Remote Sensing of Natural Hazards

Each year, natural hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, flooding, landslides, wildfires, avalanches, volcanic eruption, extreme temperatures, storm surges, drought, etc., result in widespread loss of life, livelihood, and critical infrastructure globally. With the unprecedented growth of the human population, largescale development activities, and changes to the natural environment, the frequency and intensity of extreme natural events and consequent impacts are expected to increase in the future.Technological interventions provide essential provisions for the prevention and mitigation of natural hazards. The data obtained through remote sensing systems with varied spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions particularly provide prospects for furthering knowledge on spatiotemporal patterns and forecasting of natural hazards. The collection of data using earth observation systems has been valuable for alleviating the adverse effects of natural hazards, especially with their near real-time capabilities for tracking extreme natural events. Remote sensing systems from different platforms also serve as an important decision-support tool for devising response strategies, coordinating rescue operations, and making damage and loss estimations.With these in mind, this book seeks original contributions to the advanced applications of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques in understanding various dimensions of natural hazards through new theory, data products, and robust approaches

Firm Competitive Advantage Through Relationship Management

Relationship management (RM) is an essential part of business, but its success as a business model can be hard to measure, with some firms embracing a model that is truly relationship-orientated, while others claim to be relationship-orientated but in fact prefer transactional short-term gain. This open access book aims to develop a mid-range theory of relationship management, examining truly relationship-orientated firms to discover not only what qualities these firms have that make them successful at the RM model, but also what benefits this model has for the firm. It addresses questions like how RM-mature companies achieve and sustain competitive advantage, and what determines the scale and scope of these firms, illustrating with case studies. This book will be of interest to scholars studying leadership and strategy, especially those interested in relationship management, business ethics and corporate social responsibility. It will also be of interest to professionals looking to develop their understanding of relationship management

Czernowitz to Chernivtsi by Cernăuți. A multicultural townscape as heritage of a plural society

Czernowitz, former capital city of the Duchy of Bucovina in the Hapsburg Empire, changed “location” twice: from Austria to Romania in 1918, becoming Cernauți, then from Romania to Ukraine in 1945 (until today), becoming Chernivtsi. Today Chernivtsi is mainly an Ukrainian city, but its architecture shows this historical process thanks to a series of urban landmarks. This paper aims to focus on the interplay among architecture and nationalities, so evident and strong in this case-study. The multicultural society before 1918 is reflected in many heterogeneous religious e public buildings, the effort of “Romanization” after 1918 is mainly reflected – on the contrary - in the “ethnic” Romanian qualities of new buildings. From the second half of the nineteenth century the townscape was progressively enriched by temples of different religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian…) and by the specific building types: the “national houses”, seat of the cultural life of each community (German, Jewish, Ruthenian, Polish, Romanian…) , all with their specific architectural features. In this architectural “melting pot” some buildings played a role of super-national, unifying and modern (Art Nouveau) landmarks: the railway station, the Postal Savings Bank and the theatre. The “Romanization” of the city was operated after 1920 building many new Orthodox churches and emphasizing the ethnic decorative details of new buildings (window frames, arches, roofs), related to the Brancoveanu style. The spread of Modernism, in the 30’s stopped this way of shaping a new face to the city, but the huge new Romanian Culture Palace “landed” in the theatre square speaking clearly of Bucovina as a part of Greater Romania. After 1945 the multicultural society vanished, and the Soviet power promoted homologation against the richness of the past. The independence of Ukraine from the former USSR allowed social groups and politicians to rethink about the national and local identity, mainly intended as ukrainian: as usual monuments changed, but the new ones, despite new people to celebrate, followed old ways in representing heroes. On the other hand, but more recently, architectural heritage is considered by Municipality as an ADN of Czernowitz and a value to be restored and protected, both on the Austrian and Romanian side. The website launched in 2008 for celebrating the 600 years of the town, speaks about Chernivtsi city of tolerance

Neolithic land-use in the Dutch wetlands: estimating the land-use implications of resource exploitation strategies in the Middle Swifterbant Culture (4600-3900 BCE)

The Dutch wetlands witness the gradual adoption of Neolithic novelties by foraging societies during the Swifterbant period. Recent analyses provide new insights into the subsistence palette of Middle Swifterbant societies. Small-scale livestock herding and cultivation are in evidence at this time, but their importance if unclear. Within the framework of PAGES Land-use at 6000BP project, we aim to translate the information on resource exploitation into information on land-use that can be incorporated into global climate modelling efforts, with attention for the importance of agriculture. A reconstruction of patterns of resource exploitation and their land-use dimensions is complicated by methodological issues in comparing the results of varied recent investigations. Analyses of organic residues in ceramics have attested to the cooking of aquatic foods, ruminant meat, porcine meat, as well as rare cases of dairy. In terms of vegetative matter, some ceramics exclusively yielded evidence of wild plants, while others preserve cereal remains. Elevated δ15N values of human were interpreted as demonstrating an important aquatic component of the diet well into the 4th millennium BC. Yet recent assays on livestock remains suggest grazing on salt marshes partly accounts for the human values. Finally, renewed archaeozoological investigations have shown the early presence of domestic animals to be more limited than previously thought. We discuss the relative importance of exploited resources to produce a best-fit interpretation of changing patterns of land-use during the Middle Swifterbant phase. Our review combines recent archaeological data with wider data on anthropogenic influence on the landscape. Combining the results of plant macroremains, information from pollen cores about vegetation development, the structure of faunal assemblages, and finds of arable fields and dairy residue, we suggest the most parsimonious interpretation is one of a limited land-use footprint of cultivation and livestock keeping in Dutch wetlands between 4600 and 3900 BCE.NWOVidi 276-60-004Human Origin

Ways and Capacity in Archaeological Data Management in Serbia

Over the past year and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world has witnessed inequalities across borders and societies. They also include access to archaeological resources, both physical and digital. Both archaeological data creators and users spent a lot of time working from their homes, away from artefact collections and research data. However, this was the perfect moment to understand the importance of making data freely and openly available, both nationally and internationally. This is why the authors of this paper chose to make a selection of data bases from various institutions responsible for preservation and protection of cultural heritage, in order to understand their policies regarding accessibility and usage of the data they keep. This will be done by simple visits to various web-sites or data bases. They intend to check on the volume and content, but also importance of the offered archaeological heritage. In addition, the authors will estimate whether the heritage has adequately been classified and described and also check whether data is available in foreign languages. It needs to be seen whether it is possible to access digital objects (documents and the accompanying metadata), whether access is opened for all users or it requires a certain hierarchy access, what is the policy of usage, reusage and distribution etc. It remains to be seen whether there are public API or whether it is possible to collect data through API. In case that there is a public API, one needs to check whether datasets are interoperable or messy, requiring data cleaning. After having visited a certain number of web-sites, the authors expect to collect enough data to make a satisfactory conclusion about accessibility and usage of Serbian archaeological data web bases