The World Bank\u27s support to higher education reform in Egypt: Educator\u27s perspective on its impact for quality and equality

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine and explore why despite the implementation of many reforms in Egypt’s higher education system in the past decade, problems persist in quality and impact. This is despite the closure of the World Bank supported Higher Education Enhancement Project (HEEP) in 2008. Thus, the paper aims to provide an understanding, analyze, and to evaluate the Bank’s HEEP reform that was implemented in Egypt. In the second section, I present the theoretical perspective which I believe may explain the true nature behind Egypt’s long-term relationship with international organisations, including the World Bank. This perspective is the International Education Development Framework, which covers several theories in accordance to the array of Western literature written by renowned scholars. This has led the author to question the Educators perspective in Egypt regarding the former HEEP project. The methods used consisted of I) Document and Policy Analysis of official reports and documents pertaining to the HEEP project, to obtain the perspectives of both the World Bank and the Egyptian Government (or “Borrower”) and II) Individual Interviews, to obtain the perspective of the expert educators in Egypt. The Interviews were conducted with eleven Egyptian educator experts, who were selected using the purposeful sampling, in addition to snow ball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were used. Data was collected over a period of approximately two months. The findings for the point of view of the World Bank regarding the outcome/impact of HEEP was rated as “moderately satisfactory”, while the “Borrower’s” (Egyptian Government) rated the project from their point of view, as “highly satisfactory”. It is worthy of noting that no group of stakeholders were held accountable or took any responsibility, for any hindrances of the project. In addition, several discrepancies were found as a result of the policy analysis, between the project cycle of the World Bank in relation to the actual cycle that was executed for the HEEP project. The interviews were transcribed and analysis was done using the thematic approach. Findings of the field work suggest that most of the experts perceived the HEEP project to have had limited success in achieving quality. The experts blamed the Egyptian Government for the hindrance of the project. The policy recommendations that were offered by the experts for future World Bank supported projects, were various and diverse in nature. Finally, this analysis has made the author question and request more extensive research to be conducted to explain why Egypt has maintained a long-term “partnership” with The World Bank

Social environmental determinants of student dropout in the plantation settlement

The role of institutions in the social environment appears to be one of the important predictors of student’s attendance and academic performance and social development. Despite existing research on contributions of social environment factors namely home, social and school on student dropout but these factors were examined in a separate fashion and primarily focussed in rural villages. This study aims to develop a comprehensive framework of social environmental determinants of student dropout in secondary school in the the plantation settlement which is understudied. These determinants play a critical role in identifying the measures or interventions that will enhance a child’s education. The role of these institutions in the social environment and its influence on student dropout is examined in general and amongst the secondary school students in the plantation settlement in particular. The findings reveal that although family factors contribute predominantly to student dropout as shown in conventional literature, school and social variables appear to be equally important and emerging determinants as well. Implications to policy and intervention are also discussed

Challenges and Technical Advances in Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWSs)

Flood early warning systems (FEWSs)—one of the most common flood-impact mitigation measures—are currently in operation globally. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) strongly advocates for an increase in their availability to reach the targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Comprehensive FEWS consists of four components, which includes (1) risk knowledge, (2) monitoring and forecasting, (3) warning, dissemination, and communication, and (4) response capabilities. Operational FEWSs have varying levels of complexity, depending on available data, adopted technology, and know-how. There are apparent differences in sophistication between FEWSs in developed countries that have the financial capabilities, technological infrastructure, and human resources and developing countries where FEWSs tend to be less advanced. Fortunately, recent advances in remote sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), information technologies, and social media are leading to significant changes in the mechanisms of FEWSs and provide the opportunity for all FEWSs to gain additional capability. These technologies are an opportunity for developing countries to overcome the technical limitations that FEWSs have faced so far. This chapter aims to discuss the challenges in FEWSs in brief and exposes technological advances and their benefits in flood forecasting and disaster mitigation

Inter-comparison of gauge-corrected global satellite rainfall estimates and their applicability for effective water resource management in a transboundary river basin: the case of the Meghna river basin

