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Standardising basic spatial units : problems and prospects
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Reflections on Foucauldian Discource Analysis in Planning and Environmental Research
YesDiscourse analysis is becoming an increasingly common approach in planning and environmental policy research. This paper asserts that the generic treatment of discourse analysis obscures distinct approaches where `discourses¿ can combine different elements of text, systems of thought, and action. Textually-oriented approaches have been more prevalent over the 1990s but this paper explores a different approach, grounded in the theory of Michel Foucault, which broadens discourse to embrace social action. Comparing and contrasting two studies which have utilised this approach, the paper suggests that there is considerable room for variation concerning the subjects of study, the institutional scale of analyses, the methods of investigation, and process of analysis. Nevertheless, this paper identifies certain core elements of a Foucauldian discourse analytic approach. The paper concludes that this emerging approach to discourse analysis promises considerable insights if applied more widely in planning and environmental research
Fields in Motion, Fields of Friction: Tales of Betrayal and Promise from Kangra District, India
Over a period of five decades, Kangra District, located in the mountainous northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, has been continually si(gh)ted within different development imaginaries that have evolved at particular configurations of scale and time and been given shape within a succession of international bilateral projects. These development flows into the region have in turn fostered a plethora of competing institutions and practices, contributing their own sometimes divergent flows within an inherently mobile and “developmentalizing” terrain. While this dynamic and multi-textured terrain offers rich opportunities for partnerships forged across disparate sites, there is, I argue, a need to revisit “collaboration” as a key feminist tool for facilitating social justice and change. Widely lauded for its empowering, equalizing and transformative potential by feminist scholars, collaboration is also viewed prescriptively in terms of “success” and “failure.” Consequently, “strategies and solutions” are sought to negotiate its minefields and to resolve, often futilely, the friction that repeatedly erupts within them. In this paper, I suggest a re-viewing of friction as a valuable methodological frame within feminist collaborative research and praxis. In place of the prevalent emphasis on containing and resolving friction generated at border crossings, I contend that feminist-oriented “location work” that engages with friction and follows its routes through the fluid and fertile space of a “developmentalizing terrain” can provide promising avenues and detours for empowerment and social justice. Drawing on Tsing’s (2005) discussion of the creative role of friction across global connections, I reflect on some of the ways in which it played out as a creative source of production, interruption and mutation within two of my collaborative ventures in Kangra. In doing so, I demonstrate how an attention to the sometimes unanticipated and diversionary routes that are generated by friction within collaborative efforts, and the vistas of “betrayal” and promise that they reveal, offer valuable insights for encounters at the interface of feminist praxis, anthropology and development practice
Tectonics, volcanism, landscape structure and human evolution in the African Rift
Tectonic movements and volcanism in the African Rift have usually been considered of relevance to human evolution only at very large geographical and chronological scales, principally in relation to longterm topographic and climatic variation at the continental scale. At the more loca1 scale of catchment basins and individual sites, tectonic features are generally considered to be at worst disruptive and at best incidental features enhancing the preservation and exposure of early sites. We demonstrate that recent lava flows and fault scarps in a tectonically active region create a distinctive landscape structure with a complex and highly differentiated topography of enclosures, barriers and fertile basins. This landscape structure has an important potential impact on the co-evolution of prey-predator interactions and on interspecific relationships more generally. In particular, we suggest that it would have offered unique opportunities for the development of a hominid niche characterised by bipedalism, meat-eating and stone tool use. These landscape features are best appreciated by looking at areas which today have rapid rates of tectonic movement and frequent volcanic activity, as in eastern Afar and Djibouti. These provide a better analogy for the Plio-Pleistocene environments occupied by early hominids than the present-day landscapes where their fossil remains and artefacts have been discovered. The latter areas are now less active than was the case when the sites were formed. They have also been radically transfomed by ongoing geomorphological processes in the intervening millennia. Thus, previous attempts to reconstruct the local landscape setting adjacent to these early hominid sites necessarily rely on limited geological windows into the ancient land surface and thus tend to filter out small-scale topographic detail because it cannot be reliably identified. It is precisely this local detail that we consider to be of importance in understanding the environmental contribution to co-evolutionary developments
No accounting for risk
At the present time, the relation between accounting praxis and risk is not well understood. Accounting praxis does not appear to regard the risk it identifies with its activities as being different from 'objective risk' - the concept of risk found in positive financial and accounting research. Instead accounting praxis (as reflected in case studies, surveys and other empirical studies) reveal a collection of different, sometimes contradictory, conceptions and 'taken for granted' understandings of risk that are invoked and applied on an ad hoc, case by case basis. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the conceptual disarray in accounting for risk is both costly and unnecessary. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to risk research, the authors review developments in risk thinking at the end of the 20th Century and highlight a way forward for accounting through New Paradigm Risk (NPR). Various illustrations and case study examples are drawn upon to reflect the relevance of NPR to accounting praxis
Army-NASA aircrew/aircraft integration program (A3I) software detailed design document, phase 3
The capabilities and design approach of the MIDAS (Man-machine Integration Design and Analysis System) computer-aided engineering (CAE) workstation under development by the Army-NASA Aircrew/Aircraft Integration Program is detailed. This workstation uses graphic, symbolic, and numeric prototyping tools and human performance models as part of an integrated design/analysis environment for crewstation human engineering. Developed incrementally, the requirements and design for Phase 3 (Dec. 1987 to Jun. 1989) are described. Software tools/models developed or significantly modified during this phase included: an interactive 3-D graphic cockpit design editor; multiple-perspective graphic views to observe simulation scenarios; symbolic methods to model the mission decomposition, equipment functions, pilot tasking and loading, as well as control the simulation; a 3-D dynamic anthropometric model; an intermachine communications package; and a training assessment component. These components were successfully used during Phase 3 to demonstrate the complex interactions and human engineering findings involved with a proposed cockpit communications design change in a simulated AH-64A Apache helicopter/mission that maps to empirical data from a similar study and AH-1 Cobra flight test
Safety distance awareness system for Malaysian Driver
It is known that the risk of an accident increases exponentially with the speed of the
vehicle and most collisions happen when the driver fails to brake at the required time
and distance. The objective of this research is to create a Safety Distance Awareness
System which aims at warning the driver of the potential frontal collision and to alter
Malaysian driver attitudes. This system is to manipulate Malaysian driver attitude
that likes to tailgating and to prevent rear-end collision in Malaysia. This is done by
using a Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) range finder to determine the
distance of the vehicle or obstacle in front of the host vehicle. With the help of
microcontroller, the distance of the host vehicle could be determined and a warning
will be issued in the form of both visual and hearing so driver could take the correct
preventive measure. There will be few stages of warning, the system will intensify
the distress warning until the collision occurs. These SDAs do not take any automatic
prevention or control to the vehicle to avoid collision. In overall the research hopes
to achieve a more convenient driving experience and a safer driving environment by
implementing the SDAS to keep drivers aware of the potential hazards ahead of their
vehicle. Hopefully the Malaysian government will involve in this research, since the
implementation of Safety Distance Awareness System can provide a new alternative
in the safety system hence it can reduce accidents in Malaysia
Recreation, tourism and nature in a changing world : proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 2010
Proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 201
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