2,834 research outputs found

    An intelligent decision support system for groundwater supply management and electromechanical infrastructure controls

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    This study presents an intelligent Decision Support System (DSS) aimed at bridging the theoretical-practical gap in groundwater management. The ongoing demand for sophisticated systems capable of interpreting extensive data to inform sustainable groundwater decision- making underscores the critical nature of this research. To meet this challenge, telemetry data from six randomly selected wells were used to establish a comprehensive database of groundwater pumping parameters, including flow rate, pressure, and current intensity. Statistical analysis of these parameters led to the determination of threshold values for critical factors such as water pressure and electrical current. Additionally, a soft sensor was developed using a Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithm, enabling real-time forecasting of key variables. This was achieved by continuously comparing live telemetry data to pump design specifications and results from regular field testing. The proposed machine learning model ensures robust empirical monitoring of well and pump health. Furthermore, expert operational knowledge from water management professionals, gathered through a Classical Delphi (CD) technique, was seamlessly integrated. This collective expertise culminated in a data-driven framework for sustainable groundwater facilities monitoring. In conclusion, this innovative DSS not only addresses the theory-application gap but also leverages the power of data analytics and expert knowledge to provide high-precision online insights, thereby optimizing groundwater management practices

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    Sociotechnical Imaginaries, the Future and the Third Offset Strategy

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    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

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    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods

    A BIM - GIS Integrated Information Model Using Semantic Web and RDF Graph Databases

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    In recent years, 3D virtual indoor and outdoor urban modelling has become an essential geospatial information framework for civil and engineering applications such as emergency response, evacuation planning, and facility management. Building multi-sourced and multi-scale 3D urban models are in high demand among architects, engineers, and construction professionals to achieve these tasks and provide relevant information to decision support systems. Spatial modelling technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are frequently used to meet such high demands. However, sharing data and information between these two domains is still challenging. At the same time, the semantic or syntactic strategies for inter-communication between BIM and GIS do not fully provide rich semantic and geometric information exchange of BIM into GIS or vice-versa. This research study proposes a novel approach for integrating BIM and GIS using semantic web technologies and Resources Description Framework (RDF) graph databases. The suggested solution's originality and novelty come from combining the advantages of integrating BIM and GIS models into a semantically unified data model using a semantic framework and ontology engineering approaches. The new model will be named Integrated Geospatial Information Model (IGIM). It is constructed through three stages. The first stage requires BIMRDF and GISRDF graphs generation from BIM and GIS datasets. Then graph integration from BIM and GIS semantic models creates IGIMRDF. Lastly, the information from IGIMRDF unified graph is filtered using a graph query language and graph data analytics tools. The linkage between BIMRDF and GISRDF is completed through SPARQL endpoints defined by queries using elements and entity classes with similar or complementary information from properties, relationships, and geometries from an ontology-matching process during model construction. The resulting model (or sub-model) can be managed in a graph database system and used in the backend as a data-tier serving web services feeding a front-tier domain-oriented application. A case study was designed, developed, and tested using the semantic integrated information model for validating the newly proposed solution, architecture, and performance

    An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains

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    This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually. To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the author’s philosophical adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply chain performance. The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities

    Sensing Collectives: Aesthetic and Political Practices Intertwined

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    Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders

    Informationsströme in digitalen Kulturen

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    Wir sind umgeben von einer Vielzahl an Informationsströmen, die uns selbstverstĂ€ndlich erscheinen. Um diese digitalen Kulturen zu beschreiben, entwickeln medienwissenschaftliche Arbeiten Theorien einer Welt im Fluss. Dabei erliegen ihre Diagnosen oftmals einem Technikfetisch und vernachlĂ€ssigen gesellschaftliche Strukturen. Mathias Denecke legt eine systematische Kritik dieser Theoriebildung vor. Dazu zeichnet er die Geschichte der Rede von strömenden Informationen in der Entwicklung digitaler Computer nach und diskutiert, wie der Begriff fĂŒr Gegenwartsbeschreibungen produktiv gemacht werden kann

    IMAGINING, GUIDING, PLAYING INTIMACY: - A Theory of Character Intimacy Games -

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    Within the landscape of Japanese media production, and video game production in particular, there is a niche comprising video games centered around establishing, developing, and fulfilling imagined intimate relationships with anime-manga characters. Such niche, although very significant in production volume and lifespan, is left unexplored or underexplored. When it is not, it is subsumed within the scope of wider anime-manga media. This obscures the nature of such video games, alternatively identified with descriptors including but not limited to ‘visual novel’, ‘dating simulator’ and ‘adult computer game’. As games centered around developing intimacy with characters, they present specific ensembles of narrative content, aesthetics and software mechanics. These ensembles are aimed at eliciting in users what are, by all intents and purposes, parasocial phenomena towards the game’s characters. In other words, these software products encourage players to develop affective and bodily responses towards characters. They are set in a way that is coherent with shared, circulating scripts for sexual and intimate interaction to guide player imaginative action. This study defines games such as the above as ‘character intimacy games’, video game software where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters. To do so, however, player must recognize themselves as playing that type of game, and to be looking to develop that kind of response towards the game’s characters. Character Intimacy Games are contingent upon player developing affective and bodily responses, and thus presume that players are, at the very least, non-hostile towards their development. This study approaches Japanese character intimacy games as its corpus, and operates at the intersection of studies of communication, AMO studies and games studies. The study articulates a research approach based on the double need of approaching single works of significance amidst a general scarcity of scholarly background on the subject. It juxtaposes data-driven approaches derived from fan-curated databases – The Visual Novel Database and Erogescape -Erogē Hyƍron KĆ«kan – with a purpose-created ludo-hermeneutic process. By deploying an observation of character intimacy games through fan-curated data and building ludo-hermeneutics on the resulting ontology, this study argues that character intimacy games are video games where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters and recognizing themselves as doing so. To produce such conditions, the assemblage of software mechanics and narrative content in such games facilitates intimacy between player and characters. This is, ultimately, conductive to the emergence of parasocial phenomena. Parasocial phenomena, in turn, are deployed as an integral assumption regarding player activity within the game’s wider assemblage of narrative content and software mechanics
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