Tactical Response Research Articles

Recent Advances by the API Remote Sensing Technical Working Group for Oil Spill Preparedness and Response

ABSTRACT In 2010, the American Petroleum Institute coordinated the establishment of an Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Joint Industry Task Force (JITF) comprised of experts from industry and government. The JITF was established to examine the efforts implemented during recent oil spill events, assess the current state of the industry's ability to respond to significant spills, and identify potential learnings. A remote sensing technical working group (TWG) was formed under the Oil Sensing and Tracking program to document current remote sensing technology and future research and development needs related to tracking oil on the water's surface. Since its inception, the Remote Sensing TWG has held face-to-face meetings, engaged with other joint industry groups, and completed a planning guide, “Remote Sensing in Support of Oil Spill Response,” to assist in the identification of surveillance technologies, sensors, and platforms that could enhance response efforts. The document provides information related to both strategic and tactical response activities. The guide was designed as a practical “Users Guide” as well as a planning and preparedness tool for response personnel that may be required direct surveillance activities. The group also identified key areas for industry and academia for future research and development, including:Quantifying the aerial extent and concentration of oil on the water's surface; andEnhancing ways to provide quality-assessed data in near real-time to both field resources and command centers. In addition, the TWG is currently researching the development of a web-based tool that would aid in the selection of appropriate satellite sensors for a particular response scenario. The group is working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to customize and expand an existing NASA satellite tool for use during oil spill response. The TWG plans to continue collaboration and knowledge-sharing with other joint industry projects, and to continue to hold regular meetings to share recent experiences, collaborate on potential technology areas that need development, and disseminate scientific findings in the field of remote sensing that will enhance the capabilities and readiness for response.

Brazil Case Study - Tactical Response Plans and Voo's Program - A New Approach to Shoreline Protection Preparedness

ABSTRACT In the past, Brazilian Oil Spill Response Plans focused on the definition of response strategies in offshore environments, but were insufficient when it came to shoreline protection. After the occurrence of major oil spill accidents around the world and events of great repercussion in Brazil and with the intensification of oil and gas E&P activities in locations close to the coast and near environmentally sensitive areas in the country (such as Camamu-Almada and the Jequitinhonha basin), the need for additional nearshore response studies became of the utmost importance. Recently developed documents address the environmental characterization of the coast and indicate the appropriate response strategies, but a more action-oriented approach is needed. For that purpose, based on the best practices in shoreline protection worldwide, a methodology is being implemented so as to provide consistent preparedness support for the protection of nearshore resources. The methodology uses the Brazilian licensing mandatory documents in order to identify the appropriate level of protection preparedness for each of the vulnerable segments of shoreline within the domain of the E&P activity. Once the proper level of preparedness has been identified, the method indicates how to attain such result by presenting a set of tools, such as: TRP (Tactical Response Plan), VoOs (Vessel of Oportunity) Program, Advances Bases and Full Deployment Exercises. This paper provides an overview of the methodology, followed by a case study in Brazil which helps illustrate how the level of preparedness is determined and how the proposed tools help achieve such result. Therefore, it allows assessing the effectiveness of this new approach in the country. Considering Brazil's growing E&P potential, the long extent of its coastline and the abundance of sensitive resources alongshore, the methodology should be applied to other E&P projects developed in the country.

A Single Man and a Tragic Woman

Depicting the fraught relationship between a gay man and his straight female best friend, Tom Ford's A Single Man (2009) offers a complex, and often contradictory, depiction of its leading female character, Charley. At once glamorous and troubled, stunning and damaged, Charley reproduces a number of problematic stereotypes regarding women, in general, and fag hags, in particular. At the center of these problems is the film's insinuation that Charley has a melancholic attachment to George, her gay male companion. At first glance, A Single Man reproduces Freudian constructs of melancholy as a pathological response to traumatic loss; this essay argues, however, that the film's many ambivalences also offer opportunities for critical consideration of melancholy as a tactical response to heteronormativity.

