Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Planning: Toward a Participatory Approach to Human Security
Achieving human security requires strategic peacebuilding; and too often, critical steps in this sequence are missing, or conducted by different groups of people without coordination. The Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Handbook aims to improve the effectiveness of peacebuilding by better linking practical conflict assessment exercises to self-assessment, theories of change, designing and planning, and monitoring and evaluation of peacebuilding efforts. Recognizing that many groups skimp on assessment fearing an analysis paralysis, or design programs based on untested assumptions, this approach provides basic as well as advanced tools to improve peacebuilding practice. This concise and lucid handbook tackles the problem of too much data by suggesting ways to sort, categorize and prioritize data to make it useful. Through its synthesis of a wide range of conceptual frameworks into a convenient and logical framework useful for practitioners such as NGOs developing projects, journalists wanting to write conflict-sensitive stories, or government/military agencies designing large scale efforts, the Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Handbook is an essential scholarly and practical tool for the study and implementation of peacebuilding efforts.
The high cost of accurate knowledge
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Numerical analysis of surface crack propagation in flexible pavements using XFEM and cohesive zone model
Surface initiated (top-down) cracking in the longitudinal direction of pavements has become a predominant mode of failure in thick asphalt pavements. Most previous researchers studied crack propagation using the traditional Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) method by calculating the stress intensity factor around the crack tip. In this paper, Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was used to study the key factors causing surface initiated crack propagation under surface tension and/or shear. A two-dimensional (2-D) finite element (FE) model for a two-lane flexible pavement was built to predict pavement responses and crack propagation potential under various scenarios. It was found that surface tension is the major driving force for crack propagation when the crack is at some distance away from tire loading. The results show that the distance from the location of crack to tire loading, the depth and direction of the crack, and the modulus ratio between the hot-mix asphalt (HMA) layer and the base layer have significant influences on crack propagation under surface tension. On the other hand, this study shows that shear stress can induce surface initiated crack propagation near the loading area as the shear resistance of material becomes low at the high temperature.