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Abstract: Purpose: To describe the paper-based and electronic formats of resident admission forms used in several aged care facilities in Australia and to compare the extent to which resident admission information was documented in paper-based and the electronic health records. Methods: Retrospective auditing and comparison of the documentation quality of paper-based and electronic resident admission forms were conducted. A checklist of admission data was qualitatively derived from different formats of the admission forms collected. Three measures were used to assess the quality of documentation of the admission forms, including completeness rate, comprehensiveness rate and frequency of documented data element. The associations between the number of items and their completeness and comprehensiveness rates were estimated at a general level and at each information category level. Results: Various paper-based and electronic formats of admission forms were collected, reflecting varying practice among the participant facilities. The overall completeness and comprehensiveness rates of the admission forms were poor, but were higher in the electronic health records than in the paper-based records (60% versus 56% and 40% versus 29% respectively, p <0.01). There were differences in the overall completeness and comprehensiveness rates between the different formats of admission forms (p <0.01). At each information category level, varying degrees of difference in the completeness and comprehensiveness rates were found between different form formats and between the paper-based and the electronic records. A negative association between the completeness rate and the number of items in a form was found at each information category level (p <0.01), i.e., more data items designed in a form, the less likely that the items would be completely filled. However, the associations between the comprehensiveness rates and the number of items were highly positive at both overall and individual information category levels (p <0.01), suggesting more items designed in a form, more information would be captured. Conclusion: Better quality of documentation in resident admission forms was identified in the electronic documentation systems than in previous paper-based systems, but still needs to be further improved in practice. The quality of documentation of resident admission data should be further analysed in relation to its specific content. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An environmental assessment for Jordan Paper and Cardboard Factory (JPCF) was conducted. Cleaner production concept, what it can achieve, and how it can be applied to JPCF was tested. Using the waste audit tool, five independent options were identified as having potential for improvements; these were on site reuse, technological changes, raw material changes, good housekeeping, and product changes. For each option, one or more pollution prevention actions were recommended. Economical advantages that could be achieved in water, energy, and material savings were quantified and simple payback periods calculated. Analyses revealed that on-site reuse and technological changes were the most efficient environmental options. Although different actions might result in similar benefits, the decision to execute a certain action is dependent upon its economic viability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Good documentation practice is the foundation for promoting medication safety in young population. • Study identified poor documentation practice through paper and electronic means of medical records. • Newly introduced electronic medical records did not improve the rates of metabolic monitoring nor the quality of documented monitoring. • Youth are at significant risk for antipsychotic induced metabolic syndrome the repercussion of which may impact years of productivity. • Potentially electronic health records could provide health workers with real-time information access, and develop accurate, relevant and structured information thereby adhering to clinical evidence. Since the development of digital records, claims have been made that they improve audits. Clinical audits play important role in evaluation of evidence-practice gaps. Antipsychotic medications are one of the commonly prescribed group of drugs in severe adverse mental conditions. Youth and young people are highly prone to develop drug induced metabolic syndrome. Present study evaluated the extent of data documentation on evidence for metabolic monitoring of antipsychotics and compared paper based to electronic records with good documentation standards. First phase of this study involved a retrospective clinical audit of paper-based documentation on the extent of documentation of weight (primary outcome); lipid and blood glucose (secondary outcomes) of youth prescribed atypical antipsychotics. This was undertaken in three public mental health clinics and a public/private developmental service in Australia based on paper-based documentation. The second phase included auditing electronic data capture from one community clinic. Evidence of documentation was compared with practice standards and published clinical audits (adherence rate benchmark: 40–60%). A total of 310 cases were assessed of which 51 and 37 cases met the eligibility criteria for paper-based and electronic based audit respectively as a component of clinical audit. Evidence of paper documentation of weight was 43% among participants and was comparable with other published clinical audits (p = 0.07) with poor monitoring rates for other blood tests. Findings revealed poor rate of documentation at 35.1% (13 cases), 5.4% (2 cases) and 8.1% (3 cases) for weight, lipid assessments and glucose monitoring, respectively based on electronic records. Present study demonstrate lack of good documentation practices on metabolic monitoring of youth prescribed antipsychotics. It appears transitioning from paper to electronic records did not impact the rate of increase in documentation of metabolic monitoring. This study recommends inclusion of e-monitoring icon with built in metabolic monitoring chart as a component of youth prescribed antipsychotic case records. Good documentation practice is a first step in determination of causality of antipsychotics induced metabolic syndrome. Appropriate strategies to a user-friendly electronic reminder system will be crucial to address on the mechanistic of documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As technology trends, society must adapt to the changing environment over time. Many companies have been utilizing Big Data to improve decision-making capabilities and develop strategies for launching new products and services, as they understand the customers' needs while exploring new markets. Trends in the automation of tasks are inviting more users to further their interest in the noticeable technology development. This paper studies the impacts of Big Data. The paper analyzes the potential benefits, risks, and challenges companies may face in adopting Big Data. With the advancement of technology, audit technology has also improved the utilization of Big Data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitalization of companies and the implantation of Industry 4.0 concepts are emerging and challenging for micro and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). The benefits are evident for the companies, as their business processes become simplified, and the internationalization and global market penetration turn out to be improved. However, information security and cybersecurity concerns have been raised on SME, as best practices and regulations compliance should be applied. The wide set of these regulations and their broad scope has put constraints on their overall direct mapping and adoption into SME. This paper describes an original methodology to map the Roadmap for Minimum Cybersecurity Capabilities (RMCSC) delivered by the Portuguese Cybersecurity Centre, into the well-adopted international information security ISO 27001:2013 standard. The proposed mapping is oriented toward the characteristics of SME and allows these companies to assess their cybersecurity risk to further mitigate potential identified flaws. The main deliverable of this paper is the developed methodology, which correlates the actions of the cybersecurity capabilities roadmap and the security controls enclosed in the ISO 27001:2013 standard. A questionnaire was developed to support the cybersecurity risk self-diagnosis, and the actions were justified and detailed in this paper. Further developments include the submission of the questionnaire to a case study of SME in the centre region of Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud Computing is an alternative to conventional IT Outsourcing. As