联合国可持续发展目标6（清洁饮水与卫生设施）监测评估：进展与展望

"清洁饮水和卫生设施"(SDG 6)是联合国17个可持续发展目标之一,但截至目前,世界并未走在实现SDG 6的正确轨道上。为了改变这种状况并重新带领世界走上实现SDG 6的道路,联合国倡议并启动了包括融资、数据和信息、能力发展、创新、治理5个方面内容的"SDG 6全球加速框架"。文章从服务于SDG 6指标监测评估的数据和信息角度,分析了当前全球范围内的数据进展、地球大数据技术在SDG 6指标监测评估中的应用情况,总结了全球SDG 6监测评估中存在的2个方面问题:(1)仍缺乏可持续生产的高精度指标数据集;(2)缺乏集数据获取、指标计算、目标评估为一体的运行化系统。在此基础上,提出了建立面向SDG6全目标指标体系监测评估的标准化统计报表与技术指南,以及搭建系统平台的建议。     

The serendipitous impact of COVID-19 pandemic: A rare opportunity for research and practice

In this opinion paper, I argue that the Covid-19 pandemic, as tragic and disastrous as it undoubtedly is, has also given us a rare opportunity to deeply examine the research and practice of information management in particular and information systems in general. To cope with the pandemic, we have retreated to the digital world and drastically changed the way we work. Yet these very practices can well shape the way we work in the post-pandemic world. Moreover, the pandemic is also a sharp lens through which we can study deep-rooted theoretical issues that otherwise would not have surfaced, or at least remained in the background. My call to the research community is to seize this rare opportunity.     

地球大数据促进联合国可持续发展目标实现

2015年,联合国通过17项可持续发展目标(SDGs),涵盖经济、社会、环境三大领域,其为各国全面转向可持续发展指明方向。然而,数据缺失、发展不均衡、目标间关联且相互制约等问题对于SDGs落实造成制约,2020年全球新冠肺炎疫情的暴发更加剧了各国实现SDGs面临的挑战。文章重点介绍中国科学院战略性先导科技专项(A类)"地球大数据科学工程"(CASEarth)开展的可持续发展科学卫星、可持续发展大数据信息平台系统、SDG指标监测与评估等研究工作,并对可持续发展大数据国际研究中心的科学定位、核心任务及研究内容等进行介绍。文章提出了需提升SDGs数据服务能力,加强SDG指标监测与评估科学研究,研发SDGs科学系列卫星,建设科技创新促进可持续发展智库,以及提供面向发展中国家的教育和培训等发展建议。     

地球大数据助力“可持续城市和社区”目标实现：进展与挑战

"可持续城市和社区"(SDG 11)是实现所有17项联合国可持续发展目标(SDGs)的核心。然而,普遍存在的数据缺失问题导致目前SDG 11指标监测与评估工作的开展仍面临巨大挑战。地球大数据作为科技创新和大数据的重要组成部分,在促进城市可持续发展方面能够发挥关键作用。文章重点围绕城市可持续发展的6个主题,包括城市住房、城市公共交通、城镇化、城市灾害、空气质量、开放公共空间,基于地球大数据技术,针对相应的多个具体指标,在中国尺度上开展进展监测和综合评估。在上述分析的基础上,文章总结了SDG 11实现面临的挑战;并提出了构建可持续发展大数据信息平台、加强科学技术在SDG 11实现中的杠杆作用、积极开展SDG 11综合应用示范,以及加强国内外相关机构的科技合作等建议和举措。     

Reflections on Roberta Lamb,Social Actor

Information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the lives of people at the operative level; it is less clear in what ways and to what extent it has changed the way people feel and develop as human beings. We create excellent means, but are we feeling better and getting better, and by what criteria should we evaluate our progress? Operative power is needed for the human progress, but it is not enough. In this article we consider the traditional values of knowledge, goodness (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics) as the criteria of human progress, and how our embrace of ICT has affected our advance toward these values. We round up our discussion with reflections on aspects of human nature that lead people along the ways of knowledge, goodness, and beauty, and also those that hinder such advancement.     

