Fundamentals of Volunteered Geographic Information in Disaster Management Related to Floods

The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce fundamental knowledge regarding the notion of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and its applications in disaster management (DM) of events related to floods. Initially, the meaning of the term is defined along with certain properties and general trends that characterize VGI. A brief literature review unfolds the range of activities that compose that certain term, along with its applications to flood event management. Those applications cover significant aspects of both VGI and DM cycle: from participatory activities of volunteers up to pure data analysis, extracted from social media and other VGI sources, while, in terms of DM cycle, from mitigation up to response and recovery. Finally, a set of four main clusters of open challenges is addressed. Those clusters accumulate the vast majority of open topics on this research field

Appraising research policy instrument mixes: a multicriteria mapping study in six European countries of diagnostic innovation to manage antimicrobial resistance

This article provides prospective appraisal of key policy instruments intended to stimulate innovation to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR refers to the ability of microbes to evolve resistance to those treatments designed to kill them, and is associated with the overuse or misuse of medicines such as antibiotics. AMR is an emerging global challenge with major implications for healthcare and society as a whole. Diagnostic tests for infectious diseases can guide decision making when prescribing medicines, so reducing inappropriate drug use. In the context of growing international interest in policies to stimulate innovation in AMR diagnostics, this study uses multicriteria mapping (MCM) to appraise a range of policy instruments in order to understand their potential performance while also highlighting the uncertainties that stakeholders hold about such interventions in complex contexts. A contribution of the article is the demonstration of a novel method to analyse and visualise MCM data in order to reveal stakeholder inclinations towards particular options while exploring interviewees’ uncertainties about the effectiveness of each instrument's design or implementation. The article reports results from six European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK). The findings reveal which policy instruments are deemed most likely to perform well, and why, across stakeholder groups and national settings, with areas of common ground and difference being identified. Importantly, the conclusions presented here differ from prominent policy discourse, with international implications for the design of mixes of policy instruments to combat AMR. Strategic and practical methodological implications also emerge for general appraisal of innovation policy instrument mixes

An agenda for future Social Sciences and Humanities research on energy efficiency : 100 priority research questions

Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)-including critical reflections on what changing a society's relation to energy (efficiency) even means-have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policymakers, funders, and other decision-makers when driving research agendas, and (ii) the setting of SSH-focused research agendas has not historically embedded inclusive and deliberative processes. The aim of this paper is to address these gaps through the production of a research agenda outlining future SSH research priorities for energy efficiency. A Horizon Scanning exercise was run, which sought to identify 100 priority SSH questions for energy efficiency research. This exercise included 152 researchers with prior SSH expertise on energy efficiency, who together spanned 62 (sub-)disciplines of SSH, 23 countries, and a full range of career stages. The resultant questions were inductively clustered into seven themes as follows: (1) Citizenship, engagement and knowledge exchange in relation to energy efficiency; (2) Energy efficiency in relation to equity, justice, poverty and vulnerability; (3) Energy efficiency in relation to everyday life and practices of energy consumption and production; (4) Framing, defining and measuring energy efficiency; (5) Governance, policy and political issues around energy efficiency; (6) Roles of economic systems, supply chains and financial mechanisms in improving energy efficiency; and (7) The interactions, unintended consequences and rebound effects of energy efficiency interventions. Given the consistent centrality of energy efficiency in policy programmes, this paper highlights that well-developed SSH approaches are ready to be mobilised to contribute to the development, and/or to understand the implications, of energy efficiency measures and governance solutions. Implicitly, it also emphasises the heterogeneity of SSH policy evidence that can be produced. The agenda will be of use for both (1) those new to the energy-SSH field (including policyworkers), for learnings on the capabilities and capacities of energy-SSH, and (2) established energy-SSH researchers, for insights on the collectively held futures of energy-SSH research.Peer reviewe

In Search of a Trade Mark: Search Practices and Bureaucratic Poetics

Trade marks have been understood as quintessential ‘bureaucratic properties’. This article suggests that the making of trade marks has been historically influenced by bureaucratic practices of search and classification, which in turn were affected by the possibilities and limits of spatial organisation and technological means of access and storage. It shows how the organisation of access and retrieval did not only condition the possibility of conceiving new trade marks, but also served to delineate their intangible proprietary boundaries. Thereby they framed the very meaning of a trade mark. By advancing a historical analysis that is sensitive to shifts, both in actual materiality and in the administrative routines of trade mark law, the article highlights the legal form of trade mark as inherently social and materially shaped. We propose a historical understanding of trade mark law that regards legal practice and bureaucratic routines as being co-constitutive of the very legal object itself

Dynamos, tests, and consulting: in the career of John Hopkinson in the 1880s

Cet article est centré sur l'expérience d'ingénieur et la carrière de consultant de John Hopkinson, dans les années 1880. L'analyse de ses pratiques d'ingénieur sera traitée par les cas de l'invention et de la construction de la machine Edison-Hopkinson et de la dynamo « Manchester ». C'est dans ce contexte que seront étudiées les relations professionnelles d'Hopkinson avec la English Edison Company et, ultérieurement, avec la Mather and Platt Company. En outre, au début des années 1880, Hopkinson introduisit des méthodes innovantes de test des dynamos afin d'obtenir, de façon systématique, la certitude de mesures fiables pour les générateurs électriques. Ses innovations dans les dynamos et dans les procédés de test de ces technologies en ont fait un brillant médiateur d'innovations pour l'industrie électrique en pleine expansion

Academic entrepreneurship, innovation policies and politics in Greece

This paper explores the process of the emergence in Greece of the 'Triple Helix', and the nature of the 'Helix' in the context of the concurrent changes occurring in Greek socio-political affairs. The influence of politics and innovation policies on the relationships between academia and government and industry is considered. Emphasis is given to national and regional innovation policies and their impact on the commercialization of academic research in the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Thessaly and the Foundation for Research and Technology — Hellas (FORTH) in Crete