A Query Language for Workflow Logs

A business process (workflow) is an assembly of tasks to accomplish a business goal. Real-world workflow models often demanded to change due to new laws and policies, changes in the environment, and so on. To understand the inner workings of a business process to facilitate changes, workflow logs have the potential to enable inspecting, monitoring, diagnosing, analyzing, and improving the design of a complex workflow. Querying workflow logs, however, is still mostly an ad hoc practice by workflow managers. In this article, we focus on the problem of querying workflow log concerning both control flow and dataflow properties. We develop a query language based on “incident patterns” to allow the user to directly query workflow logs instead of having to transform such queries into database operations. We provide the formal semantics and a query evaluation algorithm of our language. By deriving an accurate cost model, we develop an optimization mechanism to accelerate query evaluation. Our experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization and achieves up to 50× speedup over an adaption of existing evaluation method.

Cybersecurity Enterprises Policies: A Comparative Study

Cybersecurity is a critical issue that must be prioritized not just by enterprises of all kinds, but also by national security. To safeguard an organization’s cyberenvironments, information, and communication technologies, many enterprises are investing substantially in cybersecurity these days. One part of the cyberdefense mechanism is building an enterprises’ security policies library, for consistent implementation of security controls. Significant and common cybersecurity policies of various enterprises are compared and explored in this study to provide robust and comprehensive cybersecurity knowledge that can be used in various enterprises. Several significant common security policies were identified and discussed in this comprehensive study. This study identified 10 common cybersecurity policy aspects in five enterprises: healthcare, finance, education, aviation, and e-commerce. We aimed to build a strong infrastructure in each business, and investigate the security laws and policies that apply to all businesses in each sector. Furthermore, the findings of this study reveal that the importance of cybersecurity requirements differ across multiple organizations. The choice and applicability of cybersecurity policies are determined by the type of information under control and the security requirements of organizations in relation to these policies.

Analysis of Urban Agglomeration in Economic and Legal Perspectives (A Study on the Development of Industrial Agglomeration Areas in Semarang City)

<em>This study tries to analyze the implementation of laws and policies regarding the development of urban agglomerations, analyze agrarian law regulations in Indonesia addressing industrial estate issues, and analyze the leading sectors and economic potential of the city of Semarang. In this study, the authors use the Base Sector Analysis/LQ Analysis, Economic Sector Performance Analysis/Shift Share Analysis, Growth Ratio Model Analysis/GRM, Klassen Typology Analysis, Overlay Techniques, and SWOT Analysis to measure the competitive advantage of each element), and provide policy recommendations for the government as well as for industry players. The object of this research is spread over several industrial areas located in Semarang City including Wijaya Kusuma Industrial Area, Candi Industrial Area, BSB Industrial Park, and Terboyo Industrial Estate. The findings of this study are that it is known that leading sectors such as warehousing, financial services, transportation, retail, real estate, trade, and construction are economic bases that are growing rapidly and can support the development of urban agglomerations.</em>

The Climate Change and Air Pollution

Environmental pollution states the toxification by different forms of pollutants in the surroundings. This causes the natural system imbalance and affects the life on earth in different ways. The emissions of pollutants into air result in climate changes. The rising levels of CO2 and other air-polluting gases increase the greenhouse effect which results in temperature elevations and affects global weather patterns. Bill Gates also warned “Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved; it deserves to be a huge priority”. Though climate change and air pollution are closely linked, these are treated as separate problems. Hence, it is aimed to understand the aspects of association between climate change and air pollution in this chapter with the objectives: (i) To know the basics of climate change and air pollution, (ii) To review the active background studies on climate change as well as on air pollution, (iii) To identify the issues, controversies, problems which include the effects of global warming and greenhouse gases followed by the types of air pollutants and its harmful effects, (iv) To find the solutions and recommendations, the discussions are made on climate laws and policies, (v) To retrieve, analyze and store the climate change related information, the description about models, tools and databases are given, (vi) To have a flawless insights on the association of climate change and air pollution, (vii) To exemplify species indicators for the assessment of the effect of air pollution on climate change are also included. As Bernie Sanders said “Climate change is a planetary crisis. We've got to act, and we have to act boldly”.

