1,721,064 research outputs found
Systems-of-systems analysis of national infrastructure
No full textNational infrastructure is as much a priority in countries with a large stock of ageing infrastructural assets as it is for rapidly industrialising economies. Increasing attention is being paid to the risk and opportunities that the growing interdependence between infrastructural systems brings. However, there is no current methodology to enable long-term planning and future performance assessment of interdependent infrastructural systems. This paper makes the case for a long-term, cross-sectoral approach to analysing and planning the performance of national infrastructure systems. Such an approach is required to develop credible long-term visions for infrastructure provision and to analyse system performance across a range of possible futures. A preliminary version of a system-of-systems analysis for the UK is presented as an example. The implementation of a comprehensive, model-based approach is currently well under way
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
Quantified analysis of the probability of flooding in the Thames Estuary under imaginable worst case sea-level rise scenarios. [In special issue: Water and Disasters—Crafting Creative Solutions]
No full textMost studies of the impacts of sea level rise (SLR) have explored scenarios of < 1 m during the 21st century, even though larger rises are possible. This paper takes a different approach and explores and quantifies the likely flood impacts in the Thames estuary for a number of plausible, but unlikely, SLR scenarios. The collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) could cause global mean sea level to rise by 5-6 m; here a time-scale for such an event of 100 years is assumed to create a worst-case scenario. Combined with the 1 in 1000 storm surge event, this would result in 1000 km2 of land being frequently inundated. This area currently contains 1 million properties and their inundation would result in direct damage of at least 97.8 billion at 2003 prices. Smaller SLR scenarios, resulting from a partial collapse of the WAIS over 100 years, also have significant potential impacts, demonstrating the vulnerability of the Thames estuary to SLR. Construction of a new storm surge barrier in the outer Thames estuary is shown to provide greater resilience to unexpectedly high SLR because of the additional large flood storage capacity that the barrier would provide. This analysis has, for the first time, connected mechanisms of abrupt climate change and SLR with hydrodynamic modelling used to quantify impacts. In particular, it is recognized that future management strategies need to be adaptive and robust in order to manage the uncertainty associated with climate change
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
A GIS tool for analysis and interpretation of coastal erosion model outputs (SCAPEGIS)
Full text linkThe SCAPE (Soft Cliff and Platform Erosion) model of cliff
toe retreat, and a cliff-top recession model, have been linked with a new flexible GIS tool (SCAPEGIS) to provide visualisation and analytical capability for the model results. 45 model runs exploring different sealevel rise and wave climate scenarios and protection choices are available. Outputs are available in the form of maps, dynamic visualisation, and descriptive statistics of key parameters such as cliff toe and cliff top position. It also allows analysis with other datasets such as land use and building location for impact evaluation, and hence supports shoreline management and cliff-top land use planning. Some preliminary results and ideas for further development are presented
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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