Academic literature on the topic 'Strategic forewarning'

The evaluation of resources and environment carrying capacity (RECC) is the basis of strategic policy for the development and utilization of regional resources, economic development, and environmental protection. The magnitude of carrying capacity of resources and environment is the result of the balance of multiple aspects including economy, resources, and society. In order to reflect this multi-dimensional vector relationship, a multi-level and multi-targeted evaluation index system needs to be constructed. The paper, adopting the analytic hierarchy process and including PM2.5 (Particulate matter with diameter less than or equal to 2.5 microns in the atmosphere) into the index system, establishes the evaluation system of regional RECC and analyzes the trend of RECC in Hefei city with the index system to put forward the countermeasures of forewarning management. The results are shown as follows: (1) Overall, the RECC in Hefei city presents a declining trend, with a reduction from a middle to lower level during the year 2009 to 2013, of which the year 2010 to 2011 showed the fastest decline and the year 2013 witnessed a slight increase; (2) from the perspective of mutual influence of indexes, the main reason causing the decline of RECC in Hefei city is that the natural resources and environment carrying capacity was in a declining trend from the year 2009 to 2013, respectively declining from middle and high levels to a lower level, while the social economy carrying capacity in Hefei city was in an increasing trend as a whole from the year 2009 to 2013, with an increase from lower level to middle level. From the perspective of the forewarning management of RECC, it focuses on improving the forewarning response system of regional resources and environment carrying capacity, establishes the sharing mechanism of RECC monitoring data and improves the responsibility assigning mechanism of RECC. The study enriches the evaluation index system of RECC and proves that it is reasonable and efficient to build a differentiated index system to scientifically recognize RECC in different regions, having reference value to evaluate similar regional RECC.

To prevent and control public transport safety accidents in advance and guide the safety management and decision-making optimization of public transport vehicles, based on the forewarning and other multisource data of public transport vehicles in Zhenjiang, holographic portraits of public transport safety operation characteristics are constructed from the perspectives of time, space, and driver factors, and a prediction model of fatigue driving and driving risk of bus drivers based on BP neural network is constructed. Finally, model checking and virtual simulation experiments are carried out. The result of the research shows that the driver’s fatigue risk during the period of 7 : 00-8 : 00 am is much higher than other periods. When the bus speed is about 30 km/h, the driver fatigue forewarning events occur the most. Drivers aged 30–34 years have the largest proportion of vehicle abnormal forewarning, drivers aged 40–44 years have the largest proportion of fatigue forewarning events, and drivers with a driving experience of 15–19 years have the largest overall proportion of various forewarning events. When the vehicle speed range is (18, 20) km/h and (42, 45) km/h, the probability of fatigue driving risk and driving risk forewarning increases sharply; and when the vehicle speed is lower than 17 km/h or 41 km/h, the probability of fatigue driving risk and driving risk forewarning, respectively, is almost zero. The probability of fatigue forewarning during low peak hours on rainy days is about 30% lower than that during peak hours. The probability of driving forewarning during flat peak hours is 15% higher than that during low peak hours and about 10% lower than that during peak hours. This paper realized for the first time the use of real forewarning data of buses in the full time, the whole region, and full cycle to carry out research. Related results have important theoretical value and practical significance for scientifically guiding the safety operation and emergency management strategies of buses, improving the service level of bus passenger transportation capacity and safety operation, and promoting the safety, health, and sustainable development of the public transportation industry.

The short-term forecast of rail transit is one of the most essential issues in urban intelligent transportation system (ITS). Accurate forecast result can provide support for the forewarning of flow outburst and enables passengers to make an appropriate travel plan. Therefore, it is significant to develop a more accurate forecast model. Long short-term memory (LSTM) network has been proved to be effective on data with temporal features. However, it cannot process the correlation between time and space in rail transit. As a result, a novel forecast model combining spatio-temporal features based on LSTM network (ST-LSTM) is proposed. Different from other forecast methods, ST-LSTM network uses a new method to extract spatio-temporal features from the data and combines them together as the input. Compared with other conventional models, ST-LSTM network can achieve a better performance in experiments.

This paper introduces a crucial parameter to the novel coronavirus response in the United States, by shedding light on the early-warning role of intelligence agencies. It argues that the intelligence components of the federal government's Biological Defense Program offered actionable forewarning about an impending pandemic in the years leading to the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet, almost from the opening stages of the pandemic, senior US government officials, including President Donald Trump, have repeatedly claimed that the virus “came out of nowhere” and that “nobody saw it coming.” We show that these assertions contradict more than 15 years of pandemic preparedness warnings by intelligence professionals, and disregard the existence of intelligence-led federal pandemic response strategies of every US administration in our time. However, rather than simply placing blame on the White House for discounting these warnings, we advance a conceptual analysis of what many in the US Intelligence Community view as a critical breakdown in strategic communication between intelligence professionals and key government decision-makers. This study agrees with those who suggest that the White House disregarded its own pandemic experts. However, it also posits that the means of strategic communication employed by intelligence experts to alert the White House to the threat were unproductive. These alerts were communicated largely through the President's Daily Brief, an archaic, and ineffectual method of communication that is not designed to facilitate the kind of laser-focused, unequivocal exchange of information needed when potentially catastrophic threats confront the world. This study suggests that the Intelligence Community must implement more direct, immediate and conclusive methods of communicating intelligence to decision-makers, and should seriously consider creating a new line of products that addresses existential challenges to national security. Lastly, we contend it is time to re-evaluate existing rules that prevent intelligence analysts from offering advice on policy. Although we agree that intelligence professionals should refrain from providing policy advice on routine matters, we question the value of preventing these highly knowledgeable experts from communicating strategic policy advice to decision-makers when it comes to threats of a catastrophic nature, which may prove potentially existential for the US, its allies, and the world.

