Business interruption insurance is one of the fundamental pillars of the company insurance. Importance of business interruption insurance (cover subsequent financial losses) can exceed insurance of property. Along with development in computer technology, industrial manufacturing and globalization of all areas of production we can see an increase of potential hazards and the need for new types of insurance. Insurers flexibly respond to these demands. This thesis analyzes trends, types and construction of business interruption insurance, especially its current form. The importance of this insurance is in many cases underestimated, which is valid in the Czech Republic as well. For this reason thesis proposed approaches which should help to individualize the product for specific cases and put it near to small and medium-sized businesses.

This thesis provides a situated understanding of the ways in which the reality of a new technology is socially constructed. In particular, it examines how members of the aged interpretive community made sense of the computer as an interruption event, a technology not yet routinised as part of their everyday taken-for-granted reality, and needing to be consciously considered and evaluated to make it understandable. Members' sensemaking is studied as a narrative process in which meaning is produced by drawing on a repertoire of narratives, evaluating and developing localised responses to those narratives for the purpose of action taking. Two hundred and four participants over the age of 55 years, recruited predominantly from senior citizens' and SeniorNet organisations in the North Island of New Zealand, were interviewed in 28 focus groups over an eighteen month period between September 2001 and May 2003. Participants were categorised according to their self-identified membership of one of three groups: computer users affiliated to SeniorNet member organisations; computer users without SeniorNet organisational affiliation; and non-computer-users. Their computer-related stories were analysed using narrative analysis to identify and map the similar and different ways in which they constructed computers and themselves in relation to computers, in the stories they told. The research findings from this interpretive study augment the largely functionalist literature on older people and computers and provide insights not identified in previous studies. In particular, the findings indicate that participants identified a common meaning for the computer as actually or potentially useful for older people, but their meanings also varied according to their membership of one of the three participant groups, with SeniorNet members tending to identify the computer as an opportunity; Users, as a tool; and Nonusers, as a threat. Participants' meanings were traced through a storying process that identified three narrative elements as key: the settings in which accounts of the principal protagonists older people and computers were produced; the strength of the narrator's identification with old stories and values; and the ways in which the narrators oriented to the computer in the context of other technologies and events, or in isolation from them. The study makes a contribution to knowledge by enhancing understanding of older people's relationships with computers, through a micro level investigation of their experiences with, and meanings for, the technology. In addition, by identifying and explicating the processes through which the ongoing reality of a new technology is constructed and negotiated, and compared and contrasted in relation to three separate sub-groups of the one demographic population, the study contributes to social construction of technology theory. The study also makes a contribution to practice by showing how the alignment of old stories and new stories is a crucial component in the process for enabling those new to a technology to negotiate an appropriate placement for it, and how such alignment can be influenced by age-peer groups and the imperatives of inter-generational family communication.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-139).

Contexte : Utilisée depuis des décennies afin de contrebalancer les effets indésirables de la ménopause, l'hormonothérapie a connu un choc sans précédent lors de la publication d'une étude de la «Women's Health Initiative» en juillet 2002. Par la suite, nombreuses sont les femmes qui ont changé leur perception envers les hormones de remplacement et par conséquent leur consommation. Objectif : Utiliser ce choc pour quantifier les impacts d'avoir poursuivi ou cessé le traitement, par le biais d'incidence de pathologies. Méthodologie : Une revue de la littérature a été effectuée afin d'identifier les principales maladies associées aux hormones de remplacement. L'échantillon a ensuite été purifié pour éliminer les biais potentiels et déterminer une population représentative. Chaque femme a été classée en fonction de la médication utilisée et la décision de poursuivre ou de cesser l'hormonothérapie suite à la publication de l'étude de la WHI. Par la suite, des modèles de triples différences ont été appliqués afin d'isoler l'impact de l'abandon des hormones de remplacement. Les tests de Wilcoxon et du Chi carré ont respectivement été employés pour les variables continues et dichotomiques afin de calculer les différentes caractéristiques entre les cohortes. Résultats : Les femmes qui ont abandonné Premarin® ont vu augmenter leur risque de développer la maladie de l'Alzheimer, un accident vasculaire cérébral, un cancer du côlon, un cancer du sein, une thromboembolie veineuse, de l'ostéoporose ainsi que des fractures vertébrales et aux hanches, et ce, dans l'année qui suit l'abandon. Par contre, l'arrêt de Premarin® n'a occasionné aucun impact significatif sur l'incidence de l'anxiété, du cancer de l'endomètre, du cancer des ovaires, de la dépression, du diabète de type 2 et des évènements coronariens. Pour ce qui est des femmes qui ont abandonné Prempro®, elles s'exposent à une hausse des risques de contracter un cancer du sein. L'impact de l'abandon de Prempro® s'est révélé non significatif pour l'ensemble des autres maladies analysées. Discussion : Cette analyse sur des données de réclamation s'avère un complément intéressant aux études à double assignation aléatoire, car elle permet de voir l'impact de l'hormonothérapie sur la santé des gens en y intégrant les imperfections que la réalité occasionne. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : hormonothérapie, ménopause, économétrie, Prempro®, Premarin®

