Search

India is indisputably on the advancing front of progress where its hefty natural resources serve the greatest assets to reckon with. The progress of any country is directly dependent upon the quality and quantum of available natural resources with it. For a country like India having vast continentality, these natural resources are catalysts in programs associated with human development and sustainability. However, with the enormous rise of population and dwindling resource pools, the society suffers from critical disturbances in internal security across the country’s length and breadth. There exists a proven causal relationship of a significant association between shocks to natural resources and the intensity of civil conflicts in a region. The episodes resulting from a disrupted state of internal security pose a massive challenge to government functionaries inkeeping pace with worldwide socio-economic development. The obvious choice of Natural Resource Management (NRM) provides one of the promising keys to handle this menace effectively. Thepresent work explores this meticulous strategy of assuring internal security through an improved pragmatism and judicious use of natural resources in states marred with recurring incidences of chaos and human violence. The planning and monitoring of internal security with peoples’ stake depend evidently upon the technical capability of government in handling resources with a vision for Possibilism. NRM, thus, conceptualize a framework of governance where exploitation of resources and sustenance of internal security in India go hand-in-hand prudently. The paper attempts to resolve a deteriorating internal security situation by strategizing a development-cumsustainability approach to keep a large nation safe and secure.

The world with vast continental landmasses and having diversified topographic structures is bound to face a multiplicity of natural hazards on local to regional scale. Natural events of such adverse effects on human property and life have led us to conceptualize these as disasters. The trend analysis of the last 100 years over the earth reveals the fact that much has been changed by natural disasters with an average occurrence of 7 in 1914 to 341 disasters in 2014 per continent on a global scale. The present study focuses on how frequent disasters have continued to harm our environment and up to what extent threatened the sustainability of humanity in the last ten decades. The available data on past natural calamities have been studied to gauge the intensity and effects of these hazards and realizing a better way to mitigate them by educating all for disasters and disaster management as this will ensure timely disaster preparedness in general. Each disaster occurs at the backdrop of some science in it. This necessitates natural disasters as a probable area of concern which awaits intrinsic study and investigations with enough scientific aptitude and inquiry in science education of our country. The origin of such events of unforeseen calamities is set in one country, but its effects on howsoever mild or severe are widespread trans-nationally. To understand, mitigate, and to manage them finally lies with the scientific community at our disposal.

Image mosaicking is an image processing technique which is useful for tiling images. Image Mosaicing stitches many correlated images to get a picture of a greater field of view. General-purpose cameras, which have a low field of view, can not create images with a higher field of view while mosaicking can help us achieve it. One important step in an image mosaicking framework is the auto-sorting algorithm, which is to be performed to minimize registration errors in the mosaic image. Another step in mosaicking is the detection of interest points for matching of the source images obtained after auto-sorting. However, in the presence of noisy and pseudo-periodic structures in the source images, the existing auto-sorting methods generally produce distortions in the final mosaic image. Secondly, most of the popular interest point detection algorithms do not specifically consider computational issues. So, this work mainly addresses the above-mentioned problems which are generally encountered during image mosaicking. The problem of image auto-sorting can be partially solved by adopting a phase correlation strategy. In our method, the sorting procedure is further improved by deploying the structural similarity index (SSIM) measure instead of using the phase correlation. The issue of high time complexity of conventional corner detectors is reduced by using our proposed local difference operation in place of standard Sobel edge detector. Experimental results show the efficacy of the proposed method.

Existing image fusion approaches are not so efficient to seize significant edges, texture and fine features of the source images due to ineffective and non-adaptive fusion structure. Also for objective evaluation of fusion algorithms, there is a need of a metric to measure source image features which are preserved in the fused image. To address these issues, an optimized non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) is developed, which is applied to decompose the source images into low- and high frequency bands. The low frequency bands are fused using proposed descriptor obtained from superposition of scale multiplied Canny edge detector features and Hessian features. The high frequency bands are fused using unsharp masking based fusion rule. Moreover, a metric Q E is formulated on the basis of Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT). The information of image pixel variance for both source and fused images can be measured by using the proposed metric Q E , and it gives an indication of the amount of variance information transferred from the source images to the fused image. Both subjective and objective analysis show the efficacy of the proposed fusion structure and the metric Q E .

Existing image fusion methods can not efficiently capture significant edges, texture and fine details of the source images due to inefficient fusion framework. In addition, for objective evaluation of fusion algorithms, not much attention is given to simultaneously measure both texture and structural information of the source images which are preserved in the fused image. To address these issues, non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) is used to decompose pre-registered source images into low- and high-frequency components. These low- and high-frequency coefficients are fused by using our proposed modified weighted salience and local difference fusion rules, respectively. To enrich edge information in the fused image, Canny edge detector with scale multiplication is employed. Moreover, a metric QTS is proposed to jointly measure both texture and structural information present in the fused image. The proposed metric is formulated on the basis of local standard deviation filtering, local information entropy, and local difference filtering. Both subjective and objective results validate the proposed fusion framework and the metric QTS.