a result, cloud computing migration between organizations is rapidly growing. The adoption of this technology brings many positive aspects but prescribes various risks and concerns. An organization that officially provides its cloud computing services to external providers and implies that its IT functions and process are outsourced to third-party providers of BPO services. For privacy-making public audit processes in dynamic cloud data storage, a modified Boneh-Lynn-Shachame Dynamic Auditing (MBLSDA) algorithm is suggested in this paper. The proposed algorithm executes an audit process for multiple users based on a batch audit simultaneously and effectively to enable Third Party Auditing (TPA). This paper integrates the homomorphic authenticator in an algorithm of dynamic signing audit by random marking in terms of the privacy conserving public auditing process. When the user of cloud service, store or update the data, it encrypts using Rijndal algorithm, and Boneh-Lynn-Shacham signature generation is used for key generation. Finally, a hybrid of these a proposed Modified Boneh-Lynn-Shacham Signing Dynamic audit the data to provide the security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public auditing enables auditors to remotely verify data integrity for the outsourced data, which is an essential security issue and a promising solution for reliable cloud storage. However, in cloud storage systems, most existing public auditing schemes adopt a static auditing policy in the blockchain network, so that they are not able to adapt the dynamic environment efficiently, i.e., dynamic attacks, users joining and leaving, etc. Moreover, it is hard to improve the scalability with a static auditing policy, which may result in low performances and high security risks for the blockchain-based public auditing. In order to overcome the above limitations, we present a deep reinforcement learning-based method to improve the efficiency (i.e., transaction throughput and network latency) for the current blockchain-based public auditing solutions. Specifically, an blockchain-based security protocol is firstly proposed to guarantee that the integrity of outsourced data can be verified based on the dynamically auditing policy. Then, re-auditing time interval, the number of public auditors and the size of blocks are adjusted by the proposed deep reinforcement learning-based method to improve performance and security in a long term. Finally, security analysis indicates that the proposed work is able to resist the malicious entities and attacks derived from the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. Results of experiments that conducted in this paper demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the baseline schemes on both transaction throughput and network latency. • This paper adapts dynamic blockchain network by proposing a DRL-based model. • It minimizes long-term overhead for dynamic public auditing in cloud storage. • It ensures the security of dynamic public auditing by a theoretical analysis. • It obtains better performances on transaction throughput and network latency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The various data collected by urban sensor devices need a huge storage space. The cloud's powerful calculation ability provides decent performance support and reduces the overhead on local storage. There are many kinds of data collected by urban sensor devices, and the same kind of sensors often need to upload large numbers of files together, which are usually private, so secure cloud storage in group members is essential. However, the cloud may try to modify or hide data for its own benefit, which requires the detection of a third-party auditor. This paper puts forward a new public audit scheme. Some changes have been made to the way of generating the private key, the parameters of key generation come from the feature information set of the same sensor. When the two information sets are close enough, the correctness of the authenticator generated by this file can be verified. When the sensor is revoked due to damage or loss, this scheme will effectively revoke and regenerate the private key with less overhead, thus preventing the leakage of data privacy. This also avoids the huge overhead caused by re-downloading data to generate authenticators in traditional schemes. In addition, our scheme is effective in tracking malicious members and reducing the computing overhead of the group. Finally, the experimental results show the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security of the data in the cloud server suffers great challenges, and how to ensure the integrity of the outsourced data in the cloud servers is a problem that should be solved. Cloud data auditing technique is such a solution , which allows to check data integrity without retrieving them from the cloud. In case single-copy data may be violated by malicious attackers, Zhang et al. proposed a multi-copy cloud data auditing scheme MCAM in 2020. However, in their scheme, an attacker can forge the evidence for integrity verification only by exploiting public information and the cloud server can compromise the integrity verification even it does not store any data. In this paper, we identify these security flaws in MCAM and design a new evidence verification algorithm to fix them. Then, we propose a multi-copy cloud data auditing scheme based on our evidence verification algorithm and MCAM. In security analysis, we prove that our multi-copy cloud data auditing scheme can fix the security flaws of MCAM. Thus, our scheme is more secure than MCAM. In performance analysis, we show that our scheme is more communication efficient than MCAM. Finally, we point out one potential application of our scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study the dynamic evolution of agents engaging in tax evasion. • Agents are myopic and have preferences modeled by Prospect Theory. • A forward-looking regulator decides the auditing probability in feedback form. • We provide conditions for the existence of asymptotically stable interior equilibria. • The system may admit discontinuous optimal controls and path-dependent equilibria. The paper studies the dynamics of compliance in a population of agents that decide whether to engage in tax evasion depending on an evolutionary adaptation process, when payoffs are assumed to have the realistic features of Prospect Theory utilities. The paper also considers the optimal control problem of a tax authority that targets the maximization of the expected stream of tax revenues choosing auditing effort. The analysis produces novel and rich results, including conditions for the convergence to an asymptotically stable interior equilibrium, the existence of multiple equilibria and discontinuities in the optimal control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at solving the challenges of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), such as privacy sensitive data exposing, data being vulnerable to unauthorized access and tampered with and the single point of failure of the cloud server, this paper introduces a blockchain-enabled data access method based on attribute-based encryption. To enhance the privacy protection, the attributes are hidden and all generated transactions are recorded on the blockchain for auditing. Even if it is untrusted to a third party, it can guarantee the user's control over his own data. To reduce the computation cost, decentralized edge nodes jointly maintain the blockchain and assist users with limited resources to complete most of the calculations. Meanwhile, the use of smart contracts not only reduces the verification workload, but also evaluates multiple factors such as the communication range, communication time, and calculation overhead of the roadside unit (RSU) to ensure that the vehicle can receive messages in a timely manner. In addition, timely updating the attributes can reduce the user's computational burden and increase the flexibility of the system. Numeral experiments to show the proposed scheme has many advantages of over others such as the storage cost, the whole time consume of the proposed algorithms and the proxy computation cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, blockchain holds promise to impact a wide range of application areas, but it still suffers from technical challenges such as security and scalability. The increase in the number of transactions puts blockchains under data storage pressure. The emergence of cross-chain technologies connects different blockchains and relieves the data storage pressure. However, the existing research generally focuses on the technical realization of cross chain, lacking in-depth research on consistency issues like data integrity verification of cross-chain interaction. In this paper, we propose a decentralized