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The city of Manizales in Colombia has been widely recognized as a good practice case in disaster risk management (DRM). Previous research has sought to amplify learning from Manizales through examining the characteristics of its innovative practices. These are championed by an inter-institutional alliance that includes academia, the local government, the regional environmental authority and service providers. This paper argues that this learning needs to be accompanied by a nuanced understanding of the historical trajectories that have allowed Manizales to create and consolidate its current enabling environment for DRM. The argument derives from an analysis of fieldwork data, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and secondary data, through a critical juncture approach. Focusing on the critical juncture of seasonal heavy rains in 2003, the paper illustrates how institutional changes configured cultural–cognitive, regulatory and normative conditions for the emergence of one of Manizales' most recognized good practices, the Guardians of the Slope programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article mentions of the Book Notes section of the periodical that offers short descriptions of recently published books, papers and reports, on subjects related to the environment and development.

The article presents a bulletin board for the journal "Environment and Urbanization."

Grid mapping is a well-established approach for environment perception in robotic and automotive applications. Early work suggests estimating the occupancy state of each grid cell in a robot’s environment using a Bayesian filter to recursively combine new measurements with the current posterior state estimate of each grid cell. This filter is often referred to as binary Bayes filter. A basic assumption of classical occupancy grid maps is a stationary environment. Recent publications describe bottom-up approaches using particles to represent the dynamic state of a grid cell and outline prediction-update recursions in a heuristic manner. This paper defines the state of multiple grid cells as a random finite set, which allows to model the environment as a stochastic, dynamic system with multiple obstacles, observed by a stochastic measurement system. It motivates an original filter called the probability hypothesis density / multi-instance Bernoulli (PHD/MIB) filter in a top-down manner. The paper presents a real-time application serving as a fusion layer for laser and radar sensor data and describes in detail a highly efficient parallel particle filter implementation. A quantitative evaluation shows that parameters of the stochastic process model affect the filter results as theoretically expected and that appropriate process and observation models provide consistent state estimation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out some observations on the making, and use, of contemporary classifications of nature in the context of a simultaneous and on-going 'making' of Europe. It looks in particular at two classifications, one of British vegetation communities and the other of European 'biotopes' (a concept that closely relates to natural or semi-natural 'habitats') — respectively, the UK National Vegetation Classification (NVC) and the EU CORINE Biotopes Classification. It investigates aspects of the relationship between these two classifications which has come about through their use in a European conservation policy. The CORINE Biotopes classification, in particular, represents a new ordering of nature in a very active sense: it is a good example of a 'working archive', and is intimately tied into policy decisions at many levels in Europe. The paper addresses questions as to how contemporary classifications are being made and used, and whether certain tacit understandings and conceptual frameworks 'built in' to them reflect back upon the world at a later stage. It argues that these classifications do not always simply reflect the assumptions and understandings built into them: once in the policy domain, they are not as 'reversible' as that. Their categories quickly become unstable, mutating and interacting in sometimes unpredictable ways. The two classifications, through their relationship with policy, have a jointly evolving history. The continual renewal of meaning attached to classes within these classifications appears to reflect outwards rather than inwards — in chorus with the broader social and political context, rather than reflecting the condition of their making. In their evolving forms, they illustrate very well the complex nature of the dynamic between unity and diversity, centre and periphery, that lies at the heart of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article describes several books, papers and reports related to the environment and development. The categories of the publications include demography, environment, finance, gender and governance. Moreover, the books mentioned include "Unsustainable: A Primer for Global Environmental and Social Justice," by Patrick Hossay and "The Microcredit Programme of OPP-Orangi Charitable Trust," by Aquila lsmail.

