Formal Models

Abstract Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) have been used in industrial environment to control several different tasks. Such devices can be programmed using one of the languages specified in the IEC 61131–3 standard, such as Ladder or Functional Logic ...

Third parties are thought to face a tradeoff in that those actions most likely to bring peace in the short run appear least likely to ensure its long run stability. Yet the tradeoff between conflict management and conflict resolution may be overstated. Analyzing an iterated three player bargaining model with both information and commitment problems, we first demonstrate two conditions under which third parties may produce lasting peace through conditional subsidies, even without addressing underlying informational or commitment problems. Second, we illustrate this possibility by analyzing the impact of US foreign aid on patterns of conflict and peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our analysis indicates that the termination of the rivalry between Israel and Egypt was most likely not brought about by the Camp David accords or peacekeeping operations, but by sustained foreign aid provision. We discuss the implications for both this conflict and conflict management more broadly.

In this paper a concept will be proposed about a hypergraph-based formalism for representing enterprise architecture. The paper presents a formal model using TOGAF and hypergraph theory. Hypergraphs provide a flexible mathematical structure to describe complex relationships in an enterprise architecture , mirroring the dependencies among components, and exploring integrity and consistency issues. The proposed approach extends the analytical potential for discrepancy checking in complex enterprise architecture structures. The approach can be utilized for EAM-based analysis of information systems.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

Chapter in Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music, ed. Peter Kaminsky (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2011), 143–179.

To discuss Ravel's dialog with sonata form, this essay (chapter in a multi-author book) provides detailed analyses of the first movements of Ravel's String Quartet and Piano Trio, including structural, motivic, and harmonic features. In the Piano Trio, the motivic and harmonic details are also linked to cyclic aspects of the four-movement cycle. A hermeneutic interpretation of the first movement's form, connecting its thematic and formal characteristics to Basque poetry, suggests possible biographical undercurrents.

This article presents the application of quantitative methods of analysis in International Studies in Russia and abroad. The role of formalized quantitative methods and modeling in research methods used in the articles in the world leading and top-rated journals on international relations and political science indexed in Scopus is described, based on a review of foreign publications. The genesis of mathematical methods in the foreign IR studies is shown, as well as the basic mathematical techniques used by foreign IR researchers in relation to the basic paradigms of theory of IR. The case of the international conflict studies - by far the most quantified sub-discipline within political science - is analyzed in details. The basic schools for the quantitative analysis of international relations, formed in the Soviet Union and Russia, are mentioned as well as basic bibliography in this area is provided. The role of the Soviet and Russian schools of cliometrics and quantitative history under the leadership of academic Koval'chenko I.D. in the application of quantitative research in the humanities is revealed.
The author presents the results of his own study of the use of quantitative methods in the articles published in six leading Russian IR scientific journals in 2014. Three groups of magazines - do not use mathematical methods, occasionally applying and regularly applying- are segregated. The main reasons of low usage of quantitative methods in the domestic IR studies are revealed.
The main practical difficulties of constructing formal models of IR related to interdisciplinary synthesis in educational and research activities in the Russian realities are enumerated. The authors pays a special attention at the lack of appropriate textbooks in mathematics, adapted for the humanities, as well as of the specialized software needed for quantitative analysis and visualization of research data. The successful experience of the cooperation Department of theory and history of international relations of the Peoples Friendship University of Russia with the corresponding Departments of Applied Mathematics and Applied Informatics for the development of students' skills in quantitative analysis of IR is described.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

¿Es posible la existencia de administraciones públicas patrimonialistas que brinden políticas públicas de calidad? ¿La calidad de las políticas públicas se puede explicar, en parte, por las características organizacionales de las administraciones? ¿Gobiernos locales con administraciones que padecen buropatologías se constituyen en motores del desarrollo?
El modelo burocrático weberiano en América Latina pareciera que alcanzó una instalación incompleta. Joan Prats (1999) afirmó que “si la reforma administrativa fracasó no fue porque el modelo burocrático que se trataba de implantar no era el adecuado. De hecho el modelo ha dado y sigue dando rendimiento excelente en muchos países desarrollados. En América Latina… no llegó a institucionalizarse sino parcial y excepcionalmente el sistema que Weber llamó de dominación racional-legal encarnado en la burocracia… lo que se desarrollaron mayormente fueron “buropatologías” que en el mejor de los casos se aproximaban al sistema mixto que Weber llamó “burocracias patrimoniales””.
Así, la presente ponencia es un avance de la tesis doctoral que pretende explicar la relación entre los modelos de administración pública (variable dependiente) y las dimensiones de la calidad de las políticas públicas locales (variable independiente). Para ello, la variable dependiente es analizada a partir de la presencia o ausencia de ciertas características de tres modelos teóricos de organización de las administraciones: a) modelo patrimonialista, b) modelo racional – legal y c) modelo post-burocrático (nueva gerencia pública y/o governance) y la variable calidad de las políticas públicas es analizada a parir de nueve dimensiones: a) estabilidad, b) adaptabilidad, c) coordinación y coherencia, d) implementación, e) orientación al interés público, f) eficiencia, g) participación social, h) grado de planificación y finalmente i) evaluación.

