Download or read book Manoeuvring in an Environment of Uncertainty written by Boel Berner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000. Recent years have seen tremendous economic and political changes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on the pressing problem of how actors in their everyday life, political and social action handle uncertainty. With the help of rich empirical material from different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors try to understand how actors react, manoeuver, organize and make their actions meaningful in an environment characterized by unpredictability and change.

Download or read book Shaping Claims to Urban Land written by Fons van Overbeek and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-10-03 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of 'hybridity' is often still poorly theorized and problematically applied by peace and development scholars and researchers of resource governance. This book turns to a particular ethnographic reading of Michel Foucault's Governmentality and investigates its usefulness to study precisely those mechanisms, processes and practices that hybridity once promised to clarify. Claim-making to land and authority in a post-conflict environment is the empirical grist supporting this exploration of governmentality. Specifically in the periphery of Bukavu. This focus is relevant as urban land is increasingly becoming scarce in rapidly expanding cities of eastern Congo, primarily due to internal rural-to-urban migration as a result of regional insecurity. The governance of urban land is also important analytically as land governance and state authority in Africa are believed to be closely linked and co-evolve. An ethnographic reading of governmentality enables researchers to study hybridization without biasing analysis towards hierarchical dualities. Additionally, a better understanding of hybridization in the claim-making practices may contribute to improved government intervention and development assistance in Bukavu and elsewhere.

Download or read book The Crisis of Innovation in Water and Wastewater written by Duncan A. Thomas and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an extremely well-researched and documented book. The authors hypothesis is that the current water and wastewater sector is failing the populations of the western-world by clinging to orthodox and short-term visions of new technology and innovation, and also failing the developing nations by believing that delivery of western-world high-technology solutions is a contribution to humanitarian development. This is the crisis of innovation . To many practitioners in the water industry the book will be perceived to be hypercritical (of the incrementalism, conservative and dogged traditionalism ) of the sector, but in fact it is stimulating and positive. In the latter chapters an alternate more holistic model of water development is described. There needs to be a movement from large, central infrastructure resources to distributed systems that are more appropriate to local needs and can be coupled with environmentally sustainable energy sources and practices. Tim Lack, European Topic Centre on Water, UK Whilst acknowledging a massive leap from standpipe to universal water provision in 100 years in developed countries, the authors of this book see problems for global sustainable water supply and wastewater removal in the future. Using the UK water industry as an example, they describe the global water industry as risk averse and unwilling to innovate, a view that is encouraged by the institutional and financial regimes under which it works. The book explores the reasons for concern and sets out some hard-hitting views on how the water industry is failing to identify and tackle the essential problems in a world which is becoming ever more depleted of fresh water. The concluding chapter brings to a focus the problems of the crisis in innovation and gives some concrete suggestions for tackling them. This volume should raise the awareness of policymakers and regulators, technologists and concerned members of the public. Peter Chave, Independent Consultant and formerly Head of Pollution Control, National Rivers Authority, UK This significant new book highlights a little acknowledged but potentially catastrophic crisis of innovation in the global water sector, which institutions and industries are frighteningly ill-equipped to tackle or even accept. It suggests potential new technology and policy approaches to overcome both current and future problems. The book explores how technological innovation is vital to help provide sustainable water in both the UK and developing countries. However, innovation is being overlooked in the face of global trends to privatize and regulate water utilities. The authors highlight how the global water sector is failing to respond to increasingly complex world needs and continues to build largely unsustainable centralized infrastructures, opposing more appropriate, distributed and local modern technologies. The book also includes suggestions for potentially innovative technology and policy solutions to meet escalating global water and wastewater demands. Importantly, the authors adopt a long-term perspective that crosses both disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and include an international comparative perspective, covering a diverse range of examples and countries. This comprehensive book will have a broad appeal amongst researchers and academics with an interest in technology management, innovation studies, geography and development studies. It will also be a valuable asset for water regulators and governmental and non-governmental organisations working in this field.

Download or read book How to Become a Big Man in Africa written by Wale Adebanwi and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can subalterns transform themselves into members of the elite, and what does it take to do so? And how do those efforts reveal the nature of ethnic politics in postcolonial Africa? How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria examines these questions by revealing how, through ethno-regional conflict, violence and cultural activities, an artisan, Gani Adams, transformed himself into the holder of the most prestigious chieftaincy title among the Yoruba. Addressing persistent gaps in anthropological studies of the subaltern and of "big men" in politics through in-depth biography and rich social history, Wale Adebanwi follows Adams and other major figures in Nigeria's Oodua People's Congress (OPC) over two decades of ethnographic study and visual representations. Challenging existing models of African political mobility by leveraging his initial lack of formal education into a position of power, Adams moved from a "radical lumpen" and "area boy" to a "big man" who continues to struggle—and reflect—over the significance of his role as a cultural subject. Blurring the lines between tradition and modernity, Adams and his group have used Yoruba rituals to simultaneously claim authenticity and champion new movements for democracy and self-determination. How to Become a Big Man in Africa encourages us to understand the full complexity of Adams's political trajectory and how it reflects the structural and personal realities of becoming a "Big Man" in the contemporary postcolony.