This paper addresses the problem of environment representation for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms. One of the main problems of SLAM is how to interpret and synthesize the external sensory information into a representation of the environment that can be used by the mobile robot to operate autonomously. Traditionally, SLAM algorithms have relied on sparse environment representations. However for autonomous navigation, a more detailed representation of the environment is necessary, and the classic feature-based representation fails to provide a robot with sufficient information. While a dense representation is desirable, it has not been possible for SLAM paradigms. This paper presents DenseSLAM, an algorithm to obtain and maintain detailed environment representations. The algorithm represents different sensory information in dense multi-layered maps. Each layer can represent different properties of the environment, such as occupancy, traversability, elevation or each layer can describe the same environment property using different representations. Implementations of the algorithm with two different representations for the dense maps are shown. A rich representation has several potential advantages to assist the navigation process, for example to facilitate data association using multi-dimensional maps. This paper presents two particular applications to improve the localization process; the extraction of complex landmarks from the dense maps and the detection of areas with dynamic objects. The paper also presents an analysis of consistency of the maps obtained with DenseSLAM. The position error in the dense maps is analyzed and a method to select the landmarks in order to minimize these errors is explained. The algorithm was tested with outdoor experimental data taken with a ground vehicle. The experimental results show that the algorithm can obtain dense environment representations and that the detailed representation can be used to improve the vehicle localization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), a large international research programme, served to set the research agenda of a number of environmental sciences around the issue of global warming and global change. This paper examines the impact of the interdisciplinary cooperation within the IGBP on ecology and the ecologists' response. Ecology was an integral part of the IGBP form the beginning, yet it was sometimes in uneasy cohabitation with the other sciences involved. The issues of global warming and global change posed opportunities and challenges to ecology. They posed opportunities because an important cause emerged, with promises of exciting new (space) technologies and new funds for the environmental science. They posed challenges, because by aligning itself to sciences that study the earth system as a whole, ecology was invited simplicity to bracket its focus on the specificity of local ecosystems, that is , to give up up ecology's traditional focus on fields studies of plant and animal communities. Any aim in this paper is to place th opportunities that global change research offered to ecology in the context of changes within the field that were already underway. Power relationship between disciplines did not give ecology an upper hand vis-a vis the other earth sciences, but ecologists were able nevertheless to redefine subtly the notion of the global nevertheless to redefine subtly the notion of the global [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argos is a satellite-based data collection and location system that has been in operation since the late 1970s; it is the only such system to be dedicated solely to environmental applications. This paper shows how multiple and sometimes conflicting ways of envisioning and studying the global environment have been embodied in the Argos system. In particular, it shows how the system’s initial focus on meeting the needs of meteorologists and oceanographers made it difficult for wildlife biologists, who were interested in tracking the long-distance movements of animals, to use Argos tags. Physical environmental scientists’ vision of the global environment as a ‘volume of flows’ dictated their need for regular, precise, standardized sampling stations distributed in a grid across and above the Earth’s surface. Biologists interested in the interactions of individual animals and populations in a ‘web of life’, in contrast, demanded a flexible system of global access to the movements of individual bodies. Until the mid-1980s, the unit of the French space agency responsible for Argos resisted changes to the system that would have made it easier for biologists to deploy lightweight, low-reliability tags. It was only after the quasi-commercialization of the system in 1986 that it began to make significant concessions to the needs of biologists. The history of Argos suggests that individual infrastructures of environmental observation can host multiple and conflicting global environmental visions and that commercialization, at least within certain constraints, has provided opportunities for such visions to proliferate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses topics related to the journal including topics for future issues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) assessment of climate change, and the development of the journal's blog. Future issues will address urbanization and gender, the mapping of cities, and urban governance in Asia. Internet access to the journal "Medio Ambiente Y Urbanización" and applications for residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre in Italy are also discussed.

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines how different scientific regimes have contributed differently to the way two Western Australian islands are managed. Rottnest Island and Garden Island are located off the coast of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. This paper contrasts the way science was conducted on Rottnest from the 1950s to 1970s, and this is contrasted with the way it was done on Garden Island in the 1970s and 1980s. On Rottnest, zoology and medicine were detached from the island management, yet impacted upon the island landscape. On Garden Island, ecology and geography were integrated with, and served, management. Differences in the social and political context of the times, and between the philosophical approaches and cultures of the scientists, are shown to have created different rôles for scientists in the management of the islands, and illustrate the on-going dialectic between two scientific cultures, one a culture of biomedical abstraction on Rottnest0 and the other a culture of pragmatic holism on Garden Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with enculturation in field ecology, where students are frequently required to spend long periods of time in the field with little or no contact with others. We document the practical choices that allow aspiring ecologists, more or less successfully (in their own accounts), to deal with the indeterminacy and open-endedness of independent fieldwork, involving a version of what Collins called 'the experimenters' regress'. 'Constraint satisfaction' is a suitable concept to describe how our participant dealt with this regress. However, 'creative solutions' and 'fibbing results' become viable options when problems are deemed insurmountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe and theorize the topology of 'vision' in field ecology, a domain considerably different from laboratory work in the physical sciences, and discuss the temporal extension of data-collection practices. Data collection in this field is characterized by widely varying measurements, measurement dimensions and temporal extension of data collection. We present the ecologists' field laboratory as a perceptual machinery with a heterogeneous and heteromaterial topology as it pertains to measures, precision, replication and other material practices. Because of the complexity of ecological fieldwork, considerable co-ordination and articulation work is necessary. Here, tables, tags and labels are central tools to achieve coherence of inscriptions. We topicalize the work that digitizes measurements conducted on lizards and their habitats, and that therefore imposes signs that lend themselves to mathematical and statistical processes. It is only through these digitizing processes that lizards become visible to other (interested) ecologists, most of whom have not seen this particular animal species in person. We thereby contribute in new ways to discussions of the topography and topology of scientific vision, to the relation of measurement to practice, and to the 'adequation' of nature and mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some aspects of the early history of the American contribution to the International Biological Programme (IBP), ecology's only venture into 'Big Science'. It is argued that American ecologists were successful in obtaining generous funding for the IBP from the US Congress, thanks to a shared understanding of the way in which controlling nature was to be accomplished, expressed in the metaphor of the 'cybernetic machine'. To support this argument, a literary analysis is performed on Congressional documents, on scientific and popular books and papers by ecologists, and on writings of the environmental movement. The paper explores how a dominant representation of nature, or metalité, is brought about, and its political effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on environment and urbanization topics which include sharing reflections on inclusive sanitation, co-producing inclusive city-wide sanitation strategies, and the 20-year sanitation partnership of Mumbai and the Indian Alliance.

The article presents abstracts on environment and urbanization topics which include urban poverty, role of community architects in upgrading, and urban climate change.

