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The purpose of this paper is to suggest to the conflict study scholars a new instrument – the “conflict volcano” that could be an effective and appropriate tool for conflict analysis.

The “conflict volcano” model was designed as a qualitative method for conflict analysis with a focus on cause analysis. It was developed on the basis of “conflict tree” which underwent modifications.

The benefit of the “conflict volcano” is that it covers all aspects of conflict starting from root cause to catalysts and can reveal a wide range of causes: material, immaterial, institutional. It clearly frames factors; this helps practitioners to determine what should be considered as causes and effects. Moreover, the “conflict volcano” reflects major theoretical representations of the conflict and its aspects. While the “conflict volcano” model can study conflict phases from latent until open violence, it cannot reflect the dynamic of conflict and cannot demonstrate its evolution to post-conflict phases.

The “conflict volcano” can be used as a conflict analysis tool by practicing experts and scholars. Academicians can use it in order to understand conflict and especially to reveal its causes. Practicing experts can use it in order to design a conflict transformation strategy.

This instrument does not pretend to be a new invention in the field of conflict studies, but rather a new conceptualization, schematization of old concepts and instruments.

The purpose of the research is to generalize the most perspective ideas of modern researchers and to form the authors’ position on the problem of the notion of legal conflict from the point of view of its application in the practice of legal conflicts management. The methodology of the research consists of structural and functional approach that allows studying legal conflict as a complex system, each element of which performed a certain function. During formulation of the notion “legal conflict,” the formal and logical method of dieresis is used, which allows differentiating legal conflicts from other social conflicts and differentiating the notion from adjacent categories. The authors study the main directions of legal conflict in the modern science. Tendencies of development of ideas of legal conflict are determined. Conclusion on the necessity for formation of “flexible” definitions of the notion “legal conflict,” oriented at their application in the practice of conflict management, is substantiated. Criticism is applied toward the researchers that try to use the methods of conflict research for analysis of purely legal phenomena (legal collisions, gaps, arguments on competence, etc.). Definition of legal conflict is formed and it is shown how it is possible to build a system of diagnostics of legal conflict on its basis. It is concluded that definition of legal conflict always sets main directions of study of the phenomenon, due to which there are different definitions of the corresponding notion, depending on researcher’s orientation at studying the conflict or means of its solution. The key sign of legal conflict is the possibility of its regulation with legal means, which is realized by the conflict participants. It is necessary to view conflict as a space of opportunities – for participants and for legal bodies. It is necessary to form and develop a system of diagnostics of legal conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development of conflict-resolution algorithms between Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) and conventional aircraft. The goal of the conflict-resolution algorithm is to estimate the minimum protection distance (MPD) which is required to avoid a potential conflict.

The conflict-resolution algorithms calculate the last location at which an RPAS must start climbing to avoid a separation minima infringement. The RPAS maneuvers to prevent the conventional aircraft based on the kinematic equations. The approach selects two parameters to model the conflict-geometry: the path-intersection angle and the Rate of Climb (ROCD).

Results confirmed that the aircraft pair flying in opposition was the worst scenario because the MPD reached its maximum value. The best value of the MPD is about 12 Nautical Miles to ensure a safe resolution of a potential conflict. Besides, variations of the ROCD concluded that the relation between the ROCD and the MPD is not proportional.

The primary limitation is that the conflict-resolution algorithms are designed in a theoretical framework without bearing in mind other factors such as communications, navigation capacity, wind and pilot errors among others. Further work should introduce these concepts to determine how the MPD varies and affects air traffic safety. Moreover, the relation between an ROCD requirement and the MPD will have an impact on regulations.

The non-linear relation between the MPD and the ROCD could be the pillar to define a standardized MPD in the future for RPAS systematic integration. To accomplish this standard, RPAS could have to fulfil a requirement of minimum ROCD until a specified flight level.

This paper is the first approach to quantify the Minimum Protection Distance between RPAS and conventional aircraft, and it can serve the aeronautical community to define new navigation requirements for RPAS.

Quantifying the burden of war (BOW) beyond battle deaths is often impossible in ongoing conflicts. Consequently, indirect consequences of war can be overlooked in public BOW discussions. This paper aims to introduce a simulation model to estimate indirect child mortality attributable to war. Yemen was chosen as the example case because indirect child mortality from war likely outpaces direct casualties in the Yemen conflict.

