206 research outputs found
Piped drinking water regimes beyond the state: insights from peri-urban Delhi
No full textSumit Vij, Timos Karpouzoglou, and Vishal Narain challenge the myth of the formal (state controlled) water as ‘piped’ water versus the informal (non-state) water as ‘non-piped’. Their ethnographic work illustrates how these two water regimes are entangled, dynamic, and shaped by unequal power relations. In two recently published articles, we have conceptualised water regimes as a complex configuration of actors, institutions and technologies building on theoretical work from transition stud..
Performance analysis of the WiNC2R platform:
No full textA Cognitive Radio (CR) is an intelligent transceiver device, able to support multiple technologies, dynamic re-configurability, ease of programming and collaboration with other CR devices to improve the communication efficiency. The two key requirements for an efficient CR implementation are flexibility in operation/programming and speed.
WiNC2R (Winlab Network Centric Cognitive Radio) achieves high speed of operation using its hardware platform and flexibility using its software-configurable architecture. The current WiNC2R architecture implements an 802.11a-like OFDM flow. We evaluate the WiNC2R hardware architecture to see the modularity in the architecture, separation of data and control flow and the performance in terms of latency and throughput. To test the system, the Xilinx Bus Functional Model environment, which is designed to test the IBM standard bus-architecture-based hardware systems, is used. We use a simple ALOHA protocol in the MAC layer to communicate between two WiNC2R nodes and evaluate the performance under the best-case scenario, where the performance is only hindered by the architecture itself rather than external conditions like channel state.
The results of our basic experiments showed that for a single OFDM 802.11a-like flow, the Unit Control Modules (UCM) were idle for almost 80% of the total processing time.
We then tested the WiNC2R system to study the effects of changing the frame size. It was seen that the latencies in the WiNC2R transmitter are frame-size dependent while those in the receiver mainly depend on the size of the data in the last chunk rather than the size of the whole frame. We suggest that chunk size should be 2 OFDM symbols, and chunking be moved to MAC layer for better performance. We give analytical estimates of resulting performance improvement. In the next experiment, we describe virtualization in the WiNC2R by adding more flows. We describe the steps to implement the additional flows and estimate maximum number of concurrent flows possible.
In the last analysis, we show the effect of operating clock frequency on the performance. We prove that at 250 MHz operating frequency and 2 OFDM symbols per chunk, the current WiNC2R implementation will be able to satisfy the SIFS criterion.M.S.Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-73)by Sumit Satarka
It’s all about power: the Brahmaputras' in South Asia
No full textThis post is authored by Sumit Vij (Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands), and Anamika Barua (Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India). Anamika is part of the Universities’ Partnership for Water Cooperation & Diplomacy launched at IHE Delft in January 2018. There are many Brahmaputras’ in South Asia - Brahmaputra of India, Brahmaputra of China (called Yarlong Tsangpo), Brahmaputra of Bhutan and Brahmaputra of Bangladesh (called Jamuna). The count does not s..
Climate Change Adaptation in European Mountain Systems : A Systematic Mapping of Academic Research
No full textEuropean mountain regions have already been impacted by climate change, and this is projected to increase in the future. These mountain regions experience rapid changes, which influence social-ecological systems in the lower-mountain and floodplain regions of Europe. There is scattered evidence across different strands of academic literature on the ways in which the impacts of changing climate in mountain regions are addressed and adaptive capacity is enhanced. Using a systematic mapping review, we mapped English-language scientific journal articles that analyzed the climate change adaptation options that are planned or implemented in European mountain regions. Our understanding of how academic literature has investigated climate change adaptation is critical to identifying key knowledge gaps and research foci. Following the Reporting Standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses in environmental research protocol, 72 scientific articles published between January 2011 and August 2019 were identified from a total of 702 scientific articles. Our findings show that existing academic literature has a strong focus on the western and southern European mountains: the European Alps (n = 24), Pyrenees (n = 11), and Sierra Nevada (n = 4). Key climate impacts reported for the biophysical systems include reduction in forest carbon, soil erosion, changes in vegetation patterns, and changes in plant population and tree heights; in human systems, these include water availability, agricultural production, changes in viticulture, and impacts on tourism. Key adaptation options reported in this article are wetland conservation options, changing cropping and cultivation cycles, tree species management strategies, and snow-making technology. We found very few articles analyzing governance responses to planning and implementing adaptation; these had a strong bias toward techno-managerial responses. We conclude that, while climate impacts are substantial in European mountain regions, there are knowledge gaps in academic literature that need to be addressed
The power to define resilience in social–hydrological systems: Toward a power‐sensitive resilience framework
