Jonathan Boston, Professor of Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.ABSTRACTFundamental to good governance is the active anticipation, assessment and management of risBased on this analysis, the paper applies the concept to the policy challenges posed by climate change adaptation, particularly sea-level rise. In this regard, humanity is confronted with a slow-motion disaster that will grow progressively in scope and scale, sometimes abruptly. Societies will face significant uncertainty, multiple and compounding risks, immense costs and difficult intertemporal and intragenerational trade-offs. More specifically, rising sea levels will have a major and increasing impact on the built environment in coastal regions. Globally, hundreds of millions of people could be forced this century to relocate from areas at risk from coastal erosion and inundation, higher water tables, and more frequent and intense rainfall events. Mitigating some of the risks and increasing societal resilience via anticipatory, pro-active, prudent and adaptive policy responses will be politically challenging, not least because of the large upfront costs, the likelihood of powerful blocking coalitions, and the complexities of inter-governmental and inter-agency coordination. This paper outlines how, in the interests of sound anticipatory governance, these challenges might be addressed through the creation of new governmental institutions, funding mechanisms and revised planning processes.

Trends in Organized Crime, pp 1–28, doi:10.1007/s12117-017-9315-6. Abstract We explore how the idea of partial organization can provide insights in the study of organized crime. Studying criminal organi

Theoria, Volume 82, Issue 2,p. 166–181,May 2016. DOI: 10.1111/theo.12094 Abstract Recently, in his Rolf Schock Prize Lecture, Derek Parfit has suggested a novel way of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion

Hydrogeology Journal 25(4) pp. 1077-1091, doi: 10.1007/s10040-016-1504-x Abstract This study developed methodology for statistically assessing groundwater contamination mechanisms. It focused on microbiahumanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières in 2010. The factors included hydrogeological settings, land use and socio-economic characteristics. The results showed that the residuals of a conventional probit regression model had a significant positive spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I =3.05, I-stat = 9.28); therefore, a spatial model was developed that had better goodness-of-fit to the observations. The mostsignificant factor in this model (p-value 0.005) was the distance from a water source to the nearest Tukul area, an area with informal settlements that lack sanitation services. It is thus recommended that future remediation and monitoring efforts in the city be concentrated in such low-income regions. The spatial model differed from the conventional approach: in contrast with the latter case, lowland topography was not significant at the 5% level, as the p-value was 0.074 in the spatial model and 0.040 in the traditional model. This study showed that statistical risk-factor assessments of groundwater contamination need to consider spatial interactions when the water sources are located close to each other. Future studies might further investigate the cut-off distance that reflects spatial autocorrelation. Particularly, these results advise research on urban groundwater quality.

This study investigates how stabile the ranking system of Swedish universities is in relation to future incomes of their alumni. Amongst the findings, the ranking of colleges varies both across method

Social Science Research (2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.07.005 Abstract This article uses data on all persons who ever received Social Assistance (SA) in Sweden 1991–2007 (N = 2,638,68

In Stephen M. Gardiner (red), The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Justice, Oxford Academic. Abstract The repugnant conclusion can be formulated as follows: For any population consisting of people wi

The fourth meeting of the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar in Trinity Term will be on Monday, 16 May, in the Lecture Room on the second floor of the Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Road, Oxfor

Institute for Futures Studies Research Report 2009/2, 101p. This report assesses the diversity feasibility, but also the relevance of the social investment strategy in Europe. What policies have been i

Political Science Research and Methods Abstract We experimentally explore the role of institutions imposing collective sanctions in sustaining cooperation. In our experiment, players only observe noisy