Zoekresultaten

The Somatechnics of Organisations

This special issue of Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies – Power is an invitation to critically interrogate how our everyday technological, social, and embodied experience of organisation as a traveling concept (Bal 2002) and socio-material (Orlikowski 2007) production of reality, can generate new modes of organising and being and nonbeing organised. The articles in this special issue span across the humanities, social sciences, performing arts, and critical management studies, to trouble the concept of organisation by de-organising it and the manner in which it has traditionally been instrumentalised and put to use in modern-day organisational theory and practice. Somatechnics presents a thoroughly multi-disciplinary scholarship on the body, providing a space for research that critically engages with the ethico-political implications of a wide range of practices and techniques. The term ‘somatechnics’ indicates an approach to corporeality which considers it as always already bound up with a variety of technologies, techniques and technics, thus enabling an examination of the lived experiences engendered within a given context, and the effects that technologies, technés and techniques have on embodiment, subjectivity and sociality.

Reconsidering democracy. History of the Human Genome Project.

What options are open for people—citizens, politicians, and other nonscientists—to become actively involved in and anticipate new directions in the life sciences? In addressing this question, this article focuses on the start of the Human Genome Project (1985-1990). By contrasting various models of democracy (liberal, republican, deliberative), I examine the democratic potential the models provide for citizens' involvement in setting priorities and funding patterns related to big science projects. To enhance the democratizing of big science projects and give citizens opportunities to reflect, anticipate, and negotiate on newdirections in science and technology at a global level, liberal democracy with its national scope and representative structure does not suffice. Although republican (communicative) and deliberative (associative) democracy models meet the need for greater citizen involvement, the ways to achieve the ideal at a global level still remain to be developed.

A model for cartography's role in managing the park visitor experience

Application of Ecological Footprint Accounting as a Part of an Integrated Assessment of Environmental Carrying Capacity

The increasing rate of urbanization along with its socio-environmental impact are major global challenges. Therefore, there is a need to assess the boundaries to growth for the future development of cities by the inclusion of the assessment of the environmental carrying capacity (ECC) into spatial management. The purpose is to assess the resource dependence of a given entity. ECC is usually assessed based on indicators such as the ecological footprint (EF) and biocapacity (BC). EF is a measure of the biologically productive areas demanded by human consumption and waste production. Such areas include the space needed for regenerating food and fibers as well as sequestering the generated pollution, particularly CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. BC reflects the biological regeneration potential of a given area to regenerate resources as well to absorb waste. The city level EF assessment has been applied to urban zones across the world, however, there is a noticeable lack of urban EF assessments in Central Eastern Europe. Therefore, the current research is a first estimate of the EF and BC for the city of Wrocław, Poland. This study estimates the Ecological Footprint of Food (EFF) through both a top-down assessment and a hybrid top-down/bottom-up assessment. Thus, this research verifies also if results from hybrid method could be comparable with top-down approach. The bottom-up component of the hybrid analysis calculated the carbon footprint of food using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The top-down result ofWrocław’s EFF were 1% greater than the hybrid EFF result, 0.974 and 0.963 gha per person respectively. The result indicated that the EFF exceeded the BC of the city of Wrocław 10-fold. Such assessment support efforts to increase resource efficiency and decrease the risk associated with resources—including food security. Therefore, there is a need to verify if a city is able to satisfy the resource needs of its inhabitants while maintaining the natural capital on which they depend intact. Original article at: https://doi.org/10.3390/resources7030052 © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI.

Socio‐Environmental Vulnerability Mapping for Environmental and Flood Resilience Assessment

The phenomena of urbanization and climate change interact with the growing number of older people living in cities. One of the effects of climate change is an increased riverine flooding hazard, and when floods occur this has a severe impact on human lives and comes with vast economic losses. Flood resilience management procedures should be supported by a combination of complex social and environmental vulnerability assessments. Therefore, new methodologies and tools should be developed for this purpose. One way to achieve such inclusive procedures is by incorporating a social vulnerability evaluation methodology for environmental and flood resilience assessment. These are illustrated for application in the Polish city of Wrocław. Socio-environmental vulnerability mapping, based on spatial analyses using the poverty risk index, data on the ageing population, as well as the distribution of the areas vulnerable to floods, was conducted with use of a location intelligence system combining Geographic Information System (GIS) and Business Intelligence (BI) tools. The new methodology allows for the identification of areas populated by social groups that are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of flooding. C 2018 SETAC Original Publication: Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:592–597.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4077

An exploratory study on notational characteristics of visual notations used in decision management

The visual representation of Information System (IS) artefacts is an important aspect in the practical application of visual representations. However, important and known visual representation principles are often undervalued, which could lead to decreased effectiveness in using a visual representation. Decision Management (DM) is one field of study in which stakeholders must be able to utilize visual notations to model business decisions and underlying business logic, which are executed by machines, thus are IS artefacts. Although many DM notations currently exist, little research actually evaluates visual representation principles to identify the visual notations most suitable for stakeholders. In this paper, the Physics of Notations framework of Moody is operationalized and utilized to evaluate five different DM visual notations. The results show several points of improvement with regards to these visual notations. Furthermore, the results could show the authors of DM visual notations that well-known visual representation principles need to be adequately taken into account when defining or modifying DM visual notations.