The Meghna River basin is a transboundary basin that lies in Bangladesh (~40%) and India (~60%). Due to its terrain structure, the Bangladesh portion of the basin experiences frequent floods that cause severe human and economic losses. Bangladesh, as the downstream nation in the basin, faces challenges in receiving hydro-meteorological and water use data from India for effective water resource management. To address such issue, satellite rainfall products are recognized as an alternative. However, they are affected by biases and, thus, must be calibrated and verified using ground observations. This research compares the performance of four widely available gauge-adjusted satellite rainfall products (GSRPs) against ground rainfall observations in the Meghna basin within Bangladesh. Further biases in the GSRPs are then identified. The GSRPs have both similarities and differences in terms of producing biases. To maximize the usage of the GSRPs and to further improve their accuracy, several bias correction and merging techniques are applied to correct them. Correction factors and merging weights are calculated at the local gauge stations and are spatially distributed by adopting an interpolation method to improve the GSRPs, both inside and outside Bangladesh. Of the four bias correction methods, modified linear correction (MLC) has performed better, and partially removed the GSRPs’ systematic biases. In addition, of the three merging techniques, inverse error-variance weighting (IEVW) has provided better results than the individual GSRPs and removed significantly more biases than the MLC correction method for three of the five validation stations, whereas the two other stations that experienced heavy rainfall events, showed better results for the MLC method. Hence, the combined use of IEVW merging and MLC correction is explored. The combined method has provided the best results, thus creating an improved dataset. The applicability of this dataset is then investigated using a hydrological model to simulated streamflows at two critical locations. The results show that the dataset reproduces the hydrological responses of the basin well, as compared with the observed streamflows. Together, these results indicate that the improved dataset can overcome the limitations of poor data availability in the basin and can serve as a reference rainfall dataset for wide range of applications (e.g., flood modelling and forecasting, irrigation planning, damage and risk assessment, and climate change adaptation planning). In addition, the proposed methodology of creating a reference rainfall dataset based on the GSRPs could also be applicable to other poorly-gauged and inaccessible transboundary river basins, thus providing reliable rainfall information and effective water resource management for sustainable development

Evaluating the benefits of merging near-real-time satellite precipitation products: a case study in the Kinu basin region, Japan

After the launch of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission in 2014, many satellite precipitation products (SPPs) are available at finer spatiotemporal resolution and/or with reduced latency, potentially increasing the applicability of SPPs for near-real-time (NRT) applications. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the NRT SPPs in the GPM era and investigate whether bias-correction techniques or merging of the individual products can increase the accuracy of these SPPs for NRT applications. This study utilizes five commonly used NRT SPPs, namely, CMOPRH RT, GSMaP NRT, IMERG EARLY, IMERG LATE, and PERSIANN-CCS. The evaluation is done for the Kinu basin region in Japan, an area that provides observed rainfall data with high accuracy in space and time. The selected bias correction techniques are the ratio bias correction and cumulative distribution function matching, while the merged products are derived with the error variance, inverse error variance weighting, and simple average merging techniques. Based on the results, all SPPs perform best for lower-intensity rainfall events and have challenges in providing accurate estimates for typhoon-induced rainfall (generally more than 50% underestimation) and at very fine temporal scales. Although the bias correction techniques successfully reduce the bias and improve the performance of the SPPs for coarse temporal scales, it is found that for shorter than 6-hourly temporal resolutions, both techniques are in general unable to bring improvements. Finally, the merging results in increased accuracy for all temporal scales, giving new perspectives in utilizing SPPs for NRT applications, such as flood and drought monitoring and early warning systems

Optimal control of distributed parameter systems with discrete constrained inputs

Bibliography; p. 50-54

Time-optimal and suboptimal computational techniques for linear control systems

Bibliography: p. 86-91

The numerical modelling of fox rabies

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN054696 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

ICHARM's Initiatives for Effective Flash Flood Forecasting and Management in Arid and Semiarid Region

The Second International Symposium on Flash Floods in Wadi Systems: 25-27 October 2016. Technische Universität Berlin, Campus El Gouna, Egypt