A fixed effects panel regression was used to estimate elasticities between child mortality rate (CMR) (the rate of deaths among children under five years of age, per 1,000 live births) and two effects of war assumed to have the greatest explanatory power toward CMR: economic deterioration (measured by changes GDP per capita) and conflict magnitude (via the Major Episodes of Political Violence dataset). These elasticities were then used in a model to estimate the CMR in Yemen up to the year 2020.

Regression results suggest that Yemen’s CMR increased by more than 50 per cent from 54.2 in 2010 to 83.9 in 2017. If this trend continues, the mean CMR will almost double from its 2010 value to 102.9 in 2020. By 2020, the model estimates cumulative child deaths at over 185,000.

Lack of information about the indirect consequences of war biases the tradeoff between humanitarian and military objectives toward the latter. This information asymmetry can prolong conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to more informed debate and humanitarian programming by making vital information accessible to the public and decision-makers.

Purpose – To fill the gap between conflict theories and ethnographic methods. In fact, if one considers recent sociological production as a whole, one notes that, on the one hand, scholars belonging to the European Marxian and Weberian traditions have indeed centered their analytical interests on the theme of conflict and power, on the other hand they have studied them using the tools of macro-analysis and historical sociology, and therefore in more abstract and general terms. For their part, interactionists and ethnographers, especially American, have closely and efficaciously studied society at the elementary level of micro-interactions and everyday life; but they have often (with some felicitous exceptions) underestimated the weight and importance of conflicts and power.

Findings – The paper shows that the situation was different (better) in the 1950s and 1960s, and that recently, the field of conflict methodology (or critical ethnography) has been left almost entirely to brilliant investigative journalists. One of the causes of this has certainly been the spread, in recent decades, of an ethical regulation of research and of a deontological conception of the ethics of social research.

The paper calls for the discovery of a new ethical conception (utilitarian, ethics of responsibility) alternative to the dominant deontological approach and for the adoption, following the sociologist Jack Douglas, of an investigative method of social research. In the final part of the paper, some concrete research examples are provided and a final appeal for critical ethnography and the study of powerful organizations has been made.

Collaborative research projects are highly complex organizational settings with specific needs and inherent risks that can endanger project success if not managed well. The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the knowledge of operational challenges in collaborative research projects to improve both project and conflict management.

On the basis of the concept of systemic conflict, this study conducts a conflict analysis of a collaborative research project on food security to establish how multiple conflict drivers interact.

The results show that multiple conflict drivers affect the operation of collaborative research projects and the drivers also interact and do not function in isolation. The study also finds that the importance of some drivers differs when comparing project members’ perceptions with the number of interlinkages between drivers. A conflict map is provided to visualize the results.

The empirical evidence provided in this study is limited because it relies on a single case study and on project members’ perceptions.

The research can help not only the research community and, in particular, project management but also funding bodies in dealing with the unpredictability of outcomes created by project dynamics. In addition, the results can feed into future research, project design and management strategies.

The study applies multidimensional conflict analysis to a field that is understudied.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate time management as a source of social sustainability in a Brazilian cooperative based on the principles of the solidarity economy, guided by democracy and self-management. This type of organization which is founded on self-management and management of working hours can permit flexibility in the work schedule, an aspect that the literature shows to be one of the indicators of social sustainability. The focus of this study is the female workforce.

The research was qualitative, using case study methodology. With respect to the temporal perspective, this is a longitudinal project. The result of this contact was a field diary in which observations on the functioning of the cooperative and its activities were recorded. In addition to these observations transcribed in the field diary, interviews were conducted with members. These were guided by a script to raise issues related to work routine and project management.

The results showed that self-management of working time allows flexibility, which can indeed be seen as a source of social sustainability that can provide working women with possibilities for meeting the various, conflicting demands they face from both work and family. This was seen to be a positive factor because many women in Brazil are heads of their households and are uniquely responsible for work, family and other responsibilities.

The qualitative meaning of working time is what may be linked to social sustainability because it is connected to self-management of working hours.

The confrontational nature of the construction industry is as much a threat to effective research as it is to effective construction management. In methodological terms, it presents particular challenges of emotion, sensitivity, tension, stress, pressure and uncertainty which a researcher has to address. The present paper discusses the methodological challenges of conducting research within a confrontational environment and presents a model of solutions developed to meet these problems. This model will be of value to all researchers involved within construction projects, but particularly those interested in construction conflict.

