Governing the urban water commons : essays on collaborative policy networks in a polycentric ecology of urban water policy games.

Governing social-ecological systems, such as the urban water commons, is a multi-scale and multi-sector (polycentric) human-environment process. This dissertation interrogates this process by situating itself within the Ecology of Games Framework by Norton Long (and updated by Mark Lubell) and the literature on polycentric governance by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. The dissertation’s three essays 1) offer both theoretical and methodological means to enact polycentric public economies within the ecology of games framework, and 2) explicate the conditions under which interoganizational collaboration is fostered within a polycentric ecology of policy games in governing the Middle Rio Grande urban watershed. First, it deploys a synthesized theoretical construct which puts into conversation three theoretical paradigms to excavate the conceptual pillars to study the polycentricity of urban water governance in the United States. A novel conceptual tool is hereby constructed to help engage the thoughts that polycentricity is not the antithesis of monocentricity but the co-constitution of actors at multiple governing scales and within multiple sectors. Second, the conceptual pillars are reworked into theoretical and methodological models to study the polycentricity of governing the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) urban watershed in New Mexico, USA. Four indices are developed to measure the level of political, market, nonprofit, and overall polycentricity in governing this urban water commons. Employing multiple methods like the social network analysis, social-ecological network analysis (SENA), and regression analysis, the dissertation’s findings suggest that polycentric water governance could primarily be about the politics of power and resource distribution, the reconfigurations of actors’ positionalities as they align themselves and their interests strategically. This, among other findings in the dissertation, points to the need to centralize the politics of power and resource distribution in the study of polycentricity in social-ecological governance. Third and finally, the overall polycentric index is used to model the role of polycentricity in interorganizational collaboration within the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) urban water commons. The exponential random graph models (ERGMs) is used in this analysis. Among other findings, the results show that polycentric governance increases the probability of interorganizational collaboration within the MRG. The implications of the dissertation’s three cohesive essays to theory, methods and policy are discussed in the conclusion chapter of the dissertation. In all, this dissertation concludes that there is still no panacea in governing the (urban water) commons

Mark and spirit possession in an African context

The Gospel of Mark is a moving story especially when one looks at the way Mark recounts Jesus’ struggle with evil, the extent of the power and the fate of Satan and demons and the type of life the followers of Jesus are to lead: whether a demon-free life or a life of struggle with demons; and how scholars interpret Mark’s views today. This thesis begins with a review of a debate between J.M. Robinson and E. Best who hold divergent views on Jesus’ struggle with evil and the extent and the fate of Satan’s power and demons in Mark. This is followed by a critical analysis of Mark’s views on the baptism and the temptation narratives and Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom in a world dominated by Satan and its implications. The review of Mark 3: 22-27 serves as a background to the section that examines Spirit Possession cases and the ways Jesus exorcises these demons in Mark, bringing to light Mark’s views and the views of Western scholars. This is followed by categorising diseases into those caused by demons and those caused naturally and how Jesus exorcises and heals these diseases, demonstrating his power over evil. The section on Evil in African Traditional Religion focuses on the sources of evil and how evil is eradicated from the traditional African society. This is followed by a report of field research, which took the form of Bible Studies among Africans with the focus on Ghanaian Christians from twenty one churches in London. The purpose is to find out how these Christians whose world-view approximates that of Mark, read and interpret some texts in Mark. We were interested in what Ghanaian Christians would make of these texts because they might help us to see them as Mark’s readers would have seen them, and to discover the issues and questions which they would have brought to the texts. The final section of the thesis brings together the views of Mark, Western scholars and Ghanaian Christians showing how these views complement each other

Modeling Parking Demand : A Systems Approach To Parking Policy Analysis On Campus

An economic model of parking behavior (using Vensim PLE software) was designed to consider the relationship between costs and benefits in meeting parking demands of the range of users on an urban university campus. In using Minnesota State University, Mankato campus as the case area, model simulations were run to answer the question of; how do we price parking permits to minimize parking supply surpluses/shortages on campus and still meet the cost of parking? . The study results indicated that there is an over-supply of some types of parking spaces and an under-supply of other types when parking demand is determined only by expected permit purchases without considering the peak-use of parking facilities. The over-supply of parking spaces at peak time leads to excess parking costs - in terms of annual operating and maintenance cost - and the under-supply leads to peak time shortages of parking spaces for users. By running these simulations, an optimum parking price level - the price that minimizes supply excesses and shortages while ensuring that revenue generated meets at least the annual operating and maintenance costs - was determined for each parking permit category

Regionalism and Urban Development Planning in Africa: Towards A Collaborative Framework for Decentralized Planning in Ghana

The development planning and management of cities have evolved in theory and practice. Decentralized planning and regionalism are among such evolved concepts. With Ghanaian cities rapidly urbanizing, the transcendence nature of urbanization challenges continues to tests the responsiveness of the nation’s decentralized planning system-after its implementation more than two decades ago. Key among such tests is how the decentralized planning system can effectively promote collaborative planning among contiguous urbanizing local planning jurisdictions. This demands not only the regional coordination of development plans but also responsive “regionalism” among neighboring local planning and/or government authorities for them to; identify common development challenges, the impacts of their individual planning decisions on each other, and how to collaborate to mitigate the impacts of their decisions on each other. After examining the decentralized planning drawbacks and the Ghana’s urbanization challenges, this paper ends with a framework for effective   regional planning collaboration among neighboring urbanizing local government areas. Keywords: Urbanization, Centralized and Decentralized Planning, Regionalism, Regional Planning, Collaborative Plannin

Potential for Energy Savings in Educational Institutions in Ghana

This paper presents the results of an energy audit carried out to assess the potential of energy savings in educational institutions in Ghana using the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) as the case study institution. It also outlines a simple and effective technique for such an audit. The College of Engineering; one of the six Colleges of KNUST was used as the study location. Light bulbs and fans at the classrooms, corridors, laboratories and washrooms were monitored for energy wastage. The monitoring period was one month. The energy wastage over the period was estimated to be 1718.24kWh, which is high. The yearly energy wastage at KNUST for the areas assessed is projected to be 95.276MWh, which is alarming. Urgent steps are therefore needed to curb this wastage.Keywords: Energy auditing, Energy efficiency, Energy efficiency measures, Energy saving and Energy wastag

Colour Symbolism of Aboakyir

In Ghana, traditional festivals are important cultural elements that are identified with many ethnic groups across the country. Aboakyir is one of such traditional festivals celebrated annually by an ethnic group in the Central Region called Simpa or Effutu. The Effutu people celebrate the festival at their traditional capital called Winneba every first week of May. The purpose of the study was to conduct a qualitative research into the colours used to celebrate the Simpa Aboakyir festival during the 2016 edition. To aid the researchers gather reliable data for the study, a non-probability sampling technique called purposive sampling was used to select 16 respondents. The researchers used observation, unstructured interview and still-photography to gather primary data throughout the last week of the festival. The responses from the interviews were recorded electronically; field notes and still-pictures were taken and the recorded information was transcribed, the field notes were expanded and relevant photographs were sifted and edited. The data was categorised into relevant themes and the selected photographs were analysed through aesthetic appreciation. The transcribed data were analysed through inductive reasoning and descriptive qualitative approach to respond to the objectives and research questions of the study.  The findings that emanated from the analyses were discussed qualitatively according to the philosophy of interpretivism research paradigm to reflect the literature and the research questions of the study. Based on the findings that emerged from the analysis, the researchers recommended that visual art students at all levels and visual art practitioners must experiment the colours used by Effutus in the celebration of their traditional festival to develop other unconventional harmonious colour schemes that can be applied in creative arts. Keywords: Aboakyir festival, colour schemes and aesthetic appreciatio

Wavelet Analysis and Radial Basis Function Neural Network Based Stability Status Prediction Scheme