Pandemic Management in a Pediatric Hospital

To describe our experiences in the management of the second wave of influenza A H1N1 (pH1N1) pandemic in a tertiary-care children's hospital. An autoethnographic study of the pandemic planning and management committee members involved in managing the second wave of pH1N1 was conducted. Staffing, surge capacity, communications and emergency operations planning by adding leaders of frontline workers and other key operational roles to the incident management team, and creating a tactical response team emerged as important factors in pandemic management in our hospital. The emergency department visits increased by 50%, necessitating increased staffing of the emergency department. Communications using existing chains of command had to be used to reach frontline staff during the pandemic. Incident management teams managing pandemics and other disasters have to be dynamic and create tactical teams to ensure implementation and facilitate bidirectional communication with frontline workers.

“You Just Don’t Report That Kind of Stuff”: Investigating Teens’ Ambivalence Toward Peer-Perpetrated, Unwanted Sexual Incidents

An investigation of narratives from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) finds that one in three teenagers--12-18 years old--who experience an unwanted sexual incident perpetrated by another teen trivialize their incidents as minor, unimportant, or normal kid stuff. This study contextualizes these responses within a framework of ambivalence that highlights separately teens' ambiguity of definitions, or uncertainty that incidents perpetrated by other teens (especially dating partners and schoolmates) are "real" crimes or offenses worth reporting, and adaptive indifference, a more tactical response to conflicting norms and allegiances that discourage teens from reporting their peers' sexual misconduct to authorities. The context and consequences of teens' ambivalence are discussed.

Tactic direction determined by the interaction between oscillatory chemical waves and rheological deformation in an amoeba

The survival of an organism can depend upon the direction in which it decides to move in response to changes in external conditions. Here we propose a physicochemical mechanism of the decision process for migration direction in the case of a giant amoebalike Physarum plasmodium. The tactical movement response could be changed by reversal of the phase wave of the rhythmic contractions that occur in any part of the plasmodium body when local stimulation is applied and the frequency of the rhythmic contractions is locally modulated in the stimulated region. The proposed model describes a physicochemical mechanism of coupling between the local modulation of frequency and the global transport of protoplasmic mass. The decision process is clarified from a rheological point of view.

Simple vs. Complex Learning Revisited: Israeli Prime Ministers and the Question of a Palestinian State

When does a decision-maker's shift on a major policy issue represent a genuine reassessment in his or her beliefs as opposed to tactical maneuvering? This article provides a framework to improve our confidence that a policy shift represents “complex learning,” which entails the adoption of new goals, rather than “simple learning,” which refers to a change in means but not goals. Challenging the conventional wisdom on learning, it argues that decision makers who alter their foreign policies incrementally are more likely to have had a fundamental rethinking of their underlying assumptions on a core issue than those who exhibit sudden shifts in their foreign policy decisions absent a traumatic event. The public declarations of Israel's three most recent premiers—Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu—in support of the establishment of a Palestinian state are used to illustrate the utility of this framework. Whereas Sharon and Olmert underwent complex learning, Netanyahu's swift change appears to represent merely a tactical response to pressure from the United States.

Strategic best-response learning in multiagent systems

We present a novel and uniform formulation of the problem of reinforcement learning against bounded memory adaptive adversaries in repeated games, and the methodologies to accomplish learning in this novel framework. First we delineate a novel strategic definition of best response that optimises rewards over multiple steps, as opposed to the notion of tactical best response in game theory. We show that the problem of learning a strategic best response reduces to that of learning an optimal policy in a Markov Decision Process (MDP). We deal with both finite and infinite horizon versions of this problem. We adapt an existing Monte Carlo based algorithm for learning optimal policies in such MDPs over finite horizon, in polynomial time. We show that this new efficient algorithm can obtain higher average rewards than a previously known efficient algorithm against some opponents in the contract game. Though this improvement comes at the cost of increased domain knowledge, simple experiments in the Prisoner's Dilemma, and coordination games show that even when no extra domain knowledge (besides that an upper bound on the opponent's memory size is known) is assumed, the error can still be small. We also experiment with a general infinite-horizon learner (using function-approximation to tackle the complexity of history space) against a greedy bounded memory opponent and show that while it can create and exploit opportunities of mutual cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma game, it is cautious enough to ensure minimax payoffs in the Rock–Scissors–Paper game.

Another cost of being a young black male: Race, weaponry, and lethal outcomes in assaults

We examine the effect of the race, age, and gender of victims of assault on the offenders’ use of weapons and lethal intent. Evidence from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) suggests that offenders are particularly likely to use guns against young black men—a three-way interaction – and to kill black males and young black adults. Black offenders respond more strongly to the victim’s race than do white offenders. As a result of these effects, a violent incident between two young black men is about six times more likely to involve a gun than a violent incident between two young white men. We suggest that adversary effects, i.e., an offender’s tactical response to the threat posed by adversaries, help explain why violence in black communities tends to be much more serious than violence in white communities.

