scholarly journals Using Artificial Intelligence to classify Jobseekers: The Accuracy-Equity Trade-off

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
SAM DESIERE ◽  
LUDO STRUYVEN
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Maximum Level ◽  
Employment Services ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Public ◽  
Foreign Origin ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Graphical Tool ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly popular in the public sector to improve the cost-efficiency of service delivery. One example is AI-based profiling models in public employment services (PES), which predict a jobseeker’s probability of finding work and are used to segment jobseekers in groups. Profiling models hold the potential to improve identification of jobseekers at-risk of becoming long-term unemployed, but also induce discrimination. Using a recently developed AI-based profiling model of the Flemish PES, we assess to what extent AI-based profiling ‘discriminates’ against jobseekers of foreign origin compared to traditional rule-based profiling approaches. At a maximum level of accuracy, jobseekers of foreign origin who ultimately find a job are 2.6 times more likely to be misclassified as ‘high-risk’ jobseekers. We argue that it is critical that policymakers and caseworkers understand the inherent trade-offs of profiling models, and consider the limitations when integrating these models in daily operations. We develop a graphical tool to visualize the accuracy-equity trade-off in order to facilitate policy discussions.

The shape of a defense-growth trade-off governs seasonal trait dynamics in natural phytoplankton

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Ehrlich ◽  
Nadja J. Kath ◽  
Ursula Gaedke
Keyword(s):  
Fitness Landscape ◽  
Functional Trait ◽  
Grazing Pressure ◽  
Trait Variation ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Community Persistence ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Combining Data ◽  
Persistence Theory

Functional trait compositions of communities can adapt to altered environmental conditions ensuring community persistence. Theory predicts that the shape of trade-offs between traits crucially affects these trait dynamics, but its empirical verification from the field is missing. Here, we show how the shape of a defense-growth trade-off governs seasonal trait dynamics of a natural community, using high-frequency, long-term measurements of phytoplankton from Lake Constance. As expected from the lab-derived concave trade-off curve, we observed an alternating dominance of several fast-growing species with intermediate defense levels and gradual changes of the biomass-trait distribution due to seasonally changing grazing pressure. By combining data and modelling, we obtain mechanistic insights on the underlying fitness landscape, and show that low fitness differences can maintain trait variation along the trade-off curve. We provide firm evidence for a frequently assumed trade-off and conclude that quantifying its shape allows to understand environmentally driven trait changes within communities.

scholarly journals High and dry: Trade-off in arboreal calling in a treefrog mediated by local environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda S Cicchino ◽  
Nicholas A Cairns ◽  
Grégory Bulté ◽  
Stephen C Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Ground Cover ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Calling Behavior ◽  
Vegetation Density ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Mating Call ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Trade-offs shaping behavioral variation are often influenced by the environment. We investigated the role that the environment plays in mediating trade-offs using a widespread frog with a conspicuous mating display, Pseudacris crucifer. We first demonstrated, using playback and desiccation experiments, that calling site selection involves a trade-off between sound transmission and desiccation. We then determined the influence of local environmental conditions on the intensity of the trade-off by examining range-wide behavioral and environmental data. We showed that the benefit of improved call transmission is positively influenced by vegetation density and ground cover. Behavioral data are consistent with this relationship: sites with a greater transmission benefit have increased prevalence of arboreally calling males. We also found that the prevalence of arboreal calling behavior increases with relative humidity and air temperature, suggesting an influence of these environmental variables on the desiccation cost of arboreal calling. This study provides a clear example of the role of the environment in mediating trade-off intensities and shaping critical behavioral traits. Local environment mediates the intensity of a trade-off associated with arboreal calling behavior in a treefrog. Combining observational and experimental approaches, we show that arboreal calling behavior increases the transmission of a mating call while potentially subjecting individuals to a rate of desiccation six times greater than terrestrial calling. Local environmental conditions influence both the benefit and the cost of this trade-off, subjecting different populations to varying trade-off intensities and shaping arboreal calling behavior.

Perspectives for Planning Approaches in Promoting Underground Built Heritage - COST Action Underground4value

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Smaniotto Costa ◽  
Tatiana Ruchinskaya ◽  
Konstantinos Lalenis
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Collaborative Relationships ◽  
Cost Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Built Heritage ◽  
Educational Paradigm ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Planning Approaches

<p>The COST Action 18110 Underground4value (http://underground4value.eu) aims to advance knowledge on how to guarantee continuity of use and significance of underground historic fabric. It is collecting information, experiences and knowhow to base the development of research and training. The Action focusses on underground regeneration, revitalisation of the public realm and skills development for people concerned with underground heritage.</p><p>This contribution centres the attention of the Working Group on Planning Approaches. It also looks at the role of local authorities, as enablers and facilitators, in coordination, use  and management of underground built heritage. In this framework underground built heritage is considered as a social resource with integrated programmes of physical, economic and social measures, backed by strategic stakeholder dialogue.</p><p>On the one hand, this contribution discusses the structure and goals of the WG, as it pays attention to the necessary complementarities between functional approaches – at the level of regions and city – and social and cultural approaches involving citizens’ engagement and empowerment – at the local level. This WG aims to provide a reflection on sustainable approaches to preserve the underground built heritage and, at the same time, to unfold the case by case approach for potential use of underground space. On the other hand, to achieve its objectives the WG on Planning Approaches is setting together potentials and constraints in the efforts to make better use of underground heritage. This contribution, therefore, sheds lights on the preliminary results of the WG. It is centred on the learned lessons, challenges and barriers - from a planning science perspective - that experts met in their efforts to tackle Underground Built Heritage. Achieving this goal makes the call for an educational paradigm shift - as the Action is not only interested in compiling the results, rather on experiences that can be analysed and learned. This requires a dynamic understanding of knowledge, abilities and skills, towards creating more effective coalitions of ‘actors’ within localities, by developing structures, which encourage long term collaborative relationships. Enabled by the gained knowledge, the WG will define the best tailored ways to forward this knowledge for planners and decision-makers.</p>

scholarly journals Optimal maintenance scheduling for local public purpose buildings

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnt O. Hopland ◽  
Sturla F. Kvamsdal
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Maintenance Scheduling ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Maintenance Schedule ◽  
Public Purpose ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Optimal Maintenance ◽  
The Cost

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set up and analyze a formal model for maintenance scheduling for local government purpose buildings. Design/methodology/approach – The authors formulate the maintenance scheduling decision as a dynamic optimization problem, subject to an accelerating decay. This approach offers a formal, yet intuitive, weighting of an important trade-off when deciding a maintenance schedule. Findings – The optimal maintenance schedule reflects a trade-off between the interest rate and the rate at which the decay accelerates. The prior reflects the alternative cost, since the money spent on maintenance could be saved and earn interests, while the latter reflects the cost of postponing maintenance. Importantly, it turns out that it is sub-optimal to have a cyclical maintenance schedule where the building is allowed to decay and then be intensively maintained before decaying again. Rather, local governments should focus the maintenance either early in the building’s life-span and eventually let it decay toward replacement/abandonment or first let it decay to a target level and then keep it there until replacement/abandonment. Which of the two is optimal depends on the trade-off between the alternative cost and the cost of postponing maintenance. Originality/value – The paper provides a first formal inquiry into important trade-offs that are important for maintenance scheduling of local public purpose buildings.

scholarly journals OPTIMAL CLIMATE POLICY IN 3D: MITIGATION, CARBON REMOVAL, AND SOLAR GEOENGINEERING

2021 ◽  
pp. 2150008
Author(s):  
MARIIA BELAIA ◽  
JUAN B. MORENO-CRUZ ◽  
DAVID W. KEITH
Keyword(s):  
Climate Model ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Solar Geoengineering ◽  
Optimal Climate Policy ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Far Future