cross-chain data integrity verification scheme (DCIV) from the point of view of governing the chain by chain. We adopt supervision chain to audit the integrity of data in cross-chain interaction. We preprocess the off-chain original data in the form of Merkle tree. Before cross-chain interaction, we process the data with KZG polynomial commitment. During the auditing period, the supervision chain generates a challenge and verifies the integrity of cross-chain data. In particular, we add audit digests into the structure of transactions in blockchain to reduce the storage burden during auditing. Theoretical and experimental analyses demonstrate that DCIV can verify the integrity of data in cross-chain interaction, achieving secure and accurate cross-chain data sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-chain interaction plays a crucial role in enhancing asset circulation and data sharing across diverse blockchain systems. However, achieving secure and stable cross-chain data transactions remains a significant challenge. Traditional frameworks often prioritize efficiency, leading to potential security vulnerabilities, such as single points of failure and excessive computational burdens. These issues compromise the reliability of cross-chain interactions, necessitating the development of more robust methodologies to ensure secure data communication across consortium blockchains. To address these concerns, this paper proposes a novel cross-chain data interaction protocol based on a relay network, incorporating auditing and result arbitration mechanisms using short signatures from bilinear pairings. The protocol employs a trusted execution environment (TEE) within the relay network to execute service nodes that record transaction states. This approach not only reduces the computational load on the chain but also facilitates effective coordination for cross-chain consensus. Moreover, we present a cross-chain asynchronous consensus mechanism, named d-PBFT, to improve the flexibility of the cross-chain network. Security analysis and experimental results show that the protocol enhances the efficiency and ensures the security of cross-chain interaction, while reducing on-chain storage consumption. Thus, the protocol has a high level of security and feasibility for cross-chain data interaction among consortium blockchains. © 2014 xxxxxxxx. Hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government auditing plays a crucial role in enhancing energy efficiency and advancing green and low-carbon economic development. Given that audit oversight's quality and efficiency are influenced by the independence of auditing institutions, this study utilizes the vertical management reform of government auditing institutions as an exogenous shock, and empirically examines its impact on urban energy efficiency (UEE) using a Difference-in-Differences model (DID). We find that the audit reform improved UEE by 0.023 which is both economically and statistically significant. Concurrently, the audit reform and the development of the digital economy play substitutive roles in enhancing UEE. Finally, the results of the mediation analysis using the stepwise regression method indicate that the improvements in audit efficiency, green technology innovation, and energy structure optimization have mediated the promotion of UEE in the audit reform process, accounting for respective mediation effects of 4.35%, 4.35%, and 8.69%. • We investigate the audit independence from the level of audit management systems. • This paper finds a substitution effect of digital economic development. • The study discusses the heterogeneity in audit oversight from a global perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the integration of Intelligent Process Automation within the domain of business continuity auditing, with a focus on the Portuguese banking sector. In an era marked by rapid technological advancement, organizations are increasingly leveraging automation to reinforce operational efficiency and realize substantial cost savings. Concurrently, auditors play a pivotal role in ensuring seamless transitions amid technological transformations to safeguard business continuity. This research endeavors to bridge the realms of business continuity and intelligent automation, culminating in a comprehensive application that streamlines the audit process. The implemented solution encompasses the automation of critical audit activities, including communication, information requests, and final report submissions, liberating auditors from the chains of repetitive tasks. The incorporation of business intelligence augments this automation framework, enabling a meticulous analysis of key performance indicators within the audit department. This ensures a continuous evaluation of the efficacy of the Annual Audit Plan. Empirical validation of this initiative was achieved through surveys conducted with audit teams from four prominent Portuguese banks. The results unequivocally affirm the potential benefits of this implementation, extending invaluable support to management in the decision-making process, while concurrently alleviating auditors of routine tasks inherent to the audit process. This study not only underscores the transformative potential of intelligent process automation in the audit domain but also offers a replicable framework for organizations seeking to fortify their business continuity efforts through technological integration. The findings hold implications for businesses navigating the dynamic intersection of technology and audit practices, providing a blueprint for harnessing automation for enhanced operational resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing is a model that enables users to store their data remotely and enjoy the applications and services provided by this model on demand through a common set of configurable computing resources, without the burden of local data storage as well as maintenance. However, users no longer have physical possession of external data, and this makes the task of protecting data integrity in cloud computing extremely important so that users can use the cloud storage as if it were local, without worrying about the need to verify its integrity. Hence, public cloud storage auditing is critical, so users can use a Third-party auditor (TPA) to verify data integrity. In order to provide effective TPA security, the audit should not achieves any security vulnerabilities to the privacy of user data and does not provide any additional online burden to the user. In this paper, we propose an effective public auditing system for cloud data based on the signature of Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS), in order to ensure public auditing and maintain data privacy. The proposed system also realizes batch auditing and data dynamic process. In addition, the proposed system enhances the level of security authentication through an Automatic Blocker Protocol (ABP) to protect the system from unauthorized TPA. An extensive security and performance analysis shows that the proposed system is very secure and effective [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Energy-efficient home retrofits of Slovenian house owners are studied. • Econometric models analyse partial and integral approach to retrofits. • Drivers and barriers for the building retrofit decisions are determined. • Various information sources influence energy-efficient retrofit decisions. • Free public energy audits have failed to deliver the expected outcome. Abstract The paper examines what determines household energy-efficient retrofit decisions in Slovenia based on analysis of more than 1000 single family-house owners, survey respondents. While previous studies typically stress the importance of professional energy audits, this paper shows that other formal and informal sources of information and advice also play a significant role in informing homeowners and fostering energy-efficient retrofit decisions. Compared to partial retrofit measures, an integral approach to retrofits is more strongly associated with estimated energy saving potential, household income and professional advice seeking. On the other hand, free public energy consultation appears to have failed to deliver the expected outcome. Results of econometric analysis on barriers and drivers for building energy retrofits call for strengthening the financial incentives, informing and educating the public through various information sources, combined with the redesign of public Energy Advisory Network to increase the reach of residential building energy-efficiency policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper, recent regulation-related findings and commentaries in the academic literature are synthesized in annotated bibliography form. This annotated bibliography is one in a series of