Unionists as ‘Court Sceptics’: Exploring Elite-Level Unionist Discourses about a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights

One of the most significant characteristics of the peace process in Northern Ireland has been the profound importance attached by a range of academic, political and non-governmental actors to the concept of human rights. However, unionists, more so than other elite-level political actors in Northern Ireland, have expressed scepticism about proposals from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights. This article explores how unionists relied on a ‘court sceptic’ narrative to argue against the Bill of Rights proposals. It argues that at one level unionist reliance on ‘court sceptic’ arguments can be conceived of as instrumental in the sense that it was a mere tactical response to, as unionists argue, the inflation by the NIHRC of their mandate contained in the Good Friday Agreement to devise a Bill of Rights. However, at another level unionists reliance on ‘court sceptic’ arguments can also be traced to their constitutional experience within the British polity.

The Police Response to Critical Incidents in Academic Institutions

The threat of an assailant entering an academic institution has compelled law enforcement agencies to revise their tactical response during a critical incident. Police officials believe that today's predominant threat to academic institutions is an armed assailant. This article will examine the new procedures that both academic and law enforcement officials have implemented in safeguarding our nation's schools. School officials have initiated new emergency plans to address this potential academic crisis, and police agencies across the nation have begun to implement training programs to address this volatile threat that has placed both law enforcement agencies and academic institutions on alert. Police officials have determined that officers’ response time is detrimental to the safety of our nation's schools, and with this new officer training program, their officers will minimize the number of casualties during a critical incident in academic institutions.

Correlates of Foot Pursuit Injuries in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Police foot pursuits have come under increased scrutiny in recent years because of concerns of officer-involved shootings and fatalities associated with this tactical response. Consequently, there have been calls for police administrators to place strict limits on officer discretion to engage in foot pursuits. Such limits may be premature, however, given limited empirical evidence regarding the hazards of foot pursuits. To help inform this debate, this study analyzed foot-pursuit injuries using data provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The findings indicate that in the vast majority of pursuits, deputies and suspects were uninjured or sustained only minor injuries. In this regard, they do not appear to be any more hazardous than resistive encounters generally. However, that suspects were injured in 60% of foot pursuits and that the use of conducted energy devices by deputies was associated with an increased odds of suspect injury suggest the dynamics of foot pursuits may be different.

The economic value of improved agrometeorological information to irrigators amid climate variability

AbstractIn Australia, climate variability and the predicted impact of climate change help in making seasonal rainfall less predictable and seasonal irrigation supplies more uncertain, eroding agricultural production prospects and profitability. Water allocation forecasts have economic value to irrigators for making informed cropping decisions. This study estimated the economic value of improved irrigation allocation forecasts in the Coleambally irrigation area (CIA) in southeastern Australia using a non‐linear programming model. The model uses production and profit functions to estimate yield and gross margins for various water allocation levels rather than using given crop yields and gross margins. The model also captures the tactical response of improved cropping decisions made by irrigators based on water allocation announcements throughout the irrigation season. Tactical responses include changing the winter crop combinations, abandoning irrigation for a percentage of the summer crops, temporary purchase or sale of water, and deficit irrigation.The estimated economic benefit of improved seasonal water allocation forecasts to the CIA irrigators ranges from AU$ 1.33 ha−1 to AU$ 9.58 ha−1 (AU$ 1 = US$ 0.77). The economic analysis of water allocation forecasts shows that the potential total gross margin for the irrigators at the 100% allocation level was AU$ 47.6 m, assuming accurate forecast of the end‐of‐season allocations. A more realistic scenario generates a forecast value of AU$ 8.9 million reduction in the gross margin (pessimistic water allocation outlook) and AU$ 1.60 million in the forgone gross margin (optimistic water allocation outlook) for only 5% variation in outlook above or below the actual allocation level of 60%. This suggests that losses far exceed when water allocations are over‐estimated by irrigators, as resources and inputs could be overly committed to execute the less‐informed cropping plans. The knowledge benefits from forecasts are far greater at the lower end of an allocation due to relative water scarcity. However, for higher allocation levels (>80%), the knowledge benefits are negligible due to less water scarcity. Thus, investments in water allocation forecasts and related agrometeorological information could be useful tools for policy makers, farmers, agribusiness, and the insurance industry. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society

