A disaster risk assessment model for the conservation of cultural heritage sites in Melaka Malaysia

There exist ongoing efforts to reduce the exposure of Cultural Heritage Sites (CHSs) to Disaster Risk (DR). However, a complicated issue these efforts face is that of ‘estimation’ whereby no standardised unit exist for assessing the effects of Cultural Heritage (CH) exposed to DR as compared to other exposed items having standardised assessment units such as; ‘number of people’ for deaths, injured and displaced, ‘dollar’ for economic impact, ‘number of units’ for building stock or animals among others. This issue inhibits the effective assessment of CHSs exposed to DR. Although there exist several DR assessment frameworks for conserving CHSs, the conceptualisation of DR in these studies fall short of good practice such as international strategy for disaster reduction by United Nations which expresses DR to being a hollistic interplay of three variables (hazard, vulnerability and capacity). Adopting such good practice, this research seeks to propose a mechanism of DR assessment aimed at reducing the exposure of CHSs to DR. Quantitative method adopted for data collection involved a survey of 365 respondents at CHSs in Melaka using a structured questionnaire. Similarly, data analysis consisted of a two-step Structural Equation Modelling (measurement and structural modelling). The achievement of the recommended thresholds for unidimensionality, validity and reliability by the measurement models is a testimony to the model fitness for all 8 first-order independent variables and 2 first-order dependent variables. While hazard had a ‘small’ but negative effect, vulnerability had a ‘very large’ but negative effect on the exposure of CHSs to DR. Likewise, capacity had a ‘small’ but positive effect on the exposure of CHSs to DR. The outcome of this study is a Disaster Risk Assessment Model (DRAM) aimed at reducing DR to CHSs. The implication of this research is providing insights on decisions for DR assessment to institutions, policymakers and statutory bodies towards their approach to enhancing the conservation of CHSs

Uber Effort: The Production of Worker Consent in Online Ride Sharing Platforms

The rise of the online gig economy alters ways of working. Mediated by algorithmically programmed mobile apps, platforms such as Uber and Lyft allow workers to work by driving and completing rides at any time or in any place that the drivers choose. This hybrid form of labor in an online gig economy which combines independent contract work with computer-mediated work differs from traditional manufacturing jobs in both its production activity and production relations. Through nine interviews with Lyft/Uber drivers, I found that workers’ consent, which was first articulated by Michael Burawoy in the context of the manufacturing economy, is still present in the work of the online gig economy in post-industrial capitalism. Workers willingly engage in the on-demand work not only to earn money but also to play a learning game motivated by the ambiguity of the management system, in which process they earn a sense of self-satisfaction and an illusion of autonomous control. This research points to the important role of technology in shaping contemporary labor process and suggests the potential mechanism which produces workers’ consent in technology-driven workplaces

Agreeing to Cross: How Drivers and Pedestrians Communicate

The contribution of this paper is twofold. The first is a novel dataset for studying behaviors of traffic participants while crossing. Our dataset contains more than 650 samples of pedestrian behaviors in various street configurations and weather conditions. These examples were selected from approx. 240 hours of driving in the city, suburban and urban roads. The second contribution is an analysis of our data from the point of view of joint attention. We identify what types of non-verbal communication cues road users use at the point of crossing, their responses, and under what circumstances the crossing event takes place. It was found that in more than 90% of the cases pedestrians gaze at the approaching cars prior to crossing in non-signalized crosswalks. The crossing action, however, depends on additional factors such as time to collision (TTC), explicit driver's reaction or structure of the crosswalk.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Public entities driven robotic innovation in urban areas

Cities present new challenges and needs to satisfy and improve lifestyle for their citizens under the concept “Smart City”. In order to achieve this goal in a global manner, new technologies are required as the robotic one. But Public entities unknown the possibilities offered by this technology to get solutions to their needs. In this paper the development of the Innovative Public Procurement instruments is explained, specifically the process PDTI (Public end Users Driven Technological Innovation) as a driving force of robotic research and development and offering a list of robotic urban challenges proposed by European cities that have participated in such a process. In the next phases of the procedure, this fact will provide novel robotic solutions addressed to public demand that are an example to be followed by other Smart Cities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Autonomous Shuttles in Santa Fe Springs

The urban planning implications of AV Shuttles and how they could be incorporated into Santa Fe Springs, Los Angeles, California

“‘Relentless Geography’: Los Angeles’ Imagined Cartographies in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange,”

What would a map of Los Angeles drawn from the ground up look like? In his groundbreaking work The Production of Space (1974), Henri Lefebvre argues that the conceived space of urban planners is fundamentally distinct from lived space, which cannot be mapped out. In her impressive city-wide narrative, Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange (1997) demonstrates the effects of imposing conceived space upon the lived space of inner city Los Angeles residents, and what happens when the counter-model of space being lived by a city’s inhabitants rebels. Yamashita’s text mirrors this disjuncture between represented and lived space through the use of narrative surrealism. Space is magically reconfigured in the city, shrinking the uninhabited Downtown and expanding over-populated yet underrepresented neighborhoods, literally shifting geographically until its mapping matches the social space of those on the ground rather than those who map it from above. Literary criticism on the novel to date has largely interpreted Tropic of Orange as a commentary on the effects of globalization; not enough attention has been paid to the novel’s surreal expansion of Los Angeles’ inner city. Using Lefebvre’s “science of space,” anchored by Los Angeles’ city planning schemas, I argue that Yamashita offers a different map, one perceived by the subsets of LA’s population that fall through the cracks of the city’s grid. Tropic of Orange’s unorthodox formal structure, when combined with its narrative surrealism, creates a differential space in the text, transforming the novel into the Los Angeles imagined by its anonymous users

In Search of a Singular I: A Structurational Analysis of Passing

It is easy to envision the socio-cultural phenomenon of passing as a relic of a bygone era, yet passing is markedly more. From a historical perspective, passing-as-white is a strategy of representation through which light-skinned, white-looking, legally non-white Americans attempt(ed) to reconcile two unreconciled ideals: their limited opportunities as non-white people in a segregated society with their idealized life goals as full American citizens (DuBois, 1903; Candy, 1998). Recent scholarship on the phenomenon explains that passing is more than a masquerade. Passing can be accidental, incidental, or a committed lifestyle that is noted: when people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be...[and] when other people actually see or experience the identity that the passer is projecting, whether the passer is telegraphing that identity by intention or by chance (Kroger, 2003, p. 7-8)