This report reviews the current state of long-term climate action planning in 17 cities which have publicly communicated carbon reducttargets in line with the IPCC recommended 80% reduction by 2050 (80x50) for stabilizing the impacts of climate change at 2°C.  The aim of this report is to provide a foundation of support for cities in achieving their deep carbon reduction goals through a comprehensive understanding of leading climate action plans and the context under which they were created, including current city emissions and demographic data, climate plan reduction strategies and targets, and feedback on plan creation and needs from city planning staff.  By achieving this aim, cities are in a better position to understand where their plans fit in the global context and connect with other cities around common issues, research institutions have a new benchmark analysis of leading action plans to build further research upon, and city-level climate action organizations have a clearer idea of how to focus efforts in helping cities achieve carbon reduction goals.  This aim is achieved through the application of a framework for comparing city plans and targets, an analysis of current city emissions and demographic data, and synthesis of key findings from city planning staff discussions.   Key findings show no clear demographic and environmental biases exist within these 17 cities, indicating long-term climate action planning can be undertaken by cities across the full spectrum of size, climate, and current per capita emissions output, though regional geographic and development bias exists.  Plans for carbon reduction are highly concentrated among a small number of actions, indicating the movement has coalesced around a standard set of strategies for achieving deep carbon reductions.  Finally, the relative newness of plans, with the majority less than 5 years old, and the lack of commonality among cities in emissions methodology and communication of reduction strategies, shifts a short-term focus towards standardization methodologies which enable deeper comparison between cities and plans.

Low levels of exercise adherence has contributed to the increased prevalence of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes in American women. These low levels, coupled with high exercise program dropout rates, point to a need for strategies to increase exercise frequency in women who exercise, but not enough to improve their health and reduce risks. Real-time interventions, such as text messaging, could be useful in improving the cognitions that regulate adherence. Using a snowball sampling strategy, a cross-sectional sample of working women (N =130), ages 18-64, in the volitional stage of exercise behavior, completed a 60-item survey on exercise behavior. Social Cognitive Theory SCT and the Health Action Process Approach HAPA served as the guiding theories to test the first hypothesis that the mean strength of maintenance-self efficacy, action and coping planning skills, and limitation of real-life demands between women who adhered to exercise frequency recommendations and women who did not, would differ. Findings from an independent t test revealed significant differences in each of the variables of interest between adherers and nonadherers. A Pearson correlation test of the second hypothesis, which was guided by the SCT and the Technology Acceptance Model, revealed a significant positive relationship between the perceived usefulness of texting and the limitation of real-life demands reported by participants. This study highlights a need for further research into these differences so interventions can be more effectively aimed at addressing the factors that most affect an active working woman's ability to maintain adequate exercise frequency levels. Doing so could improve their quality of life, reduce mortality rates, and the societal burden of healthcare costs.

Employee surveys are often used to support organizational development (OD), and particularly the follow-up process after surveys, including action planning, is important. Nevertheless, this process is oftentimes neglected in practice, and research on it is limited as well. In this article, we first define the employee survey follow-up process and differentiate it from other common feedback practices. Second, we develop a comprehensive conceptual framework that integrates the relevant variables of this process. Third, we describe the methods and results of a systematic review that synthesizes the literature on the follow-up process based on the conceptual framework with the purpose of discussing remaining research gaps. Overall, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the organizational and human factors that affect this process. This is useful for practitioners, as it provides guidance for the successful implementation of this human resource practice. For example, research suggests that it is important to enable managers as change agents and to provide them with sufficient resources.

<p>In this study a process evaluation of the action planning process of the HealthKick programme in disadvantaged primary school settings in the Western Cape was conducted. A qualitative methodology was adopted to best determine the experiences of the participants and the underlying factors involved. Four schools were randomly selected to participate. Four focus group discussions were conducted with educators, and four in-depth interviews were conducted with principals and champions at schools, (champions are either an educator or school governing body member selected to be the driver of the project at each school, as well as the liaison person between the school and the HealthKick project team). Semi-structured interview guides were used to steer the discussions. Interviews and focus groups were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. The data was thematically analysed with the assistance of Atlas ti computer software. The results of this study indicated that the action planning process did not take place as designed by the project team. Several challenges were identified and experienced by participants. The results further indicated that the challenges of time, workload and competing priorities were intrinsically linked. Positive experiences were also reported and various enablers to the process were identified, such as the facilitation process, the receipt of the resource toolkit as well as the complementary nature of the HealthKick curriculum to the normal academic curriculum.</p>

<p>In this study a process evaluation of the action planning process of the HealthKick programme in disadvantaged primary school settings in the Western Cape was conducted. A qualitative methodology was adopted to best determine the experiences of the participants and the underlying factors involved. Four schools were randomly selected to participate. Four focus group discussions were conducted with educators, and four in-depth interviews were conducted with principals and champions at schools, (champions are either an educator or school governing body member selected to be the driver of the project at each school, as well as the liaison person between the school and the HealthKick project team). Semi-structured interview guides were used to steer the discussions. Interviews and focus groups were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. The data was thematically analysed with the assistance of Atlas ti computer software. The results of this study indicated that the action planning process did not take place as designed by the project team. Several challenges were identified and experienced by participants. The results further indicated that the challenges of time, workload and competing priorities were intrinsically linked. Positive experiences were also reported and various enablers to the process were identified, such as the facilitation process, the receipt of the resource toolkit as well as the complementary nature of the HealthKick curriculum to the normal academic curriculum.</p>