“You Would Not Believe What I Have to Go Through to Prove My Intellectual Value!” Stereotype Management Among Academically Successful Black Mathematics and Engineering Students

Stereotype management is introduced to explain high achievement and resilience among 23 Black mathematics and engineering college students. Characterized as a tactical response to ubiquitous forms of racism and racialized experiences across school and non-school contexts, stereotype management emerged along overlapping paths of racial, gender, and mathematics identity development. Interviews revealed that although stereotype management facilitated success in these domains, the students maintained an intense and perpetual state of awareness that their racial identities and Blackness are undervalued and constantly under assault within mathematics and engineering contexts. With age development and maturity, the students progressed from being preoccupied with attempts to prove stereotypes wrong to adopting more self-defined reasons to achieve. The results suggest that stereotype threat is not deterministic.

Redundancy and workplace occupation: the case of the Republic of Ireland

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the antecedent influences and merits of workplace occupations as a tactical response to employer redundancy initiatives.Design/methodology/approachThe data are based on analysis of secondary documentary material reporting on three workplace occupations in the Republic of Ireland during 2009.FindingsPerceptions of both procedural (e.g. employer unilateral action) and substantive (e.g. pay and entitlements) justice appear pivotal influences. Spillover effects from other known occupations may also be influential. Workplace occupations were found to produce some modest substantive gains, such as enhancing redundancy payments. The tactic of workplace occupation was also found to transform unilateral employer action into scenarios based upon negotiated settlement supported by third‐party mediation. However the tactic of workplace occupation in response to redundancy runs the risks of potential judicial injunction and sanction.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough operationally difficult, future studies should strive to collect primary data workplace occupations as they occur.Originality/valueThe paper identifies conditions conducive to the genesis of workplace occupations and the extent to which the tactic may be of benefit in particular circumstances to workers facing redundancy. It also contextualises the tactic in relation to both collective mobilisation and bargaining theories in employment relations.

C2 to the Tactical Edge

AbstractThe United States and Allied Maritime domain dominance of sea approaches, lengthy coastlines, and associated rivers and ports is essential. At risk are the security and the economies of the United States and allied countries. The classical Mahan strategies for control of the maritime domain are the role of ships of the line, submarines, and aircraft in roles for Sea and Choke Points Control and Amphibious Assault. Current threats have proven the need to extend tactical response options beyond the ship's hull to its boats and RHIBs used for security and “combatant” craft roles including antipiracy, antidrug, illegal trade, and border security. The stakes are high for these “outside the hull” craft operations because the threats beyond the ship's hull are increasingly more capable and violent and the legal stakes are frequently international in nature. Positive control of these boats is also required for safety‐at‐sea in darkness and rough sea states. Under these conditions command and control (C2) functions similar to the capabilities of ships of the line are now required to be extended to the ship's manned craft in a distributed defensive and offensive role outside the hull of the ship. The ASNE topics list suggested “Engineering the Fighter Integer … into a Distributed Defense Architecture.” This paper will address the potential threat scenarios, the associated C2 requirements for success, and postulate C2 solutions as available to the United States and allied navies for distributed defensive and offensive architectures for the manned boats beyond the hull of the ship: we call this, “C2 to the Tactical Edge.”

