Abstract. The German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) is built upon a complex sensor data infrastructure. To best fulfill the demand for a long living system, the underlying software and hardware architecture of GITEWS must be prepared for future modifications both of single sensors and entire sensors systems.The foundation for a flexible integration and for stable interfaces is a result of following the paradigm of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Tsunami Service Bus (TSB) -our integration platform in GITEWS -realizes this SOA approach by implementing the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards and services. This paper focuses on architectural and implementation aspects of the TSB. Initially, the general architectural approach in GITEWS by SOA and SWE is presented. Based on this conception, the concrete system architecture of GITEWS is introduced. The sensor integration platform TSB is then discussed in detail, following by its primary responsibilities and components. Special emphasis is laid on architectural transparency, comprehensible design decisions, and references to the applied technology. ObjectivesThe Tsunami Service Bus (TSB) is the sensor integration platform of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (Rudloff et al., 2009). Due to the geological situation in Indonesia, the primary goal of GITEWS is to deliver a reliable tsunami warning message as quickly as possible. This is achieved using several sensor systems: the seismological system, the near real time GPS deformation monitoring sysCorrespondence to: J. Fleischer (jens.fleischer@gfz-potsdam.de) tem, several tide gauges, and buoy systems. Together they provide the fundamental data necessary to support the prediction of a tsunami wave performed by the warning center. But all these sensors use their own rather fixed proprietary data formats and specific behaviors (Fig. 1). This is complicated by the fact that GITEWS is a long running system, which has to cope with changing requirements over time: new sensor types might be added while old sensors will be replaced by newer ones. Additionally, new algorithms by experts or including foreign sensor networks are assumed to change interfaces and quantity structures even during the implementation phase. In order to manage this multitude of sensors over time, an additional intermediate layer has to be introduced to provide both the required flexibility for sensor integration as well as a stable and uniform interface for the warning system. Thus, seen from an architectural viewpoint, GITEWS is a typical integration project. RequirementsAlthough the overall functional requirements for the integration platform TSB could have been stated at project start, the non-functional requirements for system operations were uncertain:-The TSB shall provide a standardized interface for accessing sensor data as well as for tasking the sensors. The time for accessing sensor data shall be in a range of less than seconds.-The TSB shall provide midterm storage (weeks) of all incoming sensor d...

Abstract. Fostered by and embedded in the general development of information and communications technology (ICT), the evolution of tsunami warning systems (TWS) shows a significant development from seismic-centred to multisensor system architectures using additional sensors (e.g. tide gauges and buoys) for the detection of tsunami waves in the ocean.Currently, the beginning implementation of regional tsunami warning infrastructures indicates a new phase in the development of TWS. A new generation of TWS should not only be able to realise multi-sensor monitoring for tsunami detection. Moreover, these systems have to be capable to form a collaborative communication infrastructure of distributed tsunami warning systems in order to implement regional, ocean-wide monitoring and warning strategies.In the context of the development of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) and in the EU-funded FP6 project Distant Early Warning System (DEWS), a service platform for both sensor integration and warning dissemination has been newly developed and demonstrated. In particular, standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have been successfully incorporated.In the FP7 project Collaborative, Complex and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC), new developments in ICT (e.g. complex event processing (CEP) and event-driven architecture (EDA)) are used to extend the existing platform to realise a component-based technology framework for building distributed tsunami warning systems.

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The recent debate on administrative bodies in international organizations has brought forward multiple theoretical perspectives, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches. Despite these efforts to advance knowledge on these actors, the research program on international public administrations (IPAs) has missed out on two important opportunities: reflection on scholarship in international relations (IR) and public administration and synergies between these disciplinary perspectives. Against this backdrop, the essay is a discussion of the literature on IPAs in IR and public administration. We found influence, authority, and autonomy of international bureaucracies have been widely addressed and helped to better understand the agency of such non-state actors in global policy-making. Less attention has been given to the crucial macro-level context of politics for administrative bodies, despite the importance in IR and public administration scholarship. We propose a focus on agency and politics as future avenues for a comprehensive, joint research agenda for international bureaucracies.

This article expands our current knowledge about ministerial selection in coalition governments and analyses why ministerial candidates succeed in acquiring a cabinet position after general elections. It argues that political parties bargain over potential office-holders during government-formation processes, selecting future cabinet ministers from an emerging 'bargaining pool'. The article draws upon a new dataset comprising all ministrable candidates discussed by political parties during eight government-formation processes in Germany between 1983 and 2009. The conditional logit regression analysis reveals that temporal dynamics, such as the day she enters the pool, have a significant effect on her success in achieving a cabinet position. Other determinants of ministerial selection discussed in the existing literature, such as party and parliamentary expertise, are less relevant for achieving ministerial office. The article concludes that scholarship on ministerial selection requires a stronger emphasis for its endogenous nature in government-formation as well as the relevance of temporal dynamics in such processes.

The recently adopted German Online Access Act triggered the creation of digitalization labs for designing digital services, bringing together federal, state, and local authorities; end-users; and private-sector actors. These labs provide opportunities for boundary spanning due to organizational field and lab features. Our comparative case studies on three digitalization labs show variations in boundary spanning and reveal lab members de-coupling from their parent organizations to a varying extent. We have concluded labs offer boundary spanning that supports safeguarding the legitimacy of innovative policy designs but also raise concerns over public accountability.

This paper analyses the patterns of bureaucratic tenure of the German federal bureaucratic elite. It applies a delegation theory and a Public Service Bargain perspective and argues that partisan and professional determinants influence the bureaucratic tenure. Our survival analysis shows that partisan features matter, yet differently than suggested by existing research: top officials affiliated with the minister's party have a significant higher risk of dismissal than those affiliated to other parties and non-partisans. In contrast, the temporal proximity between ministerial and top official appointments has no significant effects on bureaucratic tenure. In addition, professional determinants shape bureaucratic survival. Whereas the minister's office experience is insignificant for bureaucratic survival, the top official's office experience has significant and negative effects on the risk of dismissal: individuals with prior experience in managing bureaucratic apparatuses survive longer than those without such office experience. We conclude that German ministers are more likely to dismiss senior civil servants due to their unsatisfying office experience than their incongruent or lacking partisan affiliation.