The Rationale for a Well-Being Approach

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-24
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter presents the rationale for a well-being approach. A well-being approach—that is, establishing well-being as the goal and measure of what matters in order to create a future in which people, communities, and the planet can all thrive—provides a new compass for decision-making, resource allocation, social narrative, and even consciousness. The chapter highlights the benefits, positive outcomes, and potential for transformation via a well-being approach. Some of the key points include the ability of a well-being approach to: shift the focus to things that matter most to people and communities; create more urgency to address inequities and shift power; break down structural barriers and “silos” to encourage cross-sector collaboration; link human well-being and environmental sustainability; create a new expectation, demand, and accountability for a well-being agenda; and focus on the future through long-term agendas and inter-generational leadership. Meanwhile, key among the enabling conditions for well-being in the local context are truth telling about history and experiences, and ensuring that benefits are equitably shared.

scholarly journals CASIE – Computing affect and social intelligence for healthcare in an ethical and trustworthy manner

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 437-453
Author(s):  
Laurentiu Vasiliu ◽  
Keith Cortis ◽  
Ross McDermott ◽  
Aphra Kerr ◽  
Arne Peters ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Motivational States ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Language And Vision ◽  
Multimodal Emotion Recognition ◽  
Research Challenge

Abstract This article explores the rapidly advancing innovation to endow robots with social intelligence capabilities in the form of multilingual and multimodal emotion recognition, and emotion-aware decision-making capabilities, for contextually appropriate robot behaviours and cooperative social human–robot interaction for the healthcare domain. The objective is to enable robots to become trustworthy and versatile social robots capable of having human-friendly and human assistive interactions, utilised to better assist human users’ needs by enabling the robot to sense, adapt, and respond appropriately to their requirements while taking into consideration their wider affective, motivational states, and behaviour. We propose an innovative approach to the difficult research challenge of endowing robots with social intelligence capabilities for human assistive interactions, going beyond the conventional robotic sense-think-act loop. We propose an architecture that addresses a wide range of social cooperation skills and features required for real human–robot social interaction, which includes language and vision analysis, dynamic emotional analysis (long-term affect and mood), semantic mapping to improve the robot’s knowledge of the local context, situational knowledge representation, and emotion-aware decision-making. Fundamental to this architecture is a normative ethical and social framework adapted to the specific challenges of robots engaging with caregivers and care-receivers.

Building Intelligent Cities

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Vijayaraghavan Varadharajan ◽  
Akanksha Rajendra Singh
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Data Management ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Technology Infrastructure ◽  
Intelligent City ◽  
Intelligent Cities ◽  
Comprehensive Introduction

A city may be regarded as an intelligent city when its services to citizens are connected and it is able to obtain data from every aspect of its technology infrastructure to leverage it in real time for resource allocation, monitoring, management, and decision making. Cities around the globe are ambitiously leveraging the latest technologies to transform their infrastructures to better provision and manage the e-services. Although they are setting goals for focusing on the appropriate financing, long-term planning, developing technology stack, and advancing data management, governments need to further encompass all relevant guidelines towards right technology frameworks before commencing their intelligent city projects. This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to intelligent cities, also known as smart cities, and the associated requirements. It also articulates the evolution of a typical city to a truly integrated, responsive, open, and connected intelligent city and the required underlying technologies.

Using information on ecosystem services in Nepal to inform biodiversity conservation and local to national decision-making

Oryx ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ishana Thapa ◽  
Stuart H. M. Butchart ◽  
Hum Gurung ◽  
Alison J. Stattersfield ◽  
David H. L. Thomas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
National Level ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Trade Offs

AbstractPolicy-makers are paying increasing attention to ecosystem services, given improved understanding that they underpin human well-being, and following their integration within the Aichi Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Decision-makers need information on trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services but tools for assessing the latter are often expensive, technically demanding and ignore the local context. In this study we used a simple, replicable participatory assessment approach to gather information on ecosystem services at important sites for biodiversity conservation in Nepal, to feed into local and national decision-making. Through engaging knowledgeable stakeholders we assessed the services delivered by Nepal's 27 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas, the pressures affecting services through impacts on land cover and land use, and the consequences of these for people. We found that these sites provide ecosystem services to beneficiaries at a range of scales but under current pressures the balance of services will change, with local communities incurring the greatest costs. The approach provided valuable information on the trade-offs between ecosystem services and between different people, developed the capacity of civil society to engage in decision-making at the local and national level, and provided digestible information for Nepal's government. We recommend this approach in other countries where there is a lack of information on the likely impacts of land-use change on ecosystem services and people.