bibliographies that summarizes regulation-related academic research. Papers in top accounting outlets such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, The Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Business, Finance & Accounting, The Journal of Financial Reporting, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Research in Accounting Regulation and Review of Accounting Studies are included. Threads in the 2017 literature included general regulatory accounting issues, general financial reporting issues, examinations of the impact of specific guidance, and examination of issues surrounding the independent audit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anaphylaxis during anaesthesia is a serious complication for patients and anaesthetists.Methods: The Sixth National Audit Project (NAP6) of the Royal College of Anaesthetists examined the incidence, predisposing factors, management, and impact of life-threatening perioperative anaphylaxis in the UK. NAP6 included: a national survey of anaesthetists' experiences and perceptions; a national survey of allergy clinics; a registry collecting detailed reports of all Grade 3-5 perioperative anaphylaxis cases for 1 yr; and a national survey of anaesthetic workload and perioperative allergen exposure. NHS and independent sector (IS) hospitals were approached to participate. Cases were reviewed by a multi-disciplinary expert panel (anaesthetists, intensivists, allergists, immunologists, patient representatives, and stakeholders) using a structured process designed to minimise bias. Clinical management and investigation were compared with published guidelines. This paper describes detailed study methods and reports on project engagement by NHS and IS hospitals. The methodology includes a new classification of perioperative anaphylaxis and a new structured method for classifying suspected anaphylactic events including the degree of certainty with which a causal trigger agent can be attributed.Results: NHS engagement was complete (100% of hospitals). Independent sector engagement was limited (13% of approached hospitals). We received >500 reports of Grade 3-5 perioperative anaphylaxis, with 266 suitable for analysis. We identified 199 definite or probable culprit agents in 192 cases.Conclusions: The methods of NAP6 were robust in identifying causative agents of anaphylaxis, and support the accompanying analytical papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote Data Auditing (RDA) with key-exposure resilience enables secure cloud data storage both earlier and later than the key exposure happens. However, most of existing solutions suffer from the security attack during the key-exposed time period, meaning the cloud server can still discard or tamper with the data owner's files in the key-exposure period. While others require a secure channel for key update, which is unrealistic and expensive under key-exposure scenarios. In this paper, we construct an online/offline RDA framework with strong key-exposure resilience, called S-OORDA, which can resist strong key-exposure attacks and achieve the integrity verification for cloud data efficiently. Then based on the framework, we present a concrete S-OORDA scheme supporting the data owner's secret key evolution without the secure channel. And the authenticators can be updated remotely at each time period, so as to prevent the attackers to forge the authenticators using the exposed auditing secret keys. Meanwhile, the data auditing process of the proposed scheme is divided to online and offline phases, greatly relieving the online computational burden of both the data owner and the third-party auditor. Security and performance analysis confirm that the proposed scheme meets the desired security and has the optimized efficiency. • A strong key-exposure resilient online/offline remote data auditing model is designed. • A novel S-OORDA scheme is built to verify integrity and resist key-exposure attack. • It removes the secure channel for key update and supports data dynamicity remotely. • The auditing process is divided into online and offline phases to promote efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper examines how large shareholders manage goodwill impairment to inflate earnings as well as the role of audit functions in this setting. The influence of large shareholders on corporate decisions is well documented, however, overlooked in goodwill literature. Using data from China, we find that a higher ownership percentage held by large shareholders associates with a lower likelihood of recording goodwill impairment as well as a reduced impairment amount, suggesting that goodwill impairment is intentionally avoided or decreased by large shareholders. We further find that the presence of big4 auditors mitigates such relationship. • In China, large shareholders greatly influence accounting decisions related to goodwill impairment. • The more ownership large shareholders have, the less likely the firms will record goodwill impairment. • The more ownership large shareholders have, the less amount of goodwill impairment will be recorded. • Goodwill impairment is intentionally avoided or decreased by large shareholders. • Big4 auditors can mitigate the opportunistic behavior of managing goodwill impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information security and cybersecurity are key subjects in modern enterprises' management, being ISO-27001:2013, NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISO-27009 some of the most implemented international frameworks and standards. Their main goal is to globally reduce the risk, by leveraging enterprises' competitiveness in global markets and enhancing business processes and collaborators' cyber awareness. Auditing processes examine and assess a list of predefined controls. For each control, a set of corrective measures could be proposed, to increase its compliance with the standard being used. These processes are time-consuming, involve on-site intervention by specialized consulting teams on the intervened enterprises, and a set of status reports of all the interventions should be elaborated and delivered. The existing auditing information systems are not developed to meet Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) requirements, as they are mostly proprietary and expensive, ground usually on off-the-shelf applications, and are not generic to be used by several standards with different checklists and auditing methodologies. In this paper, a generic and web-integrated cybersecurity auditing information system is described. Its architecture, design, and data model enable it to be used in a wide set of auditing processes, by loading a predefined controls checklist assessment and their corresponding mitigation tasks list. It was designed to meet both SMEs and large enterprises' requirements, and stores auditing and intervention-related data in a relational database. The information system was tested on an ISO-27001:2013 information security auditing project, which has integrated fifty SMEs. The results obtained during the project are promising and reveal the appropriateness of using this information system in further similar auditing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that file system permissions in large, multi-user environments can be audited to identify vulnerabilities with respect to what is regarded as standard practice. For example, identifying that a user has an elevated level of access to a system directory which is unnecessary and introduces a vulnerability. Similarly, the allocation of new file system permissions can be assigned following the same standard practices. On the contrary, and less well established, is the identification of potential vulnerabilities as well as the implementation of new permissions with respect to a system's current access control implementation. Such tasks are heavily reliant on expert interpretation. For example, the assigned relationship between users and groups, directories and their parents, and the allocation of permissions on file system resources all need to be carefully considered. This paper presents the novel use of statistical analysis to establish independence and homogeneity in allocated file system permissions. This independence can be interpreted as potential anomalies in a system's implementation of access control. The paper then presents the use of instance-based learning to suggest the allocation of new permissions conforming to a system's current implementation structure. Following this, both of the presented techniques are then included in a tool for interacting with Microsoft's New Technology File System (NTFS) permissions. This involves experimental analysis on six different NTFS directory structures within different organisations. The effectiveness of the developed technique is then established