196 research outputs found
Our brothers across the ocean? : Unionist diplomacy, the Lansdown Foreign Office, and the Anglo-American 'special relationship', 1900-1905
Get PDFThis study is intended as a detailed exploration of British diplomacy with the United States in the first five years of the twentieth century, that is, the period during
which the Marquis of Lansdowne presided at the Foreign Office. Without doubt, this was a critical time in the readjustment (both in substance and style) of Anglo-American
diplomatic relations, initiating the amicable 'special relationship' which, broadly speaking, has endured to the present day. The efforts made by Lansdowne and the
Unionist Administration to 'clear the slate' of nagging Anglo-American disputes, and to encourage a closer diplomatic bond, helped to bring to an end decades of mutual
suspicion and antagonism, whilst representing a significant change of course for British foreign policy. In this light, the study here presented aims to provide a close analysis of
the Unionist Government's American diplomacy, their motives and diplomatic ambitions, in the appropriate imperial and strategic contexts.
An examination of this topic prompts the conclusion that, although Lansdowne fully appreciated the importance of Anglo-American friendship, he approached each dispute with a separate agenda, always gauging the strength of
American feeling before committing himself to a set policy. Lansdowne was perfectly prepared to concede non-vital interests to the United States in the Western Hemisphere
when serious tension arose, and this was particularly evident during the Isthmian canal and Alaskan boundary negotiations. With these two issues successfully concluded, the rapprochement was effectively ensured. Thus, Lansdowne's determination to uphold British interests (and those of her Western Hemispheric colonies), while occasionally placing a strain on Anglo-American relations, threatened no lasting danger. Above all, Britain relied upon vocal protestations of friendship, both for the United States and the Monroe Doctrine, to extinguish the risks of serious diplomatic tension and to cement a permanent friendship.
The major successes of Anglo-American relations, however, came to an abrupt end after the Alaskan verdict of late 1903, and a barren period followed. The
relationship had been set upon an entirely new course, but hopes for an Anglo- American partnership, sadly, remained hazy, naive, and frequently ill-conceived. In the Far East, where British and American interests broadly coincided, no joint policy emerged; instead, the two nations became separated over their responses to the Russo-Japanese conflict. Equally, the outstanding issues in North America proved incapable of settlement.
Although these final stages of Lansdowne's American diplomacy were marred by diplomatic inactivity and occasional friction, the Unionists' contribution to the Anglo-American 'special relationship' left an impressive and lasting legacy. By 1905, Britain and the United States, while not formally allied, had at least become mutually sympathetic. This was an essential factor in the readjustment of British global strategy, allowing Britain to abandon her defences in the Western Hemisphere and despatch her forces to more pressing areas of the globe
Reproducible Research and GIScience: An Evaluation Using GIScience Conference Papers
Get PDFGIScience conference authors and researchers face the same computational reproducibility challenges as authors and researchers from other disciplines who use computers to analyse data. Here, to assess the reproducibility of GIScience research, we apply a rubric for assessing the reproducibility of 75 conference papers published at the GIScience conference series in the years 2012-2018. Since the rubric and process were previously applied to the publications of the AGILE conference series, this paper itself is an attempt to replicate that analysis, however going beyond the previous work by evaluating and discussing proposed measures to improve reproducibility in the specific context of the GIScience conference series. The results of the GIScience paper assessment are in line with previous findings: although descriptions of workflows and the inclusion of the data and software suffice to explain the presented work, in most published papers they do not allow a third party to reproduce the results and findings with a reasonable effort. We summarise and adapt previous recommendations for improving this situation and propose the GIScience community to start a broad discussion on the reusability, quality, and openness of its research. Further, we critically reflect on the process of assessing paper reproducibility, and provide suggestions for improving future assessments. The code and data for this article are published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4032875
Mapping and the citizen sensor
Get PDFMaps are a fundamental resource in a diverse array of applications ranging from everyday activities, such as route planning through the legal demarcation of space to scientific studies, such as those seeking to understand biodiversity and inform the design of nature reserves for species conservation. For a map to have value, it should provide an accurate and timely representation of the phenomenon depicted and this can be a challenge in a dynamic world. Fortunately, mapping activities have benefitted greatly from recent advances in geoinformation technologies. Satellite remote sensing, for example, now offers unparalleled data acquisition and authoritative mapping agencies have developed systems for the routine production of maps in accordance with strict standards. Until recently, much mapping activity was in the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies but technological development has also allowed the rise of the amateur mapping community. The proliferation of inexpensive and highly mobile and location aware devices together with Web 2.0 technology have fostered the emergence of the citizen as a source of data. Mapping presently benefits from vast amounts of spatial data as well as people able to provide observations of geographic phenomena, which can inform map production, revision and evaluation. The great potential of these developments is, however, often limited by concerns. The latter span issues from the nature of the citizens through the way data are collected and shared to the quality and trustworthiness of the data. This book reports on some of the key issues connected with the use of citizen sensors in mapping. It arises from a European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which explored issues linked to topics ranging from citizen motivation, data acquisition, data quality and the use of citizen derived data in the production of maps that rival, and sometimes surpass, maps arising from authoritative agencies
Digital Earth from vision to practice : making sense of citizen-generated content
