Deriving global flood hazard maps of fluvial floods through a physical model cascade

Global flood hazard maps can be used in the assessment of flood risk in a number of different applications, including (re)insurance and large scale flood preparedness. Such global hazard maps can be generated using large scale physically based models of rainfall-runoff and river routing, when used in conjunction with a number of post-processing methods. In this study, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) land surface model is coupled to ERA-Interim reanalysis meteorological forcing data, and resultant runoff is passed to a river routing algorithm which simulates floodplains and flood flow across the global land area. The global hazard map is based on a 30 yr (1979–2010) simulation period. A Gumbel distribution is fitted to the annual maxima flows to derive a number of flood return periods. The return periods are calculated initially for a 25×25 km grid, which is then reprojected onto a 1×1 km grid to derive maps of higher resolution and estimate flooded fractional area for the individual 25×25 km cells. Several global and regional maps of flood return periods ranging from 2 to 500 yr are presented. The results compare reasonably to a benchmark data set of global flood hazard. The developed methodology can be applied to other datasets on a global or regional scale.

"You can see some eagles. And hear the trumpets": the literary and political hinterland of T.S. Eliot's 'Coriolan'

There has been an increased amount of scholarly interest lately in T.S. Eliot's unfinished sequence, Coriolan (1932)—interest drawn from its Shakespearian allusiveness, and from analysis of this writing's particularly rebarbative, jarring poetic. Although, however, the two parts of the sequence published by Eliot are acknowledged as being his nearest approach to poetic commentary upon contemporary political ideas, little criticism exists establishing the hinterland of the political thought, with which Eliot was most familiar, as editor of the Criterion. Coriolan emerges at a time when the lure of fascism pulled hardest at Eliot's sensibility. This article reviews the full political context provided by Eliot's journal, as well as considering the connections between that political engagement and the readings of Shakespeare he was also promulgating through this forum, in order to provide a more complex sense than hitherto of the diverse pressures underlying the unsettled nature of the existing Coriolan poems.

The MaPS project: mapping teacher conceptions of musical development

The chapter starts from the premise that an historically- and institutionally-formed orientation to music education at primary level in European countries privileges a nineteenth century Western European music aesthetic, with its focus on formal characteristics such as melody and rhythm. While there is a move towards a multi-faceted understanding of musical ability, a discrete intelligence and willingness to accept musical styles or 'open-earedness', there remains a paucity of documented evidence of this in research at primary school level. To date there has been no study undertaken which has the potential to provide policy makers and practitioners with insights into the degree of homogeneity or universality in conceptions of musical ability within this educational sector. Against this background, a study was set up to explore the following research questions: 1. What conceptions of musical ability do primary teachers hold a) of themselves and; b) of their pupils? 2. To what extent are these conceptions informed by Western classical practices? A mixed methods approach was used which included survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Questionnaires have been sent to all classroom teachers in a random sample of primary schools in the South East of England. This was followed up with a series of semi-structured interviews with a sub-sample of respondents. The main ideas are concerned with the attitudes, beliefs and working theories held by teachers in contemporary primary school settings. By mapping the extent to which a knowledge base for teaching can be resistant to change in schools, we can problematise primary schools as sites for diversity and migration of cultural ideas. Alongside this, we can use the findings from the study undertaken in an English context as a starting point for further investigation into conceptions of music, musical ability and assessment held by practitioners in a variety of primary school contexts elsewhere in Europe; our emphasis here will be on the development of shared understanding in terms of policies and practices in music education. Within this broader framework, our study can have a significant impact internationally, with potential to inform future policy making, curriculum planning and practice.