Download or read book Research Handbook on Fundamental Concepts of Environmental Law written by Douglas Fisher and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-25 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expanded and updated Research Handbook delivers an authoritative and in-depth guide to the conceptual foundations of environmental law. It offers a nuanced reflection on the underlying principles by exploring issues such as human rights, constitutional rights, sustainable development and environmental impact assessment within the context of environmental law.

Download or read book Advances in Aerospace Guidance Navigation and Control written by Qiping Chu and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-18 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the successful 1st CEAS (Council of European Aerospace Societies) Specialist Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control (CEAS EuroGNC) held in Munich, Germany in 2011, Delft University of Technology happily accepted the invitation of organizing the 2nd CEAS EuroGNC in Delft, The Netherlands in 2013. The goal of the conference is to promote new advances in aerospace GNC theory and technologies for enhancing safety, survivability, efficiency, performance, autonomy and intelligence of aerospace systems using on-board sensing, computing and systems. A great push for new developments in GNC are the ever higher safety and sustainability requirements in aviation. Impressive progress was made in new research fields such as sensor and actuator fault detection and diagnosis, reconfigurable and fault tolerant flight control, online safe flight envelop prediction and protection, online global aerodynamic model identification, online global optimization and flight upset recovery. All of these challenges depend on new online solutions from on-board computing systems. Scientists and engineers in GNC have been developing model based, sensor based as well as knowledge based approaches aiming for highly robust, adaptive, nonlinear, intelligent and autonomous GNC systems. Although the papers presented at the conference and selected in this book could not possibly cover all of the present challenges in the GNC field, many of them have indeed been addressed and a wealth of new ideas, solutions and results were proposed and presented. For the 2nd CEAS Specialist Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control the International Program Committee conducted a formal review process. Each paper was reviewed in compliance with good journal practice by at least two independent and anonymous reviewers. The papers published in this book were selected from the conference proceedings based on the results and recommendations from the reviewers.

Download or read book What Room for Manoeuvre written by Jean Daudelin and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2008-03-26 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada's thirty-four million people and trillion dollar GDP don't occupy much space on a planet of seven billion whose economy is now worth forty trillion dollars. The country is not a lightweight yet, but certainly its position as a power is shrinking. What does that mean for the country's foreign policy and its various players? What room is left, and for whom?

Download or read book EU Environmental Principles and Scientific Uncertainty before National Courts written by Mariolina Eliantonio and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative book explores the dynamics driving how courts across Europe and beyond understand and analyse scientific information in nature conservation. The Habitats and the Birds Directives-the core of EU nature conservation law-are usually seen as the most 'uniform' parts of EU environmental law. This book analyses the case law from 11 current and former EU Member States' courts and explores the dynamics of how, and crucially why, their understandings of scientific uncertainty on the one hand, and EU environmental principles on the other, vary. The courts' scope and depth of review, access to scientific knowledge, and scientific literacy all influence such decisions-as does their interpretation of norms and principles. How have the courts evaluated scientific evidence, encompassing its essential uncertainties? This book answers this and many more questions pertinent to EU environmental law, comparative environmental law, administrative law, and STS studies. Co-edited by experienced leaders in the field, and with outstanding contributors, this book is an essential guide to the dynamics of nature conservation law.

Download or read book Niklas Luhmann Law Justice Society written by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society presents the work of sociologist Niklas Luhmann in a radical new light. Luhmann’s theory is here introduced both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically, and for the first time, Luhmann’s texts are systematically read together with theoretical insights from post-structuralism, deconstruction, phenomenology, radical ethics, feminism and post-ecologism. In his far-reaching book, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos distances Luhmann’s theory from its misrepresentations as conservative, rigorously positivist and disconnected from empirical reality, and firmly locates it in a sphere of post-ideological jurisprudence. The book operates both as a detailed explanation of the theory’s concepts and as the locus of a critique which brings forth Luhmann’s radical credentials. The focal points are Luhmann’s concept of society and the law’s paradoxical connection to justice. However, these concepts are also transgressed in order to show how the law deals with the illusion of its identity, and more broadly how the theory itself deals with its limitations. This is illustrated by examples drawn from human rights, constitutional theory and ecological thinking. On the whole, Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society serves both as an introductory text and as a critical response to Luhmann’s theory, and is recommended reading for students and researchers in sociology, law, social sciences, politics and whoever is interested in seeing the influential work of Niklas Luhmann from a critical new perspective.