In this paper, an efficient iterative method for design of near-perfect reconstructed transmultiplexer (NPR TMUX) is proposed for the prescribed roll-off factor ( RF ) and stop band attenuation ( A s ). In this method, windowing technique has been used for the design of prototype filter, and different modulation techniques have been exploited for designing multi-channel transmultiplexer (TMUX). In this method, inter-channel interference ( ICI ) is iteratively minimized so that it approximately reduces to ideal value zero. Design example is given to illustrate the superiority of the proposed method over earlier reported work. A comparative study of the performance of different modulation techniques for designing TMUX is also presented.

Image registration enables joint operations between images obtained from diverse sources. However, there have been limited advances in the registration of multichannel images. The accuracy of registration is a significant concern for medical applications, among others. Two methods, PCA–ZM and CED–ZM, have been proposed for registration based on Zernike moment and enhanced mutual information. Edge detection by Zernike moment and identification of common features in multichannel images are used as a foundation to improve accuracy over single-channel registrations. Single-channel registration accuracy for MRI and SPECT brain images is found to surpass the methods compared against. PCA–ZM demonstrates good accuracy for MR-MR registration, while CED–ZM has good accuracy for MR-SPECT registration. These measures improve upon accurate registration for images, especially where many modalities are available, such as in medical diagnosis.

Multi-focus fusion technique is used to combine images obtained from single or different cameras with different focal distance, etc. In the proposed method, the non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) is employed to decompose the input image data into the low-frequency and high-frequency bands. These low-frequency and high-frequency bands are combined using sparse representation (SR) and modified difference based fusion rules, respectively. Then, inverse NSST is employed to get the fused image. Both qualitative and quantitative results confirm that the proposed approach yields a better performance as compared to state-of-the-art fusion schemes.

Concrete is strong in compression, but weak in tension its tensile strength. Due to such a low tensile capacity, flexural cracks develop at early stages of loading. In order to reduce or prevent such cracks from developing, a concentric or eccentric force is imposed in the longitudinal direction of the structural element. According to that, we studied RC concrete and prestressed concrete in flexural strengthening and analyzed the review of displacement of RC & prestressed concrete beams. The idea is to reach a definite conclusion, the prestressed concrete beams more effective as compared to reinforcement concrete beams in flexural strengthening. Software programming is a general purpose structural analysis and design program with applications primarily in the building industry - commercial buildings, bridges and highway structures, industrial structures, chemical plant structures, dams, retaining walls, turbine foundations, culverts and other embedded structures, etc.There is a very good understand all aspect of prestressed concrete beam better than as compared to reinforced concrete beam in flexural strengthening. The aim of this research is to compare the economics, durability and structural analysis of the reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete beams.

In most developing countries like India, benchmarking of water supply utilities is rarely carried out as these services are not run on professional lines to ensure profitability, even as social goals of making provision for all, including the poor, take priority over profitability. When performances of these services are not measured, efforts to improve these services remain directionless and arbitrary. Urban water supplies in India, therefore, suffer a self-inflicted fate, wherein city municipalities remain mired in mundane issues, leading to large dissatisfaction and inefficiencies. This paper attempts to evolve a framework for evaluating cost efficiencies of water supply services and applies stochastic frontier analysis to 18 urban centres in India through six models. The results indicate large relative inefficiencies and a scope of savings of 24.5% of average current operating and maintenance costs even with existing levels of resource inputs. The results are discussed from a regulatory and policy-making perspective.

Multimodal medical image fusion techniques are utilized to fuse two images obtained from dissimilar sensors for obtaining additional information. These methods are used to fuse computed tomography (CT) images with magnetic resonance images (MRI), MR-T1 images with MR-T2 images, and MR images with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images. In proposed method, nonsubsampled shearlet transform (NSST) is used for decomposition of source images to attain the low-frequency and high-frequency bands. The low-frequency bands are fused using weighted saliency-based fusion criteria, and high-frequency bands are fused with the help of phase stretch transform (PST) features. Applying inverse NSST operation, fused image is obtained. The results show the proposed method produces better results compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Due to wide image processing applications, image fusion techniques are the field of extensive research. The visible and infrared images obtained from two different sensors. The image fusion technique can be applied to fuse these source images to get a more informative fused image. The proposed method uses nonsubsampled shearlet transform (NSST) for the decomposition of source images into low- and high-frequency bands. The low-frequency bands are fused using weighted saliency-based fusion rule, and the high-frequency bands are fused using phase stretch transform based fusion rule. Then, inverse NSST is applied to obtain the fused image. The objective and subjective comparison show that the proposed method provides the better results compared with the existing methods.

In this paper, a new approach to recover 3D shape of a polyp from the endoscopic video is proposed. For this, a point light source of illumination, perspective projection and six-degree motion of the endoscope are considered. Previous approaches attempted to recover polyp shape with the help of extended Kalman filter (EKF) and monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) from a static scene. Our approach uses iterative data acquisition approach with the existing EKF Monocular SLAM and the intensity model prior. Our method constructs a dense 3D model of polyp by utilizing sparse data, which are collected by a Monocular EKF SLAM and a base model prior. Experimental results show the efficacy of our proposed method.