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

The institutions, the political system and the concept of power developed by the reformist project of Pombalism (from the name of the Portuguese enlightened ruler Marquis of Pombal, 1750-1777) are the focus of this paper.

Uma análise das instituições e do modelo político inovador inaugurado por Pombal na segunda metade do séc. 18 em Portugal.

As megaprojects have become ubiquitous, their real benefits and costs have come under increased scrutiny. We interviewed Bent Flyvbjerg, who has extensively studied megaproject development. Flyvbjerg has found systematic problems in the development process: by intentionally misrepresenting information and deliberately disregarding risks, proponents instigate projects that result in fewer benefits and higher costs than promised.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

The concept of formal consequence is at the heart of logic today, and by extension, plays an important role in such diverse areas as mathematics, computing, philosophy, and linguistics.

In this dissertation, I trace the roots of this concept in medieval logic from Pseudo-Scotus and John Buridan back to the earliest treatises on consequences, and provide translations of the three earliest known treatises on consequences - two anonymous, a third by Walter Burley.

Chapter one introduces the reader to the dominant philosophical approaches to formal consequence from the turn of the twentieth century to today. After this, I introduce the account of formal consequence advanced by John Buridan, the medieval predecessor to the semantic account advocated by Tarski and his followers.

The second chapter provides a detailed contrast of Buridan's account of formal consequence with those of Tarski, on the one hand, and later classical logic, on the other.

Chapter three examines the account of formal consequence in Pseudo-Scotus. I show that Pseudo-Scotus' account is dependent on that of Buridan, and therefore most post-date it.

Chapter four examines the account of divided modal consequence in William of Ockham. I show that Ockham's divided modalities are not fully assimilable to narrow-scope propositions of classical modal logic; formalize Ockham's account in an extension of first-order modal logic with restricted quantification; and provide a complete account of relations between two-term divided modal propositions on Ockham's account.

Chapter five introduces Walter Burley's thinking about consequences, examining: Burley's division and enumeration of consequences; his distinction between principal and derivative rules licensing good consequences; the relation of the division of consequences into formal and material varieties to Burley's preferred division between natural and accidental consequences; the relation Burley's work bears to Buridan, to the Boethian reception of Aristotle's Topics, and to the earliest treatises on consequences.

The final chapter concludes: highlighting the characteristic marks of medieval and modern approaches to consequences relative to each other; summarizing the various developments that led to the adoption of the account of formal consequence epitomized in Buridan's work; and suggesting prospects for recovering the most promising aspects of the medieval treatments of the topic.

Yang dimaksud dengan analisis SWOT adalah suatu cara menganalisis faktor-faktor internal dan eksternal menjadi langkah-langkah strategi dalam pengoptimalan usaha yang lebih menguntungkan. Dalam analisis faktor-faktor internal dan eksternal akan ditentukan aspek-aspek yang menjadi kekuatan (Strengths), kelemahan (Weakness), kesempatan (Opportunities), dan yang menjadi ancaman (Treathment) sebuah organisasi. Dengan begitu akan dapat ditentukan berbagai kemungkinan alternatif strategi yang dapat dijalankan (Freddy Rangkuti, 2005:19).

