"Exit Taxonomy" is a text based around a maverick taxonomy of types of exists, investigating departures and acts of leaving, as they pertain to both personal and political realms. Mapping out a decidedly incomplete system of classification of departures both voluntary and enforced, the text draws from a range of references and events from the news and current events, from memory and personal experience, from fiction and cinema, from the popular culture, in order to engage questions of access, freedom, belonging, choice, as well questions of personal and social responsibility.
In 1992, with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the world changed for the science of taxonomy. Many taxonomists appear not to have noticed this change, but it has significantly altered the political climate in which taxonomic research is undertaken. By the late 1990s it was clear that effective implementation of the CBD needed the participation of and funding for the taxonomic community. In this paper, I chart the rise of the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI), review some of its goals and explore how it interacts with the CBD. The interactions of the GTI with the Global Environment Facility, a potential funding body, are explored, as are the possible synergies between the GTI and the many other global initiatives linking to taxonomy. Finally, I explore some of the challenges ahead as taxonomy begins to take a front seat in the implementation of environmental policy on the world stage.
The Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) Forum 2020 was held online from 2 to 4 December 2020, using the GoToWebinar virtual platform. The Forum was organized and co-hosted by the Government of Germany, through the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, with generous financial support from the Government of Japan through the Japan Biodiversity Fund. It consisted of an opening symposium on "Best practices and challenges of the GTI inachieving the Aichi Biodiversity Targets", followed by two days of workshops/presentations. Discussions held at the Forum will be captured in a technical document to inform discussions at the third meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation. The participants in the Forum consisted of 18 selected delegates2 as well as over 200 self-registered participants. The list of participants can be found in annex I below.
This document, the first Deliverable D1.1 in the CUTLER project, identifies the relevant EU legal frameworks applicable to the various environmental, economic and societal data that will be used by city pilots to extract actionable knowledge supporting efficient data-driven decision-making processes. More specifically, it provides a legal taxonomy supporting the adequate qualification of the relevant datasets on a granular level which, in turn, enables appropriate and effective application of legal rights and obligations. It also provides an overview of the relevant regulatory frameworks aiming at facilitating the identification of the applicable legislation by technical partners. Given the project's focus on a broad range of datasets, the legal analysis includes an assessment of inter alia privacy and data protection (General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679/EU and the ePrivacy Directive 2002/58/EC, as well as the Turkish Data Protection Law no. 6698), public sector information re-use (PSI Re-use Directive 2013/37/EU), the relevant EU laws relating to Geo-Spatial Data (Access Directive 2003/4/EC and INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC) and Intellectual Property law issues (InfoSoc 2001/29 Directive, Database Directive 96/9/EC and Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943/EU). Deliverable D1.1 also examines the interplay between the notions of data protection and privacy as well as intellectual property law domains in terms of the restrictions on access to data. More specifically, this deliverable examines the legal frameworks applicable to the following categories of data: Personal data (Regulation 2016/679 and Turkish Data Protection Law no. 6698); Non-personal data (Proposal for a Regulation on the free flow of non-personal data); Electronic communications data (Proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation); Copyrighted data (Directive 2001/29); Data protected by the sui generis right on databases (Directive 96/9); Data protected by trade secrets (Directive 2016/943); Publicly held documents (Directive 2003/98); Environmental ...
