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A user-centric, privacy-preserving, and verifiable ecosystem for personal data management and utilization
No full textIn the current paradigm of digital personalized services, the centralized management of personal data raises significant privacy concerns, security vulnerabilities, and diminished individual autonomy over sensitive information. Despite their efficiency, traditional centralized architectures frequently fail to satisfy rigorous privacy requirements and expose users to data breaches and unauthorized access risks. This pressing challenge calls for a fundamental paradigm shift in methodologies for collecting, storing, and utilizing personal data across diverse sectors, including education, healthcare, and finance. This paper introduces a novel decentralized, privacy-preserving architecture that handles heterogeneous personal information, ranging from educational credentials to health records and financial data. Unlike traditional models, our system grants users complete data ownership and control, allowing them to selectively share information without compromising privacy. The architecture’s foundation comprises advanced privacy-enhancing technologies, including secure enclaves and federated learning, enabling secure computation, verification, and data sharing. The system supports diverse functionalities, including local computation, model training, and privacy-preserving data sharing, while ensuring data credibility and robust user privacy
Mobilizing private finance for adaptation and resilience priorities across cities: Mexico City case study
No full textBackground: The cost of adapting to the impacts of climate change is rising faster than the finance destined for it, creating a widening adaptation finance gap. Cities are at the forefront of adapting to climate change and have, to varying degrees, tools to address market failures contributing to the underinvestment in adaptation. By understanding the barriers and opportunities to engage the private sector, this research explores how cities can create an enabling environment to mobilize private finance for resilience. Methods: Through qualitative methods and a case study, the primary contribution of this research is a diagnostic framework that presents interventions cities can deploy to engage the private sector in advancing resilience. Mexico City is used as a case study and assessed against this framework. Results: The framework is a transferable diagnostic tool for cities to attract and retain private finance for adaptation. It identifies nine non-prescriptive, government-led interventions, recognizing the need to evaluate context-specific barriers to provide relevant solutions to communities. A series of recommendations are proposed specific to Mexico City’s efforts, as well as its political and socio-economic context. Conclusion: Adaptation measures are essential in protecting communities, assets, and biodiversity from the impacts of climate change. There are mechanisms and tools that if managed adequately, can transfer or reduce the costs and risks of climate change. Through an equity-centred approach, city-led interventions supported by the private sector can deploy locally relevant solutions at scale, building more just and resilient communities—in Mexico City and across the world
From 4 to 54: hits and misses in India’s waste reforms
No full textThe segregation of waste at the household level is a crucial step in efficient management of solid waste in cities, involving a shift in behaviours and norms. In this post, Oliver Harman examines what has typically worked well and what has often backfired in the context of waste reforms in India
Risk premium and rough volatility
Get PDFOn the one hand, rough volatility has been shown to provide a consistent framework to capture the properties of stock price dynamics both under the historical measure and for pricing purposes. On the other hand, market price of volatility risk is a well-studied object in financial economics, and empirical estimates show it to be stochastic rather than deterministic. Starting from a rough volatility model under the historical measure, we take up this challenge and provide an analysis of the impact of such a non-deterministic risk for pricing purposes
Striving to hire staff who are the "perfect fit" can obscure misfit value
Get PDFAs competition for talent intensifies, organisations pour substantial resources searching for the “perfect fit” for their teams. Hiring processes wind through résumé screeners, assessments and multiple interview rounds, all aimed at finding the best match. Dan Goering, Christina Li, Qi Zhang and Amy Kristof-Brown ask whether expending all these resources is realistic, or even necessary
While Western central banks hesitate on climate, China's acts
Get PDFOf the four largest central banks, three have failed to turn climate rhetoric into action. The Federal Reserve has chosen abstention. The European Central Bank and the Bank of England have chosen cautious risk management. Only the People’s Bank of China has chosen direct intervention. Mathias Larsen and James Jackson analyse the four institutions’ motivations and approaches
What imaginary threats can tell us about the strategic estrangement between Europe and America
Get PDFLiterature and other media can often give a window into public and policy makers’ concerns about the dangers they may face. Nick Anstead writes on the differing “threat imaginary” in the US and Europe, commenting that the US is worried about unexpected and potentially world-ending events, while in Europe, concerns center on hybrid warfare and … Continue
How not to ground an African moral theory: Metz on the rejection of moral metaphysics
No full textThis paper contests Thaddeus Metz’s rejection of ontological or metaphysical grounding in moral theorizing. Despite Metz’s contention that no moral conclusions can be derived from ontological premises, Metz himself engages in moral metaphysics when he derives persons’ moral status from value-conferring properties. Metz thereby violates the hard fact/value distinction he seemingly endorses at the outset of his inquiry. This raises the question whether he only rejects a specifically African ontological grounding, not ontological or metaphysical grounding in general. And this prompts the further question whether we should not approach African ontologies with the same degree of philosophical openness with which we approach contending Western ontologies
De-municipalisation? Legacies of austerity for England's urban parks
No full textParks are important urban infrastructures that contribute a broad range of health, environmental, social, and economic benefits. Despite this, UK parks' status as non-statutory services makes them particularly vulnerable to local authority budget cuts. This paper focuses on parks in English cities as these were particularly affected by severe cuts to local government budgets 2010–2019. This period of austerity affected parks provision in various ways, including service reductions, increased reliance on volunteer labour, and pressure to generate commercial revenue. Combined with a series of other factors, including ongoing neoliberalisation, austerity-driven changes left a range of physical, social, and institutional legacies. This paper explores these using the notion of de-municipalisation to frame the discussion. The paper is based on an innovative synthesis of research conducted by the authors 2016–2022 and presented at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in 2021. The paper identifies that austerity-driven changes included an experimental ‘shaking up’ of park governance, away from local authorities and with greater involvement from national-level NGOs. Changes also involved a ‘breaking down’ of municipal management, with responsibility delegated to dedicated parks trusts but also to community groups and volunteers. Ultimately, austerity 2010–2019 altered parks governance, transforming the stewardship and condition of parks, reducing accountability and accessibility, and exacerbating inequities in parks provision. Rather than representing new directions, these changes perpetuate those instigated in previous austerity eras. The noted trend towards de-municipalisation also reduces parks' capacity to serve as integrated infrastructures – something that may hinder efforts to make cities more sustainable and resilient
Time theft: exposing a subtle yet serious driver of socioeconomic inequality
No full textSocioeconomic inequality is perpetuated and exacerbated by an overlooked yet serious epidemic of time theft: the act of causing others to lose their time without adequate cause, compensation, or consent. We explain why time theft goes unnoticed, how it drives socioeconomic inequality, and what businesses and policymakers can do to address it