Crowdsourcing Dispute Resolution

After almost one decade of active research into human computation and crowdsourcing, several approaches and business models based on crowdsourcing have emerged, managing and distributing work to the crowd. Dispute resolution approaches may incorporate crowdsourcing as a step to retrieve relevant data. The reverse relationship has also become a tendency, where crowdsourcing approaches are close to incorporate dispute resolution techniques to perform quality control and data aggregation or filtering. This chapter provides an introduction to crowdsourcing and its relationship with dispute resolution. A discussion regarding the apparent symbiotic relationship between these two research domains is also presented, along with an overview of several approaches and use cases of particular interest.

Conflict Resolution Problem Solving with Bio-Inspired Metaheuristics

This chapter addresses nature and bio-inspired metaheuristics in the context of conflict detection and resolution problems. An approach is presented for a generalization of a population-based bio-inspired search and optimization algorithm, which is depicted for three of the most well-known and firmly established methods: the genetic algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the differential evolution algorithm. This integrated approach to a basic general population-based bio-inspired algorithm is presented for single-objective optimization, multi-objective optimization and many-objective optimization. A revision of these three main bio-inspired algorithms is presented for conflict resolution problems in diverse application areas. A bridge between feedback controller design, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization and differential evolution is established using a conflict resolution approach. Finally, some perspectives concerning future trends of more recent bio-inspired meta-heuristics is presented.

Restorative Justice and Technology

In civil law countries, criminal justice is beginning to experience a shift from retributive justice towards restorative justice. Amongst other goals, restorative justice aims to give the victim a pivotal role in the administration of justice, which until now, with the traditional criminal justice, has not happened at a desirable level. It covers very different processes, but victim-offender mediation is certainly the most established one. Although an online version of the victim-offender mediation model is yet to be implemented, we believe that it could be a relevant alternative to an offline setting. It is nevertheless clear that further studies are necessary to fully comprehend the extent of the structure and implications of a ODR system for criminal conflicts.

Conflict and Its Different Dimensions

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the nature of conflict from a computer science perspective, throwing to light an up to date review of the evolution and state-of-the-art of the intersection of conflict with technology-assisted systems and tools. The objective is to design a document to organize existing literature, provide a baseline understanding in place of an agreed definition of conflict, depict relevant conflict aspects (dimensions), and made overall evaluation of a range of methods and techniques of conflict resolution. It was also explored the challenges that individuals face in using online technology for collaboration and conflict resolution and management purposes. Finally, is presented some preliminary work regarding the most suitable technologies to implement a technological framework for handling conflict in a digital environment.

Organisational Conflict and Its Management

This chapter concerns itself with defining conflict and discusses the value it provides to organizations engaging in conflicts. The chapter is structured so that first we will provide a brief on the need to study conflict and negotiations in organizations. Then the discussion will move to the different drivers of organizational conflicts and will conclude with a typology of the different conflicts that exist within organizations. The third section will focus on the models (life-cycles) of conflicts that are available in conflict literature. The final section will focus on the different conflict handling techniques that are available. This section will include a discussion on the different conflict handling styles and negotiation tactics, and a brief on the process of alternate dispute resolution in conflict management.

Conflict Resolution in Robotics

A long-term goal in Robotics is developing autonomous systems able to assist and support human beings, especially in hazardous and/or repetitive tasks. So, these robotic systems will share their workspace with other robots, people or both of them, possibly having different goals and needs. This fact may result in a conflict that should be solved for properly achieving the intended goals. However, there is no a universal way to do it since different scenarios and behaviours lead to different kinds of conflicts. In addition, execution time is a critical issue in the Robotics field and has to be taken into account when a conflict resolution technique is developed. In this chapter we will discuss the state-of-the-art algorithms applied to several robotic tasks from assembly and disassembly in industrial settings to multi-robot cooperation through collision avoidance in unstructured, crowded environments. So, a deep analysis will highlight approach's applications and utilities, as well as their limitations.

Real-Time Detection of Pedestrians

Real-time pedestrian detection is a key technology for video surveillance. A widespread approach for detecting pedestrians is the use of color information. In recent times, the use of thermal infrared cameras has revealed to be an excellent alternative that offers good results in people segmentation. Nonetheless, thermal infrared cameras are very sensitive to the overall heat detected at each image. Moreover, a great amount of infrared images has low spatial resolution and lower sensitivity than visible spectrum images due to the technological limitations of infrared cameras. This chapter introduces a comparison of three different algorithms for real-time and robust pedestrian detection in the infrared spectrum. The aim of the paper is to look for the best algorithms prepared to resolve the conflicts that arise in the detection process in image sequences. We propose to use simple rules as conflict resolution mechanism when the outputs of the three algorithms do not coincide.

Intelligent Tutoring

Society has been changing dynamically over the years and technology has been boosting that change. Teaching, as a social activity has not been changing at the same speed. Technology enhanced learning, arises as a way to cope with that challenge, opening new paths for learning. However, sometimes it becomes difficult to cope with student´s challenges: interest, motivation, attention, are difficult to achieve with the so called net-generation. With an amazing new world at the touch of their fingers, the focus is on new, challenging and interesting things, leaving very little room to other activities. Keeping students in the right track, interested and motivated is in fact an enormous challenge. Fatigue and stress play an important role in this equation: they can dramatically decrease students' performance. Controlling these factors, in such a way that´s unaware by students, is the best way to achieve better results, as the data gathering process does not interfere with the parameters being monitored. The aim is to forecast negative situations taking some actions to mitigate them.

Opinion Aggregation and Conflict Resolution in E-Government Platforms

This chapter presents an account of recent advances in the development of a novel e-participation framework which integrates social networks, intelligent information retrieval and argumentation techniques. We discuss a novel conceptualization for Electronic Empowerment Participation (E2P), a radically new perspective on e-Participation, where collective thinking patterns can be identified under the generic form of “arguments”, being contrasted automatically and enhancing thus the abilities of the different stakeholders to engage in creative participatory processes. The underlying machinery that makes E2P possible is given by agreement technologies, a new metaphor that integrates several aspects from database theory, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems and social infrastructures. A core component in this conceptualization is an underlying argument-based approach, which allows to mine opinions from text-based information items based on incrementally generated topics.

Agreement Technologies for Conflict Resolution

Recently, artificial intelligence, has emerged as a new source of scientific works in conflict resolution. The interest in conflict resolution lies in diverse reasons. One of the main reasons is that computational systems have gradually shifted towards a distributed paradigm where heterogeneous entities should include computational conflict resolution mechanisms, such as proposed by agreement technologies. This chapter gives an overview of these technologies, which are needed in order to ensure the accomplishment of the global system goal and to solve conflicts. Among agreement technologies, automated negotiation is proposed as one key mechanism in conflict resolution due to its analogous use in human conflict resolution. Automated negotiation consists of an automated exchange of proposals carried out by software agents on behalf of their users. Another key technology is argumentation, which provides a fruitful means of dealing with conflicts and knowledge inconsistencies. Agents can reach agreements by engaging in argumentation dialogues with their opponents in a discussion.