The Swedish Species Information Centre (ArtDatabanken, SSIC) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) accumulates, analyses and disseminates information concerning Swedish species, habitats and ecosystems. The SSIC hosts the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative (STI) and produces the Swedish Red List. In addition, the SSIC is the leading partner within the Swedish LifeWatch (SLW) consortium, which cooperates with the Biodiversity Atlas Sweden (BAS) and the Living Atlas Community. The SSIC provides an open access biodiversity reporting and analysis infrastructure including for example the Swedish Species Observation System (artportalen.se), the Swedish taxonomic backbone (dyntaxa.se) and tools for species information including traits, terminology and species determination (artfakta.se). All systems, including the SLW Analysis Portal (analysisportal.se), rely on recognized standards to ensure interoperability and consist of databases, API:s and portals. The Artportalen platform now contains >69 000 000 georeferenced observations, along with 1 300 000 images, video or sound, of some 32 000 species from Sweden. The data are harvested by SLW and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In addition to reports from NGOs and the general public, which generate >90% of the observations, a rapidly increasing number of Swedish governmental authorities and agencies are using the platform to store regional and local species inventories collected by standardized scientific methods. There are sophisticated systems for validation and to secure data quality, and the records are used by scientists as well as by county and municipality councils as a principle biodiversity resource in environmental planning and decision making. Data concerning some species considered to be particularly sensitive to disturbance are classified and not openly available. These data can be accessed via a hierarchy of access levels so as to enable such classified data to available to, for example, environmental officers and to be used in management purposes The SSIC has just launched new API:s, modules for improved reporting of species checklists and invasive species, and a new platform aggregating the services in a single web interface and based on responsive design and specific interfaces for different users (artfakta.se). Improvements are also to be made in the infrastructure of the Swedish taxonomic backbone, which now contains data for almost all Swedish species (more than 275 000 scientific names and 62 000 species). In 2002, when the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative (STI) was established, the SSIC was commissioned by the Swedish Parliament to identify all species of multicellular plants, fungi and animals in the country and to make the information available to scientists, conservationists and the public. The information is presented in the Artfakta platform and in a series of identification handbooks, The Encyclopedia of the Swedish Flora and Fauna. In addition, the STI supports barcoding activities, scientific courses and announces grants for museums and taxonomic research and inventories within poorly known organismal groups. The Swedish and Norwegian taxonomy initiatives work cooperatively to increase the collective knowledge of poorly known species and, as a result, more than 3 000 species new to Sweden and Norway have been found, approximately a third being new to science. The attempt to join forces between different Scandinavian counterparts via technical progress and to focus on digitalization and sharing information on species and communities from the same biogeographical region has proven a successful concept.
Abstract This paper proposes a new approach to the classification of Developmental States (DS) based on their public efforts to foster human development. We conceptualize DS within a multidimensional framework that includes three main dimensions (economic, social and democratic), and run a hierarchical cluster analysis for 112 countries in order to build a multidimensional taxonomy of ds. We propose a country-classification and characterize three country-groups with different developmental public efforts: i) the human development States; ii) the unbalanced developmental States and iii) the non-developmental States. Our multidimensional taxonomy offers a more complex understanding of the variety of public efforts devoted to promote human development, thus overcoming the restricted -economical- conception of DS, which is mainly focused to the East Asian region.
The Swedish Species Information Centre (ArtDatabanken, SSIC) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) accumulates, analyses and disseminates information concerning Swedish species, habitats and ecosystems. The SSIC hosts the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative (STI) and produces the Swedish Red List. In addition, the SSIC is the leading partner within the Swedish LifeWatch (SLW) consortium, which cooperates with the Biodiversity Atlas Sweden (BAS) and the Living Atlas Community. The SSIC provides an open access biodiversity reporting and analysis infrastructure including for example the Swedish Species Observation System (artportalen.se), the Swedish taxonomic backbone (dyntaxa.se) and tools for species information including traits, terminology and species determination (artfakta.se). All systems, including the SLW Analysis Portal (analysisportal.se), rely on recognized standards to ensure interoperability and consist of databases, API:s and portals. The Artportalen platform now contains >69 000 000 georeferenced observations, along with 1 300 000 images, video or sound, of some 32 000 species from Sweden. The data are harvested by SLW and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In addition to reports from NGOs and the general public, which generate >90% of the observations, a rapidly increasing number of Swedish governmental authorities and agencies are using the platform to store regional and local species inventories collected by standardized scientific methods. There are sophisticated systems for validation and to secure data quality, and the records are used by scientists as well as by county and municipality councils as a principle biodiversity resource in environmental planning and decision making. Data concerning some species considered to be particularly sensitive to disturbance are classified and not openly available. These data can be accessed via a hierarchy of access levels so as to enable such classified data to available to, for example, environmental officers and to be ...