"Over budget, over time, over and over again" appears to be an appropriate slogan for large, complex infrastructure projects. This article explains why cost, benefits, and time forecasts for such projects are systematically over-optimistic in the planning phase. The underlying reasons for forecasting errors are grouped into three categories: delusions or honest mistakes; deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes; or bad luck. Delusion and deception have each been addressed in the management literature before, but here they are jointly considered for the first time. They are specifically applied to infrastructure problems in a manner that allows both academics and practitioners to understand and implement the suggested corrective procedures. The article provides a framework for analyzing the relative explanatory power of delusion and deception. It also suggests a simplified framework for analyzing the complex principal-agent relationships that are involved in the approval and construction of large infrastructure projects, which can be used to improve forecasts. Finally, the article illustrates reference class forecasting, an outside view de-biasing technique that has proven successful in overcoming both delusion and deception in private and public investment decisions.

La crisi economica globale esplosa nel 2008 ha colpito fortemente la Grecia, in primo luogo a causa dei suoi insostenibili livelli di spesa pubblica.  La reazione principale del governo, sostenuta da misure concordate con  il Fondo Monetario Internazionale, la Banca Centrale Europea e l’Unione  Europea, è stata l’introduzione di misure di austerity incentrate principalmente sul taglio della spesa della pubblica amministrazione e sul consolidamento delle funzioni di governo nazionale e locale. L’obiettivo delle  misure di austerità è tagliare la spesa del governo locale al livello più basso possibile e nel modo più efficace. In questo quadro, il “programma Kallikratis” introdotto nel 2010 ha lo scopo di attuare le seguenti riforme:  a) consolidare gli enti locali per raggiungere la loro sostenibilità finanziaria, b) accrescere la trasparenza e la legalità del loro funzionamento, c) migliorare l’efficacia governativa alla luce delle pertinenti norme comunitarie. Poiché le alte Corti hanno tradizionalmente adottato un comportamento deferenziale nei confronti delle riforme del governo locale, si prevede che le riforme Kallikratis superino il vaglio costituzionale

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of traffic forecasts in transportation infrastructure projects. The sample used is the largest of its kind, covering 210 projects in 14 nations worth U.S.$59 billion. The study shows with very high statistical significance that forecasters generally do a poor job of estimating the demand for transportation infrastructure projects. For 9 out of 10 rail projects, passenger forecasts are overestimated; the average overestimation is 106%. For half of all road projects, the difference between actual and forecasted traffic is more than ±20%. The result is substantial financial risks, which are typically ignored or downplayed by planners and decision makers to the detriment of social and economic welfare. Our data also show that forecasts have not become more accurate over the 30-year period studied, despite claims to the contrary by forecasters. The causes of inaccuracy in forecasts are different for rail and road projects, with political causes playing a larger role for rail than for road. The cure is transparency, accountability, and new forecasting methods. The challenge is to change the governance structures for forecasting and project development. Our article shows how planners may help achieve this.

Philosophical works on actual causation make wide use of thought experiments. The principal aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments are used in the contemporary debate over actual causation and to discuss their role in relation to formal approaches in terms of causal models. I claim that a recourse to thought experiments is not something old fashioned or superseded by abstract models, but it is useful to interpret abstract models themselves and to use our intuitions to judge the results of the model. Recent research on actual causation has stressed the importance of integrating formal models with some notion of normality; I suggest that thought experiments can be useful in eliciting intuitions where normality is not intended in a statistical sense. The first expository part (1–3) gives a short presentation of the notion of actual causation, summarising some typical problems of counterfactual approaches and how they are treated in causal and structural models. The second part (4–7) works on the problems of model isomorphism and criticises some radical ideas opposing the role of mental experiments, claiming that they may also be of use in evaluating formal models.

Do different types of megaprojects have different cost overruns? This apparently simple question is at the heart of research at the University of Oxford aimed at understanding the characteristics of megaprojects, particularly in terms of how they are established, run and concluded. In this study, we set out to investigate cost overruns in the Olympic Games. To do so, we examined the costs of the Games over half a century, including both summer and winter Olympics. We looked at the evolution of final reported costs and compared these to the costs established in the Games bids, submitted to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) up to seven years before the Games occurred. In so doing we established the largest dataset of its kind, and documented for the first time in a consistent fashion the costs and cost overruns for the Olympic Games, from 1960 to 2012. We discovered that the Games stand out in two distinct ways compared to other megaprojects: (1) The Games overrun with 100 per cent consistency. No other type of megaproject is this consistent regarding cost overrun. Other project types are typically on budget from time to time, but not the Olympics. (2) With an average cost overrun in real terms of 179 per cent – and 324 per cent in nominal terms – overruns in the Games have historically been significantly larger than for other types of megaprojects, including infrastructure, construction, ICT, and dams. The data thus show that for a city and nation to decide to host the Olympic Games is to take on one of the most financially risky type of megaproject that exists, something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril. For the London 2012 Games, we find that: (1) With sports-related real costs currently estimated at USD14.8 billion, London is on track to become the most costly Olympics ever. (2) With a projected cost overrun of 101 per cent in real terms, overrun for London is below the historical average for the Games, but not significantly so. (3) The London cost overrun is, however, significantly higher than overruns for recent Games since 1999. London therefore is reversing a positive trend of falling cost overruns for the Games.

