The social and cultural role of small, remote airports in the Northern Periphery.

This paper presented the key themes emerging from Work Package 7.1 of the project entitled Smart Peripheral and Remote Airports (SPARA) 2020. Work Package 7.1 consisted of qualitative research that explored the social and cultural importance of small, remote airports in the Northern Periphery. Using photo elicitation techniques the research gathered data from 575 participants across five communities in the Northern Periphery: Benbecula, Kirkwall and the Isle of Skye in Scotland; Donegal in north-west Ireland; and Sunsdvall-Timrå in mid-Sweden. The broad themes emerging from these discussions were: the impact of local history and heritage; the airport as a local employer; the airport's serendipitous social function; social and cultural use of airport facilities; and societal barriers to air travel

Solutions for innovation transfer between countries with different legislative, regulatory and funding regimes: case studies from rural passenger transport projects.

European programmes such as Interreg are predicated on the principles of demonstration and adoption of innovation, transfer of best practice between jurisdictions, and transnational cooperation to address shared challenges. However, governance, funding, planning and regulation regimes can vary substantially between partner countries within the EU, complicating and – potentially – acting as a barrier to the adoption, implementation and scaling of best practices from another jurisdiction. These barriers contribute to an already challenging environment within which to transfer innovation and implement new or green transport initiatives (Ward 1984), especially as differing approaches are often required for rural and peripheral areas (Porru et al 2020) compared with more urban or populous areas (Shah et al 2021) given demographic shifts and evolving travel needs. This paper will draw on findings from the Interreg NSR G-PaTRA project (Green Passenger Transport in Rural Areas) and will use CO2 reduction in rural passenger transport as a case study to demonstrate how variance in rural transport governance regimes can present a barrier to the adoption of best practice. It will also provide some examples and recommendations (generated from key policymakers) for how rural transport policy transfer can be more effectively facilitated and supported. The G-PaTRA project sought to promote green transport mobility by enhancing the capacity of authorities to reduce CO2 from personal transport in remote, rural, and island areas. The project aimed to embed more zero emission vehicles and a project extension allowed further work to understand the implications of the COVID pandemic for rural transport systems. The project supported a variety of carbon reduction innovation demonstrator projects and case studies, ranging from business cases for hydrogen ferries and rail, using electric vehicles on rural routes, demand responsive transport and car sharing, and the use of smart data to optimise available transport resources and drivers. An innovation scoring method was developed to identify and categorise the major barriers and facilitators of innovation transfer, sorting the barriers into technical, institutional, operational, and social categories. While good practice was demonstrated, it was found that the transfer of innovation was particularly impacted by different transport governance regimes in terms of funding, subsidy ownership and planning of services and vehicles and the extent to which transport was regulated, and the local governance structures (and the roles and relationship between national, regional, and local bodies). These were termed 'institutional' barriers, and they by far presented as the most challenging barriers to innovation transfer within this rural passenger transport context. Following identification of institutional barriers as the most prominent challenge, an extensive literature search and interviews was conducted in March 2022 to map the legislative, regulatory and funding frameworks for passenger transport in the G-PaTRA partner countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Scotland. This was followed by a workshop to develop the case studies for good practice in innovation transfer. To demonstrate this complexity, this paper maps out the governance regimes for ferry, rail, registered bus, demand responsive transport, and car sharing in the six partner countries. The paper then provides two case studies (demand responsive bus and transport optimisation) to contrast how the actors, financial regimes, and bureaucracy involved in implementing public transport innovation varies substantially between different partner countries and how this can impact on the prospects for innovation being implemented successfully. The findings of a key influencers workshop will then be used to demonstrate practical solutions for overcoming barriers to innovation transport in green rural transport and for facilitating the transfer of best practice across different institutional jurisdictions, including the targeting of key influencers to achieve political buy-in, which is seen by participants as key to driving innovation and which can overcome the institutional and bureaucratic inertia. The findings will be of interest to practitioners working in this sector. The paper also contributes to the academic discussion around innovation transfer and rural green transport initiatives

Report on the social and cultural importance of remote and peripheral airports.

