How Can Landscape Architecture Influence Systemic Change to Achieve Sustainable Cities and Regions

This paper presents how the ideas of landscape, design quality and drawings can influence systemic change to result in sustainable cities and regions. The research related to this paper explores project frameworks and design methods in order to reveal innovative ways and processes for creating environmentally friendly cities and regions that will have the power to adapt and mitigate climatic issues of the future. Through a series of explorations on existing landscape projects and while using a series of stakeholder engagement workshops contacted at a pan-European level the paper examines ways in which systemic change is possible and the outcomes it has in relation to the landscape. Using previously implemented and ongoing landscape projects such as the Room for the River (the Netherlands) and the West Midlands National Park (UK), the paper discusses how bold landscape-led visions influence decision making and support systemic change on a spatial scale. Drawing on experience gained during a series of stakeholder engagement workshops, where the projects of the Tame Valley Wetlands Partnership (UK) and the Urban Farming and Growing Network (UK) were selected as case studies, the research presents key findings and presents lessons learned that can build capacity and improve the understanding and management of stakeholders when it comes to spatial planning and urban design. The paper argues that a new way of thinking in design, policy or governance is not enough if these disciplines act individually. The breakthrough comes when each discipline collaborates with the aim to future proof our cities and regions. By presenting pioneering examples and models giving us tools for a systemic change, the paper aims to demonstrate that large scale developments can be brilliant examples of the new methodologies applied and lessons learnt. This research concludes that systemic change is represented across all levels, policy, decision making, governance, design and implementation if the aim is to deliver a sustainable city.

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The impact of stakeholder engagement on local policy decision making

Policy Sciences ◽

10.1007/s11077-019-09357-z ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 52 (4) ◽

pp. 549-571 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Le Anh Nguyen Long ◽

Megan Foster ◽

Gwen Arnold

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

New York ◽

Stakeholder Engagement ◽

New York State ◽

Policy Decision ◽

High Volume ◽

Local Policy ◽

Government Responsiveness ◽

The Impact ◽

Political Actions

Abstract We investigate how grassroots stakeholder engagement in municipal meetings shapes the decision making of local elected officials (LEOs) by examining the choices LEOs in New York State made on how to regulate high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) or fracking. We analyzed the content of 216 meeting minutes and 18 policy documents for 13 municipalities in New York. Our observations suggest that government responsiveness to local activism is shaped by the level of contestation between grassroots stakeholders. They reveal that contestation among grassroots stakeholders encourages LEOs to try to deflect responsibility for regulating fracking. When this contestation is high, LEOs tend to pursue actions which may limit but not prohibit HVHF within their jurisdiction. In contrast, when there is no contestation, LEOs more actively pursue substantive policy actions that prohibit HVHF. Generally, we find that that the level of contestation among grassroots stakeholders about HVHF impacts the political actions LEOs take.

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How do decision-makers use evidence in community health policy and financing decisions? A qualitative study and conceptual framework in four African countries

Health Policy and Planning ◽

10.1093/heapol/czaa027 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (7) ◽

pp. 799-809 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Meghan Bruce Kumar ◽

Miriam Taegtmeyer ◽

Jason Madan ◽

Sozinho Ndima ◽

Kingsley Chikaphupha ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Qualitative Study ◽

Community Health ◽

Large Scale ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Health Coverage ◽

African Countries ◽

Evidence Use ◽

Financing Decisions

Abstract Various investments could help countries deliver on the universal health coverage (UHC) goals set by the global community; community health is a pillar of many national strategies towards UHC. Yet despite resource mobilization towards this end, little is known about the potential costs and value of these investments, as well as how evidence on the same would be used in related decisions. This qualitative study was conducted to understand the use of evidence in policy and financing decisions for large-scale community health programmes in low- and middle-income countries. Through key informant interviews with 43 respondents in countries with community health embedded in national UHC strategies (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique) and at global institutions, we investigated evidence use in community health financing and policy decision-making, as well as evidentiary needs related to community health data for decision-making. We found that evidence use is limited at all levels, in part due to a perceived lack of high-quality, relevant evidence. This perception stems from two main areas: first, desire for local evidence that reflects the context, and second, much existing economic evidence does not deal with what decision-makers value when it comes to community health systems—i.e. coverage and (to a lesser extent) quality. Beyond the evidence gap, there is limited capacity to assess and use the evidence. Elected officials also face political challenges to disinvestment as well as structural obstacles to evidence use, including the outsized influence of donor priorities. Evaluation data must to speak to decision-maker interests and constraints more directly, alongside financiers of community health providing explicit guidance and support on the role of evidence use in decision-making, empowering national decision-makers. Improved data quality, increased relevance of evidence and capacity for evidence use can drive improved efficiency of financing and evidence-based policymaking.

