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The increasing attacks on traffic signals worldwide indicate the importance of intrusion detection. The existing traffic signal Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) that rely on inputs from connected vehicles and image analysis techniques can only detect intrusions created by spoofed vehicles. However, these approaches fail to detect intrusion from attacks on in-road sensors, traffic controllers, and signals. In this paper, we proposed an IDS based on detecting anomalies associated with flow rate, phase time, and vehicle speed, which is a significant extension of our previous work using additional traffic parameters and statistical tools. We theoretically modelled our system using the Dempster–Shafer decision theory, considering the instantaneous observations of traffic parameters and their relevant historical normal traffic data. We also used Shannon's entropy to determine the uncertainty associated with the observations. To validate our work, we developed a simulation model based on the traffic simulator called SUMO using many real scenarios and the data recorded by the Victorian Transportation Authority, Australia. The scenarios for abnormal traffic conditions were generated considering attacks such as jamming, Sybil, and false data injection attacks. The results show that the overall detection accuracy of our proposed system is 79.3% with fewer false alarms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative analysis of the proposed amendment to section 46(1) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA) against several effects-based tests for unilateral anticompetitive conduct. It mentions unilateral anticompetitive conduct and outlines the debate concerning the prohibition of misuse of market power in Australia. It also mentions arguments for and against effects-based tests based on decision theory and error–cost analysis.

The cruise sector is arguably the most dynamic sector of the tourism industry having sustained phenomenal growth in recent years in customer demand and operational expansion. Cruise corporations are continually seeking out viable locations to add to their itineraries, not only to vary their product menu, but also to augment business operations particularly in the case of home porting. Thus, opportunities for destinations exist and are expanding to include business interests that may not view themselves as part of the industry. The complexity of planning for the future development of cruise tourism is evident and destination planning and development is crucial to cater for the increase in visitor numbers that accompanies this industry. This paper draws from a case study of destination development and the development of home porting in Newcastle, NSW Australia. A model of stakeholder knowledge transfer was devised to illustrate the dynamics within and between stakeholders in the lead up to the 2010 cruise season when Carnival's Pacific Sun was welcomed into the port as the first cruise ship to home port in the city. This model is then stripped to the elements which were isolated as important factors in the knowledge transfer process in relation to strategic decision making on a destination development level. This paper concludes with the proposal that a generic model provides a platform for further empirical application and expansion in contexts where the dynamism of the cruise industry is playing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malleefowl Leipoa ocellata populations across Australia are declining and the range of the species is contracting. Despite a century of research much uncertainty remains about which factors are driving this decline. Consequently, it is also unclear which conservation actions will reduce the species’ extinction risk. In particular, we lack a quantitative understanding of malleefowl population dynamics. Here we use estimates derived from the literature to provide the first parametrization of a population viability analysis (PVA) for malleefowl. This model creates a quantitative framework for synthesizing existing information and comparing potential management strategies, and will help guide research activities by identifying critical aspects of the malleefowl’s life history. We model population dynamics as stochastic events that depend on individual characteristics, weather conditions and local management actions. Our PVA indicates that an isolated population of 32 adult birds would almost certainly decline to extinction over a 20-year period. Translocating and releasing captive-bred juveniles slows this rate of decline and intensively baiting for foxes can reverse it. Adult mortality rates have the greatest influence on population viability, and land managers should therefore prioritize conservation actions that target adult survivorship over actions that benefit earlier life stages. Quantitative research on the malleefowl should focus on the demographics of the adult life stage, their dispersal and the impacts of fire and grazing. Our analysis highlights the role of PVA models in assessing the cost-effectiveness of alternative management actions, and framing future research priorities for threatened species. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study regarding the active adaptive management of the Tasmanian devil which is an endangered species in Australia. It focuses on the management action for a facial tumor disease affecting the endangered species. It states that a stochastic dynamic programming with Bayesian model has been adopted to determine the best management strategy to maximize the population of the Tasmanian devil.

