Suchergebnisse

This guideline has been produced to assist the management of contaminated sites in Latvia, in particular disused Russian military sites. A risk-based approach is proposed for adoption in the assessment of such sites in line with the approach adopted in recent years by other countries in the European Union. Some countries have set fixed numerical criteria to assess contaminated land based on generic assumptions on site conditions such as; soil type, depth to groundwater, geology and hydrogeology, and proximity to potential receptors (eg. groundwater supply well, surface water body). Such an approach ignores the fact that contaminated sites vary widely in terms of both complexity and the potential risk they may pose to either human health or the environment. As fixed numerical criteria are nearly always set at very low levels, their use leads to the clean-up of more land than may be necessary. The result is wastage of resources with clean-up costs incurred without an incremental reduction in risk to human health and the environment. ; 45568

Magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) is an important problem in applications ranging from geological surveillance to military reconnaissance. MAD sensors detect local disturbances in the magnetic field, which can be used to detect the existence of and to estimate the position of buried, hidden, or submerged objects, such as ore deposits or mines. These sensors may experience false positive and false negative detections and, without prior knowledge of the targets, can only determine proximity to a target. The uncertainty in the sensors, coupled with a lack of knowledge of even the existence of targets, makes the estimation and control problems challenging. We utilize a hierarchical decomposition of the environment, coupled with an estimation algorithm based on random finite sets, to determine the number of and the locations of targets in the environment. The small team of robots follow the gradient of mutual information between the estimated set of targets and the future measurements, locally maximizing the rate of information gain. We present experimental results of a team of quadrotor micro aerial vehicles discovering and localizing an unknown number of permanent magnets. ; United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-07-1-0829) ; United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-09-1-1051) ; United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-09-1-1031) ; United States. Army Research Office (Grant W911NF-13-1-0350) ; National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant IIS-1426840)

This study aims to determine the application of the principles of good governance, the quality of public services, and the effect of applying the principles of good governance on the quality of public services at the Makassar City Land Office. This research is a quantitative descriptive study using incidental sampling techniques. The data was collected by using a questionnaire, conducting interviews, observation, and documentation. The data analysis technique used is descriptive statistical analysis and inferential statistics (product moment correlation test) using the SPSS 18 application. The results of the descriptive analysis show that the application of the principles of good governance and the quality of public services at the Makassar City Land Office belongs to the good category in terms of indicator measuring the variable. The result of the product moment correlation analysis shows that the effect of the application of the principles of good governance governance on the quality of public services is 0.790, which is positive, which means that the level of influence is in the strong category.

Dams, People and Development: The Aswan High Dam Case covers the issues concerning Aswan High Dam. Comprised of nine chapters, the book encompasses topics such as engineering, environmental implications, and hazards. Chapter 1 talks about the second dam at Aswan, while Chapter 2 deals with the controversies regarding the dam. The third chapter covers the human perspective on the dam. Chapter 4 discusses land inundation and population displacement, while Chapter 5 talks about the inhabitants of the lake. Chapter 6 deals with urban growth and water problems. The seventh chapter tackles the devel

This work was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund, Economic and Social Research Council, UK, as part of the FutureDAMS project (grant no. ES/P011373/1). ; Dam planning and construction is notoriously difficult. It is highly complex, involving a multitude of social, environmental, economic, and technological questions that often become politicised in the process; negative impacts are often concentrated on small, vulnerable groups within society, while the benefits are typically spread in a much more diffuse pattern; it requires changing riverine ecosystems, often irreversibly so; and it takes a very long time, with often harsh consequences if mistakes are made. These challenges have generated decades of debate around dams and development, yet it is not clear how dam planning and management can be improved. To address this question, the present study used Q methodology to analyse the views of social and environmental researchers on dams in Latin America on the principles that should guide dam development. The Q analysis rendered three idealised viewpoints: The first suggested that defending the rights of vulnerable people should be the main priority, as a counterbalance to the natural bias towards economically and politically powerful actors within the political economy of dam construction. The second implied adoption of a holistic and scientific vision towards dam decision-making, and a focus of efforts on perfecting formal procedures and participatory processes to build better dams in the future. The third called into question the need for dams altogether, and concentrated attention on invisible and overlooked aspects of dam decision-making, particularly past injustices, and the rights of indigenous communities to determine their own model of development. Each viewpoint represents an alternative vision for future dam planning and clarifies the choices available to policy-makers and development actors. Moreover, viewpoints give insights on the motivations of those who seek to inform debates on dams and development. While they were identified in the context of dam-decision making, our findings may also be relevant to other fields of sustainable development. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