Water supply services in urban India are essential functions of urban local bodies or municipalities. These services are mostly perceived as unsatisfactory across urban centres and the sector is widely perceived to be misgoverned with large number of municipalities making financial losses. However, this common perception of inefficient services has not much scientific basis as the efficiencies of these services are not measured. This paper, therefore, attempts to evolve a framework for evaluating the relative inefficiencies of water supply services and applies a non-parametric approach, data envelopment analysis (DEA), to 20 urban centres in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India, by applying three different models. The results of the analysis indicate that there are significant inefficiencies amongst the various municipalities that supply water. It was found that larger cities exhibit better efficiencies than smaller ones, requiring policy interventions. However, even the larger municipalities need restructuring and downsizing of their operations to be more efficient. DEA results also show that significant savings with respect to operating expenditures, staff and non-revenue water are actually possible if best practices are adopted. The paper discusses the results of the study in the context of policy issues that are relevant from a developing country perspective.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evolve a framework for assessing the efficiencies of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) services.Design/methodology/approachStochastic frontier analysis (SFA), a deterministic parametric frontier technique, has been employed for benchmarking of the MSWM services across municipalities in 22 cities in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India.FindingsThis paper reviews the solid waste management status and applies SFA to evaluate the relative performances of the services in terms of seven models, of which two models were found significant and acceptable based on the null hypothesis, significance of elasticity of variables, and an absence of data heteroskedasticity. The paper discusses the results in the context of various indicators, and finds that a large number of MSWM municipalities exhibit relative inefficiencies, implying that most municipalities can achieve higher levels of outputs by deploying fewer resources, thereby improving performances without necessarily increasing municipal spendings.Social implicationsThe work suggests some of the changes at the policy level that would affect the way in which solid waste is managed currently in India, and hence the work has social implications whereby the lives of a billion people will be improved through improved solid waste management services.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's information, advanced benchmarking techniques such as SFA have seldom been applied for evolving the efficiencies of solid waste management municipalities, primarily because the sanitation services are yet to take the shape of an industry in the developing world. Lack of availability of data and non‐transparent functions of these services prevent further exploration into estimating the inefficiencies of these service utilities. The paper will be of use to policy makers, solid waste managers, administrators, and sector regulators.

In this paper, an efficient design method of nearly perfect reconstruction cosine modulated transmultiplexer (CM TMUX) is presented for the prescribed stopband attenuation (A S ), passband attenuation (A P ), and roll off factor (RF). The method employs the weighted constrained least squares (WCLS) technique for the design of a prototype filter for CM TMUX. Here, the cut-off frequency is iteratively varied so that the magnitude response of the prototype filter is optimized to 0.707 at ω=π/2M. The performance of the proposed algorithm is measured in terms of inter-channel interference (ICI), intersymbol interference (ISI) and signal to overall interference (SI) etc. Several examples are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed method over other existing methods and found that ICI and ISI are reduced to satisfactory minimum values for the less interference operation of near perfect reconstruction (NPR) transmultiplexer system.

An efficient M-channel cosine modulated transmultiplexer system can be simply designed in two steps: first, efficient design of prototype filter and second designing of synthesis/analysis filters using cosine modulation technique. In this paper, first prototype filter is designed using weighted constrained least square technique, then using an efficient optimization algorithm, sum of interference parameters such as inter-channel interference and inter-symbol interference of transmultiplexer system has been reduced. At last, M-channel uniform transmultiplexer system has been designed by using cosine modulation. With the help of design examples, dominance of the proposed method is illustrated.

Adaptive Resonance Theory Network I (ART1) is a neural network concerning unsupervised learning. It is the first member of the ART family. ART1 can learn and recognize binary patterns. The basic idea in ART1 is that the input vector is compared to the prototype vectors in order of decreasing similarity until a prototype vector close enough to the input vector is found. In this paper, we are going to recognize the Hand Written Character. The process of recognition is divided into three steps. First the Written Character is pre-processed, then ART1 algorithm is employed to the pre-processed character to extract the Features. In the final stage, the accuracy of ART1 Network is evaluated. This paper shows that ART1 is going to recognize the Character with good accuracy rate.

Rapid urbanisation, growing cities, high population growths, public ownerships of utilities, misgovernance and malpractices, poverty, subsidies, lack of adequate finances, and inefficient operations etc. are some of the common problems characterising most developing economies. In this sense, the Indian urban water supply sector represents several issues that are common to the water supply utilities across developing countries. This paper elaborates the sustainability issues faced by the Indian water supply sector. It reviews the Indian urban scenario, and explores the role of the government in providing the water supplies to these urban areas. It also details the various sustainability issues in the water supply sector, and finally suggests some of the reform measures that are specific to the Indian conditions, but can be generalised to hold valid for most developing countries.