Image Segmentation Applied To Satellite Imagery For Monitoring Water In Lakes And Reservoirs

Here we show that a method of image processing, an image segmentation recently developed and used for the analyses of micrographs, can be applied to the monitoring of the water in lakes and reservoirs by means of the related satellite imagery. The image segmentation allows measuring surfaces and perimeters of the inundated basins. Here the segmentation is applied to the Sarygamysh Lake in Central Asi

Nubians and development: 1960-2014

From the Aswan dams of the early twentieth century to the ambitious Toshka project of today, Egyptian Nubians have watched their former land transform under the rubrics of progress, modernization, and development for over one hundred years. While these mega-projects position themselves as necessary for the greater Egyptian good, their tangible effect on the ground is less clear. For Nubians who lost their homes, lands, and traditional livelihood due to resettlement, the price of development is even higher, posing important questions about the real value of these schemes. This thesis project offers a critical look at the concept of development, using the example of Egypt’s Nubians to understand how this discourse is written, narrated, and practiced on the ground. By framing development as a discourse – that is, an “interwoven set of languages and practices” – this research engages with scholarship that sees development as “a modernist regime of knowledge and disciplinary power” (Crush, 1991). The discourse of development is a distinctly modern product, embedded in a web of related concepts including poverty, production, the notion of the state, and equality (Sachs, 1992). As the critical literature on development shows, this discourse has a historical context, rooted in twentieth-century interactions between western colonizers and their colonies (Esteva, 1992). Development, as a means to increase productivity while also civilizing colonies, allowed colonizers to contain social and political challenges in the waning years of rule. Beginning in the Nasser period in Egypt, my project demonstrates how post-colonial regimes appropriate the discourse of development for similar aims. As Toby Jones shows in his study of Saudi Arabia, state power over land and resources, and the ability to manipulate those resources at will, goes “hand in hand with the power to determine, govern, and police the territoriality of the nation-state, and thus the sovereignty of the state itself” (Jones, 2010). For Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, constructing the Aswan High Dam allowed not only for the control of water and electricity, but also for a bold display of sovereignty in the wake of ongoing British intervention. Building on Michel Foucault\u27s concept of governmentality, my project shows how increasing state control of land and resources also translated into increased control of populations and people. Drawing from the archives of the 1961-1963 SRC “Nubian Ethnological Survey,” this research shows how Egyptian state forces brought Nubians increasingly under the administrative fold of the state, using the language of development and increased state services to obscure the political and social risk of mass displacement. In addition to state-produced development discourses regarding Egypt’s Nubians, this project looks at the role of international development organizations in consolidating state authority under the auspices of development. From the Nasser period until today, international development organizations have played an enormous role in dictating the terms of Nubians’ relations to the state. Operating under the pretense of rational and unbiased expertise, organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Food Program (WFP), the World Bank, and many others have been able to maintain powerful economic and political stakes in Egypt (Mitchell, 1995). As my research shows, this power often comes at the expense of the “objects” of development, such as Egypt’s Nubians. Using the example of several recent development schemes – spearheaded by international organizations – aiming to resettle Old Nubia (what is now Lake Nasser and its surrounding environs), this analysis demonstrates how the language of equality and development continues to side-step Nubian demands to return to their former home. This research complicates notions of development, emphasizing the over-arching political and economic considerations that dictate its terms. It also presents a picture of how the “objects” of development experience this complex web of languages and practices on the ground, challenging development’s inherent claims to progress and improvement. At the same time, this project highlights how Nubians themselves use development discourse as a strategy for making claims to the state. If, as development literature suggests, states use the ostensibly neutral language of development to obscure fundamental social and political issues, is it possible to argue the same for Nubians? Given the deeply politicized nature of the “Nubian issue” in Egyptian society today, this research suggests that Nubians use the language of development as one of many tactics to articulate demands to the state. My project proposes that by co-opting the international language of development, Nubians can advocate their claims using frameworks that avoid modern state insecurities towards minorities and indigenous inhabitants

Allocating water of the Nile River

Presented at River basin management to meet competing needs: proceedings from the USCID conference on shared rivers held on October 21-31, 1998 in Park City, Utah.The Egyptian philosophy of water use is that of an agrarian society even though perhaps only 50% of foodstuffs are produced domestically. The Egyptian Government is now implementing a plan of action that will spread water over vast new areas of the Western Desert and the Sinai. The objective is to transfer within 20 years as many as 7 million persons from the Nile Valley and the Delta to intensively irrigated areas of the Western Desert. This diversion of Nile River water is to be accomplished even as the nine upstream riparians are demanding more water. A paradigm shift is required. Those guiding irrigation development in the Western Desert must accept and embrace a model of mixed development based on: 1) the eventual minimization of irrigation of field crops, 2) the identification and filling of now dry water-table aquifers through diversion of excess river flows in wet years, and 3) exploitation of minerals and other important resources of the Western Desert to support the new communities. Clearly, during the initial stages of New Valley developments, the government needs to divert the entire excesses of wet year flows for over-irrigation of reclamation crops and the filling of pre-identified underground reservoirs. Integrated ground-water-surface-water systems should be established., successively along the path of development, to supply municipal and industrial water and for the irrigation of vegetables and fruit trees. A large component of the water required for creating shaded communities and wind breaks should be derived from reuse of treated wastewater effluents and the pumping of mildly brackish ground water. Thus, through the establishment of water-table aquifers along the route of development and the careful husbanding of the water resource, extensive settlements can be realized in the western Desert without substantial diminishment of the productive capacity of the agriculture of the Nile Valley and Delta. Sustainability of the colonization will depend equally on the exercise of care in protecting the fragile desert environment in every zone of development and the equitable collection of water user fees from the start of project operations

Reconsidering priorities for digital maternal and child health: community-centered perspectives from South Africa

Especially in developing regions, parents are rarely given a direct voice in the design of digital maternal and child health (MCH) interventions. Instead, MCH needs and requirements are driven by organizations and health workers. In this research, we engage with both rural and urban parents and community leaders to better understand their challenges and priorities for digital MCH and propose a parent-centered agenda for humancomputer interaction research. This paper reports on the community-based, digital MCH priorities identified in our research, and describes how we approached community discourse and co-design of digital initiatives for these priorities, through parent-centered workshops with low-resource South African communities. Furthermore, we provide the parent-centered design opportunities and tensions we discovered for digital MCH in South African contexts, such as designing for local contexts and languages, designing for accessibility and connectedness, and highlighting the underdeveloped digital MCH niches. Finally, we highlight the importance of including facilitators for co-design workshops, such as using intermediaries and design cards.

Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production. Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George R. Trumbull I

Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production. Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George R. Trumbull IVhttps://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1017/thumbnail.jp