This volume focuses on the breakdown in sustainabilityâ€"the capacity of the planet to provide quality of life now and in the futureâ€"that is signaled by disaster. The authors bring to light why land use and sustainability have been ignored in devising public policies to deal with natural hazards. They lay out a vision of sustainability, concrete suggestions for policy reform, and procedures for planning. The book chronicles the long evolution of land-use planning and identifies key components of sustainable planning for hazards. Stressing the importance of balance in land use, the authors offer principles and specific reforms for achieving their visions of sustainability.

A study of price and the organization of firms using game theory and neoclassical economics.

Biological and natural processes have been a continuous source of inspiration for the sciences and engineering. For instance, the work of Wiener in cybernetics was influenced by feedback control processes observable in biological systems; McCulloch and Pitts description of the artificial neuron was instigated by biological observations of neural mechanisms; the idea of survival of the fittest inspired the field of evolutionary algorithms and similarly, artificial immune systems, ant colony optimisation, automated self-assembling programming, membrane computing, etc. also have their roots in natural phenomena. The second International Workshop on Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO), was held in Acireale, Italy, during November 8-10, 2007. The aim for NICSO 2007 was to provide a forum were the latest ideas and state of the art research related to cooperative strategies for problem solving arising from Nature could be discussed. The contributions collected in this book were strictly peer reviewed by at least three members of the international programme committee, to whom we are indebted for their support and assistance. The topics covered by the contributions include several well established nature inspired techniques like Genetic Algorithms, Ant Colonies, Artificial Immune Systems, Evolutionary Robotics, Evolvable Systems, Membrane Computing, Quantum Computing, Software Self Assembly, Swarm Intelligence, etc.

Biological and other natural processes have always been a source of inspiration for computer science and information technology. Many emerging problem solving techniques integrate advanced evolution and cooperation strategies, encompassing a range of spatio-temporal scales for visionary conceptualization of evolutionary computation. The previous editions of NICSO were held in Granada, Spain (2006), Acireale, Italy (2007), Tenerife, Spain (2008), and again in Granada in 2010. NICSO evolved to be one of the most interesting and profiled workshops in nature inspired computing. NICSO 2011 has offered an inspiring environment for debating the state of the art ideas and techniques in nature inspired cooperative strategies and a comprehensive image on recent applications of these ideas and techniques. The topics covered by this volume include Swarm Intelligence (such as Ant and Bee Colony Optimization), Genetic Algorithms, Multiagent Systems, Coevolution and Cooperation strategies, Adversarial Models, Synergic Building Blocks, Complex Networks, Social Impact Models, Evolutionary Design, Self Organized Criticality, Evolving Systems, Cellular Automata, Hybrid Algorithms, and Membrane Computing (P-Systems).

Many aspects of Nature, Biology or even from Society have become part of the techniques and algorithms used in computer science or they have been used to enhance or hybridize several techniques through the inclusion of advanced evolution, cooperation or biologically based additions. The previous NICSO workshops were held in Granada, Spain, 2006, Acireale, Italy, 2007, and in Tenerife, Spain, 2008. As in the previous editions, NICSO 2010, held in Granada, Spain, was conceived as a forum for the latest ideas and the state of the art research related to nature inspired cooperative strategies. The contributions collected in this book cover topics including nature-inspired techniques like Genetic Algorithms, Evolutionary Algorithms, Ant and Bee Colonies, Swarm Intelligence approaches, Neural Networks, several Cooperation Models, Structures and Strategies, Agents Models, Social Interactions, as well as new algorithms based on the behaviour of fireflies or bats.

Over the past one hundred years in particular, there has been a steady process by which natural resources (such as ground-water, forests, fishing grounds and grazing land) have been increasingly managed by centralised institutions. Governments and other national agencies have argued that this promotes efficiency, equity, and other wide national goals. Recently this orthodoxy has been challenged by rising numbers of experiments that show how centralised management tends to fail. Global, national and local goals are more likely to be met, at lower cost and with other benefits (such as promoting better democratic institutions) by involving local populations in collaborative management agreements. This volume, based on detailed case studies from around the world, subjects some of these experiments to critical study, and suggests limits to the participative approach as well as ways it can be improved and made suitable for new contexts.

This book brings together philosophical approaches to cooperation and collective agency with research into human-machine interaction and cooperation from engineering, robotics, computer science and AI. Bringing these so far largely unrelated fields of study together leads to a better understanding of collective agency in natural and artificial systems and will help to improve the design and performance of hybrid systems involving human and artificial agents. Modeling collective agency with the help of computer simulations promises also philosophical insights into the emergence of collective agency. The volume consists of four sections. The first section is dedicated to the concept of agency. The second section of the book turns to human-machine cooperation. The focus of the third section is the transition from cooperation to collective agency. The last section concerns the explanatory value of social simulations of collective agency in the broader framework of cultural evolution.

Abstract: This paper provides a review of various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of natural and environmental resources. With an increase in the level of competition over environmental and natural resources, the incidents of disputes have been at the center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of common pool resources such as fisheries and forests, and cases of environmental pollution such as acid rain, flow, and stock pollution. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce environmental and natural resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. CGT applications to international fishery disputes are especially useful in that they have been making headway in policy-related agreements among states and regions of the world. Forest applications are more local in nature, but of great relevance in solving disputes among communities and various levels of governments.