Roman public libraries

This thesis aims to investigate the development and functions of public libraries in Rome and the Roman world. After a preface with maps of libraries in Rome, Section I discusses the precursors for public library provision in the private book collections of Republican Rome, and their transfer into the public domain with the first public libraries of Asinius Pollio and Augustus. Section II contains three 'case studies' of public libraries' different roles. The Augustan library programme is used in Ch.II.l to examine the role of imperial public libraries in literary life and the connections between Rome's libraries and those of Alexandria. Chapter II.2 concentrates on the libraries of Trajan's Forum to explore the intersection of imperial public libraries and monumental public architecture. This chapter responds to an important recent article by arguing for the continued identification of the Forum's libraries with twin brick buildings at its northern end, and suggests a series of correspondences between these libraries and its other monumental components. The conclusions of this chapter are important when considering the public libraries of the wider empire, several of which seem to have been inspired by the Trajanic libraries. Chapter II.3 considers imperial public libraries and leisure by looking at the evidence for libraries within bath-house complexes, concluding that their presence there is consistent with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence and fits in well with what we know of the intellectual and cultural life of these structures. Section III examines various aspects of the practical function of Roman public libraries: their contents (books and archives), division into Latin and Greek sections, provisions for shelving and cataloguing, staff, usership, architectural form, decoration, and housing of works of art. The picture that emerges is of carefully designed and functional buildings intended to sustain public, monumental, and practical functions. Section IV uses a variety of texts to examine the way in which libraries were viewed and used. Ch. IV. 1 discusses the evidence for use of libraries by scholars and authors such as Gellius, Galen, Josephus, and Apuleius. Ch. IV.2 examines parallels between library collections and compendious encyclopaedic elements within Roman literature and considers how library collections came to be canon-forming institutions and vehicles for the expression of imperial approval or disapproval towards authors. The channels through which this imperial influence flowed are investigated in Ch. IV.3, which looks at the directors and staff of the public libraries of Rome. The final section (V) of the thesis concerns public libraries outside the city of Rome. Provincial libraries provide a useful case study in 'Romanisation': they reveal a range of influences and are shown to embody local, personal, and metropolitan imperial identities. There follows a brief conclusion, and a bibliography. There are also five appendices of numismatic and epigraphic material discussed in the text. This material has not been adequately or completely gathered elsewhere and is intended to assist the reader; where appropriate it includes illustrations, transcriptions, and translations.

Quantifying uncertainty in remotely sensed land cover maps

Remotely sensed land cover maps are increasingly used as inputs into environmental simulation models whose outputs inform decisions and policy-making. Risks associated with these decisions are dependent on model output uncertainty, which is in turn affected by the uncertainty of land cover inputs. This article presents a method of quantifying the uncertainty that results from potential mis-classification in remotely sensed land cover maps. In addition to quantifying uncertainty in the classification of individual pixels in the map, we also address the important case where land cover maps have been upscaled to a coarser grid to suit the users’ needs and are reported as proportions of land cover type. The approach is Bayesian and incorporates several layers of modelling but is straightforward to implement. First, we incorporate data in the confusion matrix derived from an independent field survey, and discuss the appropriate way to model such data. Second, we account for spatial correlation in the true land cover map, using the remotely sensed map as a prior. Third, spatial correlation in the mis-classification characteristics is induced by modelling their variance. The result is that we are able to simulate posterior means and variances for individual sites and the entire map using a simple Monte Carlo algorithm. The method is applied to the Land Cover Map 2000 for the region of England and Wales, a map used as an input into a current dynamic carbon flux model.

Continuous sky view factor maps from high resolution urban digital elevation models

This paper presents a new method to calculate sky view factors (SVFs) from high resolution urban digital elevation models using a shadow casting algorithm. By utilizing weighted annuli to derive SVF from hemispherical images, the distance light source positions can be predefined and uniformly spread over the whole hemisphere, whereas another method applies a random set of light source positions with a cosine-weighted distribution of sun altitude angles. The 2 methods have similar results based on a large number of SVF images. However, when comparing variations at pixel level between an image generated using the new method presented in this paper with the image from the random method, anisotropic patterns occur. The absolute mean difference between the 2 methods is 0.002 ranging up to 0.040. The maximum difference can be as much as 0.122. Since SVF is a geometrically derived parameter, the anisotropic errors created by the random method must be considered as significant.

The destinies of literary manuscripts: past present and future

This essay reviews the ways in which literary manuscripts may be considered to be archivally unique, as well as valuable in all senses of the word, and gives a cautious appraisal of their future in the next ten to twenty years. It reviews the essential nature of literary manuscripts, and especially the ways in which they form “split collections”. This leads to an assessment of the work of the Diasporic Literary Archives network from 2012 to 2014, and some of the key findings. The essay closes with reflections on the future of literary manuscripts in the digital age – emerging trends, research findings, uncertainties and unknowns.