Goodbye to Projects? A livelihoods-grounded audit of Community-Based Planning Project in South Africa

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Community-Based Planning (CBP) Project in South Africa¿ is the sixth in the series of project working papers.Department for International Developmen

Goodbye to Projects? - Review of development interventions and livelihoods approaches in Uganda

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `Review of development interventions and livelihood approaches in Uganda¿ is the fourth in the series of the project working papers. This is the output of a literature review and series of interviews on development interventions in Uganda.Department for International Developmen

Goodbye to Projects? - Review of development interventions in Tanzania: From projects to livelihoods approaches

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `A Review of Approaches to Development Interventions in Tanzania: From Projects to Livelihood Approaches¿ is the third in the series of the project working papers. This is the output of a literature review and semi-structured interviewing in Tanzania.Department for International Developmen

Goodbye to Projects? Working paper 1: Annotated bibliography on livelihood approaches and development interventions.

YesThis paper is one in a series of working papers prepared under a research project on Goodbye to Projects? The Institutional Impacts of a Livelihood Approach on Projects and Project Cycle Management. This is a collaborative project between the Bradford Centre for International Centre for Development (BCID) with the Economic and Policy Research Centre (EPRC), Uganda; Khanya ¿ managing rural change, South Africa; and, the Institute for Development Management (IDM), Tanzania. The project is supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under their Economic and Social Research Programme (ESCOR).Department for International Developmen

Putting livelihoods thinking into practice: implications for development management.

YesThe failure of `blueprint¿ development interventions to deliver substantive improvements in poverty reduction has been well recognised over the last twenty years. Process approaches seek to overcome the rigidity and top-down operation of much aid-funded intervention. Sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLA) are one of the latest additions to this family of approaches. As a theoretical framework and as a set of principles for guiding intervention, sustainable livelihoods thinking has implications for development management. Drawing on research exploring the application of sustainable livelihoods principles in ten development interventions, this paper considers how these principles have evolved from continuing debates surrounding process and people-centred (bottom-up) approaches to development management. This research suggests that whilst these principles can improve the impact made by interventions, the effective application of sustainable livelihoods and other process approaches are fundamentally restricted by unbalanced power relationships between development partners

Elasticity, fluctuations and vortex pinning in ferromagnetic superconductors: A "columnar elastic glass"

We study the elasticity, fluctuations and pinning of a putative spontaneous vortex solid in ferromagnetic superconductors. Using a rigorous thermodynamic argument, we show that in the idealized case of vanishing crystalline pinning anisotropy the long-wavelength tilt modulus of such a vortex solid vanishes identically, as guaranteed by the underlying rotational invariance. The vanishing of the tilt modulus means that, to lowest order, the associated tension elasticity is replaced by the softer, curvature elasticity. The effect of this is to make the spontaneous vortex solid qualitatively more susceptible to the disordering effects of thermal fluctuations and random pinning. We study these effects, taking into account the nonlinear elasticity, that, in three dimensions, is important at sufficiently long length scales, and showing that a ``columnar elastic glass'' phase of vortices results. This phase is controlled by a previously unstudied zero-temperature fixed point and it is characterized by elastic moduli that have universal strong wave-vector dependence out to arbitrarily long length scales, leading to non-Hookean elasticity. We argue that, although translationally disordered for weak disorder, the columnar elastic glass is stable against the proliferation of dislocations and is therefore a topologically ordered {\em elastic} glass. As a result, the phenomenology of the spontaneous vortex state of isotropic magnetic superconductors differs qualitatively from a conventional, external-field-induced mixed state. For example, for weak external fields $H$, the magnetic induction scales {\em universally} like $B(H)\sim B(0)+ c H^{\alpha}$, with $\alpha\approx 0.72$.Comment: Minor editorial changes, version to be published in PRB, 39 pages, 7 figure

Data driven low-bandwidth intelligent control of a jet engine combustor

This thesis introduces a low-bandwidth control architecture for navigating the input space of an un-modeled combustor system between desired operating conditions while avoiding regions of instability and blow-out. An experimental procedure is discussed for identifying regions of instability and gathering sufficient data to build a data-driven model of the system\u27s operating modes. Regions of instability and blow-out are identified experimentally and a data-driven operating point classifier is designed. This classifier acts as a map of the operating space of the combustor, indicating regions in which the flame is in a good or bad operating mode. A data-driven predictor is also designed that monitors the combustion process in real time and provides a prediction of what operating mode the flame will be in for the next measurement. A path planning algorithm is then discussed for planning an input trajectory from the current operating condition to the desired operating condition that avoids regions of instability or blow-out in the input space. An adaptive layer is incorporated into the path planning algorithm to ensure that the path planner can update its trajectory when new information about the operating space becomes available

A tale of one city: intra-institutional variations in migrating VLE platform

City University London committed in 2009 to make Moodle the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at the core of a new Strategic Learning Environment (SLE) comprised of VLE, externally facing website and related systems such as video streaming and virtual classrooms. Previously, the WebCT VLE had been separate from most of the other systems at the institution with very limited connections to other tools. Each of the schools within the institution was able to pursue their own strategy and timeframe for the migration and embedding of Moodle within their subject areas, within an absolute limit of 2 years. This paper outlines the approaches taken by the various schools, highlighting similarities and differences, and draws out common aspects from the project to make recommendations for institutions seeking to undertake similar migrations

Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches - Can they transform development?

yesThis paper critically examines the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) in the context of broader development debates, using a literature review as a tool to explore the origins, concepts and uses of the `approach¿. Whilst the concept of sustainable livelihoods is valuable in advancing our understanding the complexity and embedded nature of people¿s lives, sustainable livelihoods frameworks and principles are too simplistic to offer many answers. This paper argues that the idea of net sustainable livelihoods has much to offer the current discourse on rights and governance but that this is in danger of being diluted by its conceptualisation as a new `approach¿ to managing development interventions