Local governments dispose of powerful tools like development funds that can be distributed among its different constituents to compensate economic disequilibrium originated by a complex array of factors. But it is always one of the hardest decisions to assign handouts to people who could think its own expectations are not being taken properly into account. Each stakeholder has different criteria to evaluate his needs, and to demand a particular investment effort. Since resources are very limited in local levels, city hall governments are pulled apart by those conflicting demands. The challenge of addressing them at the same time can be modelled as a multi‐criteria decision‐making. The aim of this paper is to show that the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) could work out the most acceptable distribution of the funds among the different city districts and neighbourhoods. The application of the model in Madrid shows that AHP: (a) allows to incorporate opposing demands; (b) increases the transparency of the decision‐making process; (c) eases the decentralization of governmental decisions; (d) enhances the legitimation of the final outcome; and (e) it is a scientific approach with great potential to be applied in similar domains where hard political decisions are needed.
The safety of railway networks is a very important issue. Roughly speaking, it can be split into safety along lines and safety of railway facilities such as stations, junctions, yards, etc. In modern networks the safety along lines is controlled by automatic block systems that do not give clearance to trains to enter a section (block) until the latter is detected to be unoccupied. Meanwhile, the safety within railway facilities is supervised by railway interlocking systems. Decision making in a railway interlocking is a very important issue which is considered to be very labour-intensive. Decision-making in both automatic block systems and railway interlocking systems, unlike road traffic light systems, is not based on time (they are not scheduling problems) but in space. Basically, two different trains should never be allowed to access the same section (whatever time has passed). There are many different approaches to automate decision-making in railway interlocking systems. The classic approaches are offline: only certain routes are allowed and their compatibility is decided in advance. Meanwhile, modern approaches make decisions in real time and are independent from the topology of the railway network, but can be applied only to small or medium size railway networks. Nevertheless, these last approaches have the following drawbacks: the performances are very dependent on the number of trains in the railway network; and are unsuitable to large networks since they take long time to be run. On the other hand, algebraic approaches based on computer algebra concepts have been used in artificial intelligence for implementing expert systems. In this paper we present a completely new algebraic model, based on these concepts of computer algebra that overcomes these drawbacks: the performance of our approach is independent of the number of trains in the railway network and also is suitable for large railway networks.
Several studies have shown that exposure to colors affects cognitive and affective processes. In this paper, we tried to find if colors affect the perception of political messages and activate partisan biases. We focus our study on the Spanish cultural environment. In a prestudy ( n = 991), participants identified red as progressive, blue as conservative, and gray as neutral. In two subsequent experiments ( n = 840; n = 938), we analyzed how these three colors influenced the interpretation of political messages and confronted them with issues ownership. The results show that the colors can activate partisan biases but do not have the same strength as issues ownership.
Political objects, like national flags, arouse emotions even when they are subliminal stimuli. Through two experiments that show subliminal stimuli to the subjects, this article analyzes if those emotions are positive or negative ones—that is to say, if they enhance an inclusive reaction or an excluding one. Besides, the article compares the intensity of the flag’s emotional effect with that of the emoticons, which are figures intended to represent emotional reactions or states. Findings confirm that the Spanish flag, as a subliminal stimulus, influences the opinions of the participants. However, it has had a lower effect than that obtained in previous, similar experiments. Emoticons produce a much more intense type of response than flags. The experiments (n = 85; n = 126) enlarge the knowledge about the emotional effects of political objects of nonconscious perception. Besides, we present an original methodological contribution: the use of emoticons to alter political views.
Palabras clave: Riesgo, análisis de riesgo, marketing público, riesgo aceptable, percepción del riesgo, comunicación. Every thing is sweetened by risk Alexander Smith (1830-1867), The Fear of Dying.En la abundante literatura especializada sobre análisis de riesgos se encuentran cientos de obras, de carácter teórico, sobre el cálculo de probabilidades, el manejo de la incertidumbre con respecto a los datos de que se dispone, la incorporación de ésta a los procedimientos de toma de decisiones… Pero muy pocos autores se ocupan de las razones fundamentales que determinan, dan origen, o confieren valor, a los distintos métodos para el análisis de riesgos 1 , las bases que han de fundamentar la opción adoptada a favor de uno u otro de esos métodos, las ideas rectoras que han de guiar el proceso de análisis, de medición y clasificación de los distintos riesgos, siguiendo principios que se han expuesto con profusión en la literatura sobre el asunto, pero en los que sólo en contadas ocasiones se detiene el analista de riesgos a pensar.No se pretende aquí decir nada nuevo sobre el tema; se busca fundamentalmente acompañar al lector interesado -tanto si se trata de un lego en la materia como si, por el contrario, pertenece al floreciente negocio del riesgo-en un paseo por la enmarañada e intrincada senda de varios (los más relevantes) métodos empleados para medir los riesgos, para jerarquizarlos, para encontrar y definir, en último término, cuál de entre ellos es un riesgo aceptable, con la intención -tal vez no demasiado ambiciosa-de recalcar ideas y conceptos, fuera de todo lo cuantitativo y numérico, que permitan comprender cómo funcionan, por qué funcionan (si es que lo hacen), qué resultados se obtienen de la aplicación de esos distintos métodos y, sobre todo, apuntar alguna idea para suplir sus carencias.* Profesor Ayudante de Ciencia Política y de la Administración en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Estudio realizado en el marco del Proyecto I+D titulado «Estudio de los modelos de prevención, gestión y evaluación de catástrofes medioambientales en zonas costeras» (Vem 2003(Vem -2005, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología.1 Tal vez la obra más relevante que analiza distintos métodos para aproximarse al riesgo aceptable, siga siendo la de Fischhoff et al. (1981).
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