Integrated Management of Land Use Systems under Systemic Risks and Security Targets: A Stochastic Global Biosphere Management Model

Interdependencies among land use systems resemble a complex network connected through demand–supply relationships. Disruption of this network may catalyse systemic risks affecting food, energy, water and environmental security (FEWES) worldwide. We describe the conceptual development, expansion and practical application of a stochastic version of the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM), used to assess competition for land use between agriculture, bioenergy and forestry at regional and global scales. In the stochastic version of the model, systemic risks of various kinds are explicitly covered and can be analysed and mitigated in all their interactions. While traditional deterministic scenario analysis produces sets of scenario‐dependent outcomes, stochastic GLOBIOM explicitly derives robust outcomes that leave the systems better‐off, independently of which scenario applies. Stochastic GLOBIOM is formulated as a stochastic optimisation model that is critical for evaluating portfolios of robust interdependent decisions: ex‐ante strategic decisions (production allocation, storage capacities) and ex‐post adaptive (demand, trading, storage control) decisions. As an example, the model is applied to the question of optimal storage facilities, as buffers for production shortfalls, to meet regional and global FEWES requirements when extreme events occur. Expected shortfalls and storage capacities have a close relationship with Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value‐at‐Risk (CVaR) risk measures. A Value of Stochastic Solutions is calculated to illustrate the benefits of the stochastic over the deterministic model approach.     

Accounting for great expectations: Lessons from the new media surge for critical management theory

The short organizational history of Silicon Alley (1995–2001) is used to examine some key lessons on management learning and innovation in new, interactive media start-ups from a critical perspective. The macro-social context of this history is seen as shaped by the contemporary round of political and economic globalization and its consequences such as the consolidation of the Internet, the succession of software generations, the increase of economic concentration and corporate size, the uneven availability of venture and investment capital, and other changes in the organizational and legal structures of the “new economy”. It is argued that the dynamics of global–local interaction affects the relative autonomy of firms and their subunits (managed vs. self-organized project teams), sharpens the managerial contradictions between routinization/reproduction and innovation/transformation, and widens the differences between organizations and networks in facilitating learning, teaching, and innovation. The analysis emphasizes the endemic tension between institutional dominance and efforts at self-organization from below, the importance of informal, flexible, and relatively autonomous project networks for innovation and transformation as compared to the institutional power relations of older and larger firms, and the significance of networks in furthering the exploration and social construction of new cognitive and social boundaries.     

New Technologies for Customer Rating: Integration of Knowledge-Based Systems and Human Judgement

Avoiding incorrect credit decisions and minimizing the required effort are crucial factors for the economic success of a bank. A basic task of credit granting is a correct valuation of a customer's annual account. CUBUS was designed to give general valuation and a first global impression of a company quickly. It also draws the user's attention to the most critical items of the balance sheet. In addition, detailed analysis and valuations of each annual account item is provided. CUBUS goals which have been achieved include increasing decision quality, improving the know-how level of the staff, improving communication among different departments and finally defining and establishing generally accepted guidelines and norms. The system allows very flexible human-computer cooperation. It works as a competent assistant which provides the following functions: autonomous valuations, reactive assistance, active consulting, interactive problem solving, tutoring and supervising. When SBC's (Swiss Bank Corporation) general management decided that all commercial customers had to be rated, an application had to be developed to make CUBUS judgements available to all credit specialists within the existing mainframe database environment. The integration of mainframe databases and transactions, knowledge-based systems running on workstations, and the judgement of human users raised the challenging question of what general principles have to be applied when such diverse components have to be combined in the most efficient way.     

Developing integration in a local industrial ecosystem – an explorative approach

The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate an approach for initiating development of a local industrial symbiosis network. By maintaining the broad perspective of industrial symbiosis, which includes both material and energy flow analysis, and also taking into account the internal energy use and possibilities for energy savings, we aim to achieve a better system view that avoids both sub‐optimizations and unhealthy dependencies. The approach is applied to a case based on the cooperation between the forest industry, municipality and energy service company in a small town in southern Sweden. Several possibilities for improving material and energy use by increasing integration were identified. It was concluded that it is important to have a genuine knowledge of the system studied and close contact with the actors involved, since a simple analysis of energy and material flows is not sufficient to decide which solutions might be more advantageous. It is also important to have a flexible system boundary looking at the system from different perspectives and at different levels to find the best uses for existing energy and material streams. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Computer-assisted panel sessions (CAPS): Review of an experiment in accelerated international teleconferencing

A complex set of telecommunication links was used to permit eight geographically separated expert panels (in Austria, Poland, the Soviet Union, and the United States) to participate in a Delphi-type exercise conducted in connection with an International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) workshop titled “Systems Assessment of New Technology: International Perspectives.” No significant technical difficulties were encountered in creating and using this communication mechanism, but a number of sociopsychological and procedural problems arose that were sufficiently serious to prevent substantively useful results from being obtained. It seems clear, however, that if such an activity were to focus on questions agreed to be worthwhile, with participants and an agenda structure truly suitable for resolving these questions, then a number of relatively minor organizational and informational adjustments should permit “computer-assisted panel sessions” to become a useful tool for international scientific cooperation.     

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Conflicts and cooperation in the opening-up of new economic resources

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) will meet in March for its ninth session. The size of the resources available for distribution and their allocation by the Conference are surveyed in the following article as are the possibilities of conflict to which they give rise.