International audience ; Implementing circular economy (CE) principles is increasingly recommended as a convenient solution to meet the goals of sustainable development. New tools are required to support practitioners, decision-makers and policy-makers towards more CE practices, as well as to monitor the effects of CE adoption. Worldwide, academics, industrialists and politicians all agree on the need to use CE-related measuring instruments to manage this transition at different systemic levels. In this context, a wide range of circularity indicators (C-indicators) has been developed in recent years. Yet, as there is not one single definition of the CE concept, it is of the utmost importance to know what the available indicators measure in order to use them properly. Indeed, through a systematic literature review-considering both academic and grey literature-55 sets of C-indicators, developed by scholars, consulting companies and governmental agencies, have been identified, encompassing different purposes, scopes, and potential usages. Inspired by existing taxonomies of eco-design tools and sustainability indicators, and in line with the CE characteristics, a classification of indicators aiming to assess, improve, monitor and communicate on the CE performance is proposed and discussed. In the developed taxonomy including 10 categories, C-indicators are differentiated regarding criteria such as the levels of CE implementation (e.g. micro, meso, macro), the CE loops (maintain, reuse, remanufacture, recycle), the performance (intrinsic, impacts), the perspective of circularity (actual, potential) they are taking into account, or their degree of transversality (generic, sector-specific). In addition, the database inventorying the 55 sets of C-indicators is linked to an Excel-based query tool to facilitate the selection of appropriate indicators according to the specific user's needs and requirements. This study enriches the literature by giving a first need-driven taxonomy of C-indicators, which is experienced on ...
International audience ; Implementing circular economy (CE) principles is increasingly recommended as a convenient solution to meet the goals of sustainable development. New tools are required to support practitioners, decision-makers and policy-makers towards more CE practices, as well as to monitor the effects of CE adoption. Worldwide, academics, industrialists and politicians all agree on the need to use CE-related measuring instruments to manage this transition at different systemic levels. In this context, a wide range of circularity indicators (C-indicators) has been developed in recent years. Yet, as there is not one single definition of the CE concept, it is of the utmost importance to know what the available indicators measure in order to use them properly. Indeed, through a systematic literature review-considering both academic and grey literature-55 sets of C-indicators, developed by scholars, consulting companies and governmental agencies, have been identified, encompassing different purposes, scopes, and potential usages. Inspired by existing taxonomies of eco-design tools and sustainability indicators, and in line with the CE characteristics, a classification of indicators aiming to assess, improve, monitor and communicate on the CE performance is proposed and discussed. In the developed taxonomy including 10 categories, C-indicators are differentiated regarding criteria such as the levels of CE implementation (e.g. micro, meso, macro), the CE loops (maintain, reuse, remanufacture, recycle), the performance (intrinsic, impacts), the perspective of circularity (actual, potential) they are taking into account, or their degree of transversality (generic, sector-specific). In addition, the database inventorying the 55 sets of C-indicators is linked to an Excel-based query tool to facilitate the selection of appropriate indicators according to the specific user's needs and requirements. This study enriches the literature by giving a first need-driven taxonomy of C-indicators, which is experienced on ...
Background: Community organizations active in disasters play a vital role in community disaster response and recovery, but academic understanding of this organizational population is limited by untested and imprecise typological differentiations. An organizational taxonomy would better quantify and define this population and subgroups within it. This would allow for contextualizing research and findings against a validated framework that relates organizational groups and subgroups within the broader population. Taxonomies also serve a role similar to theory by enabling the development of new research questions and hypotheses. Objectives: This dissertation proposes a taxonomy to classify the organizations of interest, and the taxonomy uses typological benchmarks that ensure coherent classificatory groups to provide meaning-in-context and salience to the needs of its users. The taxonomy evaluated the utility of structural/operational, functional, and financial traits for classifying the organizations. The taxonomy can guide research and policy development, and it can also provide utility to the community organizations themselves and their collaborative networks. Methods: A novel study population of 660 organizations was created from a stratified non-probability quota sample of 28 Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) networks. The 660 organizations cover the full range of organizational subtypes/subgroups of interest, and the results are not meant to be generalizable to the VOADs themselves without additional and planned validation. Two sets of hierarchical clustering results were produced and compared using both polythetic and parsimonious trait selection. Iterative and heuristic modeling procedures assessed and compared the results of several important permutations and methodological choices. Findings: The best set of results classified the population based on a parsimonious set of structural/operational traits: charitable/religious and faith-based/not faith-based. The results from both approaches were robust and congruent with the typological understanding of these organizations, but up to one-fourth of the organizations in the study population exhibited noteworthy deviation from common typological distinctions. The results were expanded into a taxonomy with three branches and three tiers to create a combined total of 26 clusters and subclusters. The best set of results also used a modified unit of analysis that classified 47 coherent organizational subgroups, akin to "species", rather than 660 individual organizations.