This report presents the results of qualitative research conducted as Activity 7.1 within Work Package 7 of the SPARA 2020 project. It specifically explores the social and cultural importance of remote and peripheral airports, the effects of losing a local airport on a community, and the barriers which may exclude certain members of the community from using the airport. The research consisted of five case studies conducted in communities in the Northern Periphery region. Of these five case studies, four were conducted in operational airports: Kirkwall and Benbecula Airports, Scotland; Donegal Airport, Ireland; and Sundsvall-Timr{ring}a Airport, Sweden. The other took place on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, where scheduled air services ceased in 1988. Exhibitions of old and contemporary photographs of the local airports were held in the five communities. Researchers engaged with the individuals viewing the photos, prompting them to share their memories and experiences of using their local airport. These exhibitions were supplemented by focus groups and by face-to-face and telephone interviews. Overall, the researchers spoke to 575 individuals during the five case studies. The main themes emerging from these discussions were around: the impact of local history and heritage; the airport as a local employer; the airport's serendipitous social function; lifeline services; non-aeronautical uses of airport terminals; and barriers to use of the airport

The social and cultural role of small, remote airports in the Northern Periphery.

This paper presented the key themes emerging from Work Package 7.1 of the project entitled Smart Peripheral and Remote Airports (SPARA) 2020. Work Package 7.1 consisted of qualitative research that explored the social and cultural importance of small, remote airports in the Northern Periphery. Using photo elicitation techniques the research gathered data from 575 participants across five communities in the Northern Periphery: Benbecula, Kirkwall and the Isle of Skye in Scotland; Donegal in north-west Ireland; and Sunsdvall-Timrå in mid-Sweden. The broad themes emerging from these discussions were: the impact of local history and heritage; the airport as a local employer; the airport's serendipitous social function; social and cultural use of airport facilities; and societal barriers to air travel

Exploring the socio-cultural impact of Scottish island airports.

This paper explores the social importance of small, local airports to Scottish island communities, and the roles that they might play in maintaining cultural identity and a sense of place. It draws upon studies conducted in three communities: Benbecula and Kirkwall, each of which has airports with long histories; and the Isle of Skye, where there have been no air passenger services for over 30 years, but where efforts to reintroduce such services are ongoing. It considers how small, remote airports contribute to social and cultural value in a number of ways, generating benefits beyond those typically reflected in conventional economic analyses. These include: providing ‘lifeline’ services, particularly in enabling patient access to specialist healthcare; maintaining links with family, friends and the wider diaspora; overcoming perceived remoteness and isolation; acting as socio-cultural arenas in their own right; and being regarded as important symbols of local history, culture and identity

An optical flow approach to tracking ship track behavior using GOES-R satellite imagery

Ship emissions can form linear cloud structures, or ship tracks, when atmospheric water vapor condenses on aerosols in the ship exhaust. These structures are of interest because they are observable and traceable examples of marine cloud brightening, a mechanism that has been studied as a potential approach for solar climate intervention. Ship tracks can be observed throughout the diurnal cycle via space-borne assets like the Advanced Baseline Imagers on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, the GOES-R series. Due to complex atmospheric dynamics, it can be difficult to track these aerosol perturbations over space and time to precisely characterize how long a single emission source can significantly contribute to indirect radiative forcing. We propose an optical flow approach to estimate the trajectories of ship-emitted aerosols after they begin mixing with low boundary layer clouds using GOES-17 satellite imagery. Most optical flow estimation methods have only been used to estimate large scale atmospheric motion. We demonstrate the ability of our approach to precisely isolate the movement of ship tracks in low-lying clouds from the movement of large swaths of high clouds that often dominate the scene. This efficient approach shows that ship tracks persist as visible, linear features beyond 9 hours and sometimes longer than 24 hours

Visual methods for social and cultural airport research.

