Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

‘The phenomenon of volunteered geographic information is part of a profound transformation in how geographic data, information, and knowledge are produced and circulated. By situating volunteered geographic information (VGI) in the context of big-data deluge and the data-intensive inquiry, the 20 chapters in this book explore both the theories and applications of crowdsourcing for geographic knowledge production with three sections focusing on 1). VGI, Public Participation, and Citizen Science; 2). Geographic Knowledge Production and Place Inference; and 3). Emerging Applications and New Challenges. This book argues that future progress in VGI research depends in large part on building strong linkages with diverse geographic scholarship. Contributors of this volume situate VGI research in geography’s core concerns with space and place, and offer several ways of addressing persistent challenges of quality assurance in VGI. This book positions VGI as part of a shift toward hybrid epistemologies, and potentially a fourth paradigm of data-intensive inquiry across the sciences.It also considers the implications of VGI and the exaflood for further time-space compression and new forms, degrees of digital inequality, the renewed importance of geography, and the role of crowdsourcing for geographic knowledge production’

Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Cloud Optics

Cloud Optics

Clouds affect the climate of the Earth, and they are an important factor in the weather. Therefore, their radiative properties must be understood in great detail. This book summarizes current knowledge on cloud optical properties, for example their ability to absorb, transmit, and reflect light, which depends on the clouds geometrical and microphysical characteristics such as sizes of droplets and crystals, their shapes, and structures. In addition, problems related to the image transfer through clouds and cloud remote sensing are addressed in this book in great detail.

Cloud Optics

Equivariant Degree Theory

Equivariant Degree Theory

This book presents a new degree theory for maps which commute with a group of symmetries. This degree is no longer a single integer but an element of the group of equivariant homotopy classes of maps between two spheres and depends on the orbit types of the spaces. The authors develop completely the theory and applications of this degree in a self-contained presentation starting with only elementary facts. The first chapter explains the basic tools of representation theory, homotopy theory and differential equations needed in the text. Then the degree is defined and its main abstract properties are derived. The next part is devoted to the study of equivariant homotopy groups of spheres and to the classification of equivariant maps in the case of abelian actions. These groups are explicitely computed and the effects of symmetry breaking, products and composition are thorougly studied. The last part deals with computations of the equivariant index of an isolated orbit and of an isolated loop of stationary points. Here differential equations in a variety of situations are considered: symmetry breaking, forcing, period doubling, twisted orbits, first integrals, gradients etc. Periodic solutions of Hamiltonian systems, in particular spring-pendulum systems, are studied as well as Hopf bifurcation for all these situations.

Equivariant Degree Theory

The Disappearance

The Disappearance

The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of Februaryat four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o’clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature.? On a lazy, quiet afternoon, in the blink of an eye, our world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. After families and loved ones separate from one another, life continues in very different ways for men and women, boys and girls. An explosion of violence sweeps one world that still operates technologically; social stability and peace in the other are offset by famine and a widespread breakdown in machinery and science. And as we learn from the fascinating parallel stories of a brilliant couple, Bill and Paula Gaunt, the foundations of relationships, love, and sex are scrutinized, tested, and sometimes redefined in both worlds. The radically divergent trajectories of the gendered histories reveal stark truths about the rigidly defined expectations placed on men and women and their sexual relationships and make clear how much society depends on interconnection between the sexes. Written over a half century ago yet brimming with insight and unsettling in its relevance today, The Disappearance is a masterpiece of modern speculative fiction.

The Disappearance

Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data

Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data

Too often the Earth’s surface acted as a divide between seismologists and engineers. Now it is becoming clear that the building behaviour largely depends on the seismic input and the buildings on their turn act as seismic sources, in an intricate interplay that non-linear phenomena make even more complex. These phenomena are often the cause of observed damage enhancement during past earthquakes. While research may pursue complex models to fully understand soil dynamics under seismic loading, we need also simple models valid on average, whose results can be easily transferred to end users. Under the title ‘Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data’, we grouped several topics to be discussed together by engineers and seismologists: (1) Can we use ambient noise building and soil characterisation to extract useful information for engineers? (2) How we can tell apart a frequency decrease due to distributed damage, concentrated damage, time- varying building and soil behaviour? (3) Which is the role of transients in ambient noise analysis? (4) Can we quantify the influence of existing buildings on ground-motion recordings? (5) To which extent soil-building resonance is a cause of damage enhancement? (6) How to couple soil and building non-linear behaviour? On most questions there is an unanimous answer, but in some cases different views are present and the disagreement is faithfully reported.

Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data