Moderating role of government Acts, laws and policies between team competency and skills and construction risk management among KSA contractors

Contractors have given importance to risks in the construction process as it causes time and cost overrun, delays, and total desertion in activities and events present in the construction project. The uncertainty in the completion time, cost, and quality during construction relate to construction risks. Project goals are achieved by classifying, investigating, and replying to risks associated with construction projects. To achieve project objectives, team competency and skills are required, which are viewed as attitude, aptitude, versatility, and knowledge. Based on organisation control theory, current research (quantitative in nature) discusses the influence of team competency and skills on construction risk management with the moderation role of government Acts, laws, and policies among 303 large-size contractors working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia using PLS-SEM technique. PLS-SEM is a composite-based approach that provides high efficiency parameter estimation with increased statistical power for analyzing complex models. Results depict that government Acts, laws and policies and team competency and skills positively influence construction risk management. In addition, moderation of government Acts, laws, and policies has positive relation among team competency and skills and construction risk management. Organisational management can reduce risk occurrence within a project by building conditions for enhancing team competency and skills.

Environmental impact assessment of CPEC: a way forward for sustainable development

Purpose Human-induced changes in climate have affected the environment to the extent that any more economic development at the cost of the environment will be too costly. Thus, sustainable development options posing no additional harm to the environment are the only viable option. This study aims to examine the likely environmental impacts of infrastructural developments through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Design/methodology/approach There is a scarcity of academic debate and discussion on the environmental impact of CPEC developments in laws and policies on the environment. The qualitative approach is followed in this study and official documents and reports are used to investigate the environmental challenges posed by CPEC. Findings The findings show three possible environmental concerns which could increase the climate change vulnerability of Pakistan. The coal-fired power plants are the most prominent threat based on their CO2 contributions and smog. Second, cutting more than 54,000 trees for roads infrastructure will increase CO2 concentration along the CPEC route. Third, increasing vehicle trafficking by up to 7,000 trucks per day on Karakorum Highway alone will release 36.5 million tons of additional CO2. Originality/value It is essential to rethink the environmental cost of CPEC. The study suggests economic and legal cooperation between Pakistan and China as a way forward to deal with climate change issues. Environmental laws should be a vital part of CPEC projects to ensure their safety, security and sustainability.

If Democracy Is Such a Smart Regime, Why Are Democracies Doing So Poorly at the Moment and How Can We Fix Them?

This chapter returns to the ideal of people’s power and argues that democracies as we know them are dubiously democratic. Most ordinary citizens, in the United States certainly but in other advanced democracies as well, have little deliberative input into the laws and policies that rule their lives. The chapter traces the problem to fundamental design mistakes made in the eighteenth century when elections, an oligarchic selection mechanism, rather than the traditional lot of Classical Athens, were privileged as the method for choosing representatives. This original design mistake explains in part why contemporary democracies are, and indeed have always been, dysfunctional. This chapter also makes the case for open democracy, a new paradigm of democracy that takes more seriously the core ideal of people’s power and in which elections are no longer a central institutional principle.

Understanding Our Power to Harm

We don’t talk to boys about sexual violence with the same intensity and regularity that we talk to girls. It’s no wonder, then, that many grow into men with limited understandings of how to ensure the safety of themselves and their partners. Chapter 7 provides a deeper dive into sexual misconduct policies. It identifies common misunderstandings that boys have of policies and provides some practical tips on how to correct those deficiencies. Particular emphasis is placed on the common understanding that alcohol usage absolves one from fault. The chapter also provides tips on how boys can better navigate a sexual arena where they perceive themselves to have a lot of risk. Chief among these tips is the suggestion that boys are free to hold themselves to standards that exceed what laws and policies expect of them.

Let’s Try Real Democracy

This chapter lays out a general theoretical case for democracy, specifically the kind of democracy that democratic theorists call “deliberative democracy,” which traces the legitimacy of laws and policies to the reasoned exchange of arguments among free and equal citizens. The chapter shows the benefits of distributing political decision-power in an inclusive and egalitarian manner, especially in the deliberative phase of the legislative process. The core idea is that many minds deliberating together are better than few when it comes to dealing with the uncertainty and complexity of the world and figuring out solutions that work for all within it.