The relationship between a country's political decision-making and top military leadership is central, but also debated. Not least whether the military side should take political life into account and to what extent one should become a part of it. This essay aims to increase the understanding of the challenges of the military-political relationship, focusing on the borderland between peace and war that is usually described as a gray zone. Through scenario-based interviews with senior officials and politicians within the Swedish government and government office, it is investigated what impact a gray zone problem can have on the military advice provided. By combining a future scenario with interviews, an empirical material unique to the research field is created. The results show that the gray zone affects the strategic decision-making process, but not really by adding any completely new challenges, but mainly by strengthening and partly developing existing ones. The logic of peace, rather than war, on strategy should therefore form the basis for how the gray zone is viewed from a decision-making process perspective. The gray zone's character of ambiguity creates and reinforces tensions between different actors in the strategy process, which in turn risks delaying strategic decisions. The ambiguities arise mainly in three areas: the view of the strategic problem, the political consequences and the organization that will deal with the gray zone. Some of the ambiguities are amplified by the opponent, while others are more the result of internal factors. In order to reduce the negative effects of the gray zone problem, a much closer integration between the military and politics is proposed than in peacetime: policy-making must take place jointly and traditional boundaries need to be redrawn. The key is spelled relationships and these must be created and maintained in good time before the gray zone enters.
Relationen mellan ett lands politiska beslutsfattning och högsta militärledning är central, men också omdebatterad. Inte minst huruvida den militära sidan ska ta hänsyn till det politiska livet och i vilken grad man själv ska bli en del av detta. Denna uppsats syftar till att öka förståelsen för den militär-politiska relationens utmaningar, med fokus på det gränsland mellan fred och krig som brukar betecknas som en gråzon. Genom scenariobaserade intervjuer med högre tjänstemän och politiker inom Sveriges regering och regeringskansli undersöks vilken påverkan en gråzonsproblematik kan ha på de militära råd som lämnas. Genom att kombinera ett framtidsscenario med intervjuer skapas ett för forskningsfältet unikt empiriskt material. Resultatet visar att gråzonen påverkar den strategiska beslutsprocessen men egentligen inte genom att tillföra några helt nya utmaningar, utan främst genom att förstärka och till del utveckla redan existerande. Fredens, snarare än krigets, logik på strategi bör därför ligga till grund för hur gråzonen betraktas ur ett beslutsprocessperspektiv. Gråzonens karaktär av otydlighet skapar och förstärker spänningar mellan olika aktörer inom strategiprocessen, som i sin tur riskerar att försena strategiska beslut. Otydligheterna uppstår främst inom tre områden: synen på det strategiska problemet, de politiska konsekvenserna och den organisation som ska hantera gråzonen. Vissa av otydligheterna förstärks av motståndaren, medan andra mer är ett resultat av interna faktorer. För att minska gråzonsproblematikens negativa effekter föreslås en betydligt närmare integrering mellan militär och politik än i fredstid: policyskapandet måste ske gemensamt och traditionella gränser behöver dras om. Nyckeln stavas relati-oner och dessa måste skapas och underhållas i god tid innan gråzonen träder in.

This chapter reviews research on resistance to influence, active or passive processes that reduce the impact of a potential source of social influence. This chapter begins with a discussion of the antecedents of resistance: characteristics of the influence target (strong attitudes, demographics, and personality), perceived aspects of the influence attempt (manipulative intent, threats to freedoms), or counterinfluence messages from a third party (forewarning, inoculation, stealing thunder, the poison parasite defense, resistance to social engineering) that motivate resistance. The chapter proceeds to a discussion of internal mechanisms of resistance (counterarguing, bolstering initial attitudes, derogating the source, attributing negative affect to the message or source, attempting to correct for bias) and external mechanisms of resistance (interpersonal strategies of communicating resistance and issuing refusals) and concludes with a discussion of the consequences of resistance for attitudes and relationships.

The global commercial landscape is moving dynamically and continues to loom in the rigour environment, forewarning the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to get their act together before the next wave of the rough economic landscape hits their bottom line. SMEs discover that they need to reposition themselves, and consistent with this, many SMEs embark on outsourcing as one of their business strategies to manoeuvre their companies so that they could survive and sustain during the tough time. Therefore, this chapter studies the prevalence of outsourcing among entrepreneurs in SMEs in Malaysia. Outsourcing is a convoluted process and can bring new development opportunity for the SMEs to quest for their competitiveness. A sample of ten SME entrepreneurs from Malaysia participated in this study. A series of interviews were conducted among these entrepreneurs to probe their behaviours and outlook on outsourcing. The results showed that SME entrepreneurs highlighted the importance and impact of outsourcing in managing and running their business enterprise. Some entrepreneurs perceived outsourcing as a key trend shaping the future of their activities in terms of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, flexibility, and performance. In sum, this study generates agenda for researchers to reach more conclusive evidence about the practice of outsourcing among SMEs.