The spatial conflicts and congestion of construction resources are challenges that lead to the reduction in efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to enable users to detect and resolve workspace conflicts by implementing four resolution strategies in a five-dimensional (5D) CAD model. In addition to resolving conflicts, the model should be able to optimize time and cost of the projects. In other words, three variables of spatial conflicts, time and cost of project are considered simultaneously in the proposed model to find the optimum solution.

In the first step, a 5D simulation model is developed that includes time, cost and geometrical information of a project. Then, time-cost trade-off analysis was carried out to distinguish optimum schedule. The schedule was imported to the 5D CAD model to detect spatial conflicts. Finally, a novel algorithm was implemented to solve identified conflicts while imposing minimum project’s time and cost. Several iterations are performed to resolve all clashes using conflict resolution algorithm and visual simulation model.

The proposed methodology in this research was applied to a real case. Results showed that in comparison to the normal and initial schedule with 19 conflicts, the finalized schedule has no conflict, while time and cost of the project are both reduced.

Implementing the proposed methodology in construction projects requires proper technical basis in this field. In this regard, the executive user should have a proper understanding of the principles, concepts and tools of building information modeling and have project management knowledge. Also, the implementation conditions of the basic model requires the determination of the construction methods, estimated volumes of working items, scheduling and technical specification. The designed methodology also has two limitations regarding to its implementation. The first is the fact that strategies should be applied manually to the schedule. The other one pertains to the number of strategies used in the research. Four strategies have been used in the conflict resolution algorithm directly and the two others (spatial divisibility and activities breakdown strategies) have been used as default strategies in the visual simulation model. Since the unused strategies including the changing of construction method and the activity resources are subjective and depend upon the planner and project manager’s personal opinion, the authors have avoided using them in this research.

The method proposed in this research contributes the coordination of the working teams at the planning and execution phases of the project. In fact, the best location and work direction for each working team is presented as a schedule, so that the space conflict may not come about and the cost can be minimized. This visual simulation not only deepens the planners’ views about the executive barriers and the spatial conditions of the worksite, it also makes the construction engineers familiar on a daily basis with their executive scope. Therefore, it considerably improves the interactions and communication of the planning and construction teams. Another advantage and application of this methodology is the use of initial and available projects’ documents including the schedule and two-dimensional drawings. The integration of these basic documents in this methodology helps identify the spatial conflicts efficiently. To achieve this, the use of the existing and widely-used construction tools has facilitated the implementation of the methodology. Using this system, planners have applied the strategies in an order of priority and can observe the results of each strategy visually and numerically in terms of time, cost and conflicts. This methodology by providing the effective resolution strategies guides the practitioner to remove conflicts while optimum time and cost are imposed to project.

Contrary to the previous models that ignore cost, the proposed model is a 5D visual simulation model, which considers the variable of cost as a main factor for conflict identification and resolution. Moreover, a forward-pass approach is introduced to implement resolution strategies that are novel compared to other investigations.

The purpose of the chapter is to describe the concept of conflicts of socio-economic systems on the basis of the theory and methodology of the systemic approach.

The authors use the provisions of the systemic approach.

It is determined that dynamic socio-economic system is susceptible to conflicts, which, according to the Systemic approach, are bifurcation points. The features of conflict that allow defining it as a bifurcation point are its short duration, violation of sustainability of socio-economic system, uncertainty of consequences, influence on the system on the whole (cascade effect), and multiplicity of scenarios of development of socio-economic system after the conflict.

Studying conflict with the help of the theory and methodology of the systemic approach allowed determining the fact that conflict is a violation of order in a socio-economic system (which specifies definition of conflict and its essence) and could be evaluated through the measure of the system’s order (which specifies methodology of conflict evaluation). Moreover, conflict in a socio-economic system emerges not at once – it is accumulated under joint negative influences of internal and external factors. Further, the performed research allows specifying the classification of conflicts, which is offered in previous chapters – according to scenarios of development of socio-economic system after the conflict, normal (leading to normal change of system), abrupt (leading to abrupt change of the system), and attraction (all following states of the system are sustainable) conflicts are possible.