Microeconomic Motives of Land Use Change in Coastal Zone Area: Agent Based Modelling Approach

Economic growth causes growing urbanization, extension of tourist sector, infrastructure and change of natural landscape. These processes of land use change attract even more attention if they take place in coastal zone area. In that case not only the efficient allocation and preservation of natural area, but also reduction of potential damage from flooding is important. Driven forces of land use at macro and micro levels should be taken into account. This paper presents an agent based model (ABM), which is designed to simulate land use change in coastal zone area based of human behaviour. The aim is to understand motives, types of connections and interactions between different actors and natural environment in order to get a feeling how different policy options and natural conditions might affect land use configuration. Microeconomic motives of land use decisions are in the focus of the research. Individual land use decisions are guided by economic and geomorphologic conditions, spatial planning and coastal protection policy. Each location choice is done according to a set of defined rules and land attributes. Space is represented as a grid of cells. Self-interested economic agents interact with each other trying to benefit from a certain type of land-use. We introduce the perception of risk of flooding in the model of land use as an innovative aspect of ABM simulations for water management problems. Based on decisions of spatially distributed individual economic agents operating in a policy framework, the model produces aggregated land-use patterns as an outcome. Understanding the factors that affect land use decisions will help policy makers design incentives to achieve policy objectives in coastal zone area. The proposed ABM will be applied to a study area in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands

Risk-sharing policies in the context of the French Flood Prevention Action Programmes

This article analyzes the consequences for risk distribution of the French Flood Prevention Action Programme (PAPI). By redirecting floods from the most vulnerable to the least vulnerable areas, PAPIs expose farmers to greater flood risks. This has led local water management institutions to introduce compensation payments. The article outlines the results of an exhaustive survey of all PAPI programmes in France, which examined the way the compensation policies are set up locally. Results of the survey showed that the proposed policies may be financially non-viable. Several more viable risk-sharing solutions are then discussed, involving insurance schemes, state intervention and local institutions.flood risk management; flood storage; washland creation; risk transfer; compensation payments; insurance; floodplain restoration; over-flooding; damage assessment.

Cult Statuary in the Judean Temple at Yeb

A revisitation of the Yeb archives with an eye to the question of cult statuary. The present article inventories the state of the question and makes several constructive suggestions. Its primary contributions are: to address the Yeb evidence, even preliminarily, to the debate over Yhwh statuary in the Jerusalem temple; to make a fresh interpretation of TAD A4.7/8; and to reread other key textual data for information about statuary

Storie sovrapposte : la città e l’édizione. Istanbul alla fine del XVII secolo

International audienceAt the end of the 17th century, a French draftsman published a series of scenes from Istanbul. Unlike his predecessors, the author, Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, claimed that he had been scrupulous in the composition of these images. In analyzing them, we can see that he used a multitude of drawing artifices, trickery and deformation which bear witness to the difficulties he encountered in preparing his drawings of Muslim cities of the Near East at that time and to the strong influence of the city’s Byzantine past on the drawings that could be made. From this example, we can reflect on how a critical analysis of graphic documents can provide information on the way authors perceived places and objects.A la fin du XVII e siècle, un dessinateur français publie une série des vues d'Istanbul. L'auteur, Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, prétend, au contraire de ses prédécesseurs, avoir été très scrupuleux dans la composition de ces images. Leur examen met en exergue de multiples effets de dessin, tricheries et déformations qui témoignent à la fois des difficultés alors rencontrées par les auteurs pour représenter les villes du Proche-Orient musulman à ce moment-là et aussi de la forte influence du passé byzantin de la ville sur les images qu'il est envisageable d'en produire. Au-delà de cet exemple, il s'agit aussi de réfléchir à la manière dont la critique graphique des documents informe sur la posture de leurs auteurs à l'égard des lieux et des choses

Regards sur Sainte-Sophie (fin XVIIe - début XIXe Siècle): prémices d'une histoire de l'architecture byzantine

In the late 17th century, Guillaume-Joseph Grelot wrote the first comprehensive study on Hagia Sophia. His contribution greatly improved the knowledge of the monument in Western Europe and offered at the same time a critical view on its architecture, which was in strong contrast with the opinion of previous travelers. Grelot's study marks the starting point of a reflection on Byzantine architecture that developed throughout the Age of Enlightenment, especially in the second half of the 18th century. In their work, the theoreticians and first historians of architecture, such as Julien-David Leroy, picked Byzantine monuments instead of Western buildings as examples of medieval architecture. This choice reflected the importance attributed to the Byzantine dome on square in the history of architecture, and the idea that Byzantine architecture was less degenerate than its counterpart in the West. Despite the new attention paid to Byzantine monuments, there was little progress in the actual knowledge of the buildings, besides Hagia Sophia, San Marco in Venice and San Vitale in Ravenna. By the early 19th century, the idea that the dome of Hagia Sophia was the first of its kind seemed no longer satisfying, and the question of its origin began to arise, for example in the work of Jean-Baptiste Séroux d'Agincourt. This shift is symptomatic of the beginning of a new interest in Byzantine architecture as such, and not merely as the forerunner of > Western churches. The reflection on the origin and significance of different elements of Byzantine architecture, especially vaults, which culminates in the first decades of the 20th century, during the > controversy, was therefore not new. Indeed, it was deeply rooted in this period I call the dawning of Byzantine architectur