Observing Cognitive Complexity in Primates and Cetaceans

This paper on cognitive complexity in primates and cetaceans is a review of studies that use onlyobservational methods. These studies include descriptive accounts, both qualitative and quantitative,of behavior-in-context in naturally-occurring and quasi-experimental settings, especially involvingthe micro-analysis of video. To unify this piecemeal but burgeoning literature, “cognition” is taken asembodied, largely visible, and distributed across physical and social environments. Its study involvesdocumenting the adaptation of behavior to changing conditions, especially in ontogeny, tool-use, andsocial discourse. The studies selected for this review focus on the cognitive complexity that isapparent in the versatility, the hierarchical organization, and the long-term patterning of suchbehavioral adaptations. Versatility is seen, for example, in the substitution of different acts or objectsinto established routines, in the size and flexibility of action repertoires that enable variablyconfigured and sequenced performances, and in the marked occurrence of individual differences.Hierarchical organization is seen in the substitution or iteration of a subroutine that fails to disrupt itslarger routine, in the simultaneous embedding of one social interaction within the frame of another(as in “social tool” use), and in the insertion of a novel or borrowed subroutine as a tactical response,especially one that temporarily redirects an animal‟s trajectory. The complexity apparent in long-termpatterning includes tracking and making selective use of multiple histories (e.g., concerning kinship,rank, etc.) whose predictions and tactics may vary, responding to “market” values that change withecological and social factors, and exploiting traditions of practice which provide social and materialresources that shape engagement and learning. While this literature includes far more primate thancetacean examples, the primate work offers helpful suggestions for settings, issues, and techniquesthat could be adapted to the sensori-motor, ecological, and social constraints on cetacean cognition.The array of observations reviewed illustrate the utility across species of scoring such parameters asdisplays of attention in multiple modalities, abrupt trajectory changes, the complementarity andcontingency of actions, and the resiliency of sequences, to help identify the media that matter in agiven cognitive ecology. Systematic micro-analyses, in conjunction with long-term relational datathat track changes in affordances and coordination, make such observational approaches a viable andvaluable addition to the study of comparative cognition.

Potential for foliar phosphorus fertilisation of dryland cereal crops: a review

Although not commonly used in dryland cropping systems to date, foliar phosphorus (P) fertilisation may allow a tactical response to prevailing seasonal climatic conditions, with the added benefit of reduced input costs at sowing. However, variable outcomes have been reported from field trials predominantly conducted in the USA, and to a lesser degree in Australia. The effectiveness of foliar P is dependent on soil P status, soil water status, crop type, fertiliser formulation and prevailing climatic conditions. This review argues that the potential of foliar P fertilisation in Australian dryland cereal cropping could be enhanced by altering formulations for enhanced leaf penetration using adjuvants, and by accurately assessing the responsiveness of sites before application. This review demonstrates that it is important to use appropriate techniques such as isotopic labelling, to measure the efficacy and mode of action of foliar formulations.

Flying Leaves: Between Berlioz and Wagner

Abstract This article analyzes the writings of Berlioz on Wagner and, to a lesser extent, of Wagner on Berlioz, emphasizing the covert innuendoes of their verbal sparring during the period surrounding the Tannhäuser debacle at the Paris Opéra (1860) and Berlioz's tribulations with Les Troyens (ca. 1853–63). Because Berlioz's style and subtlety have worked against him in this famous rivalry, the priority goes to him, and especially to his magnum opus as critic, the volume A travers chants (1862). A selection from thirty years of music criticism both serious and light ("flying leaves"), A travers chants reveals itself as an unconventional counterpart to Wagner's treatises; as a tactical response to Wagner, both in the reprinted review of his 1860 concerts and in the structure, themes, and allusions of the text as a whole; as an object lesson in reading Berlioz, whose engaging clarity and humor can be more deceptive, in their ironic undertones, than the thickets of Wagner's famously tangled prose. This article interrogates some of that prose, revealing Wagner's deep ambivalence toward a predecessor of intimidating prestige to whom his music is frequently indebted—as Berlioz occasionally finds coded ways of reminding him. It shows Berlioz, for his part, continually sympathetic to the younger man's practical difficulties and high artistic ideals. And it shows him eventually coming to acknowledge the power and legitimacy of his music, despite strong aversion to Wagner's harmonic idiom and to the two cardinal points of his aesthetic: an "impious" insistence on the primacy of the word; belief in a musical progress culminating in his own Gesamtkunstwerk. In a late letter wrongly omitted from the Correspondance générale (its authenticity and correct date are here established), Berlioz movingly implies the injustice of his earlier prejudice toward a practice sanctioned by his own unshakeable creed of artistic freedom.

Storying: dream and deployment

The essay discusses how a militarised community deploys story-telling against actual military deployment and explains how the author attempts a similar tactical response in writing a novel on the subject. The master narrative of militarism subsumes/shatters the small stories of daily life in the village but these stories are re-instated/re-deployed through subversive modes of narrativising. Using lived and told stories from the total war (1987–1989) waged by the Philippine government against communist insurgency – a war that affected the author's home region – the essay argues that the military term to deploy is, in fact, overturned by the civilian population as they dream up alternative stories.