Institutions for adaptation: the capacity and ability of the Dutch institutional framework to adapt to climate change

The climate is not the only aspect in this world that is changing. We notice a number of societal trends – a shift towards individual responsibility to receive rain water on private property and to encourage individuals to seek insurance rather than depend on a safety net to be provided by the government; increasing pressure on rural land use because of urbanisation processes, together with development to combine land use functions; decisions to develop large scale housing projects that do not take into account the potential impact of climate change; and, inter alia, the development of innovative solutions such as floating houses and brackish agriculture. We also notice the development of new organizational arrangements, such as multilevel agreements between policy actors, a more horizontal approach to land use planning, and a shift form national to European nature policies. Obviously, the system we will try to study is a moving target, and the theoretical framework we use will have to be able to deal with thi

A Comparative Study of Supergrid and Superblock Urban Structure in China and Japan Rethinking the Chinese Superblocks: Learning from Japanese Experience

The Supergrid and Superblock together constitute a grid-and-cell urban structure that is especially evident in China and Japan. The Supergrid is a large-scale net of wide roads that defines a series of cells or Superblocks, each containing a network of narrower streets. While common in both countries, there are no comparative morphological studies. As a crucial contribution to urban design, this thesis places the structures in their cultural contexts and examines them against a group of post-1960 theories that focus on interrelationships between urban structure and functions. Here, they are synthesized as ‘Interconnection theory’ and the source of qualitative and quantitative methods (including Space Syntax) used to examine form-function interrelationships by understanding levels of Integration, Connection and Interaction in two Superblocks in each country. Particular emphasis is on the relationships between street networks and distribution of functions/activities. Primary research findings indicate that 1) Supergrid/Superblock systems are strongly rooted in Eastern culture, with Supergrid systems providing multi-directional global movement across wide urban areas in both countries. 2) However, the work reveals different types of street structures and functional patterns within Superblocks, with (Chinese) ‘wall’ and (Japanese) ‘floor’ spatial conceptions underlying differences. 3) These differing internal structures within the Superblocks have a deterministic impact on the spatial distribution of human activities. Clear but divergent patterns are displayed in the Superblocks with strong interrelationships between the street network and distribution of activities in the Japanese cases but less distinct ones in the Chinese: this is linked to China’s wall and gate structure that is absent in Japan

Simulacra and simulation : the impact of ICT upon "radical transformation" of culture

The article focus on the phenomena of the "radical change" (transformation) within culture brought by new ICT technologies, associated with the information and communication revolution, that have impacted not only the culture itself but also economic, social and political sphere, thus evoking the effect of synergy and convergence difficult to predict. Of course each era has its own revolutions and more or less radical changes, but the core of postmodern world we live is characterised mainly by the process of communication and culture directly mediated through digital technology, leading to the creation of new symbolic environment : virtual reality or real virtuality (often referred in terms of a third place "in between": real and virtual, human (homo sapiens) and technology (AI), individual and collective). Critical analysis of the defined phenomena implies the need of interdisciplinary approach based on the comparative methodology, both from the point view of theoretical discourses as well as more empirical approach, as the outlined theme moves "in between" new technologies (informational or new media sciences), economy, culture and social relations (economics, humanities and sociology), not to mentioned the growing interdependence and complexity within so called third wave of globalization (ICT revolution, demography and contemporary crisis). Taking into account that this phenomena is based on more and more interrelated and interdependent processes of "unintended consequences" as a result of inherent complexity of contemporary world, the first part of the article focus on the broader context of the assumed "radical change" (transformation) described by many scientific disciplines, bringing the interdisciplinary context necessary to understand this phenomena. Second part focus mainly of the impact of new technologies upon "radical transformation" of culture, trying to fully described and understand both the direct and in direct results, from the perspective of epistemological, axiological and institutional approach, necessary for more comprehensive analysis of the phenomena of "radical transformation" of culture. Third part is the endeavor of further reflection upon more or less direct result of this "radical transformation" of culture (culture of virtual reality or/and real virtuality), referring to Baudrillard's term of simulacra and simulation -the "precession of simulacra"-enhanced multiplication of signs and images reaching such an intensity, that only further exacerbated process of simulacrasation, thus blurring of the boundaries between the real, semiotic and symbolic, with no real verification possible. The core element (novelty) is the attempt to fully grasp this phenomena of "new culture emerging": by defining and understanding this process "in between" real and virtual (culture), not only as usual from the technological, but also from the cultural, sociological, economical, not to mention the philosophical (ontological) perspective

