One Says the Things Which One Feels the Need to Say, and Which the Other Will Not Understand: Slovak Pension Cases Before the CJEU and Czech Courts

In a spectacular decision, in 2012 the Czech Constitutional Court declared the Landtová judgment of the CJEU ultra vires and therefore inapplicable on the territory of that Member State. The CJEU’s judgment was rendered following a request for a preliminary ruling by the Czech Supreme Administrative Court. The real and underlying conflict, however, was of an internal nature and took place between two of the highest courts of the Czech Republic well into 2013, making it an illustrative example of how the mechanisms of judicial dialogue actually work in practice. This contribution first looks at both the horizontal and vertical aspects of the so-called Slovak Pension Cases. It further assesses them from the perspective of judicial dialogue in its procedural and substantial features, while finally discerning possible consequences that the ultra vires decision of the Czech Constitutional Court might bring about

Räumliche Analyse von gravitativen Massenbewegungen mittels multivariater Statistik

Im August 2005 sind nach intensiven Regenfällen in der Region Gasen und Haslau in der Oststeiermark, mehr als 500 gravitative Massenbewegungen (auf 60km²) aufgetreten, die hohe ökonomische Schäden verursachten und auch 2 Todesopfer forderten. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Analyse war, eine Gefahrenhinweiskarte für die Region Gasen und Haslau zu erstellen und eine unabhängige Validierung der Ergebnisse durchzuführen. Dazu wurden die in Österreich vorhanden Geodaten in Rasterdatensätze mit 10m x 10m und 50m x 50m Rasterweite konvertiert, um auch den Effekt von unterschiedlichen Auflösungen auf die resultierende Gefahrenhinweiskarte aufzuzeigen. Für die Analyse wurde das statistische Likelihood Quotienten Modell von Chung und Fabbri (1993, 2005) angewendet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen zufriedenstellende statistische Gütemaße darunter hohe Vorhersageraten aus der unabhängige Validierung der Gefahrenhinweiskarten

150 x 22. November seit 1849

Jahrestage sind oft der Anlaß, um an Personen oder Ereignisse zu erinnern. Fritz Mauthner's Geburtstag jährt sich am 22. November zum 150-sten mal. Ich will diese Gelegenheit nutzen, um weniger seinen Namen, als sein Anliegen in Erinnerung zu rufen

Ich und Stirner

STIRNERs "Verdienst" geht im Grunde auf ein einziges Werk zurück: Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum erschienen 1844/45 in Leipzig. Hören wir also, was "berufene" Geister der Geschichte über ihn zu schreiben wußten: ARNOLD RUGE ein führender Kopf des sogenannten Vormärz der 48er Revolution des letzten Jahrhunderts, hat das Buch bei seinem ersten Erscheinen als "frischen Morgenruf im Lager der schlafenden Theoretiker" begrüßt. LUDWIG FEUERBACH nannte es, trotz einiger Einwände; das "Werk des genialsten und freiesten Schriftstellers, den er kenne". MAX NETTLAU schreibt 1925, daß nur wenige Bücher so mißverstanden oder so verschiedenartig beurteilt werden wie dieses, "und viele Leser bleiben bei einem auf die Spitze getriebenen Individualismus oder Egoismus stehen, den sie herauslesen wollen"

Assessing uncertainties in landslide susceptibility predictions in a changing environment (Styrian Basin, Austria)

The assessment of uncertainties in landslide susceptibility modelling in a changing environment is an important, yet often neglected, task. In an Austrian case study, we investigated the uncertainty cascade in storylines of landslide susceptibility emerging from climate change and parametric landslide model uncertainty. In June 2009, extreme events of heavy thunderstorms occurred in the Styrian Basin, triggering thousands of landslides. Using a storyline approach, we discovered a generally lower landslide susceptibility for the pre-industrial climate, while for the future climate (2071–2100) a potential increase of 35 % in highly susceptible areas (storyline of much heavier rain) may be compensated for by much drier soils (−45 % areas highly susceptible to landsliding). However, the estimated uncertainties in predictions were generally high. While uncertainties related to within-event internal climate model variability were substantially lower than parametric uncertainties in the landslide susceptibility model (ratio of around 0.25), parametric uncertainties were of the same order as the climate scenario uncertainty for the higher warming levels (+3 and +4 K). We suggest that in future uncertainty assessments, an improved availability of event-based landslide inventories and high-resolution soil and precipitation data will help to reduce parametric uncertainties in landslide susceptibility models used to assess the impacts of climate change on landslide hazard and risk.</p

Deriving 3d point clouds from terrestrial photographs comparison of different sensors and software

Terrestrial photogrammetry nowadays offers a reasonably cheap, intuitive and effective approach to 3D-modelling. However, the important choice, which sensor and which software to use is not straight forward and needs consideration as the choice will have effects on the resulting 3D point cloud and its derivatives. <br><br> We compare five different sensors as well as four different state-of-the-art software packages for a single application, the modelling of a vegetated rock face. The five sensors represent different resolutions, sensor sizes and price segments of the cameras. The software packages used are: (1) Agisoft PhotoScan Pro (1.16), (2) Pix4D (2.0.89), (3) a combination of Visual SFM (V0.5.22) and SURE (1.2.0.286), and (4) MicMac (1.0). We took photos of a vegetated rock face from identical positions with all sensors. Then we compared the results of the different software packages regarding the ease of the workflow, visual appeal, similarity and quality of the point cloud. <br><br> While PhotoScan and Pix4D offer the user-friendliest workflows, they are also “black-box” programmes giving only little insight into their processing. Unsatisfying results may only be changed by modifying settings within a module. The combined workflow of Visual SFM, SURE and CloudCompare is just as simple but requires more user interaction. MicMac turned out to be the most challenging software as it is less user-friendly. However, MicMac offers the most possibilities to influence the processing workflow. The resulting point-clouds of PhotoScan and MicMac are the most appealing

Terrestrial and Airborne Structure from Motion Photogrammetry Applied for Change Detection within a Sinkhole in Thuringia, Germany

Detection of geomorphological changes based on structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry is highly dependent on the quality of the 3D reconstruction from high-quality images and the correspondingly derived point precision estimates. For long-term monitoring, it is interesting to know if the resulting 3D point clouds and derived detectable changes over the years are comparable, even though different sensors and data collection methods were applied. Analyzing this, we took images of a sinkhole terrestrially with a Nikon D3000 and aerially with a DJI drone camera in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and computed 3D point clouds and precision maps using Agisoft PhotoScan and the SfM_Georef software. Applying the &ldquo;multiscale model to model cloud comparison using precision maps&rdquo; plugin (M3C2-PM) in CloudCompare, we analyzed the differences between the point clouds arising from the different sensors and data collection methods per year. Additionally, we were interested if the patterns of detectable change over the years were comparable between the data collection methods. Overall, we found that the spatial pattern of detectable changes of the sinkhole walls were generally similar between the aerial and terrestrial surveys, which were performed using different sensors and camera locations. Although the terrestrial data collection was easier to perform, there were often challenges due to terrain and vegetation around the sinkhole to safely acquire adequate viewing angles to cover the entire sinkhole, which the aerial survey was able to overcome. The local levels of detection were also considerably lower for point clouds resulting from aerial surveys, likely due to the ability to obtain closer-range imagery within the sinkhole