地球大数据促进土地退化零增长目标实现：实践与展望

联合国2015年通过的《变革我们的世界:2030年可持续发展议程》中,土地退化零增长是可持续发展目标(SDGs)的重要具体目标(SDG 15.3)。由于不同地理、气候和土地利用类型条件下土地退化具有不同的表征,土地退化和恢复过程涉及的自然和人为因素的复杂性,时间和空间尺度的限定性,长期以来缺乏被普遍接受的土地退化评估指标和方法。SDG 15.3的参考基准、进展监测等关键数据,仍处于严重缺乏状态,影响了SDG 15.3的实现进程。地球大数据作为数据密集型科学范式的典型代表,为解决SDG 15.3的数据空缺提供了可能。文章围绕SDG 15.3基准确定和进展监测2个方向,介绍了实现SDG 15.3面临的主要挑战、地球大数据的潜力及已经开展的实践,并展望了地球大数据促进SDG 15.3实现的发展趋势。     

Minerva’s owl. A response to John Houghton and Charles Oppenheim’s ‘The economic implications of alternative publishing models’

As the twenty-first century approaches … the possibilities of a univerally opulent society being realised have appeared in the sense that [Adam] Smith envisioned it, and the information society that will emerge from the computer communications revolution will be a society that actually moves towards a universal society of plenty … this is what I mean by “Computopia” (Masuda)

Our culture … is already committed to the proposition that the only legitimate knowledge we can gain of our world is that yielded by science. All thinking, dreaming, feeling, indeed all other sources of insight have already be delegitimated. The indoctrination of our children's minds with simplistic and uninformed computer idolatory … is a pandemic phenomenon (Weizenbaum)²     

Information technologies and the tragedy of the Good Will

Information plays a major role in any moral action. ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) have revolutionized the life of information, from its production and management to its consumption, thus deeply affecting our moral lives. Amid the many issues they have raised, a very serious one, discussed in this paper, is labelled the tragedy of the Good Will. This is represented by the increasing pressure that ICT and their deluge of information are putting on any agent who would like to act morally, when informed about actual or potential evils, but who also lacks the resources to do much about them. In the paper, it is argued that the tragedy may be at least mitigated, if not solved, by seeking to re-establish some equilibrium, through ICT themselves, between what agents know about the world and what they can do to improve it.     

COVID-19, digital privacy,and the social limits on data-focused public health responses

The implementation of digital contact tracing applications around the world to help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most ambitious uses of massive-scale citizen data ever attempted. There is major divergence among nations, however, between a “privacy-first” approach which protects citizens’ data at the cost of extremely limited access for public health authorities and researchers, and a “data-first” approach which stores large amounts of data which, while of immeasurable value to epidemiologists and other researchers, may significantly intrude upon citizens’ privacy. The lack of a consensus on privacy protection in the contact tracing process creates risks of non-compliance or deliberate obfuscation from citizens who fear revealing private aspects of their lives – a factor greatly exacerbated by recent major scandals over online privacy and the illicit use of citizens’ digital information, which have heightened public consciousness of these issues and created significant new challenges for any collection of large-scale public data. While digital contact tracing for COVID-19 remains in its infancy, the lack of consensus around best practices for its implementation and for reassuring citizens of the protection of their privacy may already have impeded its capacity to contribute to the pandemic response.     

基于网络系统的结构分析和统计学方法构建中国可持续发展目标的关键目标和核心指标

2015年联合国通过了《2030年可持续发展议程》,确立了17项全球可持续发展总体目标和169项具体目标,同时制定了232项指标监测可持续发展进程。可持续发展目标(SDGs)之间以及指标之间相互关联,构成了一个不可分割的复杂系统。文章用51个指标和中国的时序列数据,对相应的108个目标构成的关联网络进行定量化评价。通过社会网络分析和主成分分析,识别出17个关键目标和17项核心指标。17个核心指标可以解释51项指标95%以上的信息量。用此方法构建的核心指标既可大幅减少统计工作量,又可以达到全面监测可持续发展进程的目的。建议在实施《中国落实2030年可持续发展议程国别方案》的初级阶段将17个关键目标列为优先领域,重点突破。同时,通过强化相关目标的正协同效应和防范规避负协同效应,全面提升该落实方案的实施效果。     