This paper presents a technique for predicting the transient stability status of a power system. Bus voltages of system generators are used as input parameter. The bus voltages are processed using wavelet transform. Daubechies 8 mother wavelet is employed to extract wavelet entropy of detail 1 coefficients. The sum of wavelet entropies is used as input to a trained radial basis function neural network which predicts the transient stability status. The IEEE 39-bus test system was used to validate the effectiveness and applicability of the technique. The technique is simple to apply and can be implemented in real-time. The prediction accuracy was found to be 86.5% for 200 test cases. Keywords : Radial basis function, Transient analysis and Wavelet transfor

Moderating Influence of Organizational Characteristics on Strategic Planning Process and Performance Linkage

In spite of the numerous benefits of strategic planning enumerated in the literature, some institutions appear to be struggling with maintaining expected performance standards. Some researchers allude this to the absence of effective strategic planning systems, or the plan itself. Others believe it is attitudinal – misconceptions about the role of contextual factors. This study has therefore considered the moderating influence of such factors (organizational characteristics – age, size, and structure) on the relationship between strategic planning process and performance. It focused on accredited private institutions that had some form of strategic planning systems in place, and had operated for at least five (5) academic years. Strategic planning committee members of such institutions provided data that were descriptively and empirically analyzed. The binary logistic regression analysis indicated that only institutional size and structure do significantly influence the strategic planning process toward enhanced performance. The age of an institution did not have any significant moderating influence. It has been suggested that higher degrees of formality shall enhance performance where there is insistence on attention to detail due to increased institutional size. Keywords: strategic planning, process, organizational characteristics, formality, moderators, contextual factor

Reconciling Commercial (Universal) Banking with Microfinance Institutions in Ghana, Case Study: Greater Accra Region

The study focused on reconciling commercial banking with microfinance institutions in the Greater Accra region. The study identifies that microfinance institutions were not able to eradicate the poverty level among Ghanaians which calls for the indulgence of commercial banks to rescue the nation from poverty through the provisions of some of the microfinance services. The study uses a sample size of 500 respondents and adopted both descriptive and quantitative analysis. The descriptive analysis takes into accounts both pie charts, bar-graphs and tables whereas the quantitative analysis used both probit and Ordered probit regression model to analyze whether or not commercial banks are providing microfinance services and their level of performance in executing the role of the MFIs respectively. The main objective of the study was to identify the role of commercial banks in comparison to that of Microfinance institutions and to further examine the extent to which commercial banks meet the criteria of MFIs as well as some challenges the commercial banks faced. The study also revealed that door-to-do banking services are offered by both commercial banks and Microfinance institution. The study finds out that the structures (administrative staff, logistics, collateral requirements, etc) that are required for the operating of microfinance services on the market are completely different from that needed to offer pure commercial banking services. The study further finds out that high default rate among customers seems to be part of the major challenges the bank faces in discharging microfinance services. In the nut-shell the study revealed that commercial banks go out of their various banking halls to the individual on the market often times to promote/ market their product available in the banks  and not necessarily offer microfinance services to petty traders and other small business units. Keywords: Microfinance, commercial banks, financial institutions, loans, saving

Design of an Optimal off-grid Hybrid Energy System for a Rural Community

This paper presents an optimized off-grid PV-diesel generator-battery hybrid energy system for application in an un-electrified rural community and further outlines a procedure for designing such an economical and technically feasible hybrid system. The hybrid optimization model for multiple energy resources (HOMER) software was utilized for simulation and analysis. The criteria of minimum net present cost of system, low CO2 emissions and zero electric load rejection was applied while considering technical issues of PV array, inverter coordination and PV capacity penetration level. For the case study system used, the obtained optimized hybrid energy system configuration is as follows: 68kW PV plant; 40kW Diesel plant; 45.4kW Inverter; and 80kWh battery unit. The proposed hybrid energy system is capable of producing 157685kWh of electricity annually at a levelized cost of energy of 0.55 $/kWh while emitting 51,000 kg of CO2 yearly. To avoid self-shading of the PV array, an appropriate inter-row distance was determined. The total quantity of PV modules and the electrical configuration of the PV array is presented.  Keywords : Hybrid energy system,  Net present cost,  Optimal sizing and  Photovoltai