This report examines the use of still, moving, and 3D images and visualisations for investigation into the social and cultural role of airports. The potential to use these methods to help people remember, connect to, and visualise these social and cultural spaces of the past, present, and future is explored. It follows on from work conducted as part of the SPARA 2020 project Work Package 7 activities which involved: qualitative research on the social and cultural importance of peripheral and remote airports; production of best practice templates for airport engagement with community stakeholders; and development of engagement strategies for case study airports. This report details the results of a literature search into visual methods and critically reflects upon the use of visual methods (specifically photo elicitation) in remote and rural airport contexts. This literature review: gives an overview of visual methods; details how they are used and applied in various fields; discusses research which uses different types of visuals (still, moving, and 3D); engages in a critical discussion of visual methods including advantages and ethical considerations; examines the potential for visual methods to engage with community stakeholders in social and cultural research; and examines the potential for visual methods to be used in airport and transport research more specifically. The report also reflects on the earlier SPARA 2020 research which employed the photo elicitation visual methodology and discusses the role this visual method played in the project. It also draws upon the findings of an earlier photo elicitation study which examined the social and cultural role of the main street in remote and peripheral areas. Although the report details examples from a wide variety of airports of differing sizes, the implications for socially and culturally significant remote and peripheral airports are explored in more detail, in line with the scope of the SPARA 2020 project. As such, this report will be of interest to: those working at remote and peripheral airports who wish to engage in community stakeholder engagement (especially where they are being asked to evidence non-economic impact to funding bodies); and visual researchers (especially those who study community spaces)

Report on the potential social and cultural impact of a reopened Skye Airport.

This report presents the results of desk-based research that explored the potential social and cultural impact of the reintroduction of scheduled passenger services at the Broadford airfield on the Isle of Skye, where services ceased in 1988. The report is designed to complement the work of the Skye Air Service Short Life Working Group, created to progress proposals to establish a scheduled service between Skye and Scotland’s Central Belt

Where is the chromospheric response to conductive energy input from a hot pre-flare coronal loop?

Before the onset of a flare is observed in hard X-rays there is often a pro- longed pre-flare or pre-heating phase with no detectable hard X-ray emission but pronounced soft X-ray emission suggesting that energy is being released and deposited into the corona and chromosphere already at this stage. This work analyses the temporal evolution of coronal source heating and the chromospheric response during this pre-heating phase to investigate the origin and nature of early energy release and transport during a solar flare. Simultaneous X-ray, EUV, and microwave observations of a well observed flare with a prolonged pre-heating phase are analysed to study the time evolution of the thermal emission and to determine the onset of particle acceleration. During the 20 minutes duration of the pre-heating phase we find no hint of accelerated electrons, neither in hard X-rays nor in microwave emission. However, the total energy budget during the pre-heating phase suggests that energy must be supplied to the flaring loop to sustain the observed temperature and emission measure. Under the assumption of this energy being transported toward the chromosphere via thermal conduc- tion, significant energy deposition at the chromosphere is expected. However, no detectable increase of the emission in the AIA wavelength channels sensitive to chromospheric temperatures is observed. The observations suggest energy release and deposition in the flaring loop before the onset of particle acceleration, yet a model in which energy is conducted to the chromosphere and subsequent heating of the chromosphere is not supported by the observations

Investigating student teachers’ presentations of literacy and literacy pedagogy in a complex context

The field of literacy and primary literacy education is patterned by multiple discourses and this raises challenges for those educating the next generation of primary literacy teachers. In England, the last 15 years have seen considerable levels of prescription in the primary literacy curriculum and compliance by the school and teacher education sectors has been enforced through demanding accountability regimes. In this paper, the authors draw on findings of a small-scale interview study to consider how understandings of literacies associated with different contexts may or may not inflect student teachers’ orientations towards literacy provision in school. The authors explore how five student teachers presented their experiences of literacy within and beyond the classroom and how they seemed to position themselves in relation to literacy pedagogy. The authors focus particularly on continuities and discontinuities between literacies in the student teachers’ personal and professional lives, and on tensions they identified between the teachers they felt they wanted to, and were expected to, become. Reflecting on this work, the authors consider how they can best equip pre-service primary and early years teachers to develop as critical reflective literacy practitioners in the current context