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The various pre‐trial stages of these complex proceedings have been discussed in previous issues of this Journal in Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 70–72, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 274–280, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 359–364 and the factual background explained. Depositors in the UK branch of BCCISA (part of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International group which collapsed in 1991 leaving large scale losses) had brought actions for damages in respect of their uncompensated losses against the Bank of England (the Bank) in relation to its discharge of its statutory functions under the Banking Act 1979. They argued (1) that the Bank's licensing as a deposit‐taker and subsequent supervision of BCCI amounted to misfeasance in public office and/or (2) that they had, under European law, enforceable rights against the Bank conferred on them by the First Council Banking Co‐ordination Directive (77/780/EEC) which the Banking Act 1979 implemented in the UK. In May, 2000 the House of Lords definitively settled as a matter of law the second ground of the claimants' argument ruling that the European Directive in question did not have the effect of conferring rights in damages against the Bank on the depositors. In the same judgment the House of Lords ruled as a matter of law that the essential elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office (which by this stage is the only possible legal ground of claim available to the depositors) were to be found ‘where a public officer acts knowing that he has no power to do the act complained of and that the act will probably injure the [claimant]. It involves bad faith inasmuch as that the public officer did not have an honest belief that his act was lawful’ (per Lord Steyn, House of Lords judgment of 18th May, 2000 in these proceedings). This ‘reckless indifference’ which must be proven to exist for a claim against the Bank to succeed must be judged in a subjective sense, their Lordships ruled last year, so that the depositor claimants needed to show knowledge on the part of the Bank that the decision of the Bank would probably damage the Appellants. The question of whether or not the facts pleaded by the claimants reveal a sustainable cause of action against the Bank or whether, as the Bank had argued throughout, they did not and the action ought to be struck out without proceeding to full trial was referred to another House of Lords hearing. It was from that subsequent hearing on whether or not the claim should be allowed to proceed to full trial of the substantive issue of the Bank of England's alleged liability that this decision was made.

The factual background to this House of Lords decision lies in the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Banking Group. The Appellants (who were the Appellants in the House of Lords) were depositors who had lost monies in the collapse of BCCI. BCCI itself was named as a Plaintiff since it was an assignee of the claims of Plaintiff depositors. The Plaintiffs (who were the Appellants in this appeal and are hereafter referred to as such) made a very large number of allegations against the Bank of England (the Bank) with regard to its exercise of its powers and discretions under the statutory scheme of Banking Supervision contained in the Banking Acts of 1979 and 1987. These allegations related to (inter alia) the Bank's decision to grant a full licence to BCCI in 1980, its failure subsequently to revoke that licence and various other acts and omissions in its supervisory role up to BCCI's collapse in 1991.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a novel use of a generalized Lennard‐Jones (LJ) force law in Physicomimetics, combined with offline evolutionary learning, for the control of swarms of robots moving through obstacle fields towards a goal. The paper then extends the paradigm to demonstrate the utility of a real‐time online adaptive approach named distributed agent evolution with dynamic adaptation to local unexpected scenarios (DAEDALUS).

To achieve the best performance, the parameters of the force law used in the Physicomimetics approach are optimized, using an evolutionary algorithm (EA) (offline learning). A weighted fitness function is utilized consisting of three components: a penalty for collisions, lack of swarm cohesion, and robots not reaching the goal. Each robot of the swarm is then given a slightly mutated copy of the optimized force law rule set found with offline learning and the robots are introduced to a more difficult environment. The online learning framework (DAEDALUS) is used for swarm adaptation in this more difficult environment.

The novel use of the generalized LJ force law combined with an EA surpasses the prior state‐of‐the‐art in the control of swarms of robots moving through obstacle fields. In addition, the DAEDALUS framework allows the swarms of robots to not only learn and share behavioral rules in changing environments (in real time), but also to learn the proper amount of behavioral exploration that is appropriate.

There are significant issues that arise with respect to “wall following methods” and “local minimum trap” problems. “Local minimum trap” problems have been observed in this paper, but this issue is not addressed in detail. The intention is to explore other approaches to develop more robust adaptive algorithms for online learning. It is believed that the learning of the proper amount of behavioral exploration can be accelerated.

In order to provide meaningful comparisons, this paper provides a more complete set of metrics than prior papers in this area. The paper examines the number of collisions between robots and obstacles, the distribution in time of the number of robots that reach the goal, and the connectivity of the formation as it moves.

This paper addresses the difficult task of moving a large number of robots in formation through a large number of obstacles. The important real‐world constraint of “obstructed perception” is modeled. The obstacle density is approximately three times the norm in the literature. The paper shows how concepts from population genetics can be used with swarms of agents to provide fast online adaptive learning in these challenging environments. In addition, this paper also presents a more complete set of metrics of performance.

Surely an article whose author is also part of its subject will seem at best odd to some and at worst self‐serving to others. Perhaps a bit of explanation of this article's genesis will moderate those reactions.

The purpose of this paper is to demystify the meaning of the term “consequential loss” in relation to the practice of construction law. Parties may have different understandings of the term and typically an exclusion clause will not solely relate to consequential loss, but will also include other heads of losses for which the party will not be liable for, such as loss of profit, loss of revenue and loss of business.

The question emerges as to whether the term consequential loss has a definitive legal meaning in its own right. This study seeks to ascertain the definition of the term consequential loss within the construction industry through a review of the legal position regarding liability for breach of contract and consequential loss through the consideration of the case law relating to this topic and the associated secondary sources of information.

The study concludes by elucidating a clear interpretation of the term consequential loss and guidance of how it should be used in contract law.

Recent cases and established authorities are considered together for the first time in this work which assists in the development of legal principles of direct and indirect losses and the determination of how they apply to the built environment.