1,720,954 research outputs found
Addis Ababa city plans compliance and performance evaluation
Get PDFAddis Ababa had a number of spatial plans prepared with intentions to solve its socioeconomic, physical and
environmental problems and to serve as road map for its multifaceted development endeavors. But these
plans were not implemented as intended; and rather unplanned interventions with harmful implications
became the norm. These practices are seldom checked or evaluated, and the influencing factors are not
examined. Existing literature give only general evaluation methods and criteria, or they deviate from the
Addis Ababa’s or similar cities’ contexts. The main objective of this research is to understand the extent to
which spatial plans were implemented and how plan quality, land management and institutional setup
influenced this practice as a way of improving spatial planning system in Addis Ababa.
Analytical models advocated by literature (highly structured, quantitative planning evaluation techniques)
are not opted as they are rarely attainable in practice for reasons of cost, time, deviation form context, and
data availability. Therefore, rapid and qualitative assessment was carried out using triangulation technique
analyzing data from four different sources: documents review, observation interviews and the researcher’s
rich experience, a reflective practice, with some degree of quantitative analysis.
Integration of conformance and performance-based evaluation approaches along with reflective practice
have been applied to understand the level of plan implementation. The overall city planning practice has
been assessed but for more focus and detailed account of the research topic, two cases (ORAAMP’s AACDP
of 2003 and Mercato LDP) have been assessed in detail as they are believed to demonstrate findings that can
help represent and generalize the hypothesis.
Assessment of the city’s planning practice revealed that the city’s planning approach has been favored and
disfavored by the dominant agrarian nature of the country on the one hand, and the dynamic environment
– political, socioeconomic, land system (the 1974 nationalization of land and the lease system after 1991)
and institutional (regionalization, decentralization and reform programs) on the other hand. The planning
approach has been mainly conditioned by imported planning practices with resistant local context and
attempts to contextualize the imported ones as can be seen in the formal/informal housing and business
conflicts. Continuity of the key tenets of different planning practices and incorporation of past legacies has
created superimposition of city structures and morphology as well as mixed planning culture.
The findings of the study also revealed that effectiveness of a plan and its implementation are conditioned
not only by the intentions and quality of the plan per se; but also, by other factors mainly land management,
governance, institutional setup, political, socioeconomic, and cultural settings. Failure to properly consider
land management system in the planning process, the weak institutional setup and its lack of sustained
system, absence of true participatory process, misguided monitoring, evaluation and accountability, the
apolitical stances practiced by professionals, the double plan system because of political interference, were
the core underlying factors for poor spatial planning system. It has been found that proper and adequate
consideration of influential contextual factors (land, institutional and political setting) will contribute to
improvement in spatial planning system. It is recommended that an improved new spatial planning system
be developed where we have interactive hierarchical plans, integrated collaborative spatial plans across
sectoral agencies, and where participatory community planning and implementation is pronounced
The Effects of Integrated Soil Conservation Practices on Soil Physico-Chemical Properties: The Case of Menesibu District, West Ethiopia
Get PDFThe study was conducted in Ethiopia, in Oromia Regional State, West Wollega Zone, Menesibu district to evaluate the effect of integrated soil conservation practices on soil physical and chemical properties. The land treated by integrated soil conservation practices were compared with land untreated. These were again evaluated across three slope gradients and two soil depths. The slope gradients were; gentle slope (3-10%), moderate slope (10-25%) and steep slope (>25%). The study adopted a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with split-split plot layout. A total of 36 soil samples were collected from the top 0-20 cm and 20-40cm soil depths, which were replicated three times and the selected physical and chemical properties were analyzed in the laboratory. The results of the study showed that soil bulk density (BD), soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (N) available phosphorus and potassium (Av-P &Av-K), cation exchange capacity (CEC) and exchangeable cations (Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+) were significantly different (P < 0.05), with the land treated by soil conservation practices showing better conditions than the untreated control under the three slope gradients and the two soil depths. No significant difference was observed in terms of soil texture between the conserved and un-conserved lands but there were significant differences among the slope gradient and the soil depths. The carbon to nitrogen ratio (C/N) was also not significantly different between the two land types (conserved and un-conserved land), slope gradients and soil depths. Keywords: Soil conservation practices, conserved land, un-conserved land, soil physical properties, soil chemical propertie
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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