Determinants of mHealth success: An empirical investigation of the user perspective

Mobile health (mHealth) applications have become an important tool to support public health, especially in times of increased health awareness in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is still uncertainty about what factors determine successful mHealth services from the users’ perspective. Based on the results of a systematic literature review, a qualitative content analysis of available apps and semi-structured user and expert interviews, we derive a structural model with antecedents on user attitudes towards mHealth and user satisfaction with the mHealth application. These variables determine users’ intention to continue using the application and their intention to recommend it to others. For verification, we tested the model with a sample of 249 German mHealth users from the “MyFitnessPal” community using structural equation modelling and found that all derived path relations have significant coefficients.     

拉美和加勒比可持续发展进展及与中国合作展望

中国与拉美和加勒比同为维护世界和平与发展的重要力量,同是彼此的重要合作伙伴,在落实《2030年可持续发展议程》(简称"2030议程")上有着共同的责任和广泛的合作空间。文章首先分析了拉美和加勒比千年发展目标的落实情况;进而基于可持续发展目标指数(SDG Index)及其指示板(SDG Dashboards),重点分析了拉美和加勒比实现17项可持续发展目标(SDGs)的机遇和挑战;随后分析了拉美和加勒比落实2030议程的政策和措施;最后提出了基于2030议程的中国-拉美和加勒比可持续发展合作的政策建议。     

Information technology solutions,challenges, and suggestions for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic

Various technology innovations and applications have been developed to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic also has implications for the design, development, and use of technologies. There is an urgent need for a greater understanding of what roles information systems and technology researchers can play in this global pandemic. This paper examines emerging technologies used to mitigate the threats of COVID-19 and relevant challenges related to technology design, development, and use. It also provides insights and suggestions into how information systems and technology scholars can help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper helps promote future research and technology development to produce better solutions for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics.     

Artificial moral agents: moral mentors or sensible tools?

The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis of the notion of artificial moral agent (AMA) and of its impact on human beings’ self-understanding as moral agents. Firstly, I introduce the topic by presenting what I call the Continuity Approach. Its main claim holds that AMAs and human moral agents exhibit no significant qualitative difference and, therefore, should be considered homogeneous entities. Secondly, I focus on the consequences this approach leads to. In order to do this I take into consideration the work of Bostrom and Dietrich, who have radically assumed this viewpoint and thoroughly explored its implications. Thirdly, I present an alternative approach to AMAs—the Discontinuity Approach—which underscores an essential difference between human moral agents and AMAs by tackling the matter from another angle. In this section I concentrate on the work of Johnson and Bryson and I highlight the link between their claims and Heidegger’s and Jonas’s suggestions concerning the relationship between human beings and technological products. In conclusion I argue that, although the Continuity Approach turns out to be a necessary postulate to the machine ethics project, the Discontinuity Approach highlights a relevant distinction between AMAs and human moral agents. On this account, the Discontinuity Approach generates a clearer understanding of what AMAs are, of how we should face the moral issues they pose, and, finally, of the difference that separates machine ethics from moral philosophy.     

流感大流行带来的启示

人类历史上曾暴发过4次流感大流行,即1918年＂西班牙流感＂、1957年＂亚洲流感＂、1968年＂香港流感＂和2009年＂北美流感＂,每一次流感大流行都给全球公共卫生、社会经济等带来极大危害。本文从流感的流行史、流行的特点、死亡率等流行病学特征进行探讨,为全面认识流感,正确面对和科学防控流感大流行提供借鉴。     

Social innovation and employment in the digital age: The case of the connect employment shuttles in Spain