Abstract Dam planning and construction is notoriously difficult. It is highly complex, involving a multitude of social, environmental, economic and technological questions that often become politicised in the process; negative impacts are often concentrated on small, vulnerable groups within society, while the benefits are typically spread in a much more diffuse pattern; it requires changing riverine ecosystems, often irreversibly so; and it takes a very long time, with often harsh consequences if mistakes are made. These challenges have generated decades of debate around dams and development, yet it is not clear how dam planning and management can be improved. To address this question, the present study used Q methodology to analyse the views of social and environmental researchers on dams in Latin America on the principles that should guide dam development. The Q analysis rendered three idealised viewpoints: The first suggested that defending the rights of vulnerable people should be the main priority, as a counterbalance to the natural bias towards economically and politically powerful actors within the political economy of dam construction. The second implied adoption of a holistic and scientific vision towards dam decision-making and a focus of efforts on perfecting formal procedures and participatory processes to build better dams in the future. The third called into question the need for dams altogether and concentrated attention on invisible and overlooked aspects of dam decision-making, particularly past injustices, and the rights of indigenous communities to determine their own model of development. Each viewpoint represents an alternative vision for future dam planning and clarifies the choices available to policy-makers and development actors. Moreover, viewpoints give insights into the motivations of those who seek to inform debates on dams and development. While they were identified in the context of dam-decision making, our findings may also be relevant to other fields of sustainable development.

Recently, the European Commission has put forward proposals for the next program period of EU Cohesion Policy (EUCP). Part of these proposals is an increased emphasis on performance management. This paper analyses what we know so far on performance management of EU cohesion funds. It will be argued that, despite the frequent use of terms like "sound financial management" and "value-for-money", which implies the availability of information on all so called three E's (economy, efficiency and effectiveness), performance auditing so far is largely limited to issues of economy. This is due to the EU's preoccupation -in budgetary control-­ with the issue of legality and with irregularities, which link easily to compliance auditing and the issue of economy, but hardly to efficiency and effectiveness (performance auditing). The empirical paragraph of this paper analyses the reports issued by actors on both the European and national (in casu Dutch) level in 2010 and shows that on average 68% of the content of the reports focuses on compliance auditing, instead of performance auditing (32%). Within the share of performance auditing, most attention is paid to output and outcome of the policy concerned (respectively with 12% and 17%); hardly any attention is given to input and costs (with respectively 2% and 1%). This shows that performance auditing still is not in the centre of attention in EUCP and a shift has to be made to really properly account for EUCP.

A l'assemblée générale de la Société patriotique des Dames, à laquelle assistait l'impératrice d'Allemagne, le conseiller intime, M. von Roux, présenta, après le discours de bienvenue adressé à l'impératrice par le ministre d'Etat von Hoffmann, le rapport sur le dernier exercice. Aux sections anciennes sont venues s'en ajouter 10 nouvelles; 7 sections se sont par contre dissoutes, en sorte que les sections sont actuellement au nombre de 842, sans compter 3 sociétés auxiliaires, avec un total de 140, 470 membres, contre 134,000 en 1895. C'est dansle Schleswig-Holstein et en Silésie que cet accroissement s'est produil. La tâche la plus importante de la Société a consisté en préparatifs pour la guerre, sans négliger pour cela son activité normale en temps de paix.