Suchergebnisse

The safe management of the complex distributed systems and critical infrastructures which constitute the backbone of modern industry and society entails identifying and quantifying their vulnerabilities to design adequate protection, mitigation, and emergency action against failure. In practice, there is no fail-safe solution to such problems and various frameworks are being proposed to effectively integrate different methods of complex systems analysis in a problem-driven approach to their solution. Vulnerable Systems reflects the current state of knowledge on the procedures which are being put forward for the risk and vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructures. Classical methods of reliability and risk analysis, as well as new paradigms based on network and systems theory, including simulation, are considered in a dynamic and holistic way. Readers of Vulnerable Systems will benefit from its structured presentation of the current knowledge base on this subject. It will enable graduate students, researchers and safety and risk analysts to understand the methods suitable for different phases of analysis and to identify their criticalities in application.

A sense of personal vulnerability in the face of death is the motivation behind this article. The focus of the research is first, on the lived experience of families facing bereavement in a children's hospital. Using a qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the findings identify three key issues: Hope and struggle with God; A new experience of Community; A changed relationship with the child – Continuing bonds. Then drawing on theological resources, the author outlines a response to the emerging issues describing how a theological lens can bring a unique and appreciated contribution to the families' experiences of loss, namely Theodicy: Sustaining faith and hope; Community: Being in community with God and people and Continuing Bonds: Facilitating expressions of remembrance, mystery and afterlife. Finally, consideration is given to the unique role of healthcare chaplains within the multidisciplinary team in a contemporary healthcare environment which is still negotiating the delivery of spiritual and religious care. The research confirms the valued and unique theological and pastoral contribution of healthcare chaplaincy within healthcare.

Academic freedom is formally supported but often challenged, through activities like no-platforming and through a sentiment of sensitivity and an understanding that ideas can be harmful. This development is discussed here as a reflection of the rise of the 'vulnerable subject.' This paper demonstrates the growing importance of vulnerability as the central human characteristic in (post) modern times and with reference to law and justice practices explains the 'collapse of the harm principle.' Developed through Frank Furedi's theory of diminished subjectivity we will demonstrate the extent to which the vulnerable subject has been institutionalised and adopted as a new (fragmented) norm. Within the framework of diminished subjectivity, the inner logic of vulnerability has a spiralling dynamic—once adopted as a norm, the vulnerable subject's answer to the question 'vulnerable to what?' constantly expands, drawing in ever more areas of life, behaviour, relationships as well as words and ideas into a regulatory framework. Concerns about overcriminalisation are understood here to be a product of this vulnerable subject, something that cannot be resolved at the level of law but must relate to the wider cultural and political sense of human progress and a defence of the robust liberal subject in society.

We study the conditional distribution of GDP growth as a function of economic and financial conditions. Deteriorating financial conditions are associated with an increase in the conditional volatility and a decline in the conditional mean of GDP growth, leading the lower quantiles of GDP growth to vary with financial conditions and the upper quantiles to be stable over time. Upside risks to GDP growth are low in most periods while downside risks increase as financial conditions become tighter. We argue that amplification mechanisms in the financial sector generate the observed growth vulnerability dynamics. (JEL C53, E23, E27, E32, E44)