and the March 2020–2021 period experienced a sixty-two percent increase in health worker protest activity (from 2416 protests to 3913 protests). We then provide an overview of the content of the 6589 health worker protests in the ACLED dataset between March 2020 and March 2021, describing protests in 149 countries in terms of five categories: working conditions and remuneration, resources, health system delivery issues, public policy, and other. By far, the largest category of protests during this period are those related to working conditions and remuneration. Approximately sixty-six percent (N=4358) of global protests in the 2020–2021 period expressed health worker dissatisfaction about issues such as: occupational hazards, unpaid wages, risk allowances and job security. Surprisingly, personal protective equipment (PPE) concerns—an issue covered frequently in the media—motivated a relatively low percentage of the protests (less than nine percent). We note this not to downplay the gravity of global PPE shortages, but to situate PPE shortages as one among many health worker concerns during the pandemic. Protests initiated by health workers about health system delivery issues provide an important reminder that even in the middle of a pandemic, not everything was about COVID-19. Sixty-two percent of the health system-related protests during the 2020–2021 period were about issues that were not coded as directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the vast majority of health workers’ protests around public policy were not about pandemic-related government policy, but about social issues like climate change, immigration, police brutality, and elections. The aim of this analysis is to understand what health workers advocated for during a time of immense pressure, and to identify some broad areas of concern for health sector accountability. Through this analysis, we prepare the groundwork for future research and action, and share preliminary guidance regarding how health sector stakeholders—including government, health worker associations, unions, and civil society—might develop improved systems of accountability.
Topic:
Health, Protests, Crisis Management, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

745. A Gravity Theory of Subordinate Financialisation

Author:
Photis Lysandrou
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
Recent decades have marked both the globalisation of capitalism following the collapse of communism and its financialisation following the rapid growth of the world's securities markets. These developments have impacted the core-periphery divide in capitalism. In the case of globalisation, the entry of the ex-communist countries into the world capitalist system has swelled the ranks of the emerging capitalist economies (ECEs) that are kept subordinate through the pressures from the advanced capitalist economies (ACEs). In the case of financialisation, the growth of the securities markets has led to a palpable change in the pressures that perpetuate subordination. Where previously the use of authority was the chief source of those pressures, it now plays a secondary role. Absent that authority, and the ECEs would still be held in a subordinate position in global capitalism through the gravitational pull of the ACEs' financial securities markets. The central purpose of this paper is to explain this gravitational pull.
Topic:
Markets, Political Economy, Capitalism, Finance, and Financial Globalization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

746. The Rise of a Rule-Based Transgressor Elite

Author:
Ronen Palan
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
Transnationally organised, rule-based transgressor elites are the wealthiest and most powerful elites today. The core of this group comprises managers of large multinational corporations and related ‘born global’ corporations, such as Tesla, eBay and the like, large investment houses, such as Blackrock, Blackstone and Vanguard, leading international investment banks and elite legal, consultancy and accounting firms. This elite core is joined by several ancillary groups. Arguably the most significant of those are midsize corporate groups, many of which are privately held. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, they employ tactics perfected by large corporations to arbitrage rules and ensure corporate and other forms of taxation, rules specifying personal or group liabilities or other regulations, including protection of shareholders and the like, are either partially or fully avoided. To these, Ricardo de Soares adds another group; he argues elites from development countries latch onto existing institutional and professional providers serving those other elites; once they achieve their goal of transferring capital out of their own countries, they participate actively in the process of wealth and power concentration described in this paper (Soares, 2021) .
Topic:
Political Economy, Multinational Corporations, Elites, and Capital Accumulation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

747. The Environmental Consequences of Inequality

Author:
James K. Boyce
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Inequality has important consequences for the extent of pollution and natural resource depletion as well as for the distribution of the costs and benefits from environmental degradation. Inequalities in the distribution of purchasing power operate through the market, and inequalities in the distribution of political power operate through governance institutions, often with mutually reinforcing effects.
Topic:
Environment, Political Economy, Natural Resources, Inequality, Justice, and Pollution
Political Geography:
Global Focus

748. Considerations on Inflation, Economic Growth and the 2 Percent Inflation Target

Author:
Robert Pollin and Hanae Bouazza
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper considers two basic questions with respect to inflation control, inflation targeting, and overall macroeconomic performance. The initial question is: what has been the justification in research for establishing an inflation target, and specifically a low inflation rate target of 2 – 3 percent, as the organizing principle and overarching goal of macroeconomic policy? The second question is: do we actually observe stronger macroeconomic performances—as measured in standard terms of GDP growth—when macro policy operates within the framework of such low inflation targets? Our answers to these questions are straightforward. First, no serious body of research has been produced that provides a clear justification for a 2 – 3 percent inflation target as the central goal of macroeconomic policy. Further, there is no body of evidence showing that economies at any level of development consistently experience stronger economic growth outcomes when inflation is maintained at less than 3 percent as opposed to higher inflation rates, certainly within a 4 – 5 percent inflation range and, in some circumstances, somewhat higher rates still. These findings are significant insofar as they open space for considering the set of measures other than contractionary monetary policies as viable inflation control tools. It is possible that these other measures do not operate as forcefully as contractionary monetary policy in bringing inflation down to a 2 – 3 percent target range. But our findings suggest that it is not typically necessary to force down inflation to such low levels, especially given that contractionary monetary policies succeed in controlling inflation primarily through the channel of raising mass unemployment and weakening workers’ bargaining power.
Topic:
Economic Growth, Inflation, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

749. Inconsistent Definitions of GDP: Implications for Estimates of Decoupling

Author:
Gregor Semieniuk
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Efforts to assess the possibilities for decoupling economic growth from negative environmental impacts have examined their historical relationship, with varying and inconclusive results. Part of the problem is ambiguity about definitions of environmental impacts, e.g. whether to use territorial or consumption-based measures of environmental impact. This paper shows that ambiguities arising from definitional changes to GDP are sufficiently large to affect the outcomes. I review the history of structural revisions to GDP using the example of the United States, and on international comparisons of purchasing power parity, compare decoupling results using various historical definitions of GDP on the same environmental indicator, and demonstrate that changing the GDP data vintage does impact decoupling results in qualitatively important ways, with and without purchasing power parity. Inconsistencies in economic measurement introduce an additional layer of ambiguity into historical decoupling evidence and model projection into the future. To advance debate and be clear about scenario assumptions, rigorous reporting of GDP definitions used and the sharing of data vintage for subsequent comparison and replication are urgently needed.
Topic:
Environment, Political Economy, GDP, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Global Focus

750. The Price of Speculation: Cryptocurrencies and Climate Change

Author:
Izaura Solipa and Gerald Epstein
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital currency whose popularity has rapidly increased over the past decade. What distinguishes them from other electronic currencies is their underlying technology known as the blockchain, a decentralized public ledger in which transactions among the network peers are accurately and securely recorded. The validation and mining process, where new coins are issued, is highly computationally intensive and thus requires vast amounts of energy. The literature estimates energy consumption levels of the cryptocurrency mining to be as high as those of countries such as Angola, Iceland or Cuba, and a corresponding emission of at least 3-15 million tons of CO2. We discuss these estimated impacts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on both energy levels and the environment, and then outline alternative applications that could promote climate change mitigation. We argue that despite the latter applications and the possible benefits from the technology, particularly in the energy sector, the financial uses of blockchain are creating significant environmental costs without any clear social or economic benefit stemming from this largely speculative activity.
Topic:
Climate Change, Science and Technology, Economy, Cryptocurrencies, Blockchain, Digital Currency, and Speculation
Political Geography:
Global Focus