Interruptions have negative effects on the task performance in modern work environments. These negative effects are not affordable in tasks in which decisions are time-critical and have a life-critical nature. Human-supervisory control (HSC) tasks in time-critical settings such as mission command and control and emergency response are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of interruptions since supervisors in these settings are prone to frequent interruptions which are valuable source of information and hence cannot be ignored and consequences of a wrong decision in these settings is very costly because of their life-critical nature. To address this issue, this thesis investigates an activity-centric design approach that aims to help team supervisors in a complex mission control operation to remain aware of the activities that most likely would affect their decisions, while minimizing disruption. An interruption recovery assistant (IRA) tool was designed to promote activity and situation awareness of a team of UAV operators in a representative task. Initial pilot studies showed a positive trend in effectiveness of the IRA tool on recovery time and decision accuracy. This thesis explores alternative design approaches to validate the effectiveness of an interruption recovery tool that enable mission commanders rapidly and effectively regain the situational awareness after an interruption occurs in the mission environment. This thesis overview these design approaches and present results from a series of formative evaluations of our prototype designs. These evaluations were conducted in an experimental platform designed to emulate futuristic semi-autonomous UAV team mission operations.

Interruptions have negative effects on the task performance in modern work environments. These negative effects are not affordable in tasks in which decisions are time-critical and have a life-critical nature. Human-supervisory control (HSC) tasks in time-critical settings such as mission command and control and emergency response are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of interruptions since supervisors in these settings are prone to frequent interruptions which are valuable source of information and hence cannot be ignored and consequences of a wrong decision in these settings is very costly because of their life-critical nature. To address this issue, this thesis investigates an activity-centric design approach that aims to help team supervisors in a complex mission control operation to remain aware of the activities that most likely would affect their decisions, while minimizing disruption. An interruption recovery assistant (IRA) tool was designed to promote activity and situation awareness of a team of UAV operators in a representative task. Initial pilot studies showed a positive trend in effectiveness of the IRA tool on recovery time and decision accuracy. This thesis explores alternative design approaches to validate the effectiveness of an interruption recovery tool that enable mission commanders rapidly and effectively regain the situational awareness after an interruption occurs in the mission environment. This thesis overview these design approaches and present results from a series of formative evaluations of our prototype designs. These evaluations were conducted in an experimental platform designed to emulate futuristic semi-autonomous UAV team mission operations.

In a deregulated power market, customers would have more choices for their power service and the improvement of service quality has become a challenge to power transmission and distribution companies. Distribution system reliability that was traditionally considered within the planning activities, is now incorporated in the operational environment. This dissertation presents study results of a multi-objective feeder operation optimization problem that considers how to balance network efficiency, switching and reliability costs in a distribution network. The proposed method divides annual feeder load curve into multi periods of load levels and optimizes the feeder configurations for different load levels in annual operation planning. Customer load profiles and seasonal varying data of feeder section failure rates and customer interruption costs are considered. Simulations results demonstrate the time varying effects on the optimal distribution feeder reconfiguration and operation costs. A binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) search is adopted to determine the feeder configuration in each time period. Test results indicate that not considering time varying effects and using only simplified fixed load and reliability parameters could underestimate the total loss to the utility and its customers.