1. Factors that have been considered when deciding how to invest resources in conservation of species include the efficacy and cost of management, the importance of the species, the level of threat, and the timeframe over which results are to be achieved. However, it is unclear how each of these different factors should be weighted and combined when making a decision. 2. We examine how the probabilities of species changing in IUCN Red List categories are influenced by expenditure of resources. We use these relationships to determine optimal investment strategies, using Australian birds as a case study. 3. The optimal level of investment in different species depends critically on whether managers wish to minimize the number of extinct species or a weighted average of all threatened species, and on the available budget. The level of investment should not necessarily reflect the level of threat. In our case study, the timeframe of management had little influence on the investment decision. 4. Our results show that extinctions of Australian birds can be largely avoided over the next 80 years given current expenditure, but greater investment in conservation is required to reduce the number of threatened species. 5. Synthesis and applications. The most efficient allocation of resources to conserve species is difficult to determine intuitively; therefore, this decision demands the use of formal decision theory. The influence of the particular management objective on the optimal decision means that this feature needs careful consideration. Our approach can be used to determine the level of investment that is required to reduce the number of threatened species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Purpose: Computerized Decision Support Systems have been shown to improve clinicians’ performance. Clinicians’ adoption of these systems is crucial for their success. Studying clinicians’ perceptions can provide an insight into the determinants of clinicians’ adoption of such systems. The aim of this study was to measure clinicians’ perceptions of ease of use and usefulness of a web-based antibiotic approval system, and to investigate the relationship between the reported perceptions and use of the system. Methods: Potentially identifiable coded surveys were sent to a total of 70 senior and 150 junior medical staff, and 30 pharmacists all working at a tertiary care referral teaching hospital of Melbourne, Australia. Clinicians’ perceptions of ease of use and usefulness of the antibiotic approval system; clinicians’ general computer use; and clinicians’ usage of the antibiotic approval system were measured. Results: The overall response rate from the clinicians was 53.4%. The majority of the participants (70% and above) found it easy to obtain antibiotic approval using the system. More than 80% of the participants believed that the system will decrease the inappropriate use of antibiotics at the hospital. Clinicians who were more likely to use the system also found it easy to learn (Rho =0.392, p =0.001), easy to show others how to use the system (Rho =0.298, p =0.014), easy to find additional information (Rho =0.317, p =0.009), and easy to use it within their daily workflow (Rho =0.268, p =0.028). In addition, the clinicians were also more likely to use the system if they believed that it will improve their adherence to evidence-based practice (Rho =0.352, p =0.003). Conclusion: The majority of clinicians in an independent investigation of the antibiotic approval system found the system easy to use and useful to them. A number of clinicians’ perceptions about the system were found to be correlated with the actual usage of the system by the clinicians. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Active adaptive management balances the requirements of management with the need to learn about the system being managed, which leads to better decisions. It is difficult to judge the benefit of management actions that accelerate information gain, relative to the benefit of making the best management decision given what is known at the time. We present a first step in developing methods to optimize management decisions that incorporate both uncertainty and learning via adaptive management. We assumed a manager can allocate effort to discrete units (e.g., areas for revegetation or animals for reintroduction), the outcome can be measured as success or failure (e.g., the revegetation in an area is successful or the animal survives and breeds), and the manager has two possible management options from which to choose. We further assumed that there is an annual budget that may be allocated to one or both of the two options and that the manager must decide on the allocation. We used Bayesian updating of the probability of success of the two options and stochastic dynamic programming to determine the optimal strategy over a specified number of years. The costs, level of certainty about the success of the two options, and the timeframe of management all influenced the optimal allocation of the annual budget. In addition, the choice of management objective had a large influence on the optimal decision. In a case study of Merri Creek, Melbourne, Australia, we applied the approach to determining revegetation strategies. Our approach can be used to determine how best to manage ecological systems in the face of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translocation is a useful management option for conservation of threatened animal species. It can be used to increase the range of a species, augment the numbers in a critical population, or establish new populations and hence spread the risk of extinction through local catastrophes. As it is an important and expensive conservation tool, translocation management decisions must be carefully considered, with the objective of the translocation project in mind. By analysing the translocation problem within a decision-theory framework, we find optimal management decisions that are rational and transparent. We illustrate our approach using a case study of the bridled nailtail wallaby (Onychogalea fraenata). Our particular translocation question is: if we have a set number of wallabies to translocate in each time period and two translocation sites, how many wallabies should we put at each site given the state of each population to maximise the benefit to the species? We model the translocated populations with first-order Markov chain stochastic population models, and use stochastic dynamic programming to determine the optimal management decisions. We look at two sites with different growth rates – one increasing and one decreasing – and compare the optimal strategies for two different objective functions. The first is a long-term persistence objective function, which maximises the persistence of translocated populations a large number of time steps after the end of the translocation program. The second maximises total population size at the end of the translocation program. Although these objective functions are similar, they generate surprisingly different optimal translocation strategies. When maximising the long-term persistence of the translocated populations, translocation decisions are not important as long as an increasing population is established. This indicates that site quality – rather than the number and timing of translocations – primarily determines the long-term persistence of populations. When maximising total population size, the optimal strategy is to add to the increasing population unless it is above a size where it is likely to reach its carrying capacity over the planning timeframe. As