We introduce solar geoengineering (SG) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) into an integrated assessment model to analyze the trade-offs between mitigation, SG, and CDR. We propose a novel empirical parameterization of SG that disentangles its efficacy, calibrated with climate model results, from its direct impacts. We use a simple parameterization of CDR that decouples it from the scale of baseline emissions. We find that (a) SG optimally delays mitigation and lowers the use of CDR, which is distinct from moral hazard; (b) SG is deployed prior to CDR while CDR drives the phasing out of SG in the far future; (c) SG deployment in the short term is relatively independent of discounting and of the long-term trade-off between SG and CDR over time; (d) small amounts of SG sharply reduce the cost of meeting a [Formula: see text]C target and the costs of climate change, even with a conservative calibration for the efficacy of SG.

scholarly journals Railway Wireless Communications Channel Characterization

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
Nerea Fernández-Berrueta ◽  
Jon Goya ◽  
Jaione Arrizabalaga ◽  
Iker Moya ◽  
Jaizki Mendizabal
Keyword(s):  
Communication Technology ◽  
Mobile Networks ◽  
Mobile Communications ◽  
Communication Channel ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Railway Network ◽  
The Public ◽  
Train Control ◽  
The Cost

Railway applications are in continuous evolution with the aim of offering a more efficient, sustainable, and safer transportation system for the users. Generally, these applications are constantly exchanging information between the systems onboard the train and the trackside through a wireless communication. Nowadays, Global System for Mobile communications-Railway (GSM-R) is the technology used by European Train Control System (ETCS), but it is becoming obsolete. Therefore, alternatives for this technology have to be found for the different railway applications. Its natural evolution is to move forward with the latest technology deployed: Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which the Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMN) have already deployed. Therefore, testing the performance of this communication technology in the railway environment could be useful to assess its suitability and reduce the cost of railway network dedicated deployment. In order to do that, a methodology to characterize the communication environment is proposed. The main goal is to measure geolocated impairments of any communication channel in a railway environment being able to determine its behavior of the different communication technologies and find out possible coverage issues. Moreover, it could help in the selection of suitable communication technology for railway. This paper presents a brief description of the communication for railways and its QoS parameters for performance measuring. Afterward, the testing methodology is described, and then, the communication channel measurement campaign on a real track in Spain where the railway environment is variable is presented (tunnels, rural/urban area…). Finally, the measurements and results on this real track in Spain are shown. The results provide suitability of the 4G technologies based on the delay requirements for the implementation of ETCS over it.

scholarly journals Deuda pública en México: dinámica e implicaciones de política

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (71) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Oshiel Martínez Chapa ◽  
Jorge Eduardo Salazar Castillo ◽  
Saul Roberto Quispe Aruquipa
Keyword(s):  
Public Debt ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
World Population ◽  
The Public ◽  
Oil Resources ◽  
Public Credit ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
The Cost

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors that have driven the public debt in Mexico and its consequences on the economy. The hypothesis proposed is that the increase in debt is related to factors such as discretion in the management of public resources, the guarantee of oil resources, the cost of financial bailouts and the growing social spending exercised. The research question is: How has public debt evolved in the medium and long term, and what are the consequences? The methodology used is qualitative in that it analyzes the facts and documents, and the second is quantitative in that it uses a regression model in which a growth rate of the variable in question is used. The data come from institutions such as the Bank of Mexico, the World Bank, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), as well as World Population Review. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for governments to adopt responsible policies in order to influence growth and economic development, and not that austerity policies cause low investment and unemployment in the country.

scholarly journals Integrated Periodic Timetabling and Vehicle Circulation Scheduling

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf N. Van Lieshout
Keyword(s):  
Public Transport ◽  
Computational Study ◽  
Valid Inequalities ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Public ◽  
Average Travel Time ◽  
Periodic Timetabling ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact

Periodic timetabling is one of the most well-researched problems in the public transport optimization literature. However, the impact that timetabling has on the number of required vehicles, which directly translates to operator costs, is rarely considered. Therefore, in this paper, we consider the problem of jointly optimizing the timetable and the vehicle circulation schedule, which specifies the cyclic sequences of trips that vehicles perform. In order to obtain high-quality solutions to realistic instances, we improve an earlier proposed formulation by contraction techniques, three new valid inequalities, and symmetry-breaking constraints. Ultimately, this allows us to explore the trade-off between the number of vehicles and the attractiveness of the timetable from the passengers’ perspective. An extensive computational study demonstrates the effectiveness of the improved formulation. Moreover, using this approach, we are able to find timetables requiring substantially fewer vehicles at the cost of minimal increases of the average travel time of passengers.

Asset planning for water reticulation systems - the PARMS model

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Burn ◽  
S. Tucker ◽  
M. Rahilly ◽  
P. Davis ◽  
R. Jarrett ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Customer Service ◽  
Planning Model ◽  
Traditional Practice ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Water Pipelines ◽  
Cost Planning ◽  
Asset Planning ◽  
Operational Expenditure ◽  
The Cost

Traditionally water reticulation systems have been operated so that pipeline repair/renewal occurs on a reactive basis, based upon the number of failures, the consequence of failure and the cost. Planning for future replacements and the costs associated with these has been based upon a best guess of pipe lifetimes, which have generally been very conservative, when compared to the actual pipe life obtained. Factors such as the required level of customer service, trade-offs between repair and renewal, or operating practices such as pressure reduction or shut-off block reduction have not been widely considered, except when they are required under the water authorities operating licence. To allow long-term strategies to be implemented for the repair/renewal of water pipelines, a Pipeline Asset and Risk Management System (PARMS) is being developed. This planning model has been designed to allow a range of “what if” scenarios to be analysed to determine their effects on water authorities’ long-term costs. This model is based upon whole of life costing and includes data on externality and customer impact costs. It analyses the failures of individual pipe assets, rather than the traditional practice of predicting failure of pipe cohorts, currently used by many authorities. This paper discusses the application of the PARMS planning model to allow selection of pipeline repair/renewal, and briefly analyses the influences that a range of customer service or operating decisions can have on a water authority’s capital and operational expenditure.

scholarly journals Keeping the euro at any cost? Explaining attitudes toward the euro-austerity trade-off in Greece

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-405
Author(s):  
Ignacio Jurado ◽  
Stefanie Walter ◽  
Nikitas Konstantinidis ◽  
Elias Dinas
Keyword(s):  
Strong Support ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Public ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Theoretical Mechanism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Original Survey

Despite years of crisis, the euro has enjoyed strong popular support across the Eurozone periphery. In light of the high costs of internal devaluation strategies, this begs the question why the public has remained in favor of the common currency. In this article, we propose a theoretical mechanism that accounts for both voters’ pocketbook preferences and their sociotropic assessments over the noisy trade-offs associated with the outcomes of euro membership and euro exit. Using original survey data from three consecutive survey waves in Greece (conducted in July, September, and December 2015, respectively), we analyze the attitudes of Greek voters toward the euro in an environment of acute uncertainty, austerity, high unemployment, and economic recession. First, we juxtapose our uncertainty mechanism of popular euro attitudes against other explanations put forward in the literature and find strong support for our argument. Second, we conduct a survey experiment to tap into attitudes toward the euro-austerity trade-off and find that as uncertainty over policy outcomes diminishes, framing effects abate in significance, especially among those who voted No in the July 2015 referendum. Finally, we derive distinct sets of euro preferences for different ‘vulnerability profiles’. Over time, as the trade-offs of euro membership become more pronounced, we find a marked fall in euro support between July and December 2015.

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