Perspectives of Urban Growth Management and Sustainable Development In West Bank, Hebron District as a case Study

The main objective of this PhD research study is to provide a perspective on the urban growth management and sustainable development in Palestine, and more specifically in Hebron district as a case study. Hebron is located 36 km south of Jerusalem, with an overall population size of around 600,000 people living in a total area around1246km2. Hebron is the biggest Palestinian district that has 16 municipalities and 154 localities. The research discusses and analyzes the urban planning system, economical and environmental policies and the solution required to manage and integrate the development elements to develop a sustainable development plan for Hebron. The research provides answers for fundamental questions such as what kind and definition of sustainable development are applicable to the Palestinian case?. What are the sustainability problems there and how the Israeli occupation and unstable political condition affect the sustainable development in Palestine? What are the urban growth management and sustainability policies and actions required from government, public and privets sector in Palestine? The fast urban growth in Palestine is facing many problems and challenges due to the increase in the population size and the resulting impact of this increase including, but not limited to, the demand of new houses, need for more infrastructure services, demands on new industrial, commercial, educational and health projects, which in turn reduces the area of agricultural lands and threatens the natural resources and environment. There are also other associated sustainability problems like the absence of effective plans or regulations that control urban expansion, the absence of sufficient sustainable development plans at the national levels for the district, new job requirements, Israeli restrictions and occupation for more than 60 years, existence of construction factories near residential areas, poor public awareness and poor governmental funds for service projects and development plans. The study consists of nine chapters. Chapter One includes an introduction, study objectives, problems and justifications, while Chapter Two has a theoretical background on sustainability topic and definitions of sustainability. The Palestinian urban planning laws and local government systems are discussed in Chapter Three and the methodology of research is detailed in Chapter Four. As for Chapter Five, it provides a general background on Hebron District including demographical and economical profiles, along with recommendations related to sustainable development for each profile Chapter Six addresses the urban environment, sustainability priorities and policies required. Chapter Seven discusses and analyzes infrastructure services including transportation, water and wastewater. As for Chapter Eight, it addresses the land use, housing and urban expansion beside the cultural heritage, natural heritage with relevant sustainable development polices and recommendations. Finally, Chapter Nine includes a conclusion and comprehensive recommendations integrating all of urban and sustainability event in one map. Hebron has a deep history including a rich cultural heritage aged by thousands of years, with 47% of Hebron district population under 14 years old. Being the biggest Palestinian district, Hebron has thousands of industrial and economical organizations beside a large agricultural sector at Palestine level. This gives Hebron a potential to play major roles in developing a national sustainability plan, as the current urban planning system in Palestine needs urgent reform and development to fulfill the sustainability requirement. The municipalities and ministers should find permanent financial aid for urban planning and development studies so as to face future challenges. The Palestinian government can benefit from available local human resources in development projects; hence Palestinian people have sufficient qualifications in most sectors. The Palestinian people also can invest in the privet sector in Palestine in case businessmen have been encouraged and clear investment laws and plans have been developed. The study provides recommendations associated to the sustainable development in Palestine in general and Hebron, as a case study, in specific. Recommendations include increasing the privet sector as well as the public involvement in urban growth management, and stopping unplanned urban expansion, subjecting granting building permits of new projects to the no-harm environmental impact assessment, increasing the coordination and cooperation between localities and central bodies, protection and renovation of old cites and green areas, increasing the quality and quantity of infrastructure services, establishing district urban planning department to coordinate and organize urban planning and sustainable development activities. Also, among recommendations come dividing Hebron into three planning and administrative areas (north, central and south), and dividing the sustainable development and implementation period (2010 to 2025) into three main phases. Finally, the study strongly recommends benefiting from the same urban development plans in similar districts at national and international levels, also to use new technologies and information systems in urban planning process.

