Auber & Müller: Incorporating Norms in a Model to Simulate the Management of Renewable Resources

Sigrid Aubert and Jean-Pierre Müller, both of CIRAD, have published Incorporating institutions, norms and territories in a generic model to simulate the management of renewable resources, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here is the abstract:

Management of the renewable natural resources in Madagascar is gradually being transferred to the local communities, particularly that of forest resources. However, these local communities are struggling to assess the consequences of management plans that they themselves must develop and implement on ecologically, economically and socially sustainable grounds. In order to highlight key aspects of different management options beforehand, we have developed MIRANA, a computer model to simulate various scenarios of management plan implementation. MIRANA differs from other simulation models by not only taking into account individual practices and economic exchanges, but also by accounting for the applicable regulations. These regulations are taken into consideration by means of a multiplicity of normative structures within a spatial context. The objective of this paper is to describe the representations of institutions, norms and territories proposed by MIRANA and to discuss these representations in relation to the state of the art in the field of normative multi-agent systems.

Svernlöv on Developing an Environmental Law Compliance System for the Chinese Market

Magnus Svernlöv of Notisum has posted Envitool Helps Companies Comply with EHS and CSR, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. Svernlöv describes how his firm adapted the Swedish environmental law and compliance system Rättsnätet+Miljö for the Chinese market. The new system is called Envitool. The post describes Notisum‘s partnership with online legal research service ChinaLawInfo to obtain Chinese legislation and accompanying metadata. The post also describes the development of editorial content for Envitool that would meet the particular needs of the Chinese users, mostly professionals and managers who were unfamiliar with legal information systems.

For more information, please see the complete post.

Legal Informatics Papers @ HICSS-45

Several legal informatics papers will be presented at HICSS-45: The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, to be held 4-7 January 2012 in Maui, Hawaii, USA. (Click here for the conference program.) Here are the legal informatics papers to be presented at the conference, which I’ve been able to identify, with abstracts and links to full text where available (If you know of other legal informatics papers to be presented at the conference, please feel free to list them in the comments. For abstracts or full text of papers where those are not provided, please contact the authors):

Jörg Becker, Mathias Eggert, Marcel Heddier, Ralf Knackstedt: Merging Conceptual Modeling and Law for Legally Compliant Information Systems Design – A Framework-Based Research Agenda.

Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathaki, Gianluca Misuraca, David Osimo: ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling: Research Challenges and Future Prospects in Europe.

Ralf Knackstedt, Mathias Eggert, Stefan Fleischer: The Legal Perspective on Business to Government Reporting – A Conceptual Modeling Approach and its Application in the Financial Sector. Abstract:

Business to Government (BtG) Reporting is a much-regarded research field, even more so since the collapse of the world economy. The topic attracts heightened attention from many financial service companies because they are forced to comply with an increasing number of reporting regulations. In particular, methods to design compliant BtG reporting systems are currently considered inadequate in IS research. This paper presents a way of supporting the management of legal reporting requirements by developing an approach for modeling and analyzing reporting regulations focused on the financial sector. The method is characterized in particular by the ability to represent and analyze legal reporting requirements. Using the examples of Risk Reports and the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), the modeling and analysis capabilities of the method will be evaluated.

Fu-ren Lin, Yu-tze Huang, Dachi Liao: Incrementally Clustering Legislative Interpellation Documents.

Sonia Royo, Ana Yetano, Basilio Acerete: E-Participation and Climate Change: Are Local Governments Actively Promoting Responsible Behaviors and Offering Opportunities for Citizen Involvement? [A notable finding: e-rulemaking and e-petition functions were among the "least developed" e-participation capabilities measured, with an average score of 25.4%.] Abstract:

Citizens are demanding greater transparency and accountability from their governments, and seek to participate in shaping the policies that affect their lives. The diffusion of the Internet has raised expectations that electronic tools may increase citizen participation in government decision-making and stop the decline of trust in political institutions. This paper brings together two relevant topics, e-participation and climate change, analyzing the websites of the environment departments of EU local governments that have signed the Aalborg+10 commitments, to establish to what extent EU local governments are making use of the Internet to promote e-participation and environmental-friendly behaviors among their citizens. Our results show that the developments on e-participation are higher in those areas just giving information than in the areas related to interactivity. The Internet as a tool to revitalize the public sphere is still limited to those countries with higher levels of transparency and a culture of citizen engagement.

