The regional security aspect is becoming increasingly more important within security studies. The United Nations and the United Nations Security Council has expressed an intent to utilize regional organizations as security actors with regards to maintaining international peace and security, with the purpose of achieving a greater sense of legitimacy for conflict resolution. This study aims to explore the possibilities of using such organizations within regions of varying stability, and how this usage can relate to the idea of legitimacy. Based on regional security complex theory, this study seeks to show how regional organizations have been used by the Security Council within different security sectors, and how this usage is affected by the degree of integration within the region. The result of the study show that the idea of legitimacy is easiest to achieve in regions with a mid-level degree of regional integration and concerning questions of political security. The results also show a tendency within the Security Council to use organizations from other regions with higher levels of integration in regions with lower levels of integration, and raises the question if this way of using regional organizations may risk harming the ultimate goal of legitimacy.

Trade and Investment relations between the Czech Republic and Ecuador aims to a better understanding of their international connection level. First, the research pretends to inform any business person about the business and trade panorama of the Czech Republic. Secondly, it describes the business and trade panorama of Ecuador. Thirdly and after analyzing each nation, it reports their bilateral trade relations in a quantitative way. Finally, it contributes with conclusions of the research including potential products for trade. The thesis is intended to overcome geographic and cultural constrains between the two nations in order to make a trade analysis looking for integrations between these markets.

This work is focused on the newly emerging field of Cloud computing and view of adoption of this technology in various industrial sectors. The first section explains the concept of cloud computing, its characteristics and individual models. The following part is a brief analysis of the size and development of the current market for cloud services. Next section focuses on the creation of industry categories acording to area of their business, together with their description. The actual categories are examined in part four, along with their expenditures on IT and state of Cloud's adoption, in addition with specific advantages and obstacles. Results from previous section are summarized in part five. In conclusion, the hypothesis is verified and the main findings summarized.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Problems related to public transport and private transport in Peru are persistent. New proposals to solve them arise, currently the world of data analysis is starting in Peru, there are not many open datasets useful that allow proposing solutions in each environment. In this paper, we will collect relevant data of the transport located in a province of Peru with more than 1000 users involved, restricted by a delimited geographic area and with 2 years of operations and more than 3000 transport services tracked. In this way, we highlight the importance of the data, the possible potential uses within the transport, and a case of use of the collected dataset. / Revisión por pares

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第23316号 / 情博第752号 / 新制||情||128(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科社会情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 多々納 裕一, 教授 畑山 満則, 准教授 大西 正光 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DGAM

The master thesis titled China as the Enemy? : Representations of China in the U.S. Security Discourse explores discursive foundations of American policies towards China in military, economic and political sector. First chapter introduces concepts used in the formal analysis of China representations. It departs from post-structuralist theory of discourse by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Lene Hansen and combines it with several other authors including the classical work of Carl Schmitt On the Political. The second chapter offers historical overview of key events and discourses that preceded George W. Bush Administration. One part is devoted to Evelyn Goh's analysis of internal official discourse of the "rapprochement" period between China and the U.S. Third chapter contains sections on basic characteristics of the official discourse in recent years including signifiers of China, the concept of "responsible stakeholder" and the geopolitical shift to Pacific in U.S. identity construction. Chapter 4, 5 and 6 follow the sectoral division and are further subdivided into individual themes. These are analyzed in three steps. First, the basic elements of China representation are introduced and their dynamics in the period 2001-2011 analyzed. Second, elements of the U.S. identity in the given context...