An ATM distributed simulator for network management research

Due to the high cost of a large ATM network working up to full strength to apply our ideas about network management, i.e., dynamic virtual path (VP) management and fault restoration, we developed a distributed simulation platform for performing our experiments. This platform also had to be capable of other sorts of tests, such as connection admission control (CAC) algorithms, routing algorithms, and accounting and charging methods. The platform was posed as a very simple, event-oriented and scalable simulation. The main goal was the simulation of a working ATM backbone network with a potentially large number of nodes (hundreds). As research into control algorithms and low-level, or rather cell-level methods, was beyond the scope of this study, the simulation took place at a connection level, i.e., there was no real traffic of cells. The simulated network behaved like a real network accepting and rejecting SNMP ones, or experimental tools using the API node

Faculty Good Practice - Event

Slides and link to Panopto recording about 'good practice' within from across the Faculty Adam Procter - Winchester School of Art. Liz Williams - Southampton Law School. Jean Leah - School of Management.

"Thematically Analysing Social Network Content During Disasters Through the Lens of the Disaster Management Lifecycle" & "Investigating Similarity Between Privacy Policies of Social Networking Sites as a Precursor for Standardization"

Abstract 1: Social Networks such as Twitter are often used for disseminating and collecting information during natural disasters. The potential for its use in Disaster Management has been acknowledged. However, more nuanced understanding of the communications that take place on social networks are required to more effectively integrate this information into the processes within disaster management. The type and value of information shared should be assessed, determining the benefits and issues, with credibility and reliability as known concerns. Mapping the tweets in relation to the modelled stages of a disaster can be a useful evaluation for determining the benefits/drawbacks of using data from social networks, such as Twitter, in disaster management.A thematic analysis of tweets’ content, language and tone during the UK Storms and Floods 2013/14 was conducted. Manual scripting was used to determine the official sequence of events, and classify the stages of the disaster into the phases of the Disaster Management Lifecycle, to produce a timeline. Twenty- five topics discussed on Twitter emerged, and three key types of tweets, based on the language and tone, were identified. The timeline represents the events of the disaster, according to the Met Office reports, classed into B. Faulkner’s Disaster Management Lifecycle framework. Context is provided when observing the analysed tweets against the timeline. This illustrates a potential basis and benefit for mapping tweets into the Disaster Management Lifecycle phases. Comparing the number of tweets submitted in each month with the timeline, suggests users tweet more as an event heightens and persists. Furthermore, users generally express greater emotion and urgency in their tweets.This paper concludes that the thematic analysis of content on social networks, such as Twitter, can be useful in gaining additional perspectives for disaster management. It demonstrates that mapping tweets into the phases of a Disaster Management Lifecycle model can have benefits in the recovery phase, not just in the response phase, to potentially improve future policies and activities. Abstract2: The current execution of privacy policies, as a mode of communicating information to users, is unsatisfactory. Social networking sites (SNS) exemplify this issue, attracting growing concerns regarding their use of personal data and its effect on user privacy. This demonstrates the need for more informative policies. However, SNS lack the incentives required to improve policies, which is exacerbated by the difficulties of creating a policy that is both concise and compliant. Standardization addresses many of these issues, providing benefits for users and SNS, although it is only possible if policies share attributes which can be standardized. This investigation used thematic analysis and cross- document structure theory, to assess the similarity of attributes between the privacy policies (as available in August 2014), of the six most frequently visited SNS globally. Using the Jaccard similarity coefficient, two types of attribute were measured; the clauses used by SNS and the coverage of forty recommendations made by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. Analysis showed that whilst similarity in the clauses used was low, similarity in the recommendations covered was high, indicating that SNS use different clauses, but to convey similar information. The analysis also showed that low similarity in the clauses was largely due to differences in semantics, elaboration and functionality between SNS. Therefore, this paper proposes that the policies of SNS already share attributes, indicating the feasibility of standardization and five recommendations are made to begin facilitating this, based on the findings of the investigation.

