1,720,968 research outputs found
Indagine sulla gestione dei rifiuti solidi urbani nella citta' di Nairobi e nel villaggio di Sololo (Kenya)
No full textCould a Decentralized Onsite Earthquake Early Warning System Help in Mitigating Seismic Risk in Northeastern Italy? The Case of the 1976 Ms 6.5 Friuli Earthquake
Full text linkIn May 1976, a devastating earthquake of magnitude Ms 6.5 occurred in Friuli, Italy,
resulting in 976 deaths, 2000 injured, and 60,000 homeless. It is notable that, at the time
of the earthquake, only one station was installed in the affected region. The resulting
lack of information, combined with a dearth of mitigation planning for responding to
such events, lead to a clear picture of the impact of the disaster being available only
after a few days.
This region is now covered by nearly 100 seismological and strong-motion stations
operating in real time. Furthermore, 30 average-cost strong-motion stations have been
recently added, with the goals of improving the density of real-time ground-motion
observations and measuring the level of shaking recorded at selected buildings. The
final goal is to allow rapid impact estimations to be made to improve the response
of civil protection authorities. Today, considering the higher density seismological net-
work, new efforts in terms of the implementation and testing of earthquake early
warning systems as a possible tool for mitigating seismic risk are certainly worthwhile.
In this article, we show the results obtained by analyzing in playback and using an
algorithm for decentralized onsite earthquake early warning, broadband synthetic
strong-motion data calculated at 18 of the stations installed in the region, while con-
sidering the magnitude and location of the 1976 Friuli earthquake. The analysis shows
that the anisotropy of the lead times is related not only to the finite nature of the source
but also to the slip distribution. A reduction of 10% of injured persons appears to be
possible if appropriate mitigating actions are employed, such as the development of
efficient automatic procedures that improve the safety of strategic industrial facilities
GIS-based tool to support civil aviation management during explosive volcanic eruptions
No full textWe present a software tool (yet under development) for short and long-term civil aviation management
in case of explosive volcanic eruptions. The tool covers the needs of stakeholders involved
in civil aviation management and interested in taking decisions based on a range of possible tephra
dispersal scenarios and/or ash dispersal forecasts. The GIS-based tool allows to display hazard and
vulnerability information, overlap maps to and estimate expected impacts (airports disrupted, routes
cancelled, etc.). We present the structure of the tool underlining the scientific background and
technical aspects of each element.
Hazard and vulnerability data are stored in a spatial database specifically designed to store deterministic
and probabilistic data sources. The database has a central role for the risk management process,
acting as a repository of maps to be used by the stakeholders for different purposes. To our knowledge,
this is the first “ad hoc” database proposed to store information about tephra dispersal hazard
and vulnerability.
The tool allows to overlap hazard and vulnerability data and estimate expected impacts through
spatially-based rules. Vulnerability and impact assessments are implemented by means of plug-ins
embedded in the GIS friendly interface. The analysis has been automated for the European air traffic
management during explosive eruptions. Results are relevant for the long-term risk assessment in
the European area. Regarding short-term, we present an example of application during an explosive
eruption at an active Icelandic volcano.
This GIS-based tool improves civil aviation management by automating short and long-term analyses
and making them faster and repeatable. Although this is only a prototype and still needs further
development, the up-to-date work can be a relevant contribution to the scientific community
A GIS-based tool for the estimation of impacts of volcanic ash dispersal on European air traffic
No full textImpacts of volcanic ash on air traffic have been reconsidered in the aftermath of the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano (Iceland), which caused great impacts to the European air traffic network. We present a GIS-based methodology to estimate the impacts of tephra dispersal from explosive volcanic eruptions aimed at improving air traffic management
in case of ash-contaminated airspace. We use the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption as a case study with two main objectives: to introduce the methodology and to perform a posteriori analysis of the 2010 aviation breakdown. Modelling results of atmospheric tephra dispersal over Europe build upon a reanalysis dataset of meteorological and volcanological parameters. Given that there is still no consensus on thresholds of ash concentration that is critical for flight safety, the methodology takes into account several ash concentration values. Results are hourly tables and
maps containing information on potentially affected airports and routes at different Flight Levels (FLs). This allows estimating impacts at a high temporal frequency. We also compute dailyaccumulated impacts for each FL. We compare our results with the 2010 impacts. Furthermore, advantages and disadvantages of this methodology are discussed and compared with similar existing tools. Finally, we underline possible improvements of the methodology and describe further work
Interventi per il miglioramento della gestione dei rifuiti solidi urbani nella città di Nairobi e nel villaggio di Sololo (Kenya)
No full text
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
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