1,720,971 research outputs found
The social embeddedness of brownfield regeneration actors: Insights from social network analysis
No full textStakeholder involvement in land management has been considered in both normative and analytical terms, but often in an undifferentiated way. The article aims to compare these two perspectives by proposing, first, a mixed methods approach consisting of semistructured interviews and social network analysis. Second, it explores a social network of stakeholders by inductively developing and illustrating three indicators of social embeddedness. These are the relative embeddedness of stakeholder groups, the level of overall network coherence across multiple regeneration goals, and the relative distance between non-decision makers and those making decisions. The case study used is the regeneration of Area 2, a site in Porto Marghera, Italy. The article concludes by presenting a baseline assessment of the Area 2 regeneration network and suggesting several widely applicable ways to foster stakeholder involvement in regeneration processes via improved communication
Targeted selection of brownfields from portfolios for sustainable regeneration: User experiences from five cases testing the Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool
Full text linkPrioritizing brownfields for redevelopment in real estate portfolios can contribute to more sustainable regeneration and land management. Owners of large real estate and brownfield portfolios are challenged to allocate their limited resources to the development of the most critical or promising sites, in terms of time and cost efficiency. Authorities worried about the negative impacts of brownfields – in particular in the case of potential contamination – on the environment and society also need to prioritize their resources to those brownfields that most urgently deserve attention and intervention. Yet, numerous factors have to be considered for prioritizing actions, in particular when adhering to sustainability principles. Several multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches and tools have been suggested in order to support these actors in managing their brownfield portfolios. Based on lessons learned from the literature on success factors, sustainability assessment and MCDA approaches, researchers from a recent EU project have developed the web-based Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool (TBPT). It facilitates assessment and prioritization of a portfolio of sites on the basis of the probability of successful and sustainable regeneration or according to individually specified objectives. This paper introduces the challenges of brownfield portfolio management in general and reports about the application of the TBPT in five cases: practical test-uses by two large institutional land owners from Germany, a local and a regional administrative body from the Czech Republic, and an expert from a national environmental authority from Romania. Based on literature requirements for sustainability assessment tools and on the end-users’ feedbacks from the practical tests, we discuss the TBPT's strengths and weaknesses in order to inform and give recommendations for future development of prioritization tools
Identifying sustainability communicators in urban regeneration: Integrating individual and relational attributes
No full textThe paper advances a conceptualization of sustainability in urban regeneration as communicative practice taking place within networks of social actors. To demonstrate the potential of this perspective, we propose an interdisciplinary methodology integrating social network analysis from sociology and multi-criteria decision analysis (fuzzy logic) from operations research to calculate a sustainability communicator score for each actor involved in a regeneration network. The score is based on three dimensions: a sustainability vision (relying on the three pillar model of sustainability), a formal network influence dimension (based on organizational practice and decision-making position) and an informal network influence dimension (drawing on degree, betweenness, eigenvector and closeness centrality measures from social network analysis). The framework allows the identification and ranking of sustainability communicators, based on the preferences of specific users, while also allowing for variable degrees of vagueness. We illustrate the methodology by means of a case study of a social network of actors (N = 28) involved in the sustainable regeneration of a brownfield site in Porto Marghera, Venice, Italy. The methodology is expandable beyond the actor level to allow for the ranking of more complex network configurations for promoting sustainability
Brownfield regeneration in Europe: Identifying stakeholder perceptions, concerns, attitudes and information needs
Full text linkBrownfield areas are a major concern in Europe because they are often extensive, persistent in time and compromise stakeholders’ interests. Moreover, due to their complex nature, from the decision-making point of view, the regeneration of brownfields is a challenging problem requiring the involvement of the whole range of stakeholders. Many studies, projects and organisations have recognised the importance of stakeholder involvement and have promoted public participation. However, comprehensive studies providing an overview of stakeholders’ perceptions, concerns, attitudes and information needs when dealing with brownfield regeneration are still missing.
This paper presents and discusses a participatory methodology applied to stakeholders from five European countries to fill this research gap, to develop a system to support the categorisation of the needed information and to support the understanding of which typology of information is the most relevant for specific categories of stakeholders also in relation with their concerns.
The engagement process consists of five phases: (i) planning and preparatory work, (ii) identification of stakeholder categories, (iii) engagement activities (e.g. focus groups and workshops), (iv) submission of a questionnaire and (v) provision of feedback to the involved stakeholders.
Thanks to this process, appropriate stakeholders have been identified as well as their perceptions, concerns, attitudes and information needs. Stakeholders’ perceptions proved to be different according to the country: German and Italian stakeholders perceive brownfields as complex systems, where several issues need to be addressed, while Romanian stakeholders consider contamination as almost the only issue to be addressed; Czech and Polish stakeholders address an intermediate number of issues. Attitudes and concerns seemed to be quite similar between countries. As far as information needs are concerned, similarities between some groups of stakeholders have been noticed: site owners and problem holders are primarily interested in information on planning and financing, while authorities and services providers are interested in more technical aspects like investigation, planning and risk assessment. Some outstanding outcomes emerged from the scientific community and research group, which showed an interest for remediation strategies and options and socio-economic aspects.
The research outcomes allowed to create a knowledge base for the future development of tailored and customised approaches and tools for stakeholders working in the brownfield regeneration field
Dezastrul produs în urma inundațiilor. Experiențe din mediul rural [Flood-induced disasters: Experiences from rural areas]. Tritonic, Bucharest, 2019. Anca Mihai
Full text linkThe book reviewed here is one of the very rare social scientific analyses of flood-induced disasters in Romania. The monograph is a valuable contribution to the Romanian literature in the social sciences, because the author makes a sustained effort to advance a sociological understanding of the disasters tiggered by floods. In this sense, any given flood is not the disaster but only the trigger of a social disaster. The disaster ensues from the ways in which the flood interacts with pre-existing socio-economic and spatial conditions and inequalities. The book is structured into six chapters and an introductory piece. Its appeal is wide-ranging and it includes all social scientists interested in flood-induced or climate change-induced disasters. Experts and stakeholders involved in the management of floods or similar systemic hazards would also greatly benefit from reading this informative piece
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