translocation decisions are important in fulfilling the objective, this objective function is more useful in creating practical advice for translocation managers. The discrepancy between the optimal strategies given by the two objectives demonstrates the importance of careful consideration when specifying the goals of a project. This observation applies not only to translocation programs, but any project where clear decision-making is needed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Risk management in the water utility sector is fast becoming explicit. Here, we describe application of a capability model to benchmark the risk management maturity of eight water utilities from the UK, Australia and the USA. Our analysis codifies risk management practice and offers practical guidance as to how utilities may more effectively employ their portfolio of risk analysis techniques for optimal, credible, and defensible decision making. For risk analysis, observed good practices include the use of initiation criteria for applying risk assessment techniques; the adoption of formalised procedures to guide their application; and auditing and peer reviews to ensure procedural compliance and provide quality assurance. Additionally, we have identified common weaknesses likely to be representative of the sector as a whole, in particular a need for improved risk knowledge management and education and training in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods for reserve selection and conservation planning often ignore uncertainty. For example, presence-absence observations and predictions of habitat models are used as inputs but commonly assumed to be without error. We applied information-gap decision theory to develop uncertainty analysis methods for reserve selection. Our proposed method seeks a solution that is robust in achieving a given conservation target, despite uncertainty in the data. We maximized robustness in reserve selection through a novel method, “distribution discounting,” in which the site- and species-specific measure of conservation value (related to species-specific occupancy probabilities) was penalized by an error measure (in our study, related to accuracy of statistical prediction). Because distribution discounting can be implemented as a modification of input files, it is a computationally efficient solution for implementing uncertainty analysis into reserve selection. Thus, the method is particularly useful for high-dimensional decision problems characteristic of regional conservation assessment. We implemented distribution discounting in the zonation reserve-selection algorithm that produces a hierarchy of conservation priorities throughout the landscape. We applied it to reserve selection for seven priority fauna in a landscape in New South Wales, Australia. The distribution discounting method can be easily adapted for use with different kinds of data (e.g., probability of occurrence or abundance) and different landscape descriptions (grid or patch based) and incorporated into other reserve-selection algorithms and software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in 2000, the NSW Government used a regional governance process to develop water management plans throughout the State. Under the process, the Minister appointed a range of stakeholders such as water users, conservation interests, indigenous interests, and natural resource management agencies to each committee, which then had to make difficult management and policy choices regarding the sustainable use of water. Several committees often worked in the same catchment, each focusing on a slightly different part of the entire water resource. One factor that affects the ability of these types of committees to operate is the institutional arrangements, or rules of operation and policies, under which they must work. Based on data from interviews and documents, this paper interprets how different participants behaved under certain sets of rules using game theory. The paper concludes by suggesting that game theory is helpful in explaining stakeholder behaviour. As such, its application may guide the development of robust operational rules prior to creating such regional governance processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicriteria evaluation (MCE) is a well-tried and effective procedure for structuring and aiding complex decisionmaking processes, especially those involving environmental considerations. Formal deliberative processes have also been successful in aiding understanding and meeting consensus in complex and difficult decision problems which involve more than one decisionmaker. Here, both approaches are combined in a new technique called `deliberative multicriteria evaluation' to assist a group of natural resource managers to decide on a suitable option for recreation and tourism activities in the upper Goulburn-Broken Catchment of Victoria, Australia. This approach is an attempt to combine the advantages of MCE, providing structure and integration in complex decision problems, with the advantages of deliberation and stakeholder interaction provided by a `citizens' jury'. An important outcome of the process was the discovery of some crucial aspects of the decision problem that required deeper understanding and assessment if that preferred strategy were to have the desired results. Some suggestions for improving the process are provided but, in general, the stakeholder jury was regarded as a helpful and useful procedure by the decisionmakers and one which aided them in their understanding of the issues of a complex decisionmaking problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to design monitoring regimes capable of detecting population trends can be thwarted by observational and economic constraints inherent to most biological surveys. Ensuring that limited resources are allocated efficiently requires evaluation of statistical power for alternative survey designs. We simulated the process of data collection on a landscape, where we initiated declines over 3 sample periods in species of varying prevalence and detectability. Changing occupancy levels were estimated using a technique that accounted for effects of false-negative errors on survey data. Declines were identified within a frequentist statistical framework, but the significance level was set at an optimal level rather than adhering to an arbitrary conventional threshold. By varying the number of sites sampled and repeat visits made, we show how managers can design an optimal monitoring regime that maximizes statistical power within fixed budget constraints. Results show that 2 to 3 visits/site are generally sufficient unless occupancy is very high or detectability is low. In both cases, the number of required visits increase. In an example of woodland bird monitoring in the Mt. Lofty Ranges, South Australia, we show that, although the budget required to monitor a relatively rare species of low detectability may be higher than that for a common, easily detectable species, survey design requirements for common species may be more stringent. We discuss implications for multi-species monitoring programs and application of our methods to more complex monitoring problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses problem of fire management in Ngarkat Conservation Park (CP) in South Australia, Australia and present a mathematical model to maintain to maintain community diversity from fire disturbance event in the park. It discusses optimal management strategy to manage wildfires. It also mentions development of methodology for conservation of plant biodiversity.