Taxonomy and species conservation are often assumed to be completely interdependent activities. However, a shortage of taxonomic information and skills, and confusion over where the limits to 'species' should be set, both cause problems for conservationists. There is no simple solution because species lists used for conservation planning (e.g. threatened species, species richness estimates, species covered by legislation) are often also used to determine which units should be the focus of conservation actions; this despite the fact that the two processes have such different goals and information needs. Species conservation needs two kinds of taxonomic solution: (i) a set of practical rules to standardize the species units included on lists; and (ii) an approach to the units chosen for conservation recovery planning which recognizes the dynamic nature of natural systems and the differences from the units in listing processes that result. These solutions are well within our grasp but require a new kind of collaboration among conservation biologists, taxonomists and legislators, as well as an increased resource of taxonomists with relevant and high-quality skills.
The use of animals in various assistive, therapeutic, and emotional support roles has contributed to the uncoordinated expansion of labels used to distinguish these animals. To address the inconsistent vocabulary and confusion, this article proposes a concise taxonomy for classifying assistance animals. Several factors were identified to differentiate categories, including (1) whether the animal performs work or tasks related to an individual's disability; (2) the typical level of skill required by the animal performing the work or task; (3) whether the animal is used by public service, military, or healthcare professionals; (4) whether training certifications or standards are available; and (5) the existence of legal public access protections for the animal and handler. Acknowledging that some category labels have already been widely accepted or codified, six functional categories were identified: (1) service animal; (2) public service animal; (3) therapy animal; (4) visitation animal; (5) sporting, recreational, or agricultural animal; and (6) support animal. This taxonomy provides a clear vocabulary for use by consumers, professionals working in the field, researchers, policy makers, and regulatory agencies.
Decisions to invest in information systems (IS) are made by many organisations on a very regular basis. Such decisions can vary from quickly identifying the problem, screening options and choosing a solution in a very straightforward way, to very extensive and repeated search, screen, design and negotiation activities which can take many years. There has been little explicit research into the process by which managers and organisations decide to develop IS applications. This research addresses this by analyzing 20 IS decision-making processes, using a phase-based as well as an attribute-based approach. Mintzbergs typology is used to characterize seven types of IS decisions from a phase-based or process-based perspective. For the attribute approach, the decisions have been analyzed on the basis of subjective/objective and offensive/defensive contrasts and placed in one of four categories: innovative, rational, necessary or political. The paper concludes by identifying five factors that result in major differences in IS decision-making processes. These issues are: (1) whether there is scope to design a solution, (2) whether distinct alternatives have to be searched for, (3) the degree of urgency and necessity from the perspective of the decision-makers, (4) whether the decision can be subdivided in order to follow a gradual process path (planned versus incremental) and (5) the number and power of stakeholders involved in the process and the extent that their interests vary and contrast. The paper suggests that managers deciding on IS applications should be aware of these factors in order to design a process that fits best with the specific circumstances: no single process should be considered universally applicable. This conclusion is in contrast with many decision-making models rooted in the MIS-field, which suggest to use prescriptive and rational approaches to organise IS decision-making processes.
WSN is one of the dominant and emerging technology that shows great promise for various application in military, ecological and health related areas.WSN is highly vulnerable to attacks and inclusion of wireless communication technology incurs various types of security threats.WSN requires security measures due to sensitive data and as sensor may operate in hostile unattended environment.WSN suffer from constraints like low computational capability, small memory limited energy resources physical capture susceptibility and insecure wireless communication channel. These create security a challenge in WSN. In this article we provide a survey of security in WSN.We provide an outline with constraints and security requirement and attacks with their counter measures in WSN.
By developing a taxonomy for sustainable investments, the EU Commission has created the first standardized criteria for climate-friendly economic activities.To achieve the goal of climate neutrality by 2050, firms and investors must be well informed of which investments avoid greenhouse gas emis- sions and can thus be categorized as sustainable. The present report investigates to what extent the EU taxonomy achieves this goal. The study reaches the conclusion that the criteria are compatible with a path to climate neutrality in some economic sectors, such as the automotive sector. However, in others, such as the emission-intensive basic materials sector, the cri- teria are insufficient. Thresholds that are too low carry the risk of a carbon lock-in, the entrenchment of emission-intensive technologies and structures. Instead, the EU taxonomy should offer incentives for innovations in decarbonizing the economy. This can be achieved by setting different thresholds for new investments and existing assets, as the EU taxonomy already does in the buildings sector.