As megaprojects have become ubiquitous, their real benefits and costs have come under increased scrutiny. We interviewed Bent Flyvbjerg, who has extensively studied megaproject development. Flyvbjerg has found systematic problems in the development process: by intentionally misrepresenting information and deliberately disregarding risks, proponents instigate projects that result in fewer benefits and higher costs than promised.

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

Back cover text: This book aims to enlarge the understanding of decision-making on mega-projects and suggest recommendations for a more effective, efficient and democratic approach. Authors from different scientific disciplines address various aspects of the decision-making process, such as management characteristics and cost-benefit analysis, planning and innovation and competition and institutions. The subject matter is highly diverse, but certain questions remain at the forefront. For example, how do we deal with protracted preparation processes, how do we tackle risks and uncertainties, and how can we best divide the risks and responsibilities among the private and public players throughout the different phases of the project? - Presenting a state-of-the-art overview, based on experiences and visions of authors from Europe and North America, this unique book will be of interest to practitioners of large-scale project management, politicians, public officials and private organisations involved in mega-project decision-making. It will also appeal to researchers, consultants and students dealing with substantial engineering projects, complex systems, project management and transport infrastructure.

This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure development pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is massive cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, the paper explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not the competition's, that gain approval and funding. This results in the "survival of the unfittest," where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, the paper presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large infrastructure projects, with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.

Risk, including economic risk, is increasingly a concern for public policy and management. The possibility of dealing effectively with risk is hampered, however, by lack of a sound empirical basis for risk assessment and management. This article demonstrates the general point for cost and demand risks in urban rail projects. The article presents empirical evidence that allow valid economic risk assessment and management of urban rail projects, including benchmarking of individual or groups of projects. Benchmarking of the Copenhagen Metro is presented as a case in point. The approach developed is proposed as a model for other types of policies and projects in order to improve economic and financial risk assessment and management in policy and planning.

In this thesis we elaborate a language description formalism called Montages. The Montages formalism can be used to engineer domain specific languages (DSLs), which are computer languages specially tailored and typically restricted to solve problems of specific domains.  We focus on DSLs which have some algorithmic flavor and are intended to be used in corporate environments where main-stream state-based programming and modeling formalism prevail.

For engineering such DSLs it is important that the designs of the existing,well known general purpose languages (GPLs)can be described as well, and that this descriptions are easily reused as basic building blocks to design new DSLs.  Using the Montages tool support Gem-Mex, such a new designs can be composed in an integrated semantics environment, and from the descriptions an interpreter and a specialized visual debugger is generated for the new language.

We restrict our research to sequential languages and the technical part of the thesis tries to contribute to the improvement of the DSL design process by focusing on ease of specification and ease of reuse for programming language constructs from  well  known  GPL  designs.  For  the  sake  of  shortness  we  do not present detailed case studies for DSLs and refer the reader to the literature. Finally, we mainly look at exact reuse of specification modules, and we have not elaborated the means for incremental design by reusing specifications in the sense of object oriented programming.  Of course these means are needed as well and we assume the existence of such reuse features without formalizing them.  The technical part of the thesis provides the basic specification patterns for introducing all features of an object oriented style of reuse, and applying these patterns to Montages in order to make it an object-oriented specification formalism is left for future work.

The focus and contribution of this thesis is the design and elaboration ofa language engineering discipline based on widely-spread state-based intuition of algorithms and programming.  This approach opens the possibility to apply DSL technology in typical corporate environments, where the beneficial proper-ties of smaller, and therefore by nature more secure and more focused computer languages are  most leveraged.  The thesis does not cover the equally important topic how to formalize these beneficial properties by means of declarative formalisms and how to apply mechanized reasoning and formal software engineering to DSLs.