Details the use of the decision conferencing approach to strategic planning by the Independent Living Center, a voluntary organization from Western Australia. Description of the decision conferencing approach; Goals of the approach; Participation of eleven top executives in the process; Ability of the group to quickly identify a future direction for the organization and develop a plan for implementation of the strategic plan.

This article presents a commentary on an article that examined the role that the Australian government plays in shaping business in that country. The author points to the Australian government's use of game theory in explaining market failure and shaping policy to combat this problem. The author discusses how the country's market structures and various policy reforms have created a high demand for strategy consultants who are experienced with the principals of game theory. He also discusses the consulting work he has done in the country applying his knowledge of game theory.

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Introduction. Reports findings from research in progress investigating judgment and decision making during information seeking in the workplace, in particular, the assessment of enough information. Characteristics of this judgment and the role of context in shaping it are framed against theories of human judgment and decision making. Method. Thirty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with public sector policy workers in Australia. Two interviews were carried out, the first with individual participants and the second, a joint interview with two participants. Interviews were taped and transcribed and inductive data analysis carried out. Findings. Findings discussed in this paper focus on contextual factors that frame policy workers' judgment and decision making while information seeking, factors including ill-structured problems, shifting goals, time stress and action-feedback loops. Also revealed was the importance of developing a framework, against which the judgment of enough information can be made, and the fluid and iterative nature of these judgments. Conclusion. The contextual factors reported show similarities with those identified by naturalistic decision making researchers, suggesting this new field of decision theory has much to offer researchers into information seeking in context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expert judgement is often used to mitigate the knowledge gaps that limit understanding of aquatic non-indigenous species (ANS) impacts (consequences) to environmental, economic, social, cultural and human health values. To understand how this uncertainty may affect expert decision making, we explored the presence and effects of uncertainty on consequence assessment for 10 ANS by scientists and managers. We hypothesized species' distribution, taxonomy and impact type will affect assessment magnitude. These hypotheses were partially supported. We also hypothesized a difference in the relationship between consequence magnitude and uncertainty, based on assessor group. This set of hypotheses was not supported, as all group assessments had a significant negative correlation between consequence and uncertainty. Both scientists and managers assigned lower consequence when faced with knowledge gaps and other forms of uncertainty. This aligns with an "innocent until proven guilty" or hindsight approach, as opposed to a "guilty until proven innocent" or precaution approach. Based on these outcomes, the experts appeared to make decisions in violation of both the maximin principle and precaution, instead using a heuristic approach. We suggest several management strategies to prevent biases against environmental protection that occur due to use of the hindsight approach., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The decision coping patterns of Israeli and Australian adolescents were compared in a cross-national study using two samples of 1028 Israeli and 428 Australian high-school students (age range 13.5-14.4 years). Both samples were administered a scale which measured self-reported level of confidence in decision making and tendencies to use various decision-coping patterns. Israeli adolescents scored higher than Australian adolescents on Self confidence as decision makers and Vigilance, and lower on evasive behavior in decision making (Cop out). In both samples, boys outscored girls on Self confidence as decision makers and on Complacency, and scored lower on Panicky behavior. For both samples, it was found that decision coping patterns reduce to two distinct clusters--a vigilant strategy and maladaptive strategies (panic, evasion, and complacency), evidence that decision-coping patterns have cross-cultural validity.