Suchergebnisse

The words ""Sustainable Development"" are frequently used by very lightly, to the extent that they have lost their meaning. There is a presumption that for any perspective analysis or any development proposal, these two words are the most appropriate. Sustainability has been incorporated in the objectives of many studies. The historical model of industrialized societies in the 19th and 20th centuries served as the central notion of what constitutes development in both the cost-effectiveness and equity perspectives. According to some analysts, this path represents the model for global prosperity. However, a number of growing parallel literatures recognize the importance of diverse development pathways in achieving an environmentally and socio-economically better world. The term sustainable development does not bring forward all aspects of development. A new term that incorporates the wellbeing of all citizens through economic development and the preservation of the environment is needed. A ""Worth-living Integrated Development"" could be a term that combines economic development, social development and environmental protection. A Worth-living Integrated Development may be achieved only when human societies decide to create necessary presuppositions-at the educational, research, economic, social, political, technical/technological and environmental levels-for a better world, based on the human values of peace, justice, solidarity, political, economic and social democracy and ethics, respect for nature and for the variety of cultures of all human beings. © 2012 by the authors.

Implementation of environmental legislation can be supported by the production of maps with two information levels, one which identifies areas where a legal rule is enforced and another which identifies areas where there is an infringement of that rule. This paper investigates the efficiency of remote sensing methods and techniques for the production of such a map regarding a specific law case, the Greek Forest Law. To do this, we identified, with the use of KVR-1000 very high resolution imagery, potential illegal buildings in forests and forest areas, which were mapped at a scale of 1:5000. For this purpose, an image processing method was developed which integrates spectral and first-order texture signatures, detects disturbances in forest environment, and classifies them in order for the buildings to be identified among other disturbances. The texture signatures were selected after an investigation of the performance of first- and second-order statistical texture methods in detecting disturbances in forest environment. By the method developed, buildings are mapped by segmented parts of their edges. Based on a sample of 163 buildings, the accuracy of the method was calculated at approximately 89%, i.e. 11% of the buildings included in the sample were not detected. The map produced would probably not be acceptable in court, however it can adequately support administrative procedures in ministries, forest services, etc., regarding identification of illegal building, incorporation of forest areas in an existing city plan, organization of the forest and forest area register book, etc.