This book studies how technological solutions can be used to alleviate the current state of legal systems, with their clogged up courtrooms and inefficient conflict resolution methods. It reviews the shortcomings and disadvantages of traditional and alternative conflict resolution methods and turns to Artificial Intelligence for problem-solving techniques and solutions. The book is divided into four parts. The first part presents a general and systematic analysis of the current state of the legal systems, identifying the main problems and their causes.It then moves on to present UM Court: a framework for testing and prototyping conflict resolution services. This framework was developed with the objective of using Artificial Intelligence techniques to build a service environment for conflict resolution. The third part of the book takes a step into the future by analyzing the use of Intelligent Environments in the support of conflict management and resolution. It describes the approach taken and the experiments performed in the Intelligent Systems Lab of the University of Minho. The final part of the book contains the conclusions and shows the potential advantages of the use of Intelligent Environments as a way to implement better conflict resolution procedures (virtual or real), in which all the participants have access to more and better information and are able to take better informed decisions."

This book covers different geotechnical and structural engineering topics applied to buildings, power grid infrastructures, hydroelectric projects, bridges, and transport infrastructures. The book contains research data useful for researchers and practitioners to support the sustainable design, building, operation, and maintenance of civil infrastructures. The papers included in this book were selected from the 6th GeoChina International Conference on Civil & Transportation Infrastructures: From Engineering to Smart & Green Life Cycle Solutions.

The book presents a compilation of studies regarding applied geomechanics, mining, and excavation analysis and simulation. The material is suitable for presentation to senior undergraduate and post-graduate students in both mining and geological engineering. It should also be of interest to students of other aspects of Geomechanics and, notably, engineering geologists interested in mining and underground excavation design. Practising mining engineers and rock mechanics engineers involved in mine design may use the book profitably to obtain an appreciation of the current state of engineering knowledge in their area of specialisation. Papers were selected from the 5th GeoChina International Conference on Civil Infrastructures Confronting Severe Weathers and Climate Changes: From Failure to Sustainability, held in July 23-25, 2018 in Hang Zhou, China.

The International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence 2013 (DCAI 2013) is a forum in which applications of innovative techniques for solving complex problems are presented. Artificial intelligence is changing our society. Its application in distributed environments, such as the internet, electronic commerce, environment monitoring, mobile communications, wireless devices, distributed computing, to mention only a few, is continuously increasing, becoming an element of high added value with social and economic potential, in industry, quality of life, and research. This conference is a stimulating and productive forum where the scientific community can work towards future cooperation in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence areas. These technologies are changing constantly as a result of the large research and technical effort being undertaken in both universities and businesses. The exchange of ideas between scientists and technicians from both the academic and industry sector is essential to facilitate the development of systems that can meet the ever increasing demands of today's society. This edition of DCAI brings together past experience, current work, and promising future trends associated with distributed computing, artificial intelligence and their application in order to provide efficient solutions to real problems. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition was held in Salamanca, Spain, from 22nd to 24th May 2013.