The thesis is structured in three parts.  In the first part the requirements fora language engineering approach are analyzed and the language definition formalism Montages is introduced.  In the second part the formal semantics and system architecture of Montages is given. The third part consists of a number of small example languages, each of them designed to show the Montages solution for specifying a well-known feature of main-stream object oriented programming languages such as Java. The single description modules of these example languages can be used to assemble a full object-oriented language, or a small subset of them can be combined with some high-level domain-specific features into a DSL.

The term ‘phronetic social science’ was coined in Making Social Science Matter (Flyvbjerg 2001). However, as pointed out in that volume and by Schram (2006), phronetic social science existed well before this particular articulation of the concept, but it was just not organized, recognized or named as such. Rather, it occurred here and there as scholars had adopted phronesis-like methods for their own purposes. The present title is the first organized volume of empirical–practical work in phronetic social science. Before Making Social Science Matter, phronesis, as a critical term of Aristotelian philosophy, had been theorized and its continuing importance as a key concept in Western thought had been convincingly argued by distinguished philosophers like Hans Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard J. Bernstein, among others. But no one had developed the theory and philosophy of phronesis into a practical methodology that could be applied by researchers interested in actually practising a phronetic social science. Making Social Science Matter developed such a methodology. Its implications were discussed and developed further in Making Political Science Matter (Schram and Caterino 2006). After these two theoretical–methodological contributions, it was evident that an important next step in demonstrating the usefulness of phronetic social science would be to illustrate, with concrete examples, how applied phronesis works in practical, empirical social science research. The contributions on applied phronesis contained in the present volume make clear that this next step has now been taken.

A avaliação de conjuntura tem entre seus usos e aplicações a formulação da estratégia e dos parâmetros para campanha política. Isto é válido tanto para eleições majoritárias quanto proporcionais, tanto em nível estadual e federal quanto para o municipal. Neste texto, vamos nos ater estritamente ao plano da política local.

There is ferment in the social sciences. After years of sustained effort to build a science of society modelled on the natural sciences, that project, long treated with suspicion by some, is now openly being rethought. A critical intervention in this period of reflection was Making Social Science Matter (MSSM) by Bent Flyvbjerg, published in 2001. In that book Flyvbjerg challenged the very idea of social science as a science modelled on the natural sciences. Flyvbjerg argued that, as the social sciences study human interactions that involve human consciousness, volition, power and reflexivity, attempts to build generalizable, predictive models such as those for the natural world are misplaced and even futile.

Out-of-control information technology (IT) projects have ended the careers of top managers, such as EADS CEO Noël Forgeard and Levi Strauss’ CIO David Bergen. Moreover, IT projects have brought down whole companies, like Kmart in the US and Auto Windscreen in the UK. Software and other IT is now such an integral part of most business processes and products that CEOs must know their IT risks, which are typically substantial – and overlooked. The analysis of a sample of 1,471 IT projects showed that the average cost overrun was 27% — but that figure masks a far more alarming “fat tail” risk.  Fully one in six of the projects in the sample was a Black Swan, with a cost overrun of 200%, on average, and a schedule overrun of almost 70%. This highlights the true pitfall of IT change initiatives: It’s not that they’re particularly prone to high cost overruns on average – it is that there are a disproportionate number of Black Swans. By focusing on averages instead of the more damaging outliers, most managers and consultants have been missing the real risk in doing IT. In conclusion, the article outlines ideas as to what can be done to avoid Black Swans.

I would like to thank to my father, Gerhard Rüdiger Kutter, whose answers to my questions about his work with fourth generation languages in banking software have been a seed from my childhood, which has grown to this thesis. To my marvelous wife, Enza, to my children, Nora-Manon Alma Stella and Anaël Gerhard Victor-Maria, to my mother and my sister. To the Montages team, Alfonso Pierantonio and Matthias Anlauff, to Florian Haussman, who was there when everything started, and to my scientific advisors, Lothar Thiele, Yuri Gurevich, and

