Litterdrone: marine litter characterization using drones and image analysis

This communication is about “LitterDrone” project. LitterDrone is funded via the Blue-Labs program of the European commission and it aims to make a contribution to solve the problem of marine litter. Part of this problem is monitoring stranded marine litter on beaches (measuring number and type of litter elements). Monitoring results can be used to infer data on litter origin and on the influence of tides, currents and human activity. OSPAR convention [1] is a joint European initiative that tries to unify forces against marine pollution. Part of this convention implies that contracting parties (countries) must monitor periodically stranded marine litter on beaches. Spain has signed the convention in January 1994. Litter monitoring in Spain is nowadays implemented by human personnel counting (& picking) litter items in certain beaches at certain times (4 campaigns each year, one for each season). LitterDrone project aims to create a new and/or complementary methodology based on obtaining images from drone flights (creating orthomosaics of RGB and multiespectral images) and developing software to analyze such images to obtain results comparable to those of the manual sampling.Peer Reviewe

The Norwegian emission inventory : Documentation of methodologies for estimating emissions of greenhouse gases and long-range transboundary air pollutants

The Norwegian emission inventory is a joint undertaking between the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority (SFT) and Statistics Norway. The Norwegian Pollution Control Authority is responsible for the emission factors and for providing data from specific industries and sources, while emission figures are derived from models operating at Statistics Norway. Statistics Norway is responsible for developing the emission models, for the collection and development of activity data, and for the calculations. Emission data are used for a range of national applications and for international reporting. This report document the methodologies used in the Norwegian emission inventory of greenhouse gases (GHG), acidifying pollutants, heavy metals (HM) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The documentation will also serve as a part of the National Inventory Report submitted by Norway to the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as documentation over the reported emissions to UNECE for the pollutants restricted by CLRTAP (Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution)

Collective Intentionality

In this chapter, we focus on collective action and intention, and their relation to conventions, status functions, norms, institutions, and shared attitudes more generally. Collective action and shared intention play a foundational role in our understanding of the social. The three central questions in the study of collective intentionality are: (1) What is the ontology of collective intentionality? In particular, are groups per se intentional agents, as opposed to just their individual members? (2) What is the psychology of collective intentionality? Do groups per se have psychological states, in particular propositional attitudes? What is the psychology of the individuals who participate in collective intentional behavior? What is special about their participatory intentions, their we-intentions, as they are called (Tuomela and Miller 1988), as opposed to their I-intentions? (3) How is collective intentionality implicated in the construction of social reality? In particular, how does the content of we-intentions and the intentional activity of individual agents create social institutions, practices and structures? We first discuss collective action and shared intention in informal groups. Next we discuss mechanisms for constructing institutional structures out of the conceptual and psychological resources made available by our understanding of informal joint intentional action. Then we extend the discussion of collective action and intention to institutional groups, such as the Supreme Court, and explain how concepts of such organizations are constructed out of the concepts of a rule, convention, and status function. Finally we discuss collective attitudes beyond intention