Spatial Information Technology and Natural Resources Management: A Tool TO-ASIST

The Task Orientated - Application of a Spatial Information Systems Toolbox (TO-ASIST) is proffered as a new concept in the delivery of remote sensing and GIS technologies to natural resource managers. These technologies, which may collectively be termed spatial information technology (SIT), have much to offer natural resources management but are not extensively used. This thesis reports the theoretical and experimental development of the TO-ASIST concept as a link between SIT and natural resources management. This is achieved by demonstrating how spatial information technology may assist in the process of natural resources management in theory and in practice, and how the technology may be made more accessible to managers and their staff using a TO-ASIST. A TO-ASIST is developed using a new computer programming paradigm. It is apparent that natural resources management is moving towards a more holistic approach in which individual natural resources are viewed as smaller components of a bigger picture. The need for information about these resources, their location, condition and relationship to one another was identified as an area of priority. Information of this kind is needed to establish a base line inventory but also to monitor resources over time. Monitoring allows the impact of resource developments to be re-assessed thus incrementally improving our knowledge of the environment, that in turn will assist in better decision making in the future. This is the essence of adaptive management

Learning and Change in 20th-Century British Economic Policy

Despite considerable interest in the means by which policy learning occurs, and in how it is that the framework of policy may be subject to radical change, the “black box” of economic policy making remains surprisingly murky. This article utilizes Peter Hall’s concept of “social learning” to develop a more sophisticated model of policy learning; one in which paradigm failure does not necessarily lead to wholesale paradigm replacement, and in which an administrative battle of ideas may be just as important a determinant of paradigm change as a political struggle. It then applies this model in a survey of U.K. economic policy making since the 1930s: examining the shift to “Keynesianism” during the 1930s and 1940s; the substantial revision of this framework in the 1960s; the collapse of the“Keynesian-plus” framework in the 1970s; and the major revisions to the new “neoliberal” policy framework in the 1980s and 1990s