Ebola Virus: From Medical Emergency to Complex Disaster?

Ebola haemorrhagic fever is a fatal disease caused by a new virus which has no known cure. Few outbreaks have been documented. Two major epidemics occurred in Africa in 1976. When a new epidemic was detected in Zaire in the spring of 1995, it was widely perceived as a threat to the West. Public attention was intense. A massive intervention, led by UN and US agencies, followed and put an end to the epidemic within less than two months. The intervention was successful for several reasons. Effective cooperation benefitted from the network which had been initiated by virologists since the 1976 outbreak, NGO activism and international pressure. Cultural under-currents had prepared the West for the outbreak. The prestige and competency of the international responders – particularly the UN World Health Organization and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention – helped to keep the emergency a simple one; amenable to a disciplined public-health approach. Initiatives of the Zairian authorities that might have transformed it into a complex disaster were effectively amended. A future outbreak may be harder to cope with. Unless resources are better balanced between scientific work on new viruses and grassroots organizations that play a crucial part in handling most epidemics, the current progress may be short-lived. The next Ebola outbreak in Zaire might find the country in political turmoil. Access for public health responders may be severely limited and compounded by security and human rights issues. A complex emergency could, then, form easily.     

From One Crisis to the Other: The Shift of Research Interests in France

The key to effective crisis management lies not so much with the writing of detailed manuals (that have a low likelihood of being used, and an even lower likelihood of being useful) and practising location evacuations as with structured and continuous learning processes designed to equip key managers with the capabilities, flexibility and confidence to deal with sudden and unexpected problems/events – or shifts in public perception of any such problems/events.     

Small Business in the Face of Crisis: Identifying Barriers to Recovery from a Natural Disaster1

The crisis management literature has not dealt in depth with small business response to disasters. This study takes a qualitative approach to consider how small businesses respond to and recover from a large disaster, by interviewing stakeholders in five different communities in the Gulf Coast of the United States. Events that are considered to be crises in nature are usually characterized by high consequence, low probability, ambiguity, and decision making time pressure. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath caused small business owners in the U.S. Gulf region to experience each of these. Findings include lack of planning by small business; vulnerability to cash flow interruption; lack of access to capital for recovery; problems caused by federal assistance; and serious infrastructure problems impeding recovery.     

Painful Steps of Progress from Crisis Planning to Contingency Planning: Changes for Disaster Preparedness in Turkey

Excessive losses in natural disasters in Turkey are, to a large extent, a consequence of omissions and deficiencies in the structuring of ‘disasters’ and ‘development’ laws, as well as negligent land‐use practices and avoidance of control in building processes. Two extreme forms of legal and organizational structures in disasters policy could be formulated as the ‘fatalist’ and ‘self‐reliance‘ models. Their contrasts can be investigated in terms of (a) the use of information concerning natural phenomena in formal planning procedures; (b) pre‐ or post‐disaster emphasis in preparations; (c) the political or technical basis of decisions; (d) the extraordinary or routine nature of responses; (e) the general or specialized nature of financial sources used; (f) and their compatibility with the order of priorities in risk management. An evaluation of the conventional policy in Turkey clarifies a position closer to the ‘fatalist’ model and indicates the lines of action for improvements. However, after the 1999 earthquakes, the conventional approach in disaster policy has been restructured. With the newly introduced ‘Obligatory Building Insurance’, ‘Building Control’, and ‘Professional Proficiency’ systems, greater emphasis is now given to mitigation efforts, and the introduction of contingency planning practices is more likely to happen.     

美国白蛾虫害网络节点演化分析

本文基于空间影响域网络模型,构建了2009-2013年间世界性检疫害虫美国白蛾在辽宁省的虫害关系网络,并在此基础上,重点开展五年间美国白蛾网络节点、网络直径、大度数节点等网络基本特征量的演化分析。     

Crisis Leadership by Mayors: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Newspapers and Social Media on the MH17 Disaster

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in the Ukraine on 17 July 2014 with 193 Dutch passengers on board. The present study assessed which MH17‐related activities (or absence of certain activities) of 54 mayors from the Netherlands were mentioned in (social) media and if and how they were evaluated. Analyses of newspaper articles and social media showed that public ‘meaning making’ and ‘remembering’ by mayors can be considered as a table stake or conditio sine qua non. Mayors are expected to speak at memorials and attend community activities. Strong appreciation was however retrieved from victims’ families whenever mayors visited them with a listening ear in the privacy of their homes, demonstrating the role mayors can fulfil as mourners‐in‐chief in local communities.     

The Zenithal Bistable Display: From concept to consumer

Abstract— The first commercial use of the Zenithal Bistable Display (ZBD?) is for electronic point‐of‐purchase (epop?) signage in the retail sector. As a reflective bistable display, this novel LCD technology only consumes power if new information is required and the image is updated. This allows complex images to be shown constantly for several years from the energy of a single low‐cost battery, when the display is updated up to ten times each day — ideal for signage applications. Excellent performance characteristics are achieved in a TN‐like STN‐LCD in which one of the alignment surfaces is a relief grating. Correct design of the grating shape and surface properties not only imparts the bistability, but allows control of the optical performance, the latching voltages, and the temperature range. Being addressed using a simple passive‐matrix approach, without the need for a thin‐film‐transistor backplane, large amounts of information may be displayed by STN drivers. Alow‐cost fabrication method has been devised that is compatible with conventional TN and STN manufacture, and with negligible equipment outlay. The device operating principles, manufacturing method, and performance of ZBDs are reviewed.     

The emerging role of DSS: From passive to active

Existing decision support systems (DSS) are passive in their operation; their sole aim is to help maintain the current position of the firm. Conversely, Information Technology has recently adopted a more active role in the corporate strategy. This suggests that DSS could also undertake a far more active stance by identifying gaps in existing operations and suggesting ways to strengthen the standing of the firm. We renamed DSS containing this characteristics as Active Decision Support Systems (or ADSS) to emphasize their new orientation. Managers draw on their knowledge to suggest ways of alleviating problems or exploiting opportunities, and to evaluate each alternative in relation to the corporate objectives. Patterns and alternatives must be identified and incorporated into the ADSS. They should then be compared with the current position of the firm in order to determine whether any such problems/opportunities exist. This paper proposes an approach for designing ADSS; it introduces a knowledge-based component within the DSS framework and applies the concept of triggers to control the invocation of rule sets. A logical structure for ADSS is provided and the system use is illustrated through an example of strategic management. Issues for future research are highlighted.     

The evolution of web-based optimisation: From ASP to e-Services

In many application domains, optimisation and other analytic models are often embedded as a decision engine within the respective business processes. In this paper, we study recent trends in the provision of optimisation tools and optimisation-based decision support systems (DSS) as web-enabled distributed applications. We analyse the evolution from the Application Service Provision (ASP) model to the e-Services model, and we illustrate the importance of distributed optimisation components in the effective deployment of embedded “business analytics”. We finally provide an overview of the OSP and the WEBOPT projects, which deliver optimisation-based applications and optimisation components in a distributed environment.     

航空票务信息系统的设计与实现

讨论了在Ｃｌｉｅｎｔ／Ｓｅｒｖｅｒ环境下,通信系统硬件、软件以及数据库的一种设计方法,提出利用交换式多兆比特数据业务（ＳＭＤＳ）进行数据通信的系统硬件设计方法,讨论了工程中利用ＷｉｎＳｏｃｋ进行通信的程序流程,以及Ｃｌｉｅｎｔ／Ｓｅｒｖｅｒ环境下数据库应用开发的几点经验。     

描述任务逻辑及其应用

针对任务逻辑存在的两个缺点：（1）不可判定,无法保证推理过程都能在有限的时间内结束;（2）任务的定义局限于抽象的、逻辑的定义。无法描述任务的具体属性和任务之间的关系,将描述性结构引入任务逻辑,构造了一个可描述具体属性的、可判定的任务逻辑系统——描述任务逻辑．将所构造的逻辑系统应用于具有组织的多主体系统行为建模,建立了基于描述任务逻辑的多主体组织模型和建模框架,并且表明应用描述任务逻辑构造应用系统具有表达能力强、结构紧凑的特点．     

A Strategy of ‘Circumvention’: American Policy Towards the Yugoslav Crisis

US decisions in the Yugoslav conflict have reflected a strategy of ‘circumvention’, calling on allies and international organizations to manage the crisis. The strategy itself emanated from a calculated form of procrastination, which rested on two pillars: first (in a passive sense), the rejection of any unilateral commitment to political and military solutions in the former Yugoslavia; secondly (in an active sense), the recognition that any spill-over from the conflict is equally unacceptable. Spill-overs are defined geographically and according to the intensity of military clashes; the latter are themselves defined by the pressures of public opinion, the media, allies or international organizations calling for a more pro-active, multilateral policy.