through analysing the true positive and true negative values. The presented results demonstrate the potential of the proposed techniques for overcoming complexities with real-world file system administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case-based learning is a long-standing pedagogic practice involving students undertaking a single dimensional, independent analysis of a text case study which feeds forward into a class discussion. However, this poses several challenges for education for sustainability within the current culture of Higher Education; learners are required to analyze interlinked, multi-faceted aspects of sustainability whereas a traditional text case study generally presents a single situation for consideration; students are reluctant to prepare for classes; a text case study promotes backward reasoning rather than the forward thinking that education for sustainability requires to develop work ready graduates who are change agents for sustainable futures; case-based learning cannot substitute for the active, experiential learning that students find engaging. This paper presents the findings of a three-year research study into enhancing case-based learning within education for sustainability. It proposes utilizing an extensive mixed media case and facilitating multi-dimensional analysis through the completion of a sustainability audit in an active learning environment to overcome the challenges of traditional case-based learning. The inclusion of an audit to frame the case study analysis may enhance case-based learning as it provides a more immersive experience that guides students through the collection, collation, synthesis, and communication of case study information. The study's findings suggest students are more engaged and develop the knowledge skills and values required for work readiness and to become sustainability change agents through their immersion in an audit. Consequently, this paper may be of interest to educators seeking an innovative approach to education for sustainability that may overcome the challenges of traditional case-based learning and promote active, experiential learning of the multi-faceted aspects of sustainability. [Display omitted] • Audit-based learning facilitates analysis of interlinked, multifaceted sustainability practices. • Auditing promotes employment skills - sustainability knowledge, capabilities, cognitive skills, and forward reasoning. • Auditing a case study provides immersive experiential learning. • Audit-based learning promotes student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud Data storage services allows users to easily store and access their data with any type of connected devices. However, since the data is outsourced, the user needs an auditing mechanism that enables him to check the integrity of his data without recovering it. Furthermore, the auditing should not incur a large computational and communication cost, especially since users should not have any computational issues while checking the integrity of their data using a computationally challenged device (smart-phone, tablet...). In this paper we propose an auditing scheme that provides to users an efficient and secure process to audit their outsourced data. The proposed scheme has a low computation overhead on the users and enables them to delegate the data verification process to a third party auditor while maintaining a low computational and communication overhead without jeopardizing the confidentiality of the stored data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• High uncertainty of marine offsetting processes presents risks for users of marine offsets. • These risks are managed by a focus on measurement and audit rather than biodiversity goals. • Marine offsets do not rely on accurate quantification of biodiversity losses and gains. • Auditability is good enough to meet reputational needs of organisations. • A focus on auditable offsets and marine NNL prevents transparency in ecological outcomes. Biodiversity offsetting is often presented as a way to manage competing demands of environmental protection and economic development. It is premised on the transparent demonstration of how aims of no net loss of biodiversity (NNL) or similar are met in practice. This is complicated in marine systems where ecological predictions are commonly highly uncertain, knowledge of ecological restoration is low and administrative governance is complex. Drawing on a case study of marine biodiversity offsetting in Australia, this paper shows how these uncertainties pose practical challenges for both producers and consumers of marine biodiversity offsets, needing to progress with decision-making while meeting increasing societal pressure for demonstrable NNL. These competing needs are met through the centrality of an auditable decision-making process that contributes to establishing an organisation's social licence to operate. The need for auditability drives the use of an imprecise measure of NNL through financial equivalency and the use of strategic offsetting projects. The coarse-grained interpretation of biodiversity offsetting best practice reduces the risks posed by explicit acknowledgement of biodiversity loss, offset failure or prohibitively large offset liabilities. Strategic relationship management across government, industry, academia and non-governmental organisations has raised the profile of biodiversity and its importance, but whether the auditing process has delivered on environmental protection is an open question. What is 'good enough' to meet governance standards may have become the over-riding goal. We conclude by acknowledging that the seemingly unattainable yet expected aim of NNL for marine systems prioritises auditability above discussions of 'acceptable' risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public auditing enables data owners to entrust a third-party auditor (TPA) to perform auditing tasks periodically. To resist malicious TPAs, a plethora of blockchain-based public auditing mechanisms have been proposed. However, existing schemes cannot effectively mitigate single point of failure and collusion between TPAs and miners. These schemes are burdened by significant wastage of storage resources due to the presence of redundant data. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based decentralized auditing scheme supporting ciphertext deduplication (BDACD). BDACD leverages a decentralized blockchain, which takes over the role traditionally played by a centralized TPA. A decentralized autonomous organization is incorporated to enhance resistance against collusion attacks. By integrating advanced ciphertext deduplication techniques, BDACD effectively mitigates storage overhead. Furthermore, we introduce a novel concept, T-Merkle hash tree, along with a corresponding search algorithm. This innovation significantly enhances blockchain storage utilization and enables efficient half-interval searches within a block. To ensure accountability and fairness, a smart contract is employed to establish an arbitration mechanism. This mechanism serves a dual purpose: penalizing any malevolent actions by cloud servers and providing adequate compensation to data owners whose data integrity has been compromised. Detailed security analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate BDACD has desirable security and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that positive and negative incentives can greatly promote cooperation in public goods games. The best policy for turning a population of defectors into a population of cooperators is to provide the “carrot” first and the “stick” later. Cleaner production (CP) is a new preventive environmental strategy, and its promotion is also an example of a public goods game. Voluntary participation and other positive incentives have been widely used to encourage industries to implement CP worldwide. However, taking into consideration specific industry characteristics and new environmental management requirements in China, the Chinese Cleaner Production Promotion Law proposes use of mandatory cleaner production audits (as compared to voluntary cleaner production initiatives) as innovative measures for advancing CP. This paper provides a general overview of this innovative system, explaining how the mandatory audit system was established and promoted in various policies, regulations, and national plans, and analyzing the design of the system. The paper also summarizes implementation results of the mandatory cleaner production audit system, based on annual surveys conducted in all provinces of China between 2008 and 2011. The Chinese experience can be used as a reference case by other developing countries similar to China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel theoretical framework to explain the occurrence of corruption in public procurement. It extends the agency cost-padding model by Laffont and Tirole (1992) to allow for the principal to be a partially selfish politician who can design the contract auditing policy. It is found that a benevolent politician, by choosing a sufficiently strict auditing, deters the contracting firm from padding costs; conversely, a selfish politician chooses a relatively lax auditing in order to create an incentive for cost-padding, and engages in corruption with the firm in case of detection. If the cost of auditing is high enough, even a benevolent politician might prefer to allow cost-padding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Access control is an essential mechanism in collaborative environments, which guarantees the security of shared resources. With the intertwinement of emerging technologies likes edge computing, cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), access control will encounter its innovation and development shortly. Whereas, traditional access control did not consider the adaptive and fine-grained requirements in edge computing. In addition, the integrity of the accessed data is not considered in the traditional access control scheme. 