Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

Urbanization of irrigated land and water transfers

Presented at Urbanization of irrigated land and water transfers: a USCID water management conference on May 28-31, 2008 in Scottsdale, Arizona.Colorado's Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI) shows that the state has only enough water to meet about 70% of its needs by the year 2030, with most of the gap occurring in the front range urban areas of the state. The SWSI report forecasts that a majority of the water needed for cities will transition from agriculture, which currently uses more than 80% of the state's water. Agricultural communities are concerned what such a transition could mean to their viability. The second phase of SWSI investigated such alternatives to the traditional "buy and dry" as interruptible supply agreements, rotational fallowing leases, water banks and cropping changes. The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District (LAVWCD), inspired by the Palo Verde Irrigation District in California, set about to see if ditch companies in the lower Arkansas Valley might agree to form a "super ditch" whereby they would cooperatively pool part of their water to gain operational flexibility and make it available for lease to cities. By working together in a rotational fallowing scheme, they conceptualize that they will have greater bargaining power. Perhaps by converting part of their land from growing hay or corn to growing "water" they could actually benefit financially, and keep their agricultural communities viable. Those attempting to transform the concept into reality are finding that "the devil is in the details." This paper is presented as a sociological case study in the making. The authors detail the steps Super Ditch organizers went through to determine if their scheme is feasible, as well as the hoops they are now going through to try to bring it to fruition

Urbanization of irrigated land and water transfers

Presented at Urbanization of irrigated land and water transfers: a USCID water management conference on May 28-31, 2008 in Scottsdale, Arizona.Includes bibliographical references.Burgeoning populations are increasing municipal water demand in the West, a phenomenon that is changing rural and urban economies. Agricultural water is a preferred source for meeting growing demands, but transfers often require formerly irrigated land to be fallowed, removing a key industry from rural regional economies. It is no surprise that large-scale transfers are greeted with highly-charged, emotionally contentious debates. One alternative to 'buy and dry' strategies is gaining interest. The alternative allows farmers to lease a portion of their water portfolio to cities. Leased water is generated as farmers fallow their land on a rotational basis or reduce the consumptive use of their cropping operations by limiting irrigation. Examples of limited irrigation strategies include timing irrigations during vegetative growth and adopting innovative crop rotations. Importantly, the limited irrigation cropland remains in production so that rural economies suffer reduced impacts vis a vis buy and dry activity. But will farmers adopt limited irrigation strategies if water lease markets materialize? The objectives of this research are to examine producers' potential for adoption of limited irrigations strategies and their perceptions of lease arrangements. Potential adoption is gauged from a producer survey of South Platte River Basin farmers in Colorado, a basin experiencing significant population growth in the midst of significant agriculture production. The results of this indicate that more than 60% of the respondents are willing to lease garnering between 50,000 and 60,000 acre feet of potential water supplies