1,720,985 research outputs found
GIS-based regional risk assessment and its implementation in a decision support systems for studying coastal climate change impacts
No full textClimate change represents a global challenge and is one of the most pressing environmental issues that scientists, economists, policy makers and the whole society is facing today.
The main objectives of this thesis are the development of a GIS-based Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology and its implementation within the GIS-based DEcision support SYstem for COastal climate change impact assessment (DESYCO). The methodology aims to evaluate and rank the potential risks of climate change impacts (i.e. storm surge flooding and marine water quality variations) on a variety of terrestrial and marine receptors (e.g. infrastructures, building, agricultural areas, population, marine water ecosystems). The proposed RRA is a cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary methodology considering the complex dynamics and interactions between coastal systems and other systems closely related to them (e.g. surface waters, river basins, estuaries). The implementation of the methodology within the DSS allows to transfer the information about climate-related risks to policy planners and decision makers, in order to guide them in the definition of appropriate adaptation actions.
The RRA methodology and the DSS DESYCO were applied to the coastal area of the North Adriatic sea in order to analyse the potential consequences of climate change on storm surge flooding (for extreme events with different return periods, i.e. 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 years), and on marine water quality variations (for the future scenarios 2070 and 2100).
Results of the RRA application concerning the storm surge flooding impact showed that hazard will be quite high all along the coastline of the considered region, where extreme events will be quite intense. Inside the Lagoon of Venice, higher hazard will be in the southern part of the Lagoon due to the dominance of east-winds during extreme events and due to the lower number of islands and to the simpler morphology. The coastal strip exposed to storm surge in usually few km large. The receptor population is characterised by the lower risk, while beaches, wetlands, agricultural and natural areas are characterised by higher relative risk scores. Finally, also risk for buildings will be quite low all over the considered region, with higher risk in places with older urbanization where there is higher concentration of buildings.
As far as the analysis of water quality variations on marine coastal water bodies is concerned, results showed that the main drives of hazard and risks are represented by a decrease of salinity and an increment of the temperature. Within the considered region variations of these parameters are mainly due to the presence of river mouths or to the inlets of the Lagoon of Venice. In fact, water bodies close to the Po River delta and up to the Chioggia inlet, and from the Lido’s inlet to Caorle, are characterised by a higher risk. Moreover higher risk will be during the spring season, from April to May. Finally, it was demonstrated that all the area is characterised by medium/low damages scores
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
ASSESSING THE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY OF THE VENICE LAGOON WATERS USING THE E-QUALITY SOFTWARE TOOL
No full textAccording to the Water Frameword Directive the classification of water bodies environmental quality and the achievement of
“good status” by 2015 are requested for all the European aquatic environment, including transitional waters such as coastal
lagoons. Although progresses have been done and many results have been achieved, several aspects of the WFD implementation
can be further improved and current limitations are more evident for some categories of water bodies such as coastal lagoons.
Accordingly, the E-QUALITY tool was developed with the main aim of enabling the environmental quality assessment of
transitional waters, with a particular focus on lagoons, and supporting public authorities responsible for the implementation of the
WFD with the development of management scenarios useful for the definition of new policies on water quality. The tool
integrates a geodatabase and GIS functionalities and is accessible through user friendly interfaces. It implements a methodology
based on a Weight of Evidence approach which integrates data from five Lines of Evidence (LOE), i.e. Biology, Chemistry,
Physico-chemistry, Ecotoxicology, and Hydromorphology.
The paper describes the main characteristics of the E-QUALITY tool and the result of the application to the whole Lagoon of
Venice based on the use of data collected by several monitoring campaigns from the late 80’s. The final output showed that the
water bodies located in the northern part of the lagoon and in the part closest to the sea exhibit a dominance of High/Good quality
classes, while the water bodies close to the industrial area and the historical city are more frequently characterized by Poor/Bad
quality classes. Accordingly, industrial, agricultural as well as urban discharges of chemicals were identified as the main drivers of low quality
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
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