1) In this paper, inspired by the technologies in AI and cloud, an adaptive access control scheme based on trust degrees is proposed. The trust degrees of users and the quality of data are defined. On this basis, the trust degrees-based adaptive access control framework is proposed. 2) Moreover, in the proposed scheme, technologies in AI and cryptography are converged. In particular, the ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is integrated with the classification and recommendation algorithms in AI, thereby providing adaptive and fine-grained properties access control in edge computing. 3) Moreover, the integrity of the accessed data is guaranteed by the auditing technique in cryptography. Finally, the proposed access control scheme is implemented by using the PBC library. 4) For supporting the efficient computation in edge computing, all types of elliptic curves provided by the PBC library are tested. The experimental result shows that Type D curve is the most efficient in implementing the proposed scheme. Access control is an essential mechanism in collaborative environments, which guarantees the security of shared resources. With the intertwinement of emerging technologies likes edge computing, cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), access control will encounter its innovation and development shortly. Whereas, traditional access control did not consider the adaptive and fine-grained requirements in edge computing. In addition, the integrity of the accessed data is not considered in the traditional access control scheme. In this paper, inspired by the technologies in AI and cloud, an adaptive access control scheme based on trust degrees is proposed. The trust degrees of users and the quality of data are defined. On this basis, the trust degrees-based adaptive access control framework is proposed. Moreover, in the proposed scheme, technologies in AI and cryptography are converged. In particular, the ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is integrated with the classification and recommendation algorithms in AI, thereby providing adaptive and fine-grained properties for access control in edge computing. Moreover, the integrity of the accessed data is guaranteed by the auditing technique in cryptography. Finally, the proposed access control scheme is implemented by using the PBC library. For supporting the efficient computation in edge computing, all types of elliptic curves provided by the PBC library are tested. The experimental result shows that Type D curve is the most efficient in implementing the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 16th Annual Conference on Finance and Accounting (ACFA Prague 2015) is organized by the Faculty of Finance and Accounting, University of Economics, Prague ( http://ffu.vse.cz/english/ ). The Faculty highly promotes international research cooperation and the Annual Conference offers an opportunity for researchers to present their work both in early and final stage of research. The second aim of the Conference is to create a broad platform enabling young researchers, especially Ph.D. students, from all over the world to share their thoughts and visions, to discuss contemporary development in finance and accounting, and thus to obtain references for their research and doctoral theses. In 2015 edition, we received 129 submissions of full papers from authors affiliated with universities in 25 countries. Based on the peer-review of the Scientific Committee, 91 papers (acceptance rate 70.5%) qualified for the presentations at scientific sessions. 69 papers are included in this special issue of Procedia Economics and Finance Proceedings, which are the official proceedings of the ACFA Prague 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of various audit regimes used by a gatekeeper, differing in the degree of enforcement and the presence of performance incentives, on behavior of care providers filing applications for providing long-term care services to patients. We present evidence from a large-scale field experiment in the Dutch market for long-term care. We find that increasing enforcement reduces the number of applications and that introducing performance incentives reduces this even further. Finally, we find detrimental effects on audit approval rates, but we provide some results showing that assessors are less strict when audits do not have direct implications. This implies that an audit regime with performance incentives can support policy makers, who are faced with the trade-off between providing services quickly and efficient spending of public resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CHHiP trial investigated the use of moderate hypofractionation for the treatment of localised prostate cancer using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). A radiotherapy quality assurance programme was developed to assess compliance with treatment protocol and to audit treatment planning and dosimetry of IMRT. This paper considers the outcome and effectiveness of the programme. Quality assurance exercises included a pre-trial process document and planning benchmark cases, prospective case reviews and a dosimetry site visit on-trial and a post-trial feedback questionnaire. In total, 41 centres completed the quality assurance programme (37 UK, four international) between 2005 and 2010. Centres used either forward-planned (field-in-field single phase) or inverse-planned IMRT (25 versus 17). For pre-trial quality assurance exercises, 7/41 (17%) centres had minor deviations in their radiotherapy processes; 45/82 (55%) benchmark plans had minor variations and 17/82 (21%) had major variations. One hundred prospective case reviews were completed for 38 centres. Seventy-one per cent required changes to clinical outlining pre-treatment (primarily prostate apex and base, seminal vesicles and penile bulb). Errors in treatment planning were reduced relative to pre-trial quality assurance results (49% minor and 6% major variations). Dosimetry audits were conducted for 32 centres. Ion chamber dose point measurements were within ±2.5% in the planning target volume and ±8% in the rectum. 28/36 films for combined fields passed gamma criterion 3%/3 mm and 11/15 of IMRT fluence film sets passed gamma criterion 4%/4 mm using a 98% tolerance. Post-trial feedback showed that trial participation was beneficial in evolving clinical practice and that the quality assurance programme helped some centres to implement and audit prostate IMRT. Overall, quality assurance results were satisfactory and the CHHiP quality assurance programme contributed to the success of the trial by auditing radiotherapy treatment planning and protocol compliance. Quality assurance supported the introduction of IMRT in UK centres, giving additional confidence and external review of IMRT where it was a newly adopted technique. • Participating in CHHiP and its radiotherapy quality assurance programme helped many centres to implement IMRT. • 41 centres successfully completed the CHHiP quality assurance exercises and recruited to the trial. • In 71/100 prospective patient case reviews, clinical outlines required revision pre-treatment. • Treatment planning errors were reduced from 21% to 6% at pre- and on-trial review, respectively. • Dosimetry audit results were acceptable and gave confidence in the accuracy of treatment delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the cloud storage environment, users can store their data on cloud servers to save local storage resources and also share data with other users through cloud servers. Nevertheless, the outsourced data in cloud is vulnerable to tampering