Le domaine de l'Interaction Humain-Robot (HRI) est en pleine expansion. En effet, de plus en plus de plateformes robotiques sont mises en oeuvre pour faire évoluer ce domaine. Sur ces plateformes, toujours plus de modalités d'interaction sont mises en place telles que les mouvements corporels, la reconnaissance de gestes ou d'objets, la reconnaissance et la synthèse vocale ou encore la mobilité, pour pouvoir effectuer l'interaction la plus complète et la plus naturelle pour l'humain. Mais ceci amène aussi une complexité croissante de l'intégration de ces modalités sur une seule et même plateforme. Aussi, le domaine HRI étant à ses débuts, la méthodologie expérimentale des travaux se limite le plus souvent à des preuves de concept éprouvées en laboratoire ou en milieux ouverts non contrôlés. Il se trouve que peu de chercheurs présentent une démarche structurée et rigoureuse pour l'évaluation expérimentale d'interaction humain-robot en milieux ouverts, et il en résulte des recherches de types exploratoires qui examinent principalement la complexité technologique des modalités interactives à mettre en oeuvre, et non l'impact de ces modalités sur la qualité des interactions. Le but de l'étude présentée dans ce document est d'étudier l'intégration de plusieurs modalités interactives sur un robot mobile humanoïde telles que la parole, les gestes et la mobilité sur la qualité des interactions humain-robot. Plus spécifiquement, le contexte de l'étude consiste à examiner l'impact de modalités interactives sur la capacité du robot à attirer l'attention d'une personne et à engager une interaction avec elle. Le scénario expérimental consiste à permettre au robot, à partir de la parole, d'expressions faciales, de mouvement de la tête, de gestes avec son bras et de sa mobilité, de demander de l'assistance à une personne à proximité de lui remettre un objet se trouvant au sol. L'hypothèse sous-jacente est que l'intégration de l'ensemble de ces modalités devrait améliorer la capacité du robot à engager des personnes à interagir avec lui. Des expérimentations ont été faites en milieu contrôlé et non-contrôlé selon deux protocoles expérimentaux : une étude des modalités à l'intérieur d'une population, et une étude de variation entre individus. D'une manière générale, il en ressort que l'ajout de modalités améliore la qualité de l'engagement de l'interaction par le robot, mais qu'il faut porter une attention particulière à l'approche de la personne par le robot, principalement pour les personnes non familières avec ce dernier. De plus, les observations indiquent qu'il est plus facile d'obtenir des résultats significatifs en environnement contrôlé, elles permettent d'identifier des pistes d'amélioration pour éventuellement arriver à en obtenir en milieu non-contrôlé. Enfin, ce premier projet d'intégration et d'évaluation de capacités interactives d'un robot mobile servira à alimenter une prochaine itération avec un robot plus sophistiqué présentement en conception.

This thesis investigates the engineering economics of interventions to reduce consumer inconvenience due to unreliable electricity supply in rural India. The work introduces and applies a novel approach to estimate interruption costs as loss in consumer surplus due to restricted consumption of electricity services. Chapter 2 reports an assessment that compares grid extension with distributed generation (DG) alternatives, based on the subsidies they will necessitate, and costs of service interruptions that are appropriate in the rural Indian context. Despite the inclusion of interruption costs, standalone DG does not appear to be competitive with grid extension at distances of less than 17 km. However, backing up unreliable grid service with local DG plants is attractive when reliability is very poor, even in previously electrified villages. Introduction of energy efficient lighting changes these economics, and the threshold for acceptable grid unreliability significantly reduces. Chapter 3 analyzes supply rostering (alternatively, “load shedding”) in metropolitan, small town and rural feeders in and around Bangalore city. The inequity in load shedding is analyzed through transfers due to differential tariffs between the urban and rural residential consumers, and the relief provided to BESCOM, through avoided procurement of additional supply from generators, because rural and small town feeders are load shed higher than Bangalore city. The values of the load shedding transfers are estimated to be in the range of Rs. 120-380/consumer-year from the rural consumers, and Rs. 220- 370/consumer-year from the small town consumers. The metropolitan consumers are found to be net beneficiaries. The viability of using smart meters to provide current limited but uninterrupted supply is investigated as one alternative to outright blackouts. Chapter 4 develops a broader theoretical framework that can be used to model consumer demand for electricity services with unreliable supply and adaptation. Demand for energy ‘services’ is modeled by incorporating time of use, duration and deferability. Supply reliability is disaggregated into its constituent dimensions– mean and variance of supply availability in times of high demand, and supply predictability, and their respective impacts on consumer welfare are discussed. Primary data collected from Karnataka inform the discussion, especially with backup adoption. New consumer-oriented reliability indices are proposed.

Background: Prospective memory (ProM) consists of remembering that some action needs to be performed in the future and when (detecting the Intent Trigger), and what the action is (Recalling the Content of the trigger). The Intent Trigger is bound by a forward association to the Content Recall, and the Content Recall has a backward association to the intent Trigger. In situations which present multiple, interleaving ProM tasks to operators it is not known how subsequently-presented ProM tasks interfere with the associations between the Intent Trigger and Content Recall of the original ProM task. Objective: The current study investigated the effect of presenting multiple, interleaved ProM tasks on timely detection of the Intent Trigger and accurate Recall of the Content of the original ProM task. Method: Participants encoded a ProM task (AB) in an air traffic control simulation. They then were interrupted with a second ProM task. The ProM interruption task was different from the original ProM task in either the Intent Trigger (AB, CB), Content Recall (AB, AD), or both Intent Trigger and Content Recall (i.e., a new ProM task, AB, CD). A control condition involved interrupting the participant with a weather report. Results: Detection of the Intent Trigger was significantly worse after a ProM interruption as compared to a weather interruption; a similar pattern of results, but with marginal significance, was also found for Content Recall. Additionally, a ProM task that interfered with backward association (AB, CB) was no better or worse than doing two unrelated ProM tasks (AB, CD) on the detection of the Intent Trigger. However, a task that presented a new forward association (AB, AD) was worse than performing two unrelated ProM tasks (AB, CD) on Recall of the Content. The results are discussed in the context of designing memory aids to support interleaved ProM tasks in dynamic environments.