<p>An entity capable of assessing its and others action capabilities possess the power to predict how the involved entities may change their world. Through this knowledge and higher level of situation awareness, the assessing entity may choose the actions that have the most suitable effect, resulting in that entity’s desired world state.</p><p>This thesis covers aspects and concepts of an arbitrary planning system and presents a threat analyzer architecture built on the novel planning system Goal-Oriented Action Planning (GOAP). This planning system has been suggested for an application for improved missile route planning and targeting, as well as being applied in contemporary computer games such as F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Assault Recon and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. The GOAP architecture realized in this project is utilized by two agents that perform action planning to reach their desired world states. One of the agents employs a modified GOAP planner used as a threat analyzer in order to determine what threat level the adversary agent constitutes. This project does also introduce a conceptual schema of a general planning system that considers orders, doctrine and style; as well as a schema depicting an agent system using a blackboard in conjunction with the OODA-loop.</p>

K DIPLOMOVÉ PRÁCI V ANGLICKÉM JAZYCE Strategic Management of the Education System in the Czech Republic Antonie Ondrouchová ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis "Strategic Management of the Education System in the Czech Republic" is to analyze and critically evaluate strategic management at various levels of the education system of the Czech Republic; suggest recommendations for further research. Thus, the thesis answers question on the state of strategic management at various levels of the education system of the Czech Republic. The theoretical part defines the term "strategic management", which is generally characterized by determination, process, tools, meaning and obstacles in its application. The following chapter deals with strategic management in the education system, in particular by identifying four levels of management (national, regional, local, school) represented by the relevant institutions. At the theoretical level, education policy is considered to be an indication of directions and content that are embedded in public policy documents. By the method of document content analysis, examples of strategic public policy documents are evaluated at four levels of system management. The state of the evaluated documents, based on selected aspects of the ideal state model, can be expressed by an...

This thesis describes the architecture of an adaptive goal-oriented AI system that can be used for Real-Time Strategy games. The system is at the end tested against a single opponent on three different maps with different sizes to test the ability of the AI opposed to the &apos;standard&apos; Finite State Machines and the likes in Real-Time Strategy games. The system consists of a task handler agent that manages all the active and halted tasks. A task is either low-level; used for ordering units, or high-level that can form advanced strategies. The General forms plans that are most beneficial at the moment. For creating effective units against the opponent a priority system is used; where the unit priorities are calculated dynamically. / Den här uppsatsen beskriver en adaptiv målorienterad AI-arkitektur som kan tillämpas på &quot;Real-Time Strategy&quot; spel. Systemet testat mot en annan AI som använder mer traditionella &quot;Finite State Machines&quot; in sin arkitekture. Testet utförs på tre olika banor som är olika stora. Systemet består utav en &quot;Uppgiftshanterare&quot; som har hand om alla aktiva och inaktiva uppgifter. En uppgift kan antingen vara utav låg-nivå, som används för att skicka kommandon till enheterna, eller utav hög-nivå för att göra mer avancerade strategier. Generalen planerar och skapar uppgifter som är mest fördelaktig för tillfället. För att skapa enheter som är effektiva mot fiendens enheter används ett prioritetssystem, där enhetens prioritet kalkyleras ut dynamiskt under spelets gång.

Magister Public Health - MPH / In this study a process evaluation of the action planning process of the HealthKick programme in disadvantaged primary school settings in the Western Cape was conducted. A qualitative methodology was adopted to best determine the experiences of the participants and the underlying factors involved. Four schools were randomly selected to participate. Four focus group discussions were conducted with educators, and four in-depth interviews were conducted with principals and champions at schools, (champions are either an educator or school governing body member selected to be the driver of the project at each school, as well as the liaison person between the school and the HealthKick project team). Semi-structured interview guides were used to steer the discussions. Interviews and focus groups were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. The data was thematically analysed with the assistance of Atlas ti computer software. The results of this study indicated that the action planning process did not take place as designed by the project team. Several challenges were identified and experienced by participants. The results further indicated that the challenges of time, workload and competing priorities were intrinsically linked. Positive experiences were also reported and various enablers to the process were identified, such as the facilitation process, the receipt of the resource toolkit as well as the complementary nature of the HealthKick curriculum to the normal academic curriculum. / South Africa

The field of artificial intelligence has gained much knowledge through the implementation of decision-making systems in video games. One of these systems was the Goal Oriented Action Planning system (GOAP) which directs the behavior of an AI-agent through multiple digital artifacts categorized as goals, actions, and plans. The aim of the thesis is to aid in the understanding and creation of GOAP driven AI-agents in a video game setting to promote research on this topic. The research question of this thesis was about finding out how the GOAP architecture compares to other video game decision-making systems. The theoretical framework introduces the concept of the illusion of intelligence in video games and presents a discussion focused on the different components which make up a GOAP system and other components that support it. Additionally, the theoretical framework explains the need for a comparison between different decision-making systems and explains the social impact of game AI research. The methods section introduces the criteria for the comparison between GOAP and other decision-making systems and presents a comparison process that was driven by a literature review. A GOAP system was designed for this thesis using the unified modeling language and concept maps. It was then implemented using C# code in a free-of-charge game engine called Unity. We present the pseudocode for the implementation of the GOAP system and show that this framework is a modular, customizable, and reusable system that enables AI-agents to create plans from a varied set of actions. Finally, the paper suggests further research within game decision-making AI and emphasizes the importance of game AI research for communities of game developers, hobbyists, and others who could benefit from game AI in their projects.