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Flood hazard mapping using FLO-2D and local management strategies of Dire Dawa city, Ethiopia
No full textStudy region
This study was conducted in Dire Dawa city of Ethiopia, where flood hazard occurs on regular basis.
Study focus
The study was conducted with the aim of mapping flood hazard and exploring local flood risk management strategies. As to flood mapping, FLO-2D hydrodynamic model was employed to identify flood prone villages. FLO-2D was chosen for its versatility to use different data sources. To identify local flood management strategies, household survey was conducted on 232 households located in flood prone areas.
New hydrological insights for the region
The final result of flood hazard map identified about 1163 buildings located inside high, medium and low flood hazard zones. The validity of the FLO-2D model versus ground truth was statistically tasted and showed a strong positive correlation. Flood smell, cloud direction, extreme weather and gunshot were identified as the locally used flood early warning strategies. Even if, the local flood risk management strategies have helped to reduce the level of vulnerability at normal condition, the gap is observed when extreme events are recorded. It is highly recommended that the flood hazard map developed for the city and existing flood management strategies are properly utilized for future flood risk planning of Dire Dawa city and its watershed
Improving the climate change resilience of informal settlements in mountainous regions of Africa: comparative case studies of Qwaqwa in South Africa and Konso in Ethiopia
No full textThe aim of this study is to search for the strategies to improve climate change resilience of informal settlements in mountainous regions of Africa. The multidimensional and dynamic fea-tures of resilience require the use of a systems approach to research in the field. In line with this, informal settlements’ resilience to climate change needs to be recognised as a phenom-enon that is multidimensional and complex in its characteristics. Thus, the assessment em-phasised analysing various social, economic, spatial and physical variables. Accordingly, the conceptual framework of this study was developed by adopting a systems approach to assess climate change resilience of informal settlements in mountainous regions of Africa. This ap-proach encourages the use of integrated techniques in order to obtain a comprehensive insight into and to investigate the critical factors that determine vulnerability and resilience of informal settlements for climate change-induced risks.
Accordingly, the philosophical position of this study can be categorised as a pragmatic re-search paradigm. This research paradigm allows the use of mixed research methods. A com-plex and dynamic system can be understood better by identifying the characteristics of the whole system, such as its interconnectedness, processes and adaptation patterns over time by using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Therefore, a mixed method of research was employed and the findings were confirmed by triangulation of both research methods. Furthermore, a comparative case study method was used, with the rationale of in-vestigating in-depth information about contextual-vulnerability and assessing place-based re-silience capacity. The assessment of resilience capacity of the case study areas was done by using a combination of two approaches, namely “principles to build a resilient system” and “capitals for disaster resilience”. These approaches were customised to the context of the case study areas. The capitals existing in the study sites were assessed against those principles needed to build a resilient system.
The case studies were conducted at the peripheries of Phuthaditjhaba in South Africa and Karat in Ethiopia. The cultural and natural landscapes of the surrounding areas of the two small towns were registered as world heritage sites by UNESCO. The influence of traditional lead-ership at the periphery of the two towns is high. The two small towns are both located in moun-tainous regions of Africa with an altitude exceeding 1 650 metres above sea level. These are the justifications to the selection of the two case study areas for the purpose of this research. To achieve the intended objectives of the study, a theoretical review has been conducted by considering different schools of thought about vulnerability and resilience assessment. The outcome revealed that there is no single universally applicable and accepted vulnerability and resilience assessment framework or model. This is mainly because of the complexity and con-ceptual pluralism of the concepts. Therefore, to minimise the drawbacks of using a single frame-work, it is recommended that the hybrid frameworks are used to generate comprehensive and reliable context-based outcome. In addition, flexibility in terms of devising fit-for-the-purpose frameworks is one of the fundamental considerations in theoretical and applied studies.
The findings in the case of Phuthaditjhaba indicated that the area is vulnerable to climate change threats such as shortage of water, flash flooding caused by heavy seasonal rainfall, extremely cold weather conditions during winter, and strong and damaging winds. This result in damage to houses in the informal settlements, soil erosion and rock falls from hillsides that damage the informal settlements situated at the bottom of the Drakensberg Mountains. In the case of Karat, the area is vulnerable to climate change shocks such as periodic droughts, rainfall variability and increasing temperature. This causes reduction of agricultural productivity and makes the local community susceptible to a shortage of water and food. In order to im-prove resilience, the local communities used to practise indigenous knowledge to build terrac-ing and stonewalls to conserve water and soil, and they used to plant drought-resistant trees.
One outcome of this study revealed that the African indigenous knowledge system that en-courages local solutions for local problems must be promoted for resilience planning. Building climate change-resilience capacity of informal settlements requires the successful application of indigenous knowledge and its integration with scientific knowledge. In line with this, the crit-ical question is how to maximise the potential use of indigenous knowledge to cope with com-plex climate-change risks in informal settlements found in mountainous regions of Africa. Therefore, integration of the indigenous and scientific knowledge systems by considering the contexts of the application is one of the critical strategies to cope with climate change-induced risks. To realise this, the combination of both bottom-up and top-down planning approaches need to be practised and there must be local institutions that facilitate the ’hybridisation’ pro-cess. Finally, to improve climate change resilience of informal settlements in both case study areas, it is recommended that customised, hybridised and flexible climate change resilience planning needs to be promoted
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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