1,352 research outputs found
Development of an Adaptive Environmental Management System for Lejweleputswa District: A Participatory Approach through Fuzzy Cognitive Maps
Published ThesisEnvironmental pollution caused by mines within the district of Lejweleputswa in Free
State is a major contributor to health issues and the inability to grow crops within the
mining communities. Mining industries continue to develop environmental
management systems/plans to mitigate the impact their operations has on the society.
Even with these plans, there are still issues of environmental pollution affecting the
society. Though there are Information Communication and Technology (ICT) based
pollution monitoring solutions, their use is dismal due to lack of appreciation or
understanding of how they disseminate information. Furthermore, non-adopting
community members are being regarded as inherently conservative or irrational, but
these community members argue that the recommendations and technologies brought
to them are not always appropriate to their circumstances. There was concern that
local people’s knowledge of their environment, farming systems, and their social as
well as economic situation had been ignored and underestimated when ICTs solutions
are being implemented (Warburton & Martin, 1999). Another challenge is that there is
no station to monitor pollution for small communities such as Nyakallong in the district.
This result in mining communities depending on their own local knowledge to observe and monitor mining related environmental pollution. However, this local knowledge
has never been tested scientifically or analysed to recognize its usability or
effectiveness. Mining companies tend to ignore this knowledge from the communities
as it is treated like common information with no much scientific value. As a step
towards verifying or validating this local knowledge, fuzzy cognitive maps were used
to model, analyse and represent this linguistic local knowledge.
Although this local knowledge assists in mitigating environmental pollution,
incorporating it with scientific knowledge will improve its relevance, trustworthiness
and acceptability by majority of community members and policy-makers. Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can accelerate this integration; this is the
focus of this research. The increased usages of Information Technology being witnessed today makes it the
most important factor for the world to depend on for solutions to many of today’s and
tomorrow’s problems. These solutions make use of various forms for dissemination
purposes, one of the most versatile dissemination device is a mobile phone since majority of the world’s population do own a mobile phone. In this way information is
easily accessible by almost everyone that needs it.
A novel environmental management solution was designed to work within the mining
communities of Lejweleputswa. The research started off by designing a unique
integration framework that creates the much-needed link between local knowledge
and scientific knowledge. The framework was then converted into an adaptable
environmental pollution management system prototype made up of three components;
(1) gathering environmental pollution knowledge; (2) environmental monitoring and;
(3) environmental dissemination and communication. To achieve sustainability,
relevance and acceptability, local knowledge was integrated in each of the three
components while mobile phones were used as both input and output devices for the
system. In order to facilitate collection and conservation of local knowledge on
environmental monitoring, an elaborate android-based mobile application was
developed. Wireless sensor-based gas sensor boards were acquired, and deployed
as a compliment to conventional monitoring stations, they were used to gather
scientific knowledge. To allow for public access to the system’s data, a web portal and an SMS-based component were also implemented. In order to collect local knowledge
from community, a case study of Nyakallong community in Lejweleputswa was carried
out. On completion of the system prototype, it was evaluated by participants from the
community; 90% of respondents gave a score of ‘excellent ‘
Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations
This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans
Integrating Data Science and Earth Science
This open access book presents the results of three years collaboration between earth scientists and data scientists, in developing and applying data science methods for scientific discovery. The book will be highly beneficial for other researchers at senior and graduate level, interested in applying visual data exploration, computational approaches and scientifc workflows
Integrating Data Science and Earth Science
This open access book presents the results of three years collaboration between earth scientists and data scientist, in developing and applying data science methods for scientific discovery. The book will be highly beneficial for other researchers at senior and graduate level, interested in applying visual data exploration, computational approaches and scientifc workflows
Anthropogenic actions shape biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning
Increasing rates of carbon emission, unsustainable development, and intense land cover change, led to an inevitable environmental degradation. While much of the lost biodiversity has not been described by scientists yet, we continue to lose new species at impressive rates. In this thesis, I compiled a large dataset for vertebrate assemblages in the Amazon forest, known for its extensive understudied biodiversity. The database englobes camera trap data from mammals, birds and reptile species and represents a small but important step further in the direction of filling the gap in biodiversity information for the Amazon forest. Using this dataset, I investigated the effects of human modifications on vertebrate communities in the Amazon, and the results show that, even within the gradient of low to moderate human modification, we can detect a decrease in the richness of vertebrate species. This raises a red flag for the vulnerability of species under our current scenario of changes in climate and land use. The functioning of the ecosystems involves complex processes and interactions of different species, and understanding the relationship between biodiversity change and the contribution of biodiversity to the provision of nature’s contribution to people (NCP) remains a challenge. In this thesis, I propose a macroecological framework that integrates biodiversity models and energy flux theory to link biodiversity, ecosystem function and NCP. This novel approach allows the incorporation of different aspects (such as species interactions and environmental data) to evaluate biodiversity-based NCP. Furthermore, in order to apply this framework to belowground ecosystems, I aggregated data and developed a biodiversity model to predict species abundance based on their body mass. Additionally, I also used the compiled database to explore the effects of environmental conditions on the community-abundance distribution of the communities
Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns
Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse
- …