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The detection of an adversary in secret image sharing has been a problematic side in the reconstruction phase. Some of verifiable secret sharing solutions have been proposed to solve the problem. However, there is some computational limitation in the previous schemes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the importance of consistency for detecting an adversary in a secure reconstruction phase. Strong t-consistency assures the correctness of reconstructed secret as long as participants P ∈ N and n(P) = t. Consistency is a solution for preventing the participant to be absent and helps the dealer to easily detect the adversary without an additional verification step.

This paper focuses on secure reconstruction, and uses two different approaches, namely, single-secret and multi-secret, to experiment the relationship between the given variable (t,m,n) and the adversaries by observing the quality test result, polynomial approach and visualization.

The results show that t and m are inversely proportional to the image quality without respect to the polynomial approach. The reconstruction phase is declared as securely conducted when m = 2t − 1, for both single- and multi-secret approaches.

The application of consistency is a considerable step for securing the secret from an adversary by combining the reconstruction phase and the consistency combination at once, removing the need for additional separate verification steps for decreasing the computational time, especially in secret image sharing.

Despite the extensive research on post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP), there is a paucity of studies that examine critical challenges for the project practices in post-war-developing countries, particularly, Africa. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key project management challenges impacting the post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP) during the construction and planning stages in Angola, with an aim to fill the knowledge gap.

The primary data was collected from 130 project management practitioners working with planning, provincial government organisations including consultants, and contractors within the Angolan public sectors organisations. Response data was subjected to descriptive statistics, mean scores, and inferential statistics (One sample t-tests) and Kendall's concordance.

The descriptive and empirical analysis demonstrated a disparity of the ranking of the 21challenges affecting the PDRP among the groups; with statistically significant differences amongst the 10 challenges. Based on the overall sample, 6 out of 10 critical challenges are between (24–25) levels of agreement close to the mean. The results of the mean score ranking indicate that “working with poor or restricted access to location”, “project culture that fits the needs of local people”; “improving the capacity of local government”, “minimizing the negative effects of local people” and “relocation issues by establishing property rights during the reconstruction project” were the five critical challenges to managing PDRP whereas “improving information and communication processes”, “securing adequate resources (material and machinery)”, “dealing with rising costs of materials and labour” were considered to be the least critical.

The study was restricted to one province and Country (out of 18) namely, Luanda, Angola. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized to public sector organisations operating in different countries with different contexts, political settings and disaster complexities.

The establishment of challenges in PDRPs helps the key stakeholders by providing the foundation to project teams to address the challenges during planning and construction stages, and thus improving project delivery in the future. Understanding the uniqueness of PDRPs and interdependency of project management from the implementing organization is of particular value for the managers of future projects and other decision-makers, especially in the emerging countries. Moreover, the findings could be used to reflect on the need to formulate policies appropriate to post disaster environments, which among other issues could address building policies, which could include land ownership regulations and procedures together with property rights.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the subject within a previously unexplored post-war context with a focus on public organizations perspective. The study provides insights on the challenges affecting the post-disaster reconstruction across the Angolan public sector.

The wave of popular unrest in the Arab world reached Syria in March 2011, and what started as peaceful demonstrations with simple demands of justice and freedom turned into a brutal armed conflict and a full-scale civil war. Over seven years of conflict resulted in the deaths of over half a million Syrians, the forced displacement of millions more, and a huge loss of the country's social and physical structures. What began as another Arab Spring movement against a dictatorial regime has turned into a proxy war that has attracted the interests of the world and regional powers. The paper discusses Syria's political history and investigates the motives for the Syrian uprising and argues that it is related to socio-economic deprivations rather than sectarianism. The work underlines the interests of the countries involved in the Syrian conflict focusing on Russia, USA, Iran, and Turkey, as well as their contribution to the future reconstruction of the country.

Over the past few years, the Syrian regime and its allies targeted many cities and destroyed opposition-held neighborhoods. The work considers if this destruction was part of an overall strategy adopted by the al-Assad regime to terrorize those who opposed it and change Syria demographically, examining the new laws issued by the government to transfer public properties into the hands of its loyal businessmen factions, as in the case of the reconstruction project in the city of Homs.