Get PDFThe vision of Digital Earth (DE) put recently forward under the auspices of the International Society for DE extends the paradigm of spatial data infrastructures by advocating an interactive and dynamic framework based on near-to-real time information from sensors and citizens. This paper contributes to developing that vision and reports the results of a two-year research project exploring the extent to which it is possible to extract information useful for policy and science from the large volumes of messages and photos being posted daily through social networks. Given the noted concerns about the quality of such data in relation to that provided by authoritative sources, the research has developed a semi-automatic workflow to assess the fitness for purpose of data extracted from Twitter and Flickr, and compared them to that coming from official sources, using forest fires as a case study. The findings indicate that we were able to detect accurately six of eight major fires in France in the summer of 2011, with another four detected by the social networks but not reported by our official source, the European Forest Fire Information Service. These findings and the lessons learned in handling the very large volumes of unstructured data in multiple languages discussed in this study provide useful insights into the value of social network data for policy and science, and contribute to advancing the vision of DE
Coordinating improved communication between the academic and OpenStreetMap communities : abstract
Get PDFFor well over a decade now there has been substantial interest on OpenStreetMap (OSM) from the academic research community. The incredible success of OSM is an intriguing source of potential research for academics. Based on our collective observations as academics, OSM contributors, and users of OSM data, there is much room for improvement in the interactions between the academic research and OSM communities. There are two sides to this story. One one side the OSM community often learns only very late (or sometimes never) about research results generated from academic research on OSM itself. On the other side the academic research community has often little information, or understanding, on what the most important research and scientific concerns for the OSM community actually are. Subsequently, a large amount of academic research is carried out on OSM in complete isolation from the OSM community itself. How can we work towards creating better connections and collaborations between the scientific/academic research communities and the OSM community? In our SOTM conference presentation we shall look to propose a starting point for meetings, discussions and collaborations between the academic/scientific community and the OSM community. A first step in this direction has been the establishment of the OSM Science mailing list [1] in January 2018. The Science mailing list has many functions including: encouraging academics to look for feedback and support on your planned OSM surveys (BEFORE they are undertaken), providing a means for OSM contributors to pitch or propose problems and challenges, based on OSM, to the academic community (and vice-versa), talk and critically evaluate recent scientific research on OSM, etc. However, bigger steps lie ahead. In our presentation we shall concentrate on two key issues: (1) How to improve communication structurally and in a sustainable way between both the OSM community and the academic research community; (2) How we can move forward and enable co-created research? One potential target outcome from SOTM 2018 would be agreement to work towards establishment of a more structured global survey that proposes research ideas based on suggestions generated by the OSM community and academics/researcher
Digital representation of park use and visual analysis of visitor activities
Get PDFUrban public parks can serve an important function by contributing to urban citizens' quality of life. At the same time, they can be the location of processes of displacement and exclusion. Despite this ambiguous role, little is known about actual park use patterns. To learn more about park use in three parks in Zurich, Switzerland, extensive data on visitor activities was collected using a new method based on direct recording via a portable GIS solution. Then, the data was analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper examines whether geographic visualization of these data can help domain experts like landscape designers and park managers to assess park use. To maximize accessibility, the visualizations are made available through a web-interface of a common, off-the-shelf GIS. The technical limitations imposed by this choice are critically assessed, before the available visualization techniques are evaluated in respect to the needs and tasks of practitioners with limited knowledge on spatial analysis and GIS. Key criteria are each technique's level of abstraction and graphical complexity. The utility and suitability of the visualization techniques is characterized for the distinct phases of exploration, analysis and synthesis. The findings suggest that for a target user group of practitioners, a combination of dot maps showing the raw data and surface maps showing derived density values for several attributes serves the purpose of knowledge generation best
Peer assessment to improve reproducibility of computational project work
Get PDFComputational research requires increased reproducibility for open science practices yet is not widely taught in the geosciences. Teaching reproducibility and establishing it as learning qualification and objective is an important step towards improving scientific practice and will also improve student learning by facilitating peer-review and reuse of earlier work in later courses. It will also improve the formal (summative and formative) assessment of student project work within a course, and the quality of reusable open educational resources. There is evidence in the literature that teaching reproducibility should combine practice (tutorials) trying to reproduce someone else’s work, and iterations of teacher and peer feedback on thereproducibility of one’s own work. In this contribution, reproducibility was introduced as a new topic in a 15 EC MSc course, which follows a challenge-based learning approach to tackle the wicked problem of different stakeholders facing human-induced earthquakes due to gas extraction. Students work in groups for different stakeholders. Self-regulated feedback is encouraged to include other stakeholders’ views. After a tutorial at the end of the first half of the course, student groups submitted a reproducibility plan for their project work, which was then peer-reviewed by the other groups, so that any feedback could still be incorporated. The quality and depth of the peer feedback itself provided information on how well the topic has been understood. The outcomes show that the approach delivered encouraging results with respect to the previous year
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