2008. 352 pp. r150.00 (hardcover). This volume is intended to explain why major investment projects (the so-called mega-projects) often are not completed on time and cost more than originally budgeted. Drawing from experiences of European and North American countries, the book also suggests ways to avoid such failures. Although the topic is rather specific, the book is worth reading for both experts and nonexperts as infrastructure development continues to be a major key to economic expansion across the globe.g row_486 380.. 408 For those who only have a vague idea of what a mega-project is, the book begins by introducing the topic and reviewing the most important recent literature. The first part of the volume, then, provides numerous insights on the complexity of mega-projects, starting from the large number of reasons why mega-projects might fail. For example, the project might be "underdesigned," thus less costly but less robust to unforeseen developments, or it might be "overdesigned," when a large number of weaknesses and possible problems are considered in advance, and solutions are evaluated before the problem actually occurs. Overdesigned projects are more robust, less likely to fail, but are much more costly. The project might involve the use of innovative technologies that have never been applied to a similar context, and that involve more uncertain implementation costs and results. Most projects have an impact on the environment and might face opposition for example from environmentalist groups. If representative of these groups have not been directly involved in the design of the project, they might try to stop it, thus causing delays and increasing costs. Finally, because of incorrect predictions of 380 GROWTH AND CHANGE, JUNE 2009

This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure developments pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, it explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not those of their competition, that gain approval and funding. This results in the ‘survival of the unfittest’, in which often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, it presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.

L'auteur etudie les modalites de retour de l'instance municipale et de certains de ses acteurs a partir du suivi de la consultation electorale municipale de juin 1998 et des principaux enjeux sous-jacents : l'ouverture a la construction de centaines d'hectares de vergers et la concurrence nationale pour le leadership sunnite entre Rafic Hariri et Omar Karame au sein meme du bastion de ce dernier.

A major source of risk in project management is inaccurate forecasts of project costs, demand, and other impacts. The paper presents a promising new approach to mitigating such risk, based on theories of decision making under uncertainty which won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics. First, the paper documents inaccuracy and risk in project management. Second, it explains inaccuracy in terms of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Third, the theoretical basis is presented for a promising new method called "reference class forecasting," which achieves accuracy by basing forecasts on actual performance in a reference class of comparable projects and thereby bypassing both optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Fourth, the paper presents the first instance of practical reference class forecasting, which concerns cost forecasts for large transportation infrastructure projects. Finally, potentials for and barriers to reference class forecasting are assessed.

After brief introduction about hypergraphs and their specic
capabilities that make them apt to be applied in various elds of research
within information systems, modeling and analytics. In the literature re-
view, we survey the elds that t to hypergraphs theory and the applica-
tion of their capability to describe complex relationships. We outline our
research on modeling of information systems and architectures, and then
we propose a research agenda to exploit the rich representation ability of
hypergraphs in the context of various information and IT systems.

Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman must be commended for their clear identification of causes and cures to the planning fallacy in “Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions” (July 2003). Their look at overoptimism, anchoring, competitor neglect, and the outside view in forecasting is highly useful to executives and forecasters. However, Lovallo and Kahneman underrate one source of bias in forecasting—the deliberate “cooking” of forecasts to get ventures started. My colleagues and I call this the Machiavelli factor.

Results from the first statistically significant study of the causes of cost escalation in transport infrastructure projects are presented. The study is based on a sample of 258 rail, bridge, tunnel and road projects worth US$90 billion. The focus is on the dependence of cost escalation on: (1) the length of the project‐implementation phase, (2) the size of the project and (3) the type of project ownership. First, it was found, with very high statistical significance, that cost escalation was strongly dependent on the length of the implementation phase. The policy implications are clear: decision‐makers and planners should be highly concerned about delays and long implementation phases because they translate into risks of substantial cost escalations. Second, projects have grown larger over time, and for bridges and tunnels larger projects have larger percentage cost escalations. Finally, by comparing the cost escalation for three types of project ownership - private, state‐owned enterprise and other public ownership - it was shown that the oft‐seen claim that public ownership is problematic and private ownership effective in curbing cost escalation is an oversimplification. The type of accountability appears to matter more to cost escalation than type of ownership.

* This research was selected for the special issue of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Working Group 8.6 2007 annual conference (see the entry for this conference). This publication is part of the special issue.

Given the importance of contextual influences on the diffusion of innovations, the theories and methodologies that take context into account are increasingly relevant to research and practice. One such approach, the systems of innovation approach, considers context to be a cascading set of effects arising from various participants and innovations surrounding the production and diffusion of a focal innovation. Based on this approach, we focus on a public program involved in the diffusion of e-business systems to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). E-business systems are complex innovations, and the contextual influences are particularly important here, because SMEs often lack the knowledge and resources to strategically adopt, modify, and use these innovations. Using the systems of innovation approach, we examined the contexts around public program interventions with an SME in order to explain their form and influence on e-business adoption processes. The empirical findings suggest that many public programs fail to effectively deliver interventions because program contexts restrict program personnel's ability to completely assess and respond to the range of adopter needs. While some aspects of the program contexts can be altered by the program directors, others are further removed and are currently beyond our collective control at this point-in-time. The implications for diffusion research and practice are discussed.

L'obiettivo della tesi è duplice: da una parte, ci si propone la comprensione del calcolo delle probabilità da un punto di vista teorico, per mezzo della semantica della logica classica; dall'altra, si vuole sviluppare un algoritmo per il calcolo delle probabilità a partire da un modello matematico, che sia il più efficiente possibile. Per realizzare ciò, viene utilizzata una restrizione della logica predicativa, basata su un linguaggio del primo ordine. In particolare, il linguaggio rappresenta solo modelli che possiedono domini finiti equipotenti, anche se la loro cardinalità non è fissata a priori. Se infatti ammettessimo domini infiniti o non equipotenti, per i teoremi di Church-Turing e Trakhtenbrot il calcolo diventerebbe indecidibile, e quindi l'algoritmo non sarebbe sviluppabile. La tesi è divisa in due parti: nella prima viene esposta la teoria, in cui sono formalizzati i fondamenti teorici dell'algoritmo, mentre nella seconda viene sviluppato l'algoritmo vero e proprio, con l'implementazione in appendice. L'algoritmo è pensato in modo tale che prenda in input una formula chiusa del linguaggio e una struttura di probabilità predicativa (PPrS), presentata nel secondo capitolo, e restituisca in output la probabilità che la formula ha di essere vera nella struttura, o meglio, la probabilità che l'evento rappresentato dalla formula si verifichi in relazione alla struttura di probabilità. Per fare in modo che l'algoritmo risulti il più efficiente possibile, sono state utilizzate diverse tecniche matematiche, in particolare un algoritmo per la visita dei grafi, i tableaux semantici, la semplificazione delle formule e un'euristica sulla quantità dei modelli per una formula. Infine, è stata realizzata anche un'implementazione dell'algoritmo in Java, nella quale sono stati utilizzati JFlex e BYACC/J, per generare rispettivamente l'analizzatore lessicale e il parser per il riconoscimento e la traduzione in oggetti Java delle formule logiche; inoltre, la frontiera del tableau è rappresentata attraverso una struttura ad albero, in modo da ridurre sensibilmente l'utilizzo della memoria.

This paper explores how theories of the planning fallacy and the outside view may be used to conduct quality control and due diligence in project management. First, a much-neglected issue in project management is identified, namely that the front-end estimates of costs and benefits – used in the business cases, cost-benefit analyses, and social and environmental impact assessments that typically support decisions on projects – are typically significantly different from actual ex post costs and benefits, and are therefore poor predictors of the actual value and viability of projects. Second, it is discussed how Kahneman and Tversky’s theories of the planning fallacy and the outside view may help explain and remedy this situation through quality control of decisions. Third, it is described what quality control and due diligence are in the context of project management, and an eight-step procedure is outlined for due diligence based on the outside view. Fourth, the procedure is tested on a real-life, multibillion-dollar project, organized as a public-private partnership. Finally, Akerlof and Shiller’s recent discussion in economics of “firing the forecaster” is discussed together with its relevance to project management. In sum, the paper demonstrates the need, the theoretical basis, a practical methodology, and a real-life example for how to de-bias project management using quality control and due diligence based on the outside view.

Most studies of city branding are written from a marketing or management perspective. This book is different, as the micro-management issues of city branding are discussed within a broader macro-theoretical or structural context while analysing questions from the point of view of local economic development and industrial policy.

Conceptual tools are provided to assist branding in global inter-city competition. But the text is not just a toolkit for city marketing, but a theoretically oriented description of the preconditions and means of economic city profiling and restructuring on a highly competitive global scene.

In this sense the book is theoretically oriented and contextual, and it approaches the branding challenge from the point of view of urban political economy, as reflected in the concept of the informational city, the growth machine thesis and the world city hypothesis.

Building on the notational principles of C. S. Peirce’s graphical logic, Pietarinen has tried to develop a propositional logic unfolding in the medium of sound. Apart from its intrinsic interest, this project serves as a concrete test of logic’s range. However, I argue that Pietarinen’s inaugural proposal, while promising, has an important shortcoming, since it cannot portray double-negation without thereby portraying a contradiction.