The citizen lobby: from capacity to influence

The Internet holds endless opportunities for exchange and dialogue and the promise of developing a better democratic model. Day-to-day politics are largely driven by economic lobbies in the interest of what Habermas calls their "generalised particularism," the threat to take jobs and tax revenues elsewhere. Citizens' influence over politicians is twofold: they are asked for their input in elections, referenda, online consultations and surveys, and citizens can initiate issues where they see political action needed. Yet these "participative forces," including NGOs, street rallies and charities, regularly fail to reach the ears of elected politicians as effectively as those of well-funded corporate lobbies. Also, this type of voluntary engagement often falls short of presenting the kind of reasoned challenges to the incumbents - by the electorate - that Habermas' communicative action aimed at. A more powerful model would therefore organise the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments, which, as Habermas quite correctly pointed out differ from mere opinions, and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. This is what the Citizen Lobby intends to do

Citizen Lobby

The Internet holds endless opportunities for exchange and dialogue and the promise of developing a better democratic model. Day-to-day politics are largely driven by economic lobbies in the interest of what Habermas calls their „generalised particularism,“ the threat to take jobs and tax revenues elsewhere. Citizens’ influence over politicians is twofold: they are asked for their input in elections, referenda, online consultations and surveys, and citizens can initiate issues where they see political action needed. Yet these “participative forces,” including NGOs, street rallies and charities, regularly fail to reach the ears of elected politicians as effectively as those of well-funded corporate lobbies. Also, this type of voluntary engagement often falls short of presenting the kind of reasoned challenges to the incumbents—by the electorate—that Habermas’ communicative action aimed at. A more powerful model would therefore organise the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments, which, as Habermas quite correctly pointed out differ from mere opinions, and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. This is what the Citizen Lobby intends to do

Glocal Governance

This open access book develops a conceptual framework for glocal governance as a multi-stakeholder local governance approach based on global human rights norms and democratic principles. It discusses glocal governance as part of an ongoing global transformation process that began in the 1990s, when democracy and individualizing responsibilities for governance became the dominant political system worldwide, and continues through today’s dawn of a New Cold War between those countries which have democratized and those which haven’t. This book will intrigue practitioners and scholars alike who are interested in the concepts of glocality and glocalism, local-global connectivity, and the implementation and dissemination of global norms and concepts such as human rights and democracy, at the local and community level as well as among civil society and private enterprises. The author argues that global norms have now become universal benchmarks which private, political, and civil actors use to assess day-to-day situations and market developments, and to make their decisions accordingly. This book will appeal to students, practitioners, and scholars of the social sciences and humanities who are interested in governance, human rights, public diplomacy and international relations; and in conceptualizing mechanisms for governing and enforcing political decisions locally, on the basis of global universal principles, international norms, and laws

Deep Representation Learning with Limited Data for Biomedical Image Synthesis, Segmentation, and Detection