or loss due to software or hardware failures, hacker attacks, and other unforeseen issues. Public auditing technique have been developed to safeguard the integrity of the outsourced data. In addition, outsourced data typically contains users' sensitive information like their names and ages, which are likely to be unavoidably exposed to cloud servers and other users. To tackle the aforementioned issues, a certificateless public auditing scheme with sensitive information hiding (CPAS-SIH) for data sharing is presented in this paper, which introduces a third-party sanitizer to sanitize the data blocks encompassing sensitive information in outsourced data and converts their tags into the valid ones for sanitized data blocks. Meanwhile, an extended double linked list information table is utilized to enable data dynamic operations, including the data blocks modification, insertion, as well as deletion. The security analysis demonstrates that CPAS-SIH satisfies unforgeability, auditing soundness, immutability, and data privacy preservation. The performance evaluation indicates that CPAS-SIH is efficient and practical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government auditing is an important mechanism for supervising the use of fiscal funds, preventing official corruption, and improving governance performance. The performance of government auditing is affected by its independence. Taking vertical management reform of government auditing institutions—an initiative China began to pilot in 2015—as the exogenous shock to government auditing and its incentive structure, this paper used the differences-in-differences method (DID) to evaluate the impact of government auditing on the performance of environmental governance. The reform was found to have significantly reduced the intensity of pollutant emissions and a series of robustness tests confirm the validity of this conclusion. The environmental effect of government auditing reform was mainly achieved by improving environmental performance, not by increasing environmental investment. Specifically, the reform had no direct impact on environmental fiscal expenditure; Rather, it improved environmental input–output performance and environmental governance capabilities. The research presented in this paper not only enriches the study of the relationship between (de)centralization and local environmental governance but also provides new evidence of and policy insights into the impact of government auditing on environmental governance. • Government auditing vertical management reform as a quasi-natural experiment. • Employ a differences-in-differences approach with the panel data of 281 cities in China from 2010 to 2017. • Evaluate the effectiveness of government auditing. • Government auditing has significantly reduced the intensity of pollutant emissions. • Improving the performance of environmental governance rather than increasing environmental input is the mainly mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supplier audits are frequently criticized for lacking authenticity and objectivity. Technology-enhanced audits (TEA) offer a potential solution to supplier audit problems by enabling enhanced analytical, visualization, modeling, and predictive capabilities. This paper explores the potential of Industry 4.0 practices in enhancing supplier audit authenticity and efficacy, as well as reducing supplier monitoring costs. The application of Industry 4.0 in supplier auditing is still in its infancy. Therefore, this paper adopts an exploratory approach building on an extensive review of the literature. The paper builds upon an inductive-deductive approach to explore how the individual technologies underlying Industry 4.0 can be leveraged to enhance supplier audits. Based on insights from the literature, the paper develops propositions outlining the role of Industry 4.0 in supplier audit authenticity, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness. The paper builds arguments against the backdrop of traditional audits' limitations and illustrates how TEA can overcome many of these limitations. TEA can enhance the authenticity and efficacy of supplier audits, while also reducing supplier monitoring costs. TEA are most effective in an Industry 4.0 environment where the use of technologies is supported with governance structures. The application of Industry 4.0 can make supplier audits more transparent and value-adding, benefiting both the buyer and supplier. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are explored. Suppliers can leverage TEA to create opportunities for strategic differentiation, enhance transparency and trust, and stand out from those who view audits solely as a cost. Buyers can use TEA to enhance audit efficacy, enhance insights into supplier operations, cut monitoring costs, and improve their competitiveness. TEA is a new generation of supplier auditing that has the potential to bring fundamental changes to current auditing models and make audits genuine, authentic, prospective, and insightful while building on Industry 4.0 principles. • Traditional supplier audits have several limitations. • Technology-enhanced audits (TEA) can overcome many of the limitations of traditional audits. • Industry 4.0 provides a valuable framework for orchestrating TEA. • Industry 4.0 based supplier audits can make audits more authentic, efficacious, and cost-effective. • TEA are likely to be more effective in an Industry 4.0 environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Monitoring and auditing are regarded as essential activities for process control and follow up, which contribute to improving performance in organizations and provide a key role in preventing or reducing environmental harm. However it is not unusual to find them confused with each other in the academic literature. This paper provides a detailed literature review of theoretical and review papers in order to clarify concepts and characteristics of environmental monitoring and auditing; and to suggest ways forward which can overcome this confusion. It was found that confusions stemmed from considerations of: similarities, hierarchy, overlaps, scope, risk issues and timeliness. The development of accounting and auditing over time was found to have led to a flexible understanding of follow up practices, and the disregard of adaptive management as originally understood in the impact assessment field. It is suggested that adaptive management, recovered from impact assessment and recent specific literature, can be applied to improve environmental monitoring and auditing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: ICT-based decision aids are currently making waves in the modern business world simultaneously with increased pressure on auditors to play a more effective role in the governance and control of corporate entities. This paper aims to review the main research efforts and current debates on auditors’ use of artificial intelligent systems, with a view to predicting future directions of research and software development in the area. The paper maps the development process of artificial intelligent systems in auditing in the light of their identified benefits and drawbacks. It also reviews previous research efforts on the use of expert systems and neural networks in auditing and the implications thereof. The synthesis of these previous studies revealed certain research vacuum which future studies in the area could fill. Such areas include matching the benefits of adopting these intelligent agents with their costs, assessing the impact of artificial intelligence on internal control systems’ design and monitoring as well as audit committees’ effectiveness, and implications of using such systems for small and medium audit firms’ operations and survival, audit education, public sector organisations’ audit, auditor independence and audit expectations-performance gap. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The controlling and auditing of organizational transactions in real time allows to determine the degree of reliability with which they are carried out, mitigating the organizational risk. This paper presents a solution proposal under a new vision for organizational auditing and monitoring in real time since it is focused on the implementation of continuous assurance services in organizational transactions in compliance with the formalisms of a business ontological model. Furthermore, this paper contributes for a new paradigm of the transactional auditing, which is intended to be at a very low and detailed level of organizational transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing use of encrypted data within file storage and in network communications leaves investigators with many challenges. One of the most challenging is the Tor protocol, as its main focus is to protect the privacy of the user, in both its local footprint within a host and over a network connection. The Tor browser, though, can leave behind digital artefacts which can be used by an investigator. This paper outlines an experimental methodology and provides results for evidence trails which can be used within real-life investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations around the world are increasingly concerned about the environment, adopting sustainable practices in their business processes. In the field of Information Technologies (IT) several Green IT practices have been proposed, but in isolation, so a framework is needed if the Green IT is to be implemented and improved in an efficient and integrated way. In this paper, we propose a maturity model (based on ISO/IEC 15504) to help organizations implement the governance and management of Green IT gradually, as well as to improve their maturity level in this area. The validation of this proposal by experts and a case study seems to indicate that the proposal can be useful for implementing and improving the Green IT processes in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Under neoliberal schemes like audit systems, consumer demands born of concerns about food safety, the environment and animal welfare are theoretically poised to influence agricultural production systems (). Whether such influences might reverse or redirect the trend toward environmentally-damaging rampant productivism of the 20th century hinges in part on the subjective positions of farmers and the ways in which they inform how farmers respond to policy and market signals. In this paper we argue the need for a genuine engagement with both the complexities of farmer subjectivity and the interactions amongst farmer subjectivity and agro-ecologies, and animal bodies in particular. This paper presents a case study of sheep farmers on the South Island that reveals contestation and transitions in traditional markers of “good farming”, particularly animal health. We observe how such transitions arise from reconfigurations of the relationships between agro-ecological, political and social histories. In this paper’s formulation, neither state subsidies nor neoliberalism in agriculture is primary cause or ultimate effect of the transformation of agricultural practice. Rather, changes in the political economy expose contradictions in farmer subjectivities, the resolution of which may block or reinforce trends suggested by the political economy. We suggest that contested ideas about animal health within the social field of pastoral farming in New Zealand makes it possible that New Zealand’s sheep growers may take the high road of best environmental practice via highly audited environmental standards of production demanded by elite consumer markets, or that they may remain in the intensifying trajectory of continuing to drive the sheep’s body to its maximum possible intensity of production. The mixed legacy of neoliberal reform is that it has simultaneously enabled both of these contradictory trajectories in New Zealand pastoralism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration''s (OSHA''s) Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation was promulgated in 1992. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency''s (EPA''s) corresponding Risk Management Program (RMP) rule followed in 1996. Both programs include requirements for triennial compliance audits. Effective compliance audits are critical in identifying program weaknesses and ensuring the safety of facility personnel and the surrounding public. Large companies with corporate and facility health, safety, and environmental groups typically have the resources and experience to conduct audits internally, either through a corporate audit team or the sharing of personnel between multiple facilities. Small to medium sized businesses frequently do not have the expertise or the resources to perform compliance audits, and rely on third-party consultants to provide these services. This paper will discuss the observations of the authors in performing audits and working with PSM/RMP programs across a number of market sectors (e.g. chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, water treatment), including effective practices, hurdles to successful implementation and execution of programs, and typical program shortcomings. The paper will also discuss steps to improve the audit process and increase effectiveness whether performed by a third party or internally. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Auditing is getting its share of attention as a means of identifying gaps between current and desired performance in many activities. Furthermore, the audit approach has been evolving from the traditional manual process of paper documentation to a paperless, electronic, and online one. Yet online auditing in relation to design activities within an enterprise remains largely unexplored. To provide a useful design audit tool, in this study, we aimed to develop an online design audit platform (ODAP) for internal application within an enterprise. In doing so, we first set the context of the ODAP by constructing a design audit matrix that encompassed six organizational levels and five operational phases. Second, based on the design audit matrix, we developed an online design audit framework for the ODAP. Third, the ODAP was tested and evaluated with the cooperation of 20 participating Taiwanese enterprises. The results show that the ODAP is a good-quality information system in terms of system quality, information quality and interface design though there are some shortcomings, such as the lack of a score-weighted function, a comment database, and a mechanism for information customization. In this paper, we discuss the implications of these findings and suggest several avenues for further research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a detailed study of environmental impact monitoring (EIM) in South Australia by first establishing a context for EIM in the form of a literature review, and by then conducting a detailed content and practice analysis on EIA documents and on actual monitoring in practice. EIM in practice for specific projects was found to not correspond with either EIM proposals in the corresponding environmental impact statement, or EIM recommendations in the government''s assessment report. EIM programmes appeared to be carried out at the discretion of the proponent, and no projects were found to have environmental impact monitoring that directly corresponded to either proposals in the EIS or recommendations in the assessment report. Reasons for this lack of correlation have been postulated to be a combination of a serious lack of the following factors: clearly assigned monitoring responsibilities, public accountability, clearly outlined monitoring timeframes, clearly outlined aims and objectives, lack of human resources, and lack of any EIM legislation. It should be noted that the study, upon which this paper is predominantly based, was undertaken in 1998. This study looked at developments that were approved (and subsequently built) under the Planning Act 1982. This Act was later replaced by the South Australian Development Act 1993. Relevant information from this study that has been reproduced in this paper was accurate at that time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This year, the process industry has reached an important milestone in process safety—the acceptance of an internationally recognized standard for safety instrumented systems (SIS). This standard, IEC 61511, documents good engineering practice for the assessment, design, operation, maintenance, and management of SISs. The foundation of the standard is established by several requirements in Part 1, Clauses 5–7, which cover the development of a management system aimed at ensuring that functional safety is achieved. The management system includes a quality assurance process for the entire SIS lifecycle, requiring the development of procedures, identification of resources and acquisition of tools. For maximum benefit, the deliverables and quality control checks required by the standard should be integrated into the capital project process, addressing safety, environmental, plant productivity, and asset protection. Industry has become inundated with a multitude of programs focusing on safety, quality, and cost performance. This paper introduces a protective management system, which builds upon the work process identified in IEC 61511. Typical capital project phases are integrated with the management system to yield one comprehensive program to efficiently manage process risk. Finally, the paper highlights areas where internal practices or guidelines should be developed to improve program performance and cost effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]