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the present paper, we show that in its efforts to maintain credibility and claim social relevance, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and its members repeatedly negotiate a boundary between science and politics. While the boundaries of ecology are flexibly defined, contingent on political context and what is at stake, they are also shaped and constrained by the already constructed social world. Several factors shape the ESA's boundary-work: (1) historically resonant discourses of both value-freedom and the utility of science; (2) national politics, including social movements and the demands of funding bodies; (3) the structure and actions of other, often more prestigious, scientific societies; and (4) established orthodoxies of scientific behavior. We contribute to the scholarly literature on credibility in science by showing that the construction of boundaries between science and politics is, in some cases, better understood as the reproduction of the already constructed social world than as a product of strategic efforts in pursuit of individual interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of the role of scientific élites in mediating between science and politics, securing support for research and shaping the interests of the rank and file. We apply a 'garbage can' model, which posits that science, policy and politics typically evolve in separate, unconnected streams, each with its own momentum. In this model, élites may act strategically as 'policy entrepreneurs' to take advantage of occasional temporary opportunities, or 'windows', to influence the policy and science streams. Our case study is of US policy toward research related to the Greenhouse Effect, from the International Geophysical Year in 1957 to the aftermath of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment.[SUP1] We trace the evolution of two research programmes-carbon-cycle research and atmospheric modeling. The major political strategies followed by the relevant élites connected with these programmes were concerned with the pursuit of professional autonomy, with weather modification and with envirionmentalism. Changes in élite strategy followed mainly from events outside science, in the policy and politics 'streams', rather than from scientific findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging the elastic bodies of soft robots promises to enable the execution of dynamic motions as well as compliant and safe interaction with an unstructured environment. However, the exploitation of these abilities is constrained by the lack of appropriate control strategies. This work tackles for the first time the development of closed-loop dynamic controllers for a continuous soft robot. We present two architectures designed for dynamic trajectory tracking and surface following, respectively. Both controllers are designed to preserve the natural softness of the robot and adapt to interactions with an unstructured environment. The validity of the controllers is proven analytically within the hypotheses of the model. The controllers are evaluated through an extensive series of simulations, and through experiments on a physical soft robot capable of planar motions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new framework to help transform visual surveys of a natural environment into time-lapses. As data association across year-long variation in appearance continues to represent a formidable challenge, we present success with a map-centric approach, which builds on 3D vision for visual data association. We use a foundation of map point priors and geometric constraints within a dense correspondence image alignment optimization to align images and acquire loop closures between surveys. This framework produces many loop closures between sessions. Outlier loop closures are filtered in the frontend and in the backend to improve robustness. From the result map, the Reprojection Flow algorithm is applied to create time-lapses. The evaluation of our framework on the Symphony Lake Dataset, which has considerable variation in appearance, led to year-long time-lapses of many different scenes. In comparison with another approach based on using iterative closest point (ICP) plus a homography, our framework produced more and better-quality alignments. With many scenes of the 1.3 km environment consistently aligning well in random image pairs, we next produced 100 time-lapses across 37 surveys captured in a year. Approximately one-third had at least 20 (out of usually 33) well-aligned images, which spanned all four seasons. With promising results, we evaluated the pose error of misaligned image pairs and found that improving map consistency could lead to even better results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how a society values reading beyond the educational setting is currently described in terms of a reading culture. Shifting the focus from a reading culture to a literate environment, which comprises all the ways people interact with text in their everyday lives, is an alternative way to capture the value of the written word. This study examines the extent to which a literate environment, to include a reading culture, exists in Kenya. The data was drawn from an exploratory study of the information practices of women attending university in Kenya. Findings show that a literate environment existed and extended beyond campus. Although not widely generalizable, evidence of a reading culture was also apparent. This case demonstrates how assessing the literate environment provides a broader understanding of how people engage with text that would otherwise be missed. A broader concept will lead to better strategies to enhance engagement with text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work addresses a new technique of motion planning and navigation for differential-drive robots in dynamic environments. Static and dynamic objects are represented directly on the control space of the robot, where decisions on the best motion are made. A new model representing the dynamism and the prediction of the future behavior of the environment is defined, the dynamic object velocity space (DOVS). A formal definition of this model is provided, establishing the properties for its characterization. An analysis of its complexity, compared with other methods, is performed. The model contains information about the future behavior of obstacles, mapped on the robot control space. It allows planning of near-time-optimal safe motions within the visibility space horizon, not only for the current sampling period. Navigation strategies are developed based on the identification of situations in the model. The planned strategy is applied and updated for each sampling time, adapting to changes occurring in the scenario. The technique is evaluated in randomly generated simulated scenarios, based on metrics defined using safety and time-to-goal criteria. An evaluation in real-world experiments is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics of formal representations of environmental hazards. Certain environmental hazards are made publicly invisible when their formal representations are misaligned with what can be measured in practice under the existing socioeconomic and technoscientific conditions. Conversely, better aligning formal representations and measurement capabilities helps reveal the scope of such hazards. Such (mis)alignment of formal representations is a relative, dialogical, and historically specific process. It requires not only experts and their specialized knowledge, but also contextual knowledge of the actual local conditions. The work of alignment of formal representations requires public ‘un-black-boxing’ of these formalisms. It also depends on much infrastructural work, which I describe as the invisible work of making visible. (Mis)alignment of formal representations is illustrated here with the examples of three successive concepts of radiation protection in Belarus, a former Soviet Union republic that was covered with much of the Chernobyl fallout. Revisions to the radiation protection concept first expanded and then dramatically shrank the scope of the officially recognized and publicly visible radioactive contamination in Belarus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Various kinds of crystals are grown by nature in multiply twinned configurations called cyclic twins. Here, for the first time, I will use twinning equations to analyze some representative examples of these. Generally, these can be free of shear stresses only if lattice parameters are somewhat different from those commonly measured at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, and theory provides a description of the former. So, in the usual environment, they must be subject to residual stresses, although they were probably not, in the environment in which they grew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the unique system of integrated urban environmental management in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Description of the city's participatory budgeting system; Features of the components of the integrated management system; Physical environment of the city in relation to the South American context; Provisions made for public participation.

The article states that particle-size analysis has been relatively unsuccessful in benthic ecology. Scientist Eric Mills accounts for this by suggesting that it provides for the benthic ecologist a fixed point of reference in a confusing universe. The article describes that many scientists routinely draw a distinction in the kind between the scientific-something, which concerns the facts, nature, and the best way of thinking about these. They may concede that social fashions sometimes interfere with the realm of the scientific. Sedimentologists committed to particle-size analysis have suggested, for instance, that the move to holistic alternatives is a function of changing fashion rather than the result of the scientific failure of the method. Such a distinction between the scientific and the social is built into the Mertonian sociology of science, which concentrates on the functional and dysfunctional features of the social reward system of centrates on the functional and dysfunctional features of the social reward system of science.