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This paper proposes a voting strategy for knowledge integration and decision making systems with information uncertainty. As ensemble learning methods have recently attracted growing attention from both academia and industry, it is critical to understand the fundamental problem of voting strategy for such learning methodologies. Motivated by the signal to noise ratio (SNR) concept, we propose a method that can vote optimally according to the knowledge level of each hypothesis. The mathematical framework based on gradient analysis is used to find the optimal weights, and a voting algorithm, BoostVote, is presented in detail in this paper. Simulation analyses based on synthetic data and real-world data sets with comparison to the existing voting rules demonstrate the effectiveness of this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Duncan΄s (1976) and Souder & Moenaert΄s (1992) theories are based on distinguishing between mechanistic and organic organization designs. Moreover the theoretical framework of this investigation, requires an understanding of the specific stages of the innovation process and their characteristics. Therefore, Burns & Stalker΄s (1961) concept of organic and mechanistic organizations (3.1) will be discussed initially. It is followed by a presentation of the innovation process and its stages (3.2) and a discussion of the stage specific (and uncertaintyrelated) information processing requirements of the innovation process representing important characteristics (3.3). As indicated, the theoretical fundament for the phase-specific effectiveness of organic and mechanistic structures relies on Duncan΄s (1976) concept of the ambidextrous organization, and on the closely related information uncertainty reduction model proposed by Souder & Moenaert (1992) (3.4). The theoretical fundament related to the phasespecific effectiveness of boundary spanning activities relies on resource dependency theory (Pfeffer 1982, Pfeffer & Salancik 1978) (3.5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the characters of emergency decision-making in crisis management, this paper proposes a special decision-making method to deal with the inadequate information, uncertainty and dynamical trend. This CBR-based decision support method retrieves similar cases from Case Base and forecasts the prior distribution of absent feature values using Bayesian Dynamic Forecasting Model. Then the result is put into Markov-based state transition matrix to order suggested solutions by suitability and assist consensus achieving among decision makers. This novel method is suitable to emergency decision making as it provides support for the dynamic and evolutionary character of emergency response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the previous chapter problems of disclosing various types of uncertainties were investigated: the uncertainty of goals and interests in practical activities of individual participants and information uncertainty during the interaction or counteraction of several participants not incorporated into certain groups. At the same time, in practice, complex organizational structures and forms of interaction and counteraction are realized. For example, in the world economy there exist different international associations, unions, and other forms of interconnections and interactions of manufacturers and consumers of various services, raw materials, and goods. In a market economy, simultaneous influences of uncertainty factors, risks, competition, interaction, or counteraction factors are typical for such participants. Therefore, research and development of methods for solving system problems of active interaction and counteraction in such associations and coalitions are of significant practical interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider an agent taking two successive decisions under uncertainty. After his first decision, a signal is revealed providing information about the state of nature and the second decision is taken accordingly. Suppose that the agent is an expected utility maximizer. The precautionary effect holds when, in the prospect of future information, his optimal initial decision is less than without (no signal). Indeed, the first decision is usually a scalar representing consumption, so that precaution is identified with less consumption. We introduce the second-period value of information as a function of the initial decision and show that, when this function is decreasing, the precautionary effect holds true. More generally the condition enables the comparison of optimal decisions related to different signals, not necessarily comparable. It also ties together and clarifies many conditions for the precautionary effect that are scattered in the environmental economics literature. A practical illustration with Nordhaus΄ DICE model is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of knowledge democracy is meant to enable a new focus on the relationships between knowledge production and dissemination, the functioning of the media and our democratic institutions. The emerging concept of knowledge democracy moreover obliges us to realise that the institutional frameworks of today΄s societies may appear to be deficient as far as the above mentioned undercurrents, trends and other developments demand change. We explored the directions for institutional change during the conference. Democracy is without a doubt the most successful governance concept for societies during the last two centuries. It is a strong brand, even used by rulers who do not meet any democratic criterion. Representation gradually became the predominant mechanism by which the population at large, through elections, provides a body with a general authorisation to take decisions in all public domains for a certain period of time. Representative parliamentary democracy became the icon of advanced nation-states. The recent decline of representative parliamentary democracy has been called upon by many authors. On the micro-level the earlier consistent individual position of an ideologically-based consistent value pattern has disappeared. The values are present but the glue of a focal ideological principle is not any longer at stock. Fragmentation of values has lead to individualisation, to uniqueness but thereby also to the impossibility of being represented in a general manner by a single actor such as a member of parliament. More fundamentally media-politics destroy the original meaning of representation. On the meso-level the development of political parties to marketeers in the political realm destroys their capacity for designing consistent broad political strategies. Like willow trees they move with the winds of the supposed voters΄ preferences. And on the macro-level media-politics dominate. Volatility therefore will probably increase. The debate on the future of democracy in advanced national societies has not yet led to major innovations. Established political actors try to tackle populism with trusted resources: a combination of anti-populist rhetoric and adoption of the populist agenda. Some of the media have responded by attempting to become ˵more populist than populists themselves″, almost always at the expense of analytical depth. Meanwhile, the worldwide web provides for a drastic change in the rules of the game. A better educated public has wide access to information, and selects it by itself instead of by media filters. Moreover citizens themselves have become media. They may produce world-famous YouTube pictures. The crucial combination of a network society and media-politicsMedia-politics provides new problems and tensions. The political agenda is filled with so-called wicked problems, characterised by the absence of consensus both on the relevant values and the necessary knowledge and information. Uncertainty and complexity prevail. Advanced societies are characterised by an increasing intensity and speed of reflexive mechanisms. Reflexive mechanisms in a more or less lenient political environment cause overwhelming volatility of bodies of knowledge related to social systems. As all available knowledge is utilised to facilitate reflexive processes, the result of such processes might establish new relationships that undermine the existing knowledge. Social reality has then become unpredictable in principle. The relationships between science and politics demand new designs in an environment of media-politics, wicked problems and reflexivity. The classical theory on boundary workBoundary work in order to master the existing gaps between science and politics is nowadays widely accepted among experts. The underlying insight is that scientific knowledge by its very structure never directly relates to action, because it is fragmented, partial, conditional and immunised. This observation is [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open and dynamic nature of modern distributed systems and pervasive environments presents significant challenges to security management. One solution may be trust management which utilises the notion of trust in order to specify and interpret security policies and make decisions on security-related actions. Most logic-based trust management systems assume monotonicity where additional information can only result in the increasing of trust. The monotonic assumption oversimplifies the real world by not considering negative information, thus it cannot handle many real world scenarios. In this paper we present Shinren, a novel non-monotonic trust management system based on bilattice theory and the any-world assumption. Shinren takes into account negative information and supports reasoning with incomplete information, uncertainty and inconsistency. Information from multiple sources such as credentials, recommendations, reputation and local knowledge can be used and combined in order to establish trust. Shinren also supports prioritisation which is important in decision making and resolving modality conflicts that are caused by non-monotonicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]