1,720,952 research outputs found
Seismic Risk Mitigation in Greece: Translation of Dutch flood risk management practices
No full textSeismic risk in some regions of Greece has increased over the last decades. The reason lies in urban development in earthquake prone regions, combined with a lack of ability or interest to tackle known construction vulnerabilities of buildings. Despite the severity of risk, also confirmed by recent events, homeowners have proven unwilling to mitigate seismic risk, possibly because of their inability to pay and/or unwillingness to invest due to lack of information or awareness. As a result, significant part of the building stock remains unsafe, in comparison with the safety level of the current building code. A way to stimulate seismic risk mitigation is government intervention. Such intervention could consist of a safety plan (retrofit program, mandatory insurance, emergency planning etc.) implemented by government, subsidies, introduction of more stringent building codes, risk communication. Recent developments in Greece regarding seismic safety are mostly aimed at vulnerability and risk evaluation, the publishing of a technical building Code of Interventions, and mapping out a seismic safety plan for Greece. Meanwhile, experts ask for government intervention proposing organisational change and a distribution of roles / liabilities among different clusters. For every scheme of government program, risk estimation is vital to be able to set priorities and decide whether buildings, municipalities, or regions are safe enough. Besides economic risks, risks to life should also be considered. Instruments for quantifying fatality risks are however unavailable at present. A review of the cornerstones of Dutch flood risk management practices, especially in risk estimation and decision-making has shown that fatality risks are considered from a societal perspective and an individual one. The societal risk metric concerns the (exceedance) probabilities of larger numbers of fatalities; the individual risk metric concerns the probability of death of a person at a specific location. In the case of the Netherlands, due to the nature of the flood hazard and protection scheme (public flood defences), the government is strongly involved in flood risk mitigation. Despite differences between the protection schemes for large-scale floods (strengthening dikes rather than protecting buildings) and earthquakes (strengthening buildings), this project proposes the translation (=the act of converting) of aforementioned metrics to the case of seismic risk in Greece. To quantify those metrics for earthquakes requires knowledge of the probabilities of different hazard levels (peak ground accelerations), the extent of damage on buildings given the hazard, and the expected number of fatalities in case of damage given the extent of damage. In this study, societal risk (depicted by FN-curves) and individual risk levels are quantified using exceedance probability function of peak ground acceleration at the site under Seismic Risk Mitigation in Greece Translation of Dutch Flood Risk Management Practices consideration, as well as deterministic transfer functions for damage (vulnerability curves) and losses (mortality curves). Moreover, since economic losses of earthquakes can also be significant, societal economic risk (FL-curve) and individual economic risk are also proposed and quantified. Using recent research results about the vulnerability of buildings, inventory data for social economic characteristics and reasonable assumptions about missing information (like building size); risk can be estimated for existing and retrofitted building stocks of Greek municipalities. After sensitivity analysis of model parameters, two case studies are presented that show the use of the aforementioned risk metrics for different levels of government decision-making. One simulating top level (central government) decision making, setting priorities for retrofit between municipalities, and the second simulating medium level (local government) decision making, setting priorities for a retrofit program between different structural typologies of buildings. The case studies show that the risk metrics and the model to quantify them can be useful tools for deciding which municipality should absorb more resources, whether mitigation is urgent, which mitigation strategy is most efficient, and how alternative retrofit programs influence risk levels. Of course, the model is only a prototype further refinements are advised. There are important benefits from the implementation of the described methodology. Firstly, the decision maker only deals with probabilities and consequences, has a general overview thus he/she may distribute resources and time in a more (cost) effective way. Moreover, human life is distinguished from cost-benefit analysis (no monetization). Events with high numbers of fatalities, which can cause disruption to the whole of the country, as well as disproportional individual exposures, can be targeted directly. Finally, it gives the opportunity to monitor the progress of a safety plan, and is scalable for central and local administration. This study concludes by proposing the application of societal & individual risk metrics (for fatalities and economic loss) to support two levels (central and local) of government decision making concerning seismic risk mitigation in Greece. Furthermore, it provides a prototype model for the quantification of these metrics. Finally, this thesis proposes directions for further research, the most important being research about the costs of alternative retrofit programs, which is necessary for the debate about appropriate (efficient/feasible) societal & individual risk acceptance criteria.Design and Construction ProcessesCivil Engineering and Geoscience
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
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
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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