The Risk Mapping in the Czech Republic

The paper focuses on the issue of risk mapping in the conditions of the Czech Republic. This method is based on the risk mapping method developed by the Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic, which comes from the methodology recommended by the European Union. The aim of the paper is to characterize and determine selected starting points for risk mapping that are necessary for representation the risks on the map. It uses the interaction of different types of hazards with the vulnerability of the territory and the level of preparedness in that territory. Implementation of the risk mapping result for a given territorial unit is broad. Risk mapping is based primarily on the classification and quantification of risk in relation to the territory. It is a value-based result risk on the map

Semantic location extraction from crowdsourced data

Crowdsourced Data (CSD) has recently received increased attention in many application areas including disaster management. Convenience of production and use, data currency and abundancy are some of the key reasons for attracting this high interest. Conversely, quality issues like incompleteness, credibility and relevancy prevent the direct use of such data in important applications like disaster management. Moreover, location information availability of CSD is problematic as it remains very low in many crowd sourced platforms such as Twitter. Also, this recorded location is mostly related to the mobile device or user location and often does not represent the event location. In CSD, event location is discussed descriptively in the comments in addition to the recorded location (which is generated by means of mobile device's GPS or mobile communication network). This study attempts to semantically extract the CSD location information with the help of an ontological Gazetteer and other available resources. 2011 Queensland flood tweets and Ushahidi Crowd Map data were semantically analysed to extract the location information with the support of Queensland Gazetteer which is converted to an ontological gazetteer and a global gazetteer. Some preliminary results show that the use of ontologies and semantics can improve the accuracy of place name identification of CSD and the process of location information extraction

Emergent realities for social wellbeing : environmental, spatial and social pathways

A book published by the Department of Criminology, Faculty for Social Wellbeing, University of Malta focusing on environmental, spatial and social fathways for social wellbeing.peer-reviewe

Farming in Changing Production Conditions: Agricultural Technology, Climate Change and Adaptation in Vietnam

In an era when enormous challenges to food security are imposed on humanity through phenomena such as global climate change, it is important to understand how farming households adapt and respond to a changing production environment. This thesis consists of three empirical studies with a special focus on rural farming households in Vietnam. The first study investigates the pattern and determinants of the use of four agricultural practices – new rice seed varieties, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and mechanisation – in small-scale rice farming. Using a long panel dataset, the study applied a two-stage estimation strategy to determine how and to what extent the changes in agricultural technology have been affected by various factors. The second study examines the changes in climatological variables since 1975 using a comprehensive dataset for a relatively long time period (1975 to 2014) and a high density of climatic records. It first combines statistical methods with geostatistical techniques to graphically represent the distribution of climate patterns, identifying variations and trends and linking to rice production throughout the country. The third study investigates whether or not farmers have altered their farming strategies over time in response to pronounced changes in the climate. Since farmers’ decisions to use certain farming techniques are inherently dynamic, I estimated a dynamic random-effects probit model, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence. Vietnamese farmers have been operating their farms under a continuously transforming policy environment. However, new challenges are emerging and their impacts on agricultural production have been increasingly pronounced. The findings and policy implications drawn from these studies will be useful in enhancing farmers’ adaptive capacity in fast changing production conditions

Integrated assessment and valuation of ecosystem services - Guidelines and experiences

EU FP7 OpenNESS project deliverable D33 & D4

Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference of the International Institute for Infrastructure Renewal and Reconstruction

Proceedings of The 9th Annual International Conference of the International Institute for Infrastructure Renewal and Reconstruction. The conference was held at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia from 8-10 July 2013. The event title for the 9th Annual Conference was: Risk-informed Disaster Management: Planning for Response, Recovery and Resilience. All papers were double blind peer reviewed and the Proceedings were published online in March 2015

Local and regional desertification indicators in a global perspective: Seminar proceedings

This volume contains the proceedings of the International Seminar on Local and Regional Desertification Indicators in a Global Perspective held in Beijing, China, in May 2005. Aim of the seminar was to provide a precious opportunity to exchange information and experiences about the identification and use of desertification B&I among representatives of UNCCD Annexes, while contributing to strengthen linkages among them and exploring possible synergies. The seminar was organised in the framework of the AIDCCD project (Active Exchange of Experiences on Indicators and Development of Perspective in the Context of UNCCD), aiming at developing and co-ordinating exchange of experience across the world among institutions involved in the implementation of the UNCCD regional Annexes

SIMULATING SEISMIC WAVE PROPAGATION IN TWO-DIMENSIONAL MEDIA USING DISCONTINUOUS SPECTRAL ELEMENT METHODS

We introduce a discontinuous spectral element method for simulating seismic wave in 2- dimensional elastic media. The methods combine the flexibility of a discontinuous finite element method with the accuracy of a spectral method. The elastodynamic equations are discretized using high-degree of Lagrange interpolants and integration over an element is accomplished based upon the Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre integration rule. This combination of discretization and integration results in a diagonal mass matrix and the use of discontinuous finite element method makes the calculation can be done locally in each element. Thus, the algorithm is simplified drastically. We validated the results of one-dimensional problem by comparing them with finite-difference time-domain method and exact solution. The comparisons show excellent agreement