Suchergebnisse

Comprising a decade's worth of essays written since the publication of the author's pathbreaking book, The Political Economy of the Environment (2002), this volume discusses a number of diverse environmental issues through an economist's lens. Topics covered include environmental justice, disaster response, globalization and the environment, industrial toxins and other pollutants, cap-and-dividend climate policies, and agricultural biodiversity.

Purpose Smart cities provide fully integrated and networked connectivity between virtual/digital assets and physical building/infrastructure assets to form digital economies. However, industrial espionage, cyber-crime and deplorable politically driven cyber-interventions threaten to disrupt and/or physically damage the critical infrastructure that supports national wealth generation and preserves the health, safety and welfare of the populous. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of cyber-threats confronting critical infrastructure asset management reliant upon a common data environment to augment building information modelling (BIM) implementation. Design/methodology/approach An interpretivist, methodological approach to reviewing pertinent literature (that contained elements of positivism) was adopted. The ensuing mixed methods analysis: reports upon case studies of cyber-physical attacks; reveals distinct categories of hackers; identifies and reports upon the various motivations for the perpetrators/actors; and explains the varied reconnaissance techniques adopted. Findings The paper concludes with direction for future research work and a recommendation to utilize innovative block chain technology as a potential risk mitigation measure for digital built environment vulnerabilities. Originality/value While cyber security and digitization of the built environment have been widely covered within the extant literature in isolation, scant research has hitherto conducted an holistic review of the perceived threats, deterrence applications and future developments in a digitized Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) sector. This review presents concise and lucid reference guidance that will intellectually challenge, and better inform, both practitioners and researchers in the AECO field of enquiry.

environments for public health. Certain member states of the European Union (EU) have already achieved successes in improving indoor environmental quality, such as controlling certain contaminants (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke) or developing nationwide policies that address indoor air generally. However, a common European approach to achieving healthy indoor environments is desirable for several reasons including providing a broader recognition of the problem of unhealthy indoor air, setting a policy example for all 27 EU member states, and achieving greater public health equity across the different European nations. In this article we address the question "Why is it so difficult in the EU to develop a coherent approach on indoor environment?" We identify and describe four main barriers: a) the subsidiarity principle in EU policymaking, introducing decentralization of decision making to the member states ; b) fragmentation of the topic of the indoor environment ; c) the differences in climate and governance among different member states that make a common policy difficult ; and d) economic issues. We discuss potential lessons and recommendations from EU and U.S. successes in achieving healthier indoor environments through various policy mechanisms

Book ; Setting out from a background of scholarship evolved over a period of decades, I joined the High Court Bench in October 2003, with the enthusiasm to match the law as learnt, to the reality of dispute settlement. First assigned duty in the Civil Division at the principal station, and thereafter continually adjudicating civil disputes, I formed the impression, especially after serving for more than three years in the Criminal Division and after experiencing the entire range of justiciable causes, that civil cases, offered the widest scope for the development of the typical legal concept, and for the formulation of novel concepts of jurisprudence. The reason is that, unlike in criminal or cognate matters, which on constitutional or historical grounds were bounded by formal law, the civil domain rested on private grievance, and accorded the judge considerable liberty in the application of principle an d in law-making. At the same time I gained the perception , with in the framework of civil litigation, that the law relating to property was by far the most tested sphere of dispute settlement. By no means surprising, in view of the constrained pace of growth of the national economy, attending upon a rapid pace of population growth, such as obtains in most African countries. The basic endowment of nature, in the form of land, and land-based resources and activities, lies at the core of social tensions, and the resultant urgency of dispute settlement; and these, thus, constitute the larger part of the incidence of civil litigation. Such disputes do not, in most cases, find anything akin to solution-templates in the form of enacted law. And the common law tradition has come in handy - with its considerable scope for judicial law-making. This scenario conforms to reality in East Africa, which had the legacy of the common law, coming both formally through legislative prescription, and informally through the agency of judicial officers of Commonwealth origin, as well as through a system of legal education and training greatly influenced by the Commonwealth experience.The classic depict ion of the place of judicial creativity, even when the subject-matter is govern ed by enacted law, is that by Lord Denning: "It would certainly save the judges trouble if Acts of Parliament were drafted with Divine prescience and perfect clarity. In the absence of it.a judge.must set to work on the constructive task of finding the intention of Parliament, and he must do this not only from the language of the statute but also from a consideration of the social conditions which have given rise to it , and of the mischief which it was passed to remedy, and then he must implement the written word so as to give 'forces of life' to the intention of the legislature.» t In the same way, there was an unlimited scope for the Kenyan judge to interpret the law, breathe life into it and, for all practical purposes, make law. It is the clear significance of landed property in the incidence of litigation , that led to the choice of this sphere as the forum for examining evolving judicial practice. This work is a depiction of the judge's law-creative role, in the common law tradition. The judge's context of work is, however, not exactly the same in East Africa as in England - the cradle of the common law tradition. In most countries of Africa, the fundamental principles of law are laid out in a written Constitution, that is binding on the courts and all public agencies. It is, thus, a matter of professional interest, how the superior courts have performed the common-law role, in the context of the Constitution as the basic norm. In this work, it is the sphere of property law that has been adopted as the medium for examining the mode of discharge of the common law function, in the context of the principles elaborated in the Constitution.