Seven years of war exhausted Syria's financial stocks, and the country (and in turn the regime) is suffering the consequences of military spending. But like any other war, destruction is also a great opportunity to generate money through reconstruction and growth. It is a “win-win situation”; the regime will use the fund designated for reviving the country to its own benefit, gaining future profits. Already invested in the conflict, involved countries will be part of the reconstruction process to secure their presence and control in Syria.

United Nations agencies like UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) are working closely with the Syrian regime and its governmental representatives. This research examines their involvement and how their ‘humanitarian mission' is being exploited to prop up the al-Assad regime.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss policy-relevant findings regarding strategies for mainstreaming gender in achieving sustainable post-disaster reconstruction (PDR).

An exploratory case study was used to explore the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategies and the link to sustainable PDR. The Bantul and Sleman regencies of Yogyakarta province provide a unique site for researching PDR as they are located in a region that is more strongly affected by earthquakes than nearly any other in Indonesia. Data were collected through interviews with 17 key stakeholders and 26 beneficiaries who were involved during and after the earthquake. To support the interview findings, surveys involving 50 policy makers and 150 beneficiaries were conducted. Content analysis and t-statistics were used in analyzing the data.

Gender mainstreaming strategies within sustainable reconstruction should incorporate strategies for protecting against gender vulnerabilities and for promoting gender capacities. Both are fundamental to the achievement of sustainable PDR.

The paper establishes comprehensive strategies for mainstreaming gender under three pillars (i.e. economic, social and environmental) of sustainable development. The findings benefit relevant policy makers by improving the policy performance of gender mainstreaming in the affected communities in enhancing sustainable PDR.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a usable configuration management for Archistar, which utilizes secret sharing for redundantly storing data over multiple independent storage clouds in a secure and privacy-friendly manner. Selecting the optimal secret sharing parameters, cloud storage servers and other settings for securely storing the secret data shares, while meeting all of end user’s requirements and other restrictions, is a complex task. In particular, complex trade-offs between different protection goals and legal privacy requirements need to be made.

A human-centered design approach with structured interviews and cognitive walkthroughs of user interface mockups with system administrators and other technically skilled users was used.

Even technically skilled users have difficulties to adequately select secret sharing parameters and other configuration settings for adequately securing the data to be outsourced.

Through these automatic settings, not only system administrators but also non-technical users will be able to easily derive suitable configurations.

The authors present novel human computer interaction (HCI) guidelines for a usable configuration management, which propose to automatically set configuration parameters and to solve trade-offs based on the type of data to be stored in the cloud. Through these automatic settings, not only system administrators but also non-technical users will be able to easily derive suitable configurations.

Public investment programming is a complex exercise and involves a number of factors. These include social, economical, environmental, technological and political factors. In addition, each of the factors depends on many subfactors. For example, the economic factor depends on project impact on local and national economy, number of beneficiaries, and opportunity cost of work lost. The Public Projects Programming System (3PS) is mainly a decision support system aimed at helping senior decision makers in the public sector to program the implementation of public investment projects. A multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach was used based on the weighted average multi‐criteria analysis (WAMA) model. The structure (database, model base, and user interface) of the 3PS is presented. A case study, in the northern suburbs of Beirut, shows the implementation of the system in a real post conflict reconstruction environment in Lebanon.

The jurisprudence concerning the regulation of mergers and acquisitions in the Indian context, from the perspective of competition law, is vast. Mergers and acquisitions in India have been regulated by the Indian Companies Act, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act and several sector specific legislations. After their notification in June 2011, Ss. 5 and 6 of the Competition Act read with the Combination Regulations of 2011 is the primary law that currently governs this field. In this paper, the authors, using a comparative perspective, analyse whether the present legal regime is effective in tackling the problems associated with regulating mergers in the Indian and international context. These problems include identifying the appropriate market definition, devising an effective test to weed out mergers that cause an “appreciable adverse competition”, understanding the roles of the multiple sector‐specific regulatory bodies, inter alia. It is concluded that the present regime does not deal with several of these important concerns.

The approach is both analytical and comparative. This paper provides an in‐depth study of a recent development in the law relating to mergers and acquisitions in India, which has cross‐border implications.

The paper shows that the application of Ss. 5 and 6 of the Indian Competition Act has serious flaws which need to be ironed out.

As the notification is recent, there is no substantive writing in the field. This paper bridges that gap. Also, this paper provides comparative perspectives, juxtaposing the Indian regime with the US and EU regimes where applicable.