scholarly journals Coercive Measures in Psychiatry: A Review of Ethical Arguments

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Chieze ◽  
Christine Clavien ◽  
Stefan Kaiser ◽  
Samia Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Involuntary Hospitalization ◽  
Coercive Measures ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Procedural Values ◽  
Further Development

Introduction: Coercion is frequent in clinical practice, particularly in psychiatry. Since it overrides some fundamental rights of patients (notably their liberty of movement and decision-making), adequate use of coercion requires legal and ethical justifications. In this article, we map out the ethical elements used in the literature to justify or reject the use of coercive measures limiting freedom of movement (seclusion, restraint, involuntary hospitalization) and highlight some important issues.Methods: We conducted a narrative review of the literature by searching the PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Google Scholar and Cairn.info databases with the keywords “coercive/compulsory measures/care/treatment, coercion, seclusion, restraint, mental health, psychiatry, involuntary/compulsory hospitalization/admission, ethics, legitimacy.” We collected all ethically relevant elements used in the author's justifications for or against coercive measures limiting freedom of movement (e.g., values, rights, practical considerations, relevant feelings, expected attitudes, risks of side effects), and coded, and ordered them into categories.Results: Some reasons provided in the literature are presented as justifying an absolute prohibition on coercion; they rely on the view that some fundamental rights, such as autonomy, are non-negotiable. Most ethically relevant elements, however, can be used in a balanced weighting of reasons to favor or reject coercive measures in certain circumstances. Professionals mostly agree that coercion is only legitimate in exceptional circumstances, when the infringement of some values (e.g., freedom of movement, short-term autonomy) is the only means to fulfill other, more important values and goals (e.g., patient's safety, the long-term rebuilding of patient's identity and autonomy). The results of evaluations vary according to which moral elements are prioritized over others. Moreover, we found numerous considerations (e.g., conditions, procedural values) for how to ensure that clinicians apply fair decision-making procedures related to coercion. Based on this analysis, we highlight vital topics that need further development.Conclusion: Before using coercive measures limiting freedom of movement, clinicians should consider and weigh all ethically pertinent elements in the situation and actively search for alternatives that are more respectful of patient's well-being and rights. Coercive measures decided upon after a transparent, carefully balanced evaluation process are more likely to be adequate, understood, and accepted by patients and caregivers.

Knowledge-Based Decision Making

2018 ◽  
pp. 160-184
Author(s):  
Mirjana Pejic-Bach ◽  
Mislav Ante Omazic ◽  
Ana Aleksic ◽  
Jovana Zoroja
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Organizational Capabilities ◽  
Term Survival ◽  
Organizational Settings ◽  
Knowledge Based

In the context of sustainability and long term survival, knowledge based decision making has been recognized as a significant factor. Its application in organizational settings specifically through knowledge management, process management, and decision making presents one of the core organizational capabilities. This chapter explores more deeply the synergy that occurs between the knowledge based decision making and its contribution to sustainability. The extent of knowledge based decision making application is evaluated, and its relation to the economic, social and environmental sustainability, in the multi case analysis of four Croatian firms from two service industries: telecommunications and insurance.

Knowing Me, Knowing You: Aboriginal and European Concepts of Nature as Self and Other

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Strang
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Explicit Discourse ◽  
Aboriginal Groups

AbstractBased on long-term fieldwork with Aboriginal groups, Euro-Australian pastoralists and other land users in Far North Queensland, this paper considers the ways in which indigenous relations to land conflate concepts of Nature and the Self, enabling subjective identification with elements of the environment and supporting long-term affective relationships with place. It observes that indigenous cultural landscapes are deeply encoded with projections of social identity: this location in the immediate environment facilitates the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and identity and supports beliefs in human spiritual transcendence of mortality. The paper suggests that Aboriginal relations to land are therefore implicitly founded on interdependent precepts of social and environmental sustainability. In contrast, Euro-Australian pastoralists' cultural landscapes, and constructs of Nature, though situated within more complex relations with place, remain dominated by patriarchal and historically adversarial visions of Nature as a feminine "wild-ness" or "otherness" requiring the civilising control of (male) Culture and rationality. Human spiritual being and continuity is conceptualised as above or outside Nature, impeding the location of selfhood and collective continuity within the immediate environment. In tandem with mobile and highly individuated forms of social identity, this positions Nature as "other". There is thus a subjective separation between the individualised life of the self, and the life of Nature/other that, despite an explicit discourse in which ecological well-being is valorised, inhibits affective connection with place and confounds sustainability.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Sanitation Strategies and Initiatives Implemented in Mexico from Community Capitals Point of View

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thalía Turrén-Cruz ◽  
Juan García-Rodríguez ◽  
Miguel López Zavala
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Community Capitals ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Community Capitals Framework ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Basic Sanitation ◽  
Treat All

Sanitation is fundamental to human development and well-being. For developing countries, such as Mexico, one of the greatest long-term challenges is to treat all the wastewater generated. Several projects have been implemented to achieve this goal, but, due to the idiosyncrasies of local people, they have failed. This study aims to analyze both, previous and current sanitation strategies and initiatives that are implemented in Mexico. Through the analysis of data reported by the literature, using the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) and focusing on human factors, the data was analyzed to identify whether communities are being considered to guarantee the success of the technologies and resources implemented. Besides the lack of information, it was understood that, despite the governance efforts to provide sanitation, the task remains incomplete; some top priority drivers, such as population growth and water supply, seem to define the progress or decline in providing quality basic sanitation services. Using the CCF, it was observed that financial, political, and built (infrastructural) are being prioritized over the human, social, cultural, and natural capitals. Therefore, it is important to highlight the communities’ point of view on the development and decision making of projects and public policies, not just for sanitation but also for common well-being.

scholarly journals Building a Sustainable Society: The Necessity to Change the Term 'Consumer'

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Chakori
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Consumption Culture ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
Definition Of

The profit-seeking system leads to many negative environmental impacts. Within this economic system, consumption reflects an important relationship between humans and nature. However, despite the growing international attention to environmental sustainability, our society does not necessarily acknowledge consumerism as the cause of global environmental degradation. Deconstructing the consumption culture and redefining what determines well-being, this paper will attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing definition of people in the economic system. Many authors have defined our role in the economy; however, in terms of customer, citizen-consumer, and socially conscious consumer, most of the literature in this domain remains rooted in consumerism. Consumerism cannot be fixed with further consumerism; therefore this paper discusses the importance of reclaiming our identity and the need to define new terms for people in a new economic system. Any new terms should integrate interests and responsibilities that go beyond simple utility maximization. Moving beyond the term “consumer” will change our worldview. This cultural transformation may help facilitate long-term environmental sustainability.

scholarly journals COMM151: A PROJECT-BASED COURSE TO ENHANCE ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION SKILLS

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 027
Author(s):  
Tanju Deveci ◽  
Roger Nunn
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Intrapersonal Communication ◽  
The Impact

Engineering is a discipline that requires its practitioners to learn and use a variety of soft-skills, which include academic and non-academic written and spoken communication, inter- and intrapersonal communication skills, critical thinking ability, an ability to work in teams and an ability to analyze, interpret and synthesize interdisciplinary information from a variety of sources. However, students who pursue their engineering education in English as their second language can face formidable challenges acquiring these skills. It is our observation that such students are often only given assistance through English courses designed to improve their individual linguistic abilities. We believe that although this approach may help in the short term, it may not sufficiently cater for students’ overall needs and well-being in the long term. With this in mind, this paper describes our attempt to reduce this problem in our local context of the Petroleum Institute (PI) through a long term innovation effort.A project-based approach has been adopted to provide students with an opportunity to enhance their language skills through meaningful learning experiences that also develop professional, personal and academic skills. This approach has also allowed the university to meet ABET criteria related to communication needs of engineering students. In this paper, we give a detailed rationale for our belief that a holistic approach to developing abilities required by engineering and other students is a better option. This is followed by a description of the different components of our current curriculum that has been developed over 12 years. We describe particular activities, and discuss their merits. We also present students’ perceptions about the impact of their project-based learning experience on their language and skills development. We also outline the way the course is designed to be adaptable for unpredictable future needs in a fast developing professional and academic environment.

Conferences as Learning Spaces on Climate Change and Sustainability

2015 ◽  
pp. 37-59
Author(s):  
Mona Betour El Zoghbi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
New Learning ◽  
Meaningful Engagement ◽  
Depth Interviews

The international community is increasingly recognizing the importance of youth's meaningful engagement and empowerment for managing long-term climate change challenges, and of their consultation on policies and decisions that affect their well-being and sustainable development. Yet the extent to which new learning is generated in current spaces for youth participation in local, national and global negotiations and decision-making on environmental issues remains less understood. This Chapter discusses the importance and effectiveness of youth-targeted and youth-led environmental conferences, forums, workshops and similar events in advancing the learning experiences of youth participants in these events. Testimonials from young people, generated through in-depth interviews of youth participants at environmental conferences and forums in the Netherlands and South Africa provide key insights into their engagement. The findings highlight the need for more empowering and critically engaging platforms for youth participation and for adequate mentoring of young participants.

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