environments for public health. Certain member states of the European Union (EU) have already achieved successes in improving indoor environmental quality, such as controlling certain contaminants (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke) or developing nationwide policies that address indoor air generally. However, a common European approach to achieving healthy indoor environments is desirable for several reasons including providing a broader recognition of the problem of unhealthy indoor air, setting a policy example for all 27 EU member states, and achieving greater public health equity across the different European nations. In this article we address the question "Why is it so difficult in the EU to develop a coherent approach on indoor environment?" We identify and describe four main barriers: a) the subsidiarity principle in EU policymaking, introducing decentralization of decision making to the member states ; b) fragmentation of the topic of the indoor environment ; c) the differences in climate and governance among different member states that make a common policy difficult ; and d) economic issues. We discuss potential lessons and recommendations from EU and U.S. successes in achieving healthier indoor environments through various policy mechanisms

Increasingly, policymakers in Europe and around the world are realizing the importance of healthy indoor environments for public health. Certain member states of the European Union (EU) have already achieved successes in improving indoor environmental quality, such as controlling certain contaminants (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke) or developing nationwide policies that address indoor air generally. However, a common European approach to achieving healthy indoor environments is desirable for several reasons including providing a broader recognition of the problem of unhealthy indoor air, setting a policy example for all 27 EU member states, and achieving greater public health equity across the different European nations. In this article we address the question "Why is it so difficult in the EU to develop a coherent approach on indoor environment?" We identify and describe four main barriers: a) the subsidiarity principle in EU policymaking, introducing decentralization of decision making to the member states; b) fragmentation of the topic of the indoor environment; c) the differences in climate and governance among different member states that make a common policy difficult; and d) economic issues. We discuss potential lessons and recommendations from EU and U.S. successes in achieving healthier indoor environments through various policy mechanisms.

This book examines issues of landscape change and the eco-cultural nature of the environment. It looks at how widespread landscape abandonment, rural depopulation, and urbanisation effects the environment and appropriate protection and conservation measures.

Economic activity can damage natural systems and reduce the flow of ecosystem services. The harms can be substantial, as our case studies vividly illustrate. Most degraded landscapes have at least some potential to be reclaimed. However, uncertainty plagues decision making regarding degradation and reclamation, in relation to the extent of the damage, the success of reclamation, and how exposure will change in the future. We examine how a range of observed decision biases can lead to far‐from‐optimal policies regarding how much degradation to allow and when, as well as how and how much, to reclaim degraded sites. Despite our focus on degraded landscapes, we believe these are generic biases present in a wide range of risk situations. Our three case studies show these biases at work. The first two studies are of mining operations in the United States and Canada, and the third is of climate change.