Call for Papers: dg.o 2011

A call for papers has been issued for dg.o 2011: The 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, to be held 12-15 June 2011, at the University of Maryland, in College Park, Maryland, USA. Here are the deadlines:

• 10 January 2011: Workshop, tutorial, and panel proposals due
• 6 February 2011: Papers, posters and demo descriptions due
• 30 March 2011: Camera-ready manuscripts due

Papers or proposals are invited on the following topics:

• “Digital Government Application Domains: such as courts, emergency response management, education, government statistics and data, grants administration, intelligence, international initiatives and cooperation, health and human services, law enforcement and criminal justice, legislative systems, natural resources management, open government (o-government), regulation and rulemaking, security, tax administration, transportation systems, and urban planning.
• IT-enabled Government Management and Operations: such as cross-boundary information sharing and integration, decision-making processes, digital government organization and management strategies, information assurance, information technology adoption and diffusion, IT and service architectures, long-term preservation and archiving of government information, program planning, service integration, as well as technology transition and transfer.
• Information Values and Policies: such as accessibility, digital democracy and governance, digital divide, openness, privacy, public participation in democratic processes, security, transparency, trust, and universal and equity of access to information and services.
• Information Technology and Tools to Support Government: such as cloud computing for digital government domains; collaboration tools; digital libraries and knowledge management; geographic information systems; human-computer interaction; intelligent agents; information integration; interoperable data, networks and architectures; large scale data and information acquisition and management; mobile government; multiple modalities and multimedia; national and international infrastructures for information and communication; service-oriented architectures; semantic web; and social networking, mashups, and software engineering for large-scale government projects.”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

Holley on Public Participation, Environmental Law and New Governance

Dr. Cameron Holley of the Australian National University Climate and Environmental Governance Network has published Public Participation, Environmental Law and New Governance: Lessons for Designing Inclusive and Representative Participatory Processes, 27 Environmental and Planning Law Journal 360-391 (2010) (Issue No. 5). Here is the abstract:

New environmental governance (NEG) claims to improve efficacy as well as “deepen democracy” by opening up new points of public participation into many levels and stages of traditional legal process. This article examines a vital, yet divisive, aspect of these new participatory approaches: the challenge of achieving inclusive and representative participation by civil society actors and all pertinent stakeholders. Using research into 12 case studies drawn from three leading Australian NEG programs, this article empirically examines inclusion and representation in practice and reveals the substantial difficulties NEG faces in fully satisfying its participatory aspirations. This leads the article to make a number of important empirically-based recommendations for designing more effective participation processes. These recommendations fall under two broad themes: (i) enhancing the capacities of potential participants; and (ii) enhancing the capacity and role of public agencies as facilitators of participation. The analysis also has implications for ongoing theoretical debates regarding the participatory and democratic character of NEG.

Thanks to Dr. Holley for sending the abstract.

Bell on How the Land Title Register Can Assist with Sustainable Decision-Making

Dr. Justine Bell of the University of Queensland School of Law has published Greening the Land Title Register: How Can the Land Title Register Assist with Sustainable Decision-Making?, 18 Australian Property Law Journal 263 (2010) (Issue No. 3). Here is the abstract:

In recent years, it has become apparent that unrestricted land use is incompatible with environmental sustainability. To confront this problem, Australian governments have enacted legislation which places limits on land use. In some instances these restrictions or obligations may be registered or recorded on title, but this practice is not uniform. Furthermore, even where restrictions and obligations are registered or recorded on title, the legal effect of these notations is not always clear. This article explores the various ways in which Australian governments have used the land title register to provide information on environmental laws, and the legal implications associated with extending the scope of the land title register. It concludes with a series of recommendations for reform.

Thanks to Dr. Bell for providing the abstract.

Watts et al. on Software for Optimal Conservation Based Land- & Sea-Use Zoning

Matthew E. Watts, of the University of Queensland, The Ecology Center, School of Biological Sciences and Centre for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis, Dr. Ian R. Ball, of the Australian Antarctic Division, and colleagues, have published Short Communication: Marxan with Zones: Software for Optimal Conservation Based Land- & Sea-Use Zoning, forthcoming in 24 Environmental Modelling & Software 1513 (Dec. 2009). Here is the abstract:

“Marxan is the most widely used conservation planning software in the world and is designed for solving complex conservation planning problems in landscapes and seascapes. In this paper we describe a substantial extension of Marxan called Marxan with Zones, a decision support tool that provides land-use zoning options in geographical regions for biodiversity conservation. We describe new functions designed to enhance the original Marxan software and expand on its utility as a decision support tool. The major new element in the decision problem is allowing any parcel of land or sea to be allocated to a specific zone, not just reserved or unreserved. Each zone then has the option of its own actions, objectives and constraints, with the flexibility to define the contribution of each zone to achieve targets for pre-specified features (e.g. species or habitats). The objective is to minimize the total cost of implementing the zoning plan while ensuring a variety of conservation and land-use objectives are achieved. We outline the capabilities, limitations and additional data requirements of this new software and perform a comparison with the original version of Marxan. We feature a number of case studies to demonstrate the functionality of the software and highlight its flexibility to address a range of complex spatial planning problems. These studies demonstrate the design of multiple-use marine parks in both Western Australia and California, and the zoning of forest use in East Kalimantan.”