No full textSince the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience, and water resilience. At the same time, a substantial body of literature has developed that questions the resilience concept's systems ontology, natural science roots and alleged conservatism, and criticizes resilience thinking for not addressing power issues. In this study, we review these critiques with the aim to develop a framework for power‐sensitive resilience analysis. We build on the three faces of power to conceptualize the power to define resilience. We structure our discussion of the relevant literature into five questions that need to be reflected upon when applying the resilience concept to social–hydrological systems. These questions address: (a) resilience of what, (b) resilience at what scale, (c) resilience to what, (d) resilience for what purpose, and (e) resilience for whom; and the implications of the political choices involved in defining these parameters for resilience building or analysis. Explicitly considering these questions enables making political choices explicit in order to support negotiation or contestation on how resilience is defined and used
Power interplay between actors in climate change adaptation policy-making in South Asia
No full textTo address the impacts of climate change, countries in South Asia are increasingly making efforts to design climate change adaptation (CCA) policies. Such policies are prepared in a complex power-loaded environment, where different policy actors struggle with one another to meet their personal or collective interests. Current CCA policy research highlights the importance of power in policy-making, but few studies have looked into this systematically. This dissertation therefore aims to study the role of power in CCA policy-making in South Asia and to recommend ways to deal with the negative effects of power. The research adopts an abductive research design, using qualitative case studies in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Case studies at local, national and transboundary level are conducted to study how actors’ power interplay influences CCA policy-making processes and policies. This dissertation proposes a power interplay framework that describes interactions between policy actors and how actors deploy material and ideational resources to influence one another. It presents evidence of how policy actors use these resources at local and regional level to exclude local policy actors and push for short-termism in local adaptation plans and in the planning process for the transboundary Brahmaputra River basin. It shows that multiple climate policy paradigms shape the way in which adaptation is framed and approached by policy actors and that these paradigms have an important influence on how power interplay evolves. To reduce the negative effects of power – for example, the exclusion of actors – I distilled four power-sensitive design principles (PDPs) from other social science disciplines for application in the CCA context. The results of this dissertation offer theoretical contributions to the study of CCA policy-making in South Asia, and concrete and practically relevant PDPs are proposed to improve long-term CCA planning
Urbanization, Common Property Resources and Gender Relations in a Peri-urban Context
No full textThe article reflects on the urbanization process and the social interactions that have played a role in diminishing access to common property resources (CPRs) for the vulnerable residents of the peri-urban Gurgaon. It emphasizes on the factors responsible for changing access and usage. Coupled with uncertain rainfall, these factors have reduced the dependence on and changed the usage of the CPRs in the two peri-urban villages—Budheda and Sadhrana. The article shares the field evidence of how social and political institutions shape access to resources affecting the livelihoods of the vulnerable groups, especially agriculture and animal husbandry. Lastly, it provides evidence of changing gender relations around the tasks of natural resource collection and use with increasing urbanization. These nuances raises the questions on the policy gaps based on the community perceptions and evidences in the field.</p
Waterscape : a perspective for understanding the contested geography of water
No full textThe waterscape is a perspective that has captured the imagination of diversescholars interested in the interaction of water and society. This includes the waywater travels in time and space and is shaped by culture and geography. In thisarticle, we pay particular attention to the study of the waterscape in the politicalecology tradition. Scholars following this tradition have placed strong emphasison understanding the role of power and the contested nature of water in diverserural, urban, and periurban landscapes. The article provides a brief account ofthe main strands of literature and serves the purpose of an introductory overview of the waterscape for beginners. We focus both on major works that have helped define the waterscape as a perspective in political ecology and recent studies on the role of unequal power and gender relationships, informal water practices, and local water flows such as ponds and wastewater
World water day: Brahmaputra Riparian countries should look beyond political interests to realise river's potential
No full textBrahmaputra is a unique river system and if managed well, it can be the engine for economic and regional development. However, it requires an integrated basin-wide approach combined with social, economic, political, cultural and legal considerations along with a scientific and technological paradigm. This is only possible if the basin countries communicate and interact with each other to foster a spirit of cooperation
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