Download or read book Decision making Strategies for Automated Driving in Urban Environments written by Antonio Artuñedo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-25 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes an effective decision-making and planning architecture for enhancing the navigation capabilities of automated vehicles in the presence of non-detailed, open-source maps. The system involves dynamically obtaining road corridors from map information and utilizing a camera-based lane detection system to update and enhance the navigable space in order to address the issues of intrinsic uncertainty and low-fidelity. An efficient and human-like local planner then determines, within a probabilistic framework, a safe motion trajectory, ensuring the continuity of the path curvature and limiting longitudinal and lateral accelerations. LiDAR-based perception is then used to identify the driving scenario, and subsequently re-plan the trajectory, leading in some cases to adjustment of the high-level route to reach the given destination. The method has been validated through extensive theoretical and experimental analyses, which are reported here in detail.

Download or read book The Maritime Engineering Reference Book written by Anthony F. Molland and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 921 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maritime Engineering Reference Book is a one-stop source for engineers involved in marine engineering and naval architecture. In this essential reference, Anthony F. Molland has brought together the work of a number of the world's leading writers in the field to create an inclusive volume for a wide audience of marine engineers, naval architects and those involved in marine operations, insurance and other related fields. Coverage ranges from the basics to more advanced topics in ship design, construction and operation. All the key areas are covered, including ship flotation and stability, ship structures, propulsion, seakeeping and maneuvering. The marine environment and maritime safety are explored as well as new technologies, such as computer aided ship design and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).Facts, figures and data from world-leading experts makes this an invaluable ready-reference for those involved in the field of maritime engineering.Professor A.F. Molland, BSc, MSc, PhD, CEng, FRINA. is Emeritus Professor of Ship Design at the University of Southampton, UK. He has lectured ship design and operation for many years. He has carried out extensive research and published widely on ship design and various aspects of ship hydrodynamics.* A comprehensive overview from best-selling authors including Bryan Barrass, Rawson and Tupper, and David Eyres* Covers basic and advanced material on marine engineering and Naval Architecture topics* Have key facts, figures and data to hand in one complete reference book

Download or read book How Africa Works written by Deborah Fahy Bryceson and published by Practical Action Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `An important contribution to African studies, one which should be read by others interested in changing occupations, identities and moralities everywhere' Pat Caplan, Goldsmiths College, London --Book Jacket.

Download or read book Motion Planning for Autonomous Vehicles in Partially Observable Environments written by Taş, Ömer Şahin and published by KIT Scientific Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-23 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work develops a motion planner that compensates the deficiencies from perception modules by exploiting the reaction capabilities of a vehicle. The work analyzes present uncertainties and defines driving objectives together with constraints that ensure safety. The resulting problem is solved in real-time, in two distinct ways: first, with nonlinear optimization, and secondly, by framing it as a partially observable Markov decision process and approximating the solution with sampling.

Download or read book Managing Uncertainties in Networks written by Joop Koppenjan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As public and private sector organizations work more frequently in partnership, managing uncertainties, problems and controversies becomes increasingly difficult. Despite sophisticated technology and knowledge, the strategic networks and games required to solve uncertainties becomes more complex and more important than ever before. This unique text examines such developments in the area of network strategy. Differentiating itself from other policy network approaches which mainly have a research focus, this text has a managerial orientation, presenting strategies and management recommendations for public and private sector organizations as well as the analytical tools required by practitioners seeking to support their own internal decision-making and strategy formulation. Tapping into the important and ever-growing area of risk and uncertainty management, this is a vital and long awaited staple for the arena, written by two leading authors in the field, and is key reading for students, scholars and policy makers seeking to understand the complexities of the network society.

Download or read book Proceedings of Mechanical Engineering Research Day 2020 written by Mohd Fadzli Bin Abdollah and published by Centre for Advanced Research on Energy. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This e-book is a compilation of 170 articles presented at the 7th Mechanical Engineering Research Day (MERD'20) - Kampus Teknologi UTeM (virtual), Melaka, Malaysia on 16 December 2020.

Download or read book Sensor Based Intelligent Robots written by Henrik I Christensen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the thorougly refereed post-proceedings of an international workshop on sensor based Intelligent Robot held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany in September/October 1998. The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are robot navigation, motion planning, autonomous mobile robots, wheelchair robots, interactive robots, car navigation systems, visual tracking, sensor based navigation, distributed algorithms, computer vision, intelligent agents, robot control, and computational geometry.

Download or read book Nordic Journal of African Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: