485 research outputs found

    PALSAR wide-area mapping and annual monitoring methodology for Borneo

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    This paper describes the operational radar mapping processing chain developed and steps taken to produce a provisional wide-area PALSAR forest and land cover map of Borneo for the year 2007, compliant with emerging international standards (CEOS guidelines, FAO LCCS). The methodology is based on the classification of FBS and FBD image pairs. To cover Borneo the equivalent of 554 standard images is required. The final overall accuracy assessment result shows this demonstration map product is in 85.5% full agreement with the independent reference dataset and in 7.8% ‘partial agreement’. Monitoring land cover change on an annual basis requires consistent year-to-year mapping. This implies that the localised and temporal effects of environmental factors on the backscatter level (such as inundation or El Niño drought) and variation due to differing observation dates/cycles (related to change of season) have to be accounted for strip by strip. New concepts for (a) automated intercalibration of radar data, (b) time-consistency and (c) automated adaptation of radar signatures to changing environmental conditions have been evaluated for its usefulness to improve the classification and the consistency of annual monitoring

    Re-engaging local youth for sustainable sport-for-development

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    © 2018 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand Despite increasing evidence that sport-for-development (SFD) programs can contribute to community development, there remains a lack of empirical inquiry into different socio-managerial aspects of SFD. For example, in attempts to achieve locally sustained SFD programs, the roles, responsibilities and potential impact of re-engaged youth need further investigation. The authors define re-engaged youth as previous program participants who have maintained strong links with the organization and who return to the program at a later stage as volunteers or staff members. In this paper, the authors examine ways in which Re-engaged youth of the Blue Dragon Children Foundation's SFD program contribute to sustainable management and indirectly to community development within a disadvantaged community setting in Hanoi, Vietnam. Following an interpretive mode of inquiry, the authors conducted and analyzed two focus groups (six participants each) and 12 in-depth interviews with re-engaged youth (n = 7) and key program stakeholders (n = 5). Overall, re-engaged youth represented key drivers for organizational success; they served as program culture experts, role models, leaders and mentors, and creators of a family feel in SFD and beyond. The authors argue that re-engaged youth are demonstrating a number of important change agent capabilities that enable them to uniquely gauge and best respond to the needs of program participants and local communities in complex sociocultural environments

    Trade policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: Evidence from a new data set

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    This paper presents new high-frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The data set reveals a rapid increase in trade policy activism in February and March 2020 in tandem with the rise in COVID-19 cases but also uncovers extensive heterogeneity across countries in both their use of trade policy and the types of measures used. Some countries acted to restrict exports and facilitate imports, others targeted only one of these margins, and many did not use trade policy at all. The observed heterogeneity suggests numerous research questions on the drivers of trade policy responses to COVID-19, on the effects of these measures on trade and prices of critical products, and on the role of trade agreements in influencing the use of trade policy

    External sources of clean technology: evidence from the clean development mechanism

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    New technology is fundamental to sustainable development. However, inventors from industrialized countries often refuse technology transfer because they worry about reverse-engineering. When can clean technology transfer succeed? We develop a formal model of the political economy of North–South technology transfer. According to the model, technology transfer is possible if (1) the technology in focus has limited global commercial potential or (2) the host developing country does not have the capacity to absorb new technologies for commercial use. If both conditions fail, inventors from industrialized countries worry about the adverse competitiveness effects of reverse-engineering, so technology transfer fails. Data analysis of technology transfer in 4,894 projects implemented under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism during the 2004–2010 period provides evidence in support of the model

    Factors affecting inter-regional academic scientific collaboration within Europe: the role of economic distance

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    This paper offers some insights into scientific collaboration (SC) at the regional level by drawing upon two lines of inquiry. The first involves examining the spatial patterns of university SC across the EU-15 (all countries belonging to the European Union between 1995 and 2004). The second consists of extending the current empirical analysis on regional SC collaboration by including the economic distance between regions in the model along with other variables suggested by the extant literature. The methodology relies on co-publications as a proxy for academic collaboration, and in order to test the relevance of economic distance for the intensity of collaboration between regions, we put forward a gravity equation. The descriptive results show that there are significant differences in the production of academic scientific papers between less-favoured regions and core regions. However, the intensity of collaboration is similar in both types of regions. Our econometric findings suggest that differences in scientific resources (as measured by R&D expenditure) between regions are relevant in explaining academic scientific collaborations, while distance in the level of development (as measured by per capita GDP) does not appear to play any significant role. Nevertheless, other variables in the analysis, including geographical distance, specialization and cultural factors, do yield significant estimated coefficients, and this is consistent with the previous literature on regional SC
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