The effect of secular resonances in the asteroid region between 2.1 and 2.4 AU

The asteroid region between 2.1 and 2.4 AU appears to be depopulated at inclinations i greater than 12 deg. This region is surrounded by the three main secular resonances nu(sub 5), nu(sub 6), and nu(sub 16) and is crossed by higher order secular resonances. Secular resonances appear to overlap in this region. Numerical integrations of the orbits of seventeen fictituous asteroids with initial inclinations 12 deg less than or equal to i less than or equal to 20 deg show the following: (1) this particular asteroid region is not depopulated in our computer experiment on timescales of 2.7 Myrs; (2) inclinations are pumped up by successive crossings through higher order secular resonances while eccentricities are not increased sufficiently to produce planet-crossers; (3) bodies located in the bordering nu(sub 6) resonance with semi-major axes a less than or equal to 2.4 AU become Earth-crossers on a time scale of 1 Myr; and (4) we confirm the result that modes due to higher order secular resonances must be eliminated when proper elements are computed

The Past Two Decades in Disaster Information Management: Academic Contributors and Topical Evolution

Academic Research in Disaster Information Management has been conducted over more than two decades worldwide. The scholarly community, numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands of contributors, has produced a body of knowledge that comprises over four thousand peer-reviewed academic articles. With this volume of research, Disaster Information Management has grown into a sizable domain of study and reached a critical mass of output, which justifies topical and directional analyses that in turn help identify potential gaps in scholarly attention. Furthermore, such analyses of the body of knowledge allow for determining major publication venues as well as identifying contributors including the underlying scholarly networks. With this paper a first comprehensive account of the evolution of topical directions inside the study domain is established. Also, leading contributors and influencers are named, and their networks and publication venues are identified. Over the past two decades the study domain of Disaster Information Management is found to be steadily growing in publication numbers as well as in research avenues

Building Sound Foundations for Smart City Government: The Case of Munich, Germany

City governments around the world have increasingly engaged in “smart city” initiatives. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are at the core of these initiatives. City governments appear to play impor-tant roles in making the urban spaces, in which they are embedded, more attractive, more competitive, more livable, and smarter. The authors interviewed City officials in Munich, Germany, and asked for the definitions of “smart city,” which they then compared to Munich’s smart city-related program. While the practitioners’ definitions differed in part from those in the academic literature, the smart city overhaul program at Munich city government had a direct relationship to the practitioners’ understanding of smartness. The authors por-tray and discuss the City of Munich institutional architecture overhaul and its expected and realized benefits, and compare the results to those of an earlier study on the City of Seattle. Both city governments evidently pursue different approaches, the effectiveness of which can more readily be assessed only at a future point of the smart city evolution