Classification of airborne laser scanning data using geometric multi-scale features and different neighbourhood types

In this paper, we address the classification of airborne laser scanning data. We present a novel methodology relying on the use of complementary types of geometric features extracted from multiple local neighbourhoods of different scale and type. To demonstrate the performance of our methodology, we present results of a detailed evaluation on a standard benchmark dataset and we show that the consideration of multi-scale, multi-type neighbourhoods as the basis for feature extraction leads to improved classification results in comparison to single-scale neighbourhoods as well as in comparison to multi-scale neighbourhoods of the same type

Profiling unauthorized natural resource users for better targeting of conservation interventions

Unauthorized use of natural resources is a key threat to many protected areas. Approaches to reducing this threat include law enforcement and integrated conservation and development (ICD) projects, but for such ICDs to be targeted effectively, it is important to understand who is illegally using which natural resources and why. The nature of unauthorized behavior makes it difficult to ascertain this information through direct questioning. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, has many ICD projects, including authorizing some local people to use certain nontimber forest resources from the park. However, despite over 25 years of ICD, unauthorized resource use continues. We used household surveys, indirect questioning (unmatched count technique), and focus group discussions to generate profiles of authorized and unauthorized resource users and to explore motivations for unauthorized activity. Overall, unauthorized resource use was most common among people from poor households who lived closest to the park boundary and farthest from roads and trading centers. Other motivations for unauthorized resource use included crop raiding by wild animals, inequity of revenue sharing, and lack of employment, factors that created resentment among the poorest communities. In some communities, benefits obtained from ICD were reported to be the greatest deterrents against unauthorized activity, although law enforcement ranked highest overall. Despite the sensitive nature of exploring unauthorized resource use, management‐relevant insights into the profiles and motivations of unauthorized resource users can be gained from a combination of survey techniques, as adopted here. To reduce unauthorized activity at Bwindi, we suggest ICD benefit the poorest people living in remote areas and near the park boundary by providing affordable alternative sources of forest products and addressing crop raiding. To prevent resentment from driving further unauthorized activity, ICDs should be managed transparently and equitably

Conservation and “land grabbing” in rangelands: Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Large-scale land acquisitions have increased in scale and pace due to changes in commodity markets, agricultural investment strategies, land prices, and a range of other policy and market forces. The areas most affected are the global “commons” – lands that local people traditionally use collectively — including much of the world’s forests, wetlands, and rangelands. In some cases land acquisition occurs with environmental objectives in sight – including the setting aside of land as protected areas for biodiversity conservation. On the other hand, current trends and patterns of commercial land acquisition present a major and growing threat not just to local livelihoods and human rights, but also to conservation objectives. There is a potential opportunity here for greater collaboration between conservation interests, and local communities’ land rights interests with their supporters amongst human rights and social justice movements. This Issue Paper documents experiences from the rangelands of Mongolia, Kenya, India, Ethiopia, and other countries, which were presented at a Conference on Conservation and Land Grabbing held in London in 2013

Management of EPICS IOCs in a Distributed Network Environment Using Salt

An EPICS-based control system typically consists of many individual IOCs, which can be distributed across many computers in a network. Managing hundreds of deployed IOCs, keeping track of where they are running, and providing operators with basic interaction capabilities can easily become a maintenance nightmare. At the Institute for Beam Physics and Technology (IBPT) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), we operate separate networks for our accelerators KARA and FLUTE and use the Salt Project to manage the IT infrastructure. Custom Salt states take care of deploying our IOCs across multiple servers directly from the code repositories, integrating them into the host operating system and monitoring infrastructure. In addition, this allows the integration into our GUI in order to enable operators to monitor and control the process for each IOC without requiring any specific knowledge of where and how that IOC is deployed. Therefore, we can maintain and scale to any number of IOCs on any numbers of hosts nearly effortless. This paper presents the design of this system, discusses the tools and overall setup required to make it work, and shows off the integration into our GUI and monitoring systems

Normalising jurisdictional heterotopias through place branding : the cases of Christiania and Metelkova

This paper explores the political dimensions of place branding as a path to normalisation for areas where a paradoxical relationship with the law exists, places that we coin “jurisdictional heterotopias” borrowing from Foucauldian literature. We posit that place branding plays a fundamental role in facilitating scale jumping in the otherwise vertically aligned legal space, a hierarchy designed to exclude spatial multiplicity from its premise. By examining the role of place branding in such areas, we endeavour to understand and appreciate the selective application of the law, the perpetuation of unregulated and illegal activity, as well as the place – specificity of legal practice. Ultimately, we argue that strong place branding associations permit the engulfment of this type of heterotopias in the “mainstream” leading to their normalisation; such a normalisation results not only in the acceptance of their uniqueness by the institutional elements, but also in the potential nullification of the liberties their communities advocate

Transverse and Longitudinal Profile Measurements at the KARA Booster Synchrotron

In the booster synchrotron of the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), the beam is injected from the microtron at 53 MeV and ramped up to 500 MeV. Though the injected beam current from the microtron to the booster seems good, the injection efficiency into the booster is currently low due to various effects. Consequently, an upgrade of the whole beam diagnostics system is taking place in the booster, in order to improve the injection efficiency through understanding the loss mechanisms and the behavior of bunches. Among these diagnostics tools are beam loss monitors, a transverse profile monitor and a longitudinal profile monitor. In this paper, we will describe the setups used for bunch profile measurements in both transverse and longitudinal planes and report on first data analysis results

Making drug harms: Punishments for drugs offenders who pose risks to children

Images of children are routinely used in discourses on drugs, offering a compelling rationale for adopting particular policy positions or legislative reforms. However, the importance of childhood to the constitution of drug harms, and the punishment and subjectification of drug users and offenders, have rarely been the subject of enquiry, whether within drug and alcohol studies, criminology or legal studies. Scholarship on criminal sentencing in England and Wales is also relatively sparse, and has been dominated by analyses of the ‘legal-rational’ logic of particular provisions or reforms. This paper, which relies on the premise that drugs and their effects are constituted through discourse, and are thus contingent, variable and unstable, identifies the ‘collateral realities’ (Law, 2011) that are enacted during legislative and judicial attempts to stabilize the harms caused by drugs to children and communities