En réponse aux changements climatiques avérés et à une qualité de l'air qui se dégrade, la quantification des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et des polluants atmosphériques des régions urbanisées suscite un intérêt croissant. La meilleure description des émissions anthropiques actuellement disponible est proposée par les inventaires d'émission. Mais leurs estimations, fournies par secteur, reposent sur la combinaison de données d'activité et de facteurs d'émission déterminés sur bancs d'essai et qui ne représentent pas forcément bien les conditions réelles d'émission. Paris, en tant que 3e mégapole européenne, se place dans ce contexte et nous avons choisi d'utiliser des méthodes reposant sur l'acquisition de mesures in situ en région parisienne pour caractériser le signal urbain et vérifier les estimations de l'inventaire régional haute résolution d'Airparif. Les méthodes mises en place dans ce travail de thèse reposent sur l'utilisation conjointe de différents traceurs atmosphériques (CO, NOx, COV). En effet, ils sont co-émis au CO2 lors des processus de combustions incomplètes dans des proportions supposées caractéristiques du secteur d'émission. Les rapports de concentration entre les différentes espèces co-émises sont donc un outil de choix pour cette étude. Nous avons alors développé différentes méthodes d'évaluation de ces rapports pour caractériser les émissions pour l'une des sources prédominantes de CO2 à Paris (le trafic routier) ou dans le panache parisien. Les variabilités spatiale et saisonnière des rapports ont notamment pu être étudiées et les conclusions obtenues n'étaient pas forcément référencées dans les estimations des inventaires ou d'études antérieures. Nous avons comparé nos résultats aux estimations fournies par l'inventaire le plus récent d'Airparif qui apparait généralement surestimer ces rapports. Enfin, nous avons combiné les résultats de l'approche multi-espèces à ceux fournis par l'analyse des isotopes du carbone dans le CO2 (souvent utilisés comme référence pour l'étude des émissions anthropiques). D'après leur analyse, les émissions de CO2 à Paris sont majoritairement d'origine fossile (81 %) et l'utilisation des combustibles fossiles est répartie quasi équitablement. Finalement, l'accord satisfaisant trouvé entre les deux démarches (multi-espèces et isotopique) a permis d'affirmer leur pertinence pour l'étude des signaux urbains moyens. / In response to changing air quality and climate, there is a growing interest in quantifying emissions ofatmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases from urban areas. Currently emission inventories provide the most detailed description of anthropogenic emissions. However, their estimates rely on the combination of activity proxies and emission factors for individual source sectors calibrated for benchmarck situations that may significantly differ from real conditions. Paris, the third largest megacity in Europe, can be considered in this context. We used methods based on in situ measurements in this region to characterise the urban signal and independently assess the latest estimates from the regional inventory. The methods we developed rely on the joint analysis of atmospheric tracers (CO, NOx, VOCs) which are co-emitted with CO2 during incomplete combustion processes in ratios that are characteristic of each emission sector. These ratios between co-emitted species are thus an appropriate tool to study the urban signal. During this PhD, we developed several methods to evaluate the ratios using measurements for a major CO2 emission source in Paris (road traffic) or for measurements acquired in the urban atmosphere. We revealed spatial and seasonal variabilities in these ratios and the main conclusions were not necessarily in complete accordance with the ones from inventories or previous studies. We also compared our results to the estimates provided by the latest regional inventory, which appears to overestimate them in most cases. Finally, we combined the results obtained with the multi-species analysis to the ones provided by isotopic analyses (which are often used as a reference to study anthropogenic emissions). According to the analyses of these measurements, CO2 emissions in Paris came mostly from combustion of fossil fuels (81 %) and the use of each fossil fuel is almost equally distributed. Finally, the satisfactory agreement found between the two approaches (multi-species and isotopic one) confirmed their relevancefor the analysis of mean urban signals.

No description available.

Knowledge Management (KM) helps extend the knowledge of individuals or groups across organisations in ways that directly affect performance. Further, it is a formalised and integrated approach to identify and manage an organisation's knowledge assets. The study is an exploratory investigation of the implementation of IT-based Knowledge Management Systems. It is also a comparative study of the Kuwait and UK public sectors with the specific aim of building a best practice model for KM implementation in conjunction with IT. This includes examination of the relevant literature, a comprehensive analysis of case studies of KM implementation in 91 organisations presented in the literature, in order to arrive at the most critical factors of KM implementation and their degree of criticality, and an exploratory survey of 68 organisations both in the UK and Kuwait relating to their experiences in implementing initiatives such as KM and the role of IT in that process. In view of the intensive and extensive data for interdependence relationships between variables, statistical techniques were used, and in-depth studies of 16 leading organisations, to understand how the KM implementation processes and the critical factors identified were addressed and implemented. This study identifies critical factors of success in KM domain that applicable to Kuwaiti organisations. These factors were categorised under four different headings: (1) Technology, (2) KM processes, (3) Change management, (4) Top management commitment. A generic holistic model for effective KM implementation is proposed. / Kuwait Ministry of Interior.

This master's thesis examines the importance of the explosion incident at Nord Stream and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Sweden’s security sectors. The critical energy project Nord Stream 1 and its expansion to Nord Stream 2 have created bipolar attitudes and debates in Sweden and the EU regarding the security implications of increased Russian power. The Ukraine war and the physical attack on the pipelines have only amplified security concerns in the international political arena. This thesis aims to provide a descriptive understanding of the explosion incident and Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine and their resulting impact on Sweden’s ability to establish a stable security strategy viewed by security sectors such as national-, environmental-, energy-, military-, economic-, human-, and societal-security. Additionally, this thesis also explores these issues from Sweden’s perspective with the use of classic international relations perspectives such as realism and liberalism. Results present that the security sector reports heightened tensions, with Russia potentially increasing military activities. New intensified threat perception for Sweden, negative environmental impacts, affecting on human health and security. Effects regarding energy security. New security threats for Russia's establishment within the European market, impact and effects on nations' identity and uncertainty about the new political situation, and increased insecurity for essential societal infrastructures.