The digital revolution has shaped the modern world in unprecedented ways. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the value of digital technologies. As the health crisis’ effect rippled through economic, political, and social structures worldwide, it also accelerated the adoption of digital tools to pool expertise, ideas, and capacities for generating solutions to the pandemic’s short- and long-term implications. One of the areas where major challenges have arisen is employment.In the whole panorama of digital social innovation in Spain, we find an experience that can be described as outstanding and that links employment and digitalization. However, despite being highly successful, there is hardly any academic literature on this experience. The Connect Employment Shuttles will be the subject of specific in-depth analysis in this article. This is a socially innovative program that has been developed since 2020 in collaboration with the Santa María la Real Foundation. The Connect Employment Shuttles are an existing model specialization, the Employment Shuttles, but applied in the field of digitalization. In this article, we present the origin of the Employment Shuttles and the differences between them and other labor market integration initiatives, their constituent elements, and the social impact they exert.The research question of our study is whether this innovative mechanism combining employment and digitalization is valid and reliable. The answer is particularly relevant for private and public entities interested in implementing effective measures against unemployment, especially in vulnerable groups. The main contribution of this study is the systematized presentation of the experience of the Connect Employment Shuttles and its results so far, being the major limitation is the scarcity and dispersion of information sources.     

Bibliometric Evaluation of Researchers in the Internet Age

Research evaluation, which is an increasingly pressing issue, invariably relies on citation counts. In this contribution we highlight two concerns that the research community needs to pay attention to. One, in the world of search engine facilitated research, factors such as ease of Web discovery, ease of access, and content relevance, rather than quality, influence what gets read and cited. Two, research evaluation based on citation counts works against many types of high-quality works. We also elaborate on the implications of these points by examining a recent nationwide evaluation of researchers performed in Italy. We focus on our discipline (computer science), but we believe that our observations have relevance for a broad audience.     

The role of IS in the covid-19 pandemic: A liquid-modern perspective

History shows that pandemics can catalyse enormous change, fundamentally transforming the way people make sense of the world. Technologies can also be catalysts of change. While digital technologies are playing a vital role in tackling the covid-19 pandemic, the pandemic also presents a significant opportunity for digital technologies. Some experts believe the pandemic may permanently normalise the comprehensive societal use of digital technologies. This article casts a critical eye over the potential implications of this opportunity in the context of information systems (IS) research and development. We introduce and outline selected principles of Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity. We then apply the liquid-modern principles to illustrative examples drawn from the covid-19 literature by focussing on three areas of established information systems interest: control, big data and information privacy. We show that traditional conceptualisations of scientific and societal order and control need to be reassessed; that big data alone cannot order clear and safe paths out of the current crisis and that information privacy regulations are irrelevant when undermined or circumvented by public and private actors. We conclude by making four recommendations for IS pandemic researchers and five practical recommendations in the context of the pandemic.     

GAWA – Manager for accessibility Wayfinding apps

With this work, we propose and validate a new service system in the context of Wayfinding services to improve the SmartCities mechanism: smart mobility, smart people, smart governance and smart living services. Steering and navigation tasks through an environment constitute an essential activity in our daily lives. They have a high degree of practical value in a variety of domains, such as public area design, architectural Wayfinding, geo-positioning and navigation, as well as urban planning and environmental design. At times, people with a visual impairment may also have problems in navigating autonomously and without personal assistance, especially in unknown environments (outdoor and indoor) using a smartphone. There could also be emergency situations in which the receiving of information in real time could be crucial. People with motor disabilities usually need information to avoid environments with obstacles, to arrive at a target or to manage touchscreens in daily activities and different environments. The use of landmarks is therefore vitally important in human navigation. Wayfinding systems must change, given that according to the United Nations (UN) Development Program, people with a disability represent around 10% of the world’s population, which is approximately 650 million people. Additionally, according to the World Health Organization, the world’s population of people 60 years of age and older has doubled since 1980 and is predicted to reach 2 billion by 2050. Most Wayfinding applications in the Smartphone market suffer from at least one of the following problems: the information is not dynamic, the design is not universal or the interface is not adapted to different users and preferences. Accordingly, apps do not currently have a universal design. The GAWA platform provides a universal and accessible solution to manage Wayfinding applications that focuses on people with a disability in outdoor and indoor environments in Smartcities. According to the results, the platform could be used for performing activities in their daily lives.