Category 5

Follow Elizabeth and her family through this family oriented video series which highlights topics such as preparing for a hurricane, how to help those affected by a storm and raises awareness for mental health after a natural disaster. Nexus Maximus IV The Challenge: Innovation for Refugees and Displaced Populations One of the great challenges of our time is how to help refugees and displaced populations, and how to prevent the causes in the first place. Every minute, 24 people around the world are forced to flee their homes. That’s 34,000 people a day who leave everything behind in the hope of finding safety and a better tomorrow. The impact of war, political, racial and religious conflict, and environmental crises of famine and climate change, have caused great suffering and there is a great opportunity to do better. The issues these populations and the countries who receive them face are diverse and complex. They include public health, housing/built environment, cultural integration, public safety, employment/economic and more. How can innovation address these challenges? How do we create the social systems and products to support a healthy, safe and integrated program for refugees? How do we address the physical, emotional, and social needs of refugees to restore hope and opportunity? The solutions may be as far ranging as the challenges, exploring the acute needs during a crisis, as well as the chronic needs of the permanently displaced; looking at immigration and adjustments to new cultures. We encourage participants to draw upon all disciplines, from health professions to architecture, engineering to design, ethics, communication and every way of thinking we have, to find better ways to innovate on physical solutions, processes, policies, systems, and more. Recap of poster presentationshttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/nexusmaximus/1015/thumbnail.jp

09:03 a dozen years to make a state go virtual : LIDAR data use for 3D visualisation of the Maltese Islands

Creating a new modus operandi for 3D data analysis that covers an entire state is a endearing task which required considerable funding and the integration of various thematic domains that lent an operational hand to spatial analysis in the Maltese state. An ERDF project taken up in Malta saw the integration of various environmental themes together with the creation of baseline surveys that serve the state as a launching pad for strategic analytical processes. The Malta study comprises the 3D component of the project which enabled the seamless integration of Terrestrial LiDAR, bathymetric LiDAR and bathymetric acoustic scans up to one nautical mile from the baseline coast, The aim of this process was to ensure that the integration of the datasets conformed to the requirements of the EEA (European Environment Agency) dataflow process (2012), the INSPIRE Directive (OJ, 2007), the Aarhus Convention (OJ, 2003a), the Freedom of Information Act (OJ, 2003b) and the Public Sector Information Directive (2003c). In addition, this project aimed to be the first to test the Shared Environment Information System (FORMOSA, SCIBERRAS, FORMOSA PACE, 2013; BORG, FARRUGIA, 2010).peer-reviewe

Maltese criminological landscapes : a spatio-temporal case : where physical and social worlds meet

Landscapes have taken many forms in the real and virtual worlds, placing more emphasis on the geographical perspective, sometimes at the risk of losing the spatio-social perspective. Studying thematic issues divorced from the locations they occur in results in a sterile outcome, since each activity has a time and space imperative attached to it. In his analysis of the morphology of landscapes, SAUER’S (1925) early assertion held true that geography without a substantive content remained an abstract relationship; with the essential content being the socio-cultural landscape (HIRSCHFIELD ET AL, 2001). This paper integrates both spatial and temporal crime, whilst linking crime statistics to such information layers as development and urban use, and zoning activities in a Maltese context.peer-reviewe

Forty years of Landscape research

Papers of four decades published in Landscape Research are reviewed in order to chronicle the journal’s development and to assess the academic performance of the journal relative to its own aims. Landscape Research intends to reach a wide audience, to have a broad thematic coverage and to publish different types of papers with various methodological orientations. Cutting across these first aims are the interdisciplinary ambition of the journal, and its overall focus on landscape. These aims are evaluated based upon categorisation of article content, authorship and methodology, using data derived through interpretative inquiry and quantitative analyses. The results tell the story of how Landscape Research has developed from a newsletter of the Landscape Research Group, mainly aimed at practitioners, into an interdisciplinary, international journal with academic researchers as its primary community of interest. The final section discusses the current profile of the journal and identifies issues for its future direction and development

R Symmetries in the Landscape

In the landscape, states with $R$ symmetries at the classical level form a distinct branch, with a potentially interesting phenomenology. Some preliminary analyses suggested that the population of these states would be significantly suppressed. We survey orientifolds of IIB theories compactified on Calabi-Yau spaces based on vanishing polynomials in weighted projective spaces, and find that the suppression is quite substantial. On the other hand, we find that a $Z_2$ R-parity is a common feature in the landscape. We discuss whether the cosmological constant and proton decay or cosmology might select the low energy branch. We include also some remarks on split supersymmetry.Comment: 13 page

Portland River District park system urban design framework study

18 pp. Bookmarks supplied by UO. Maps, figures, illus. Published January 16, 2001. Captured September 18, 2009.The Framework Plan: creates a strong and poetic metaphor of historic Tanner Creek; it addresses the deeper meanings of the natural cycle of water collection and storage, the visual relationship between water and land, and the natural and social life that they support; provides a great variety of spaces, both in terms of use and scale; reaches out to promote a synergy between civic and private development initiatives; [and] establishes strong, guiding principles to promote a sense of place. The plan relies on simple elements which are both common and unique to the city. [From the Plan

Modeling the ecology and evolution of biodiversity: Biogeographical cradles, museums, and graves

Individual processes shaping geographical patterns of biodiversity are increasingly understood, but their complex interactions on broad spatial and temporal scales remain beyond the reach of analytical models and traditional experiments. To meet this challenge, we built a spatially explicit, mechanistic simulation model implementing adaptation, range shifts, fragmentation, speciation, dispersal, competition, and extinction, driven by modeled climates of the past 800,000 years in South America. Experimental topographic smoothing confirmed the impact of climate heterogeneity on diversification. The simulations identified regions and episodes of speciation (cradles), persistence (museums), and extinction (graves). Although the simulations had no target pattern and were not parameterized with empirical data, emerging richness maps closely resembled contemporary maps for major taxa, confirming powerful roles for evolution and diversification driven by topography and climate

Does visualisation of digital landscapes serve itself : how topographic, planning, environmental and other thematic information is integrated and disseminated via web GIS

Digital landscapes provide decision makers with readily-available tools that enhance the policy-to-decision process. Malta has been witness to various processes to create digital landscapes for both the professional and the general public. This study reviews the operational and technological processes employed since the introduction of GIS in Malta and reviews the issue of 3D GIS and whether visualisation served its purpose in reaching the current state of affairs. A case-study on one particular research is reviewed which investigates whether users look at visualisation outputs as part of a larger environment or as an end in themselves.peer-reviewe