Biomedical imaging requires accurate expert annotation and interpretation that can aid medical staff and clinicians in automating differential diagnosis and solving underlying health conditions. With the advent of Deep learning, it has become a standard for reaching expert-level performance in non-invasive biomedical imaging tasks by training with large image datasets. However, with the need for large publicly available datasets, training a deep learning model to learn intrinsic representations becomes harder. Representation learning with limited data has introduced new learning techniques, such as Generative Adversarial Networks, Semi-supervised Learning, and Self-supervised Learning, that can be applied to various biomedical applications. For example, ophthalmologists use color funduscopy (CF) and fluorescein angiography (FA) to diagnose retinal degenerative diseases. However, fluorescein angiography requires injecting a dye, which can create adverse reactions in the patients. So, to alleviate this, a non-invasive technique needs to be developed that can translate fluorescein angiography from fundus images. Similarly, color funduscopy and optical coherence tomography (OCT) are also utilized to semantically segment the vasculature and fluid build-up in spatial and volumetric retinal imaging, which can help with the future prognosis of diseases. Although many automated techniques have been proposed for medical image segmentation, the main drawback is the model's precision in pixel-wise predictions. Another critical challenge in the biomedical imaging field is accurately segmenting and quantifying dynamic behaviors of calcium signals in cells. Calcium imaging is a widely utilized approach to studying subcellular calcium activity and cell function; however, large datasets have yielded a profound need for fast, accurate, and standardized analyses of calcium signals. For example, image sequences from calcium signals in colonic pacemaker cells ICC (Interstitial cells of Cajal) suffer from motion artifacts and high periodic and sensor noise, making it difficult to accurately segment and quantify calcium signal events. Moreover, it is time-consuming and tedious to annotate such a large volume of calcium image stacks or videos and extract their associated spatiotemporal maps. To address these problems, we propose various deep representation learning architectures that utilize limited labels and annotations to address the critical challenges in these biomedical applications. To this end, we detail our proposed semi-supervised, generative adversarial networks and transformer-based architectures for individual learning tasks such as retinal image-to-image translation, vessel and fluid segmentation from fundus and OCT images, breast micro-mass segmentation, and sub-cellular calcium events tracking from videos and spatiotemporal map quantification. We also illustrate two multi-modal multi-task learning frameworks with applications that can be extended to other domains of biomedical applications. The main idea is to incorporate each of these as individual modules to our proposed multi-modal frameworks to solve the existing challenges with 1) Fluorescein angiography synthesis, 2) Retinal vessel and fluid segmentation, 3) Breast micro-mass segmentation, and 4) Dynamic quantification of calcium imaging datasets

World cities and the uneven geographies of financialization: unveiling stratification and hierarchy in the world city archipelago

This article critically evaluates the network‐centrism of much of contemporary world cities research and queries its capacity to unveil key accumulation processes under financialized globalization. Our object of inquiry is the world city archipelago (WCA), a material yet non‐contiguous space of world city ‘islands', which is (re)produced through the socio‐spatial practices of advanced producer services (APS) firms as they assist in constructing (financial) accumulation strategies for their clients. Scrutinizing the WCA with a singular focus on networks can veil dynamics that lead to internal stratification and hierarchy between world cities and their constitutive outside. Alternatively, these veiled dimensions are better grasped by territorial, scalar and place‐based abstractions. As an example, we unveil WCA space by studying the space of APS practices in three recent cases of Eurobond issuance. By comparing these three instances through an encompassing approach, a bounded geography of a financialized accumulation space is identified, which contains London and other world cities as a necessary space of dependence but also stretches out to various contingent spaces of engagement at the fringes of the WCA network: offshore jurisdictions and places of debt origination. We conclude by making the case for a heightened sensitivity in respect of core–periphery structures that exist between the WCA and its outside, but also within the WCA itself

Citizen Lobby

The Internet holds endless opportunities for exchange and dialogue and the promise of developing a better democratic model. Day-to-day politics are largely driven by economic lobbies in the interest of what Habermas calls their „generalised particularism,“ the threat to take jobs and tax revenues elsewhere. Citizens’ influence over politicians is twofold: they are asked for their input in elections, referenda, online consultations and surveys, and citizens can initiate issues where they see political action needed. Yet these “participative forces,” including NGOs, street rallies and charities, regularly fail to reach the ears of elected politicians as effectively as those of well-funded corporate lobbies. Also, this type of voluntary engagement often falls short of presenting the kind of reasoned challenges to the incumbents—by the electorate—that Habermas’ communicative action aimed at. A more powerful model would therefore organise the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments, which, as Habermas quite correctly pointed out differ from mere opinions, and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. This is what the Citizen Lobby intends to do

From Socialism to Open Cooperativism: Convergences and Divergences in the Work of Castoriadis, Olin Wright and Bauwens

This article attempts at integrating core socialist elements analyzed through the prism of Castoriadis s and Wright s work into a model of open cooperativism between Commons-based peer production ethical market entities and a partner state introduced by Bauwens and Kostakis It concludes with a critical appraisal of Bauwens and Kostakis s mode