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Understanding the Implications of Alternative Bioenergy Crops to Support Smallholder Farmers in Brazil

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12052146 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (5) ◽

pp. 2146 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Paola Sakai ◽

Stavros Afionis ◽

Nicola Favretto ◽

Lindsay C. Stringer ◽

Caroline Ward ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Sweet Potato ◽

Water Use ◽

Large Scale ◽

Smallholder Farmers ◽

Calorific Value ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Bioenergy Crops ◽

Energy Needs ◽

Development Context

Smallholders constitute more than three quarters of the world’s farmers, and despite their numbers, they commonly lack opportunities to advance their development status. Bioenergy production and consumption can help sustain smallholders’ energy needs and generate employment and income, but it also raises concerns over social justice and equity, especially where crops used for bioenergy could also be used for food. This perspective paper is grounded in a literature review related to three different crops in Brazil: sugarcane, landrace maize and sweet potato. It seeks to determine if these crops offer the potential to support smallholder farmers’ development in a more equitable way, focusing on opportunities for their use in bioenergy. We review the literature to identify policies shaping the smallholder development context in relation to these crops, assessing whose knowledge informs policy and institutional decision making, and highlighting the policy attention afforded to the different crops from different sectors. We further evaluate the literature on each crop in relation to water use and calorific value (i.e., food and energy). Our review indicates that while sugarcane has received the most policy and institutional attention, its development is largely anchored in research and development investments that support large-scale commercial farms and agri-businesses. Smallholders have not benefited or had the opportunity to engage in relevant policy decision making for sugarcane cultivation. At the same time, smallholders hold valuable untapped knowledge on the cultivation of sweet potato and landrace maize, both of which have the potential to generate development opportunities for smallholders. Our review suggests that the environmental impact of landrace maize and sweet potato in terms of water use is significantly lower than sugarcane, while they can generate more calories for energy or food consumption and offer diversification opportunities. Despite that these alternative crops offer considerable untapped potential to support rural development, more research is still needed to harness these benefits. Changes are needed to address inequities in policies, institutions and the types of knowledge informing decision making. Such changes need to afford smallholder farmers greater recognition and participation in decision making, so that the distribution of benefits from the three study crops can reach them to support their development better.

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Measuring daily-life fear perception change: a computational study in the context of COVID-19 (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.33872 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yuchen Chai ◽

Juan Palacios ◽

Jianghao Wang ◽

Yichun Fan ◽

Siqi Zheng

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Social Media ◽

Large Scale ◽

Daily Life ◽

Computational Study ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Health Crisis ◽

The Social ◽

Policy Decision Making ◽

Media Data

BACKGROUND COVID-19, as a global health crisis, has triggered the fear emotion with unprecedented intensity. Besides the fear of getting infected, the outbreak of COVID-19 also created significant disruptions in people’s daily life and thus evoked intensive psychological responses indirect to COVID-19 infections. OBJECTIVE This study aims to develop novel digital trackers of public fear emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to uncover meaningful topics that the citizens are concerned about to inform policy decision-making. METHODS We construct an expressed fear database using 16 million social media posts generated by 536 thousand users in China between January 1st, 2019 and August 31st, 2020. We employ Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to detect the fear emotion within each post and apply BERTopic to extract the central fear topics. RESULTS We find that on average, 2.45% of posts per day having fear as the dominant emotion in 2019. This share spiked after the COVID-19 outbreak and peaked at 9.1% on the date that China’s epi-center Wuhan city announced lockdown. Among the fear posts, topics related to health takes the largest share (39%). Specifically, we find that posts regarding sleep disorders (Nightmare and Insomnia) have the most significant increase during the pandemic. We also observe gender heterogeneity in fear topics, with females being more concerned with health while males being more concerned with job. CONCLUSIONS Our work leverages the social media data coupled with computational methods to track the emotional response on a large scale and with high temporal granularity. While we conduct this research in a tracing back mode, it is possible to use such a method to achieve real-time emotion monitoring, thus serving as a helpful tool to discern societal concerns and aid for policy decision-making.

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MAXIMIZING DISPERSANT PREPAREDNESS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE 2007 HAWAIIAN ISLANDS FULL SCALE EXERCISE

International Oil Spill Conference Proceedings ◽

10.7901/2169-3358-2008-1-805 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 2008 (1) ◽

pp. 805-809

Author(s):

Kim Beasley ◽

C. Curtis Martin ◽

Roger Laferriere

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Decision Making ◽

Data Transmission ◽

Large Scale ◽

Command And Control ◽

The United States ◽

The State ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Coast Guard ◽

And Control

ABSTRACT Large scale dispersant exercises have been conducted nationally and internationally ever since their first large scale use during the Torrey Canyon Spill of 1967. Few of these exercises are conducted on the grandest scale intended to exercise all aspects of the operation; from command and control, pre-application testing, application, monitoring and data transmission. Clean Islands Council in cooperation with the State of Hawaii'S Department of Health and the U.S. Coast Guard conducted a two day exercise on February 21–22, 2007 to test the full range of the State'S Dispersant capability. It was the largest exercise ever conducted in Hawaii, and arguably the largest in United States history. The exercise was the culmination of 14 years of program development by the Clean Islands Council, the State of Hawaii and the United States Coast Guard. The exercise instilled a tremendous appreciation in all players involved of the complexity of dispersant operations, and the importance of ensuring efficient command and control processes, support and communications. All elements of Dispersant application were tested: decision making processes, laboratory pre-testing, on-scene test application, on-scene application, on-scene monitoring and real time data transmission to effect quick decision making from jurisdictional agencies. Additionally, the latest state of the art equipment was used during all phases. This paper discusses the results of the exercise and shares critical lessons learned that will greatly advance the preparedness knowledge of all dispersant users internationally. The authors of this paper have over 50 years of collective spill response experience and were personally involved in the exercise design and execution.

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Stakeholder Engagement in Sport Policy Decision Making in Taiwan during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The International Journal of the History of Sport ◽

10.1080/09523367.2021.1898379 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

Ian Henry ◽

Chin-Hsung Kao ◽

Ling-Mei Ko

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Stakeholder Engagement ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Sport Policy ◽

Policy Decision Making

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Experiences With and Lessons Learned From Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating a Support Program for Older Hearing Aid Users and Their Communication Partners in the Hearing Aid Dispensing Setting

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2020_aja-19-00072 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (3S) ◽

pp. 638-647 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Janine F. J. Meijerink ◽

Marieke Pronk ◽

Sophia E. Kramer

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Critical Discussion ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Research Note ◽

Support Program ◽

Large Sample Size ◽

Long Term Effects ◽

Communication Program ◽

Communication Partners

Purpose The SUpport PRogram (SUPR) study was carried out in the context of a private academic partnership and is the first study to evaluate the long-term effects of a communication program (SUPR) for older hearing aid users and their communication partners on a large scale in a hearing aid dispensing setting. The purpose of this research note is to reflect on the lessons that we learned during the different development, implementation, and evaluation phases of the SUPR project. Procedure This research note describes the procedures that were followed during the different phases of the SUPR project and provides a critical discussion to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the approach taken. Conclusion This research note might provide researchers and intervention developers with useful insights as to how aural rehabilitation interventions, such as the SUPR, can be developed by incorporating the needs of the different stakeholders, evaluated by using a robust research design (including a large sample size and a longer term follow-up assessment), and implemented widely by collaborating with a private partner (hearing aid dispensing practice chain).

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