We discover alignments of views between interest groups (lobbies) and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) by automatically analyzing their texts. Specifically, we do so by collecting novel datasets of lobbies’ position papers and MEPs’ speeches, and ...
Parliament dynamics might seem erratic at times. Predicting future voting patterns could support policy design based on the simulation of voting scenarios. The availability of open data on legislative activities and machine learning tools might enable such ...
Systems theory defines leverage points as places to intervene in order to change a system. Points with high impact on system behavior are notoriously hard to act upon, and indeed most policy intervention is based at the lowest level (#12 in Donella Meadows ...
Scholarly studies and common accounts of national politics enjoy pointing out the resilience of ideological divides among populations. Building on the image of political cleavages and geographic polarization, the regionalization of politics has become a tr ...
A distance bounding (DB) protocol is a two-party authentication protocol between a prover and a verifier which is based on the distance between the prover and the verifier. It aims to defeat threats by malicious provers who try to convince that they are cl ...
We consider online predictions of vote results, where regions across a country vote on an issue under discussion. Such online predictions before and during the day of the vote are useful to media agencies, polling institutes, and political parties, e.g., t ...
We consider a supply chain with one supplier and one retailer in which the parties develop a quantity flexibility contract to specify the conditions of procurement activities. The contract allows the retailer to adjust the initial order quantity after the ...
In this thesis, we explore the application of data mining and machine learning techniques to several practical problems. These problems have roots in various fields such as social science, economics, and political science. We show that computer science tec ...
In 1986, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) / Rem Koolhaas created a landscape design for the Haarlemmermeerpolder, located between Amsterdam, Leiden, and Haarlem. They were invited by urbanists and planners wanting to denounce the urban policy ...
Climate change is clearly discernible in observed climate records in Switzerland. It impacts on natural systems, ecosystems, and economic sectors such as agriculture, tourism, and energy, and it affects Swiss livelihood in various ways. The observed and pr ...
