Spreading of Antarctic Bottom Water in the Atlantic Ocean

This paper describes the transport of bottom water from its source region in the Weddell Sea through the abyssal channels of the Atlantic Ocean. The research brings together the recent observations and historical data. A strong flow of Antarctic Bottom Water through the Vema Channel is analyzed. The mean speed of the flow is 30 cm/s. A temperature increase was found in the deep Vema Channel, which has been observed for 30 years already. The flow of bottom water in the northern part of the Brazil Basin splits. Part of the water flows through the Romanche and Chain fracture zones. The other part flows to the North American Basin. Part of the latter flow propagates through the Vema Fracture Zone into the Northeast Atlantic. The properties of bottom water in the Kane Gap and Discovery Gap are also analyzed

Mining Social Media and Structured Data in Urban Environmental Management to Develop Smart Cities

This research presented the deployment of data mining on social media and structured data in urban studies. We analyzed urban relocation, air quality and traffic parameters on multicity data as early work. We applied the data mining techniques of association rules, clustering and classification on urban legislative history. Results showed that data mining could produce meaningful knowledge to support urban management. We treated ordinances (local laws) and the tweets about them as indicators to assess urban policy and public opinion. Hence, we conducted ordinance and tweet mining including sentiment analysis of tweets. This part of the study focused on NYC with a goal of assessing how well it heads towards a smart city. We built domain-specific knowledge bases according to widely accepted smart city characteristics, incorporating commonsense knowledge sources for ordinance-tweet mapping. We developed decision support tools on multiple platforms using the knowledge discovered to guide urban management. Our research is a concrete step in harnessing the power of data mining in urban studies to enhance smart city development

NHEP 2007 Progress Report

The New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) National Estuary Program, which is a collaborative local/state/federal program established under the Clean Water Act with the goal of protecting and enhancing nationally significant estuaries. The NHEP receives most of its funding from the EPA and is administered by the University of New Hampshire. The mission of the NHEP is to protect, restore, and monitor the environmental quality of the state’s estuaries, including the Great Bay Estuary and the Hampton-Seabrook Estuary. The NHEP study area covers the entire coastal watershed of New Hampshire, including all the freshwater tributaries that flow into the estuaries. Forty-two communities are within the NHEP’s area of focus. About 10 percent of the state’s land area is in the coastal watershed, and approximately one-third of the state’s population and businesses are located here. Although a portion of the watershed lies in Maine, currently the NHEP conducts its activities in the New Hampshire portion only. Approved in 2001 and updated in 2005, the NHEP’s Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan) represents a strategic approach to protect and restore the state’s estuaries. Spanning three years, the collaborative process to develop the watershed plan involved the work of resource managers, planners, researchers, concerned citizens, and other coastal stakeholders. The resulting plan describes actions to be undertaken throughout New Hampshire’s coastal watershed to achieve and sustain healthy estuarine systems. The Management Plan identifies priority actions in five areas: 1) Water Quality, 2) Land Use, Development, and Habitat Protection, 3) Shellfish Resources, 4) Habitat Restoration, and 5) Public Outreach and Education. The NHEP collaborates with partner organizations to identify Management Plan priorities each year. The NHEP either addresses these activities directly or awards grants to communities, conservation organizations, researchers, and government agencies to complete priority projects. From 2001 to 2006, the NHEP awarded approximately $3.5 million to fund projects to improve, protect, or monitor the health of New Hampshire’s estuaries

Building a Better Future on the Foundations of the Past: Incorporating Historic Districts into Ecocities

In an effort to become more sustainable, many cities are embarking on ecocity projects: city-wide urban projects intended to minimize environmental impacts as a result of urban development through a combination of environmental policy and urban planning. This thesis discusses how the ecocity movement can complement and conflict with historic preservation. The case studies of Strasbourg, France and Alexandria, Virginia shed light on how preservation can be successfully incorporated into ecocity plans. A best practices guide, synthesized from the case studies, outlines how preservation should be incorporated in the various planning stages to further a city’s sustainable goals. This thesis concludes that in many cases preservation goals and the sustainable goals identified in ecocity plans align, but without the inclusion of and collaboration with preservation professionals during the early planning stages, preservation can be left out of ecocity plans and historic fabric can ultimately be threatened by new “sustainable” development

2004 NHEP Progress Report, NHEP

This report summarizes progress made toward implementing the New Hampshire Estuaries Project Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) and evaluates the status of environmental and administrative indicators based upon management goals and objectives. The report is divided into two primary sections: (I) Status of Environmental and Administrative Indicators and (II) Action Plan Completion

An integrated GPS/PDA/GIS telegeoprocessing system for traffic & environment

The development of sustainable urban transport networks is a present priority for world leaders, national governors and local authorities. The challenge is to increase mobility reducing the adverse impacts of transport. The potential of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to provide solutions for the 21st century sustainable urban transport system has already been demonstrated in several piecewise applications. An integrated framework that addresses the needs of municipal authorities, that integrates the data spread through different sources, that supports the intelligent traffic & environment operations, and that provides information to the citizens steering their involvement and commitment is of critical importance and can be the enabler towards the creation of more efficient, safety, and environmental-friendly transport networks that promote the citizens’ quality of life. This work describes an integrated GPS (Global Positioning System) / PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) / GIS (Geographical Information System) system which is part of the mentioned framework. The system includes prototypes for mobile urban traffic data acquisition, with a GPS -equipped vehicle, a PDA application and wireless communications, and for a geodatabase with a related Web application for urban traffic & environment. Their integrated operation is exemplified for a real urban transport system.Postprint (published version

Toward a Net-Zero Carbon Planet: A Policy Proposal

The effort to address climate change is global in scale and increasingly urgent, yet it lacks an effective policy framework. President Obama\u27s determination to elevate clean energy to a national policy priority, Congress\u27s consideration of a federal cap-and-trade regime for greenhouse gases, and the upcoming revisions to the Kyoto Protocol all provide an opportunity to move toward adopting a globally balanced carbon budget. A balanced carbon budget could replace the current, somewhat arbitrary greenhouse gas reduction targets with a scientifically derived calibration limiting global carbon emissions to the rate of carbon absorption. Carbon sub-budgets could then be allocated to each nation or region, which could choose its own measures to meet its carbon budget through a carbon-management plan. These measures will likely fall into four broad categories: reduction of carbon emissions through demand reduction and greater efficiency; increased carbon absorption through reforestation and carbon capture; substitution of non-carbon-based fuels; and, because of the lag time in achieving carbon equilibrium through implementing these measures, adaptation to climate change. Such a balanced carbon budget approach has the virtues not only of long-term safety, but also of clarity, comprehensiveness, and choice. Recent experience shows that choice-allowing units of government and industry flexibility in meeting budget targets-is the key to gaining and retaining public support and to harnessing ingenuity and innovation. This overall approach requires an unprecedented level of monitoring, reporting, and adjustment to achieve the desired result. It may also require some departures from current environmental orthodoxies favoring smart growth and opposing nuclear power

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

The Social Economy in BC and Alberta: Strengthening the Foundations for Growth

The BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA) is a coalition of community based and academic institutions formed to conduct research on the social economy and community economic development in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. This document is the funding proposal from the Canadian Centre for Community Renewal, the lead agency of BALTA, to the main funder, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). It provides a rationale and overview of initial plans for BALTA's five year research program.BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA); Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (CCCR); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC