Local perceptions of opportunities for engagement and procedural justice in electricity transmission grid projects in Norway and the UK

ArticleCopyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Transmission lines are critical infrastructures, but frequently contested especially at the local level, by local communities. The role of public engagement in processes pertaining to specific transmission line projects is an under-researched, yet important topic that this paper seeks to discuss by investigating how inhabitants perceive these processes and to what extent they find the processes just and fair. This paper addresses the participatory aspects of the planning process, as perceived by the local inhabitants in four Norway and UK cases, by using a qualitative comparative case study design. We further analyse this issue through frameworks of public engagement and procedural justice. In both countries public engagement is largely characterized by perceptions of insufficient information, and insufficient influence on the process. In sum, the findings indicate that the informants generally perceive the opportunities for involvement as insufficient and unjust. The findings are quite similar across all cases and both countries. Local inhabitants represent diverse groups who often have different levels of knowledge, time and engagement to bring to the planning process. Their requests for improved processes thus underline the serious public engagement challenges that applicants and decision-makers face.Research Council of Norwa

Political and societal dimensions of hydrobalancing from Norway towards Europe. An assessment of drivers and barriers for further development

This report provides an assessment of non-technical drivers and barriers influencing further development of the hydrobalancing potential from Norway towards European countries. The rising shares of intermittent renewable energy in Europe will increase the needs for balancing and storage capacity, and Norwegian hydrobalancing is interesting in this regard. Realizing hydrobalancing services from Norway will to larger extent depend on the EU development of a system for exchanging and valuing balancing services from renewable sources such as hydro power. In addition, the right drivers need to be in place at the Norwegian national level. A major barrier is currently the lack of comprehensive political strategies and necessary measures to relize increased hydrobalancing from Norway. Both the "sceptics" and "supporters" amongst social stakeholders generally endorse interconnector projects towards Europe, like the new projects to Germany and the UK, but they do not currently demand hydrobalancing at a large scale. Still, given the probability of changes in the European energy system, as well as changes in the Norwegian economy, the overall picture can change rapidly. Consequently Norway could benifit from a more strategic thinking and approach towards hydrobalancing, where hydropower and grid facilities are considered as parts of a whole - and where the issue of societal acceptance is substantially addressed also at the local level

3D X-Ray Reconstruction from Strongly Incomplete Noisy Data

Recently we reported [1–3] on the theory and the technique of reconstructing three- dimensional images of flaws and inclusions from an extremely limited number of cone- beam X-ray projections. The number of projections is chosen between two and seven and they are achieved in an observation angle smaller than 180 degrees. We introduced an approach using the Bayesian reconstruction (BR) with Gibbs prior in the form of mechanical models like noncausal Markov fields. As it was pointed out the convergence of the iteration reconstruction procedure depends on the chosen prior functional within a compact set of solutions. We investigated the capabilities of three types of a priori functional, which are represented by Gibbs energies. Corresponding to the supported structures, they were named (i) cluster support, (ii) plane support and (iii) phase support. While examining the phase support we made an effort to estimate the influence of Gaussian white noise on the quality of restoration. The noise was generated artificially and superimposed to the two dimensional x-ray images. It was shown that the algorithm was stable despite the disturbance of the noise. On the other hand it was observed that an increasing noise level leads to a noticeable deterioration of the quality of the restored image. The restoration of images from extremely incomplete and noisy data is a strict practical demand in many cases. This explains the effort to investigate the influence of noise to the reconstruction results

Konsekvensutredninger og miljøundersøkelser ved etablering av akvakultur.

En KU skal inneholde dokumentasjon om akvakulturtiltakets konsekvenser for miljø, naturressurser eller samfunn, og gi grunnlag for mer grundig og spesifikk behandling og utvidet vilkårsetting for akvakultursøknaden. Arbeidsgruppen har gitt innspill på konkrete eksempler på utløsende vilkår for konsekvensutredning og laget forslag til retningslinjer om dette. En har vurdert rettigheter og plikter som følger av miljøinformasjonsloven, og konkludert med at dette ikke har betydning i forhold til Fiskeridirektoratets mulighet til å kreve KU. Videre har en sett på tilfeller der KU ikke er aktuelt fordi det er åpenbart at søknaden om akvakultur vil bli avslått. I tilfeller der effektene av flere lokaliteter akkumuleres over større arealer og naturområder, mener arbeidsgruppen at det i enkelte tilfeller kan være behov for KU. Når det gjelder planlegging og utredning som grunnlag for lokalisering av akvakulturanlegg, legger arbeidsgruppen til grunn at god kommunikasjon og kontakt med berørte myndigheter og parter er viktig. Miljøundersøkelser vedrørende biologisk mangfold kan på sikt være et alternativ til KU. Arbeidsgruppens oppfatning er at der er behov for retningslinjer i form av forskrift. Før slike forskriftsbestemmelser gis, må det innhentes faglige råd fra HI. Arbeidsgruppen har sett på tiltak med sikte på en videreføring av retningslinjene og en kontinuerlig forbedring. En tilrår i første omgang at dokumentasjonen på Nettfisken om KU blir underlagt et system for revisjon og innmelding av endringsforslag og avvik, og at det settes i gang et arbeid med å lage kompetansemoduler og videre kompetanseheving