Modelling the hydraulics of the Carlisle 2005 flood event

The performance of a 2D numerical model of flood hydraulics is tested for a major event in Carlisle, UK, in 2005. This event is associated with a unique data set, with GPS surveyed wrack lines and flood extent surveyed 3 weeks after the flood. The Simple Finite Volume (SFV) model is used to solve the 2D Saint-Venant equations over an unstructured mesh of 30000 elements representing channel and floodplain, and allowing detailed hydraulics of flow around bridge piers and other influential features to be represented. The SFV model is also used to corroborate flows recorded for the event at two gauging stations. Calibration of Manning's n is performed with a two stage strategy, with channel values determined by calibration of the gauging station models, and floodplain values determined by optimising the fit between model results and observed water levels and flood extent for the 2005 event. RMS error for the calibrated model compared with surveyed water levels is ~±0.4m, the same order of magnitude as the estimated error in the survey data. The study demonstrates the ability of unstructured mesh hydraulic models to represent important hydraulic processes across a range of scales, with potential applications to flood risk management.

A multi-scale framework for strategic management of diffuse pollution

A multi-scale framework for decision support is presented that uses a combination of experiments, models, communication, education and decision support tools to arrive at a realistic strategy to minimise diffuse pollution. Effective partnerships between researchers and stakeholders play a key part in successful implementation of this strategy. The Decision Support Matrix (DSM) is introduced as a set of visualisations that can be used at all scales, both to inform decision making and as a communication tool in stakeholder workshops. A demonstration farm is presented and one of its fields is taken as a case study. Hydrological and nutrient flow path models are used for event based simulation (TOPCAT), catchment scale modelling (INCA) and field scale flow visualisation (TopManage). One of the DSMs; The Phosphorus Export Risk Matrix (PERM) is discussed in detail. The PERM was developed iteratively as a point of discussion in stakeholder workshops, as a decision support and education tool. The resulting interactive PERM contains a set of questions and proposed remediation measures that reflect both expert and local knowledge. Education and visualisation tools such as GIS, risk indicators, TopManage and the PERM are found to be invaluable in communicating improved farming practice to stakeholders. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Proceedings of the inaugural construction management and economics ‘Past, Present and Future’ conference CME25, 16-18 July 2007, University of Reading, UK

This conference was an unusual and interesting event. Celebrating 25 years of Construction Management and Economics provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the research that has been reported over the years, to consider where we are now, and to think about the future of academic research in this area. Hence the sub-title of this conference: “past, present and future”. Looking through these papers, some things are clear. First, the range of topics considered interesting has expanded hugely since the journal was first published. Second, the research methods are also more diverse. Third, the involvement of wider groups of stakeholder is evident. There is a danger that this might lead to dilution of the field. But my instinct has always been to argue against the notion that Construction Management and Economics represents a discipline, as such. Granted, there are plenty of university departments around the world that would justify the idea of a discipline. But the vast majority of academic departments who contribute to the life of this journal carry different names to this. Indeed, the range and breadth of methodological approaches to the research reported in Construction Management and Economics indicates that there are several different academic disciplines being brought to bear on the construction sector. Some papers are based on economics, some on psychology and others on operational research, sociology, law, statistics, information technology, and so on. This is why I maintain that construction management is not an academic discipline, but a field of study to which a range of academic disciplines are applied. This may be why it is so interesting to be involved in this journal. The problems to which the papers are applied develop and grow. But the broad topics of the earliest papers in the journal are still relevant today. What has changed a lot is our interpretation of the problems that confront the construction sector all over the world, and the methodological approaches to resolving them. There is a constant difficulty in dealing with topics as inherently practical as these. While the demands of the academic world are driven by the need for the rigorous application of sound methods, the demands of the practical world are quite different. It can be difficult to meet the needs of both sets of stakeholders at the same time. However, increasing numbers of postgraduate courses in our area result in larger numbers of practitioners with a deeper appreciation of what research is all about, and how to interpret and apply the lessons from research. It also seems that there are contributions coming not just from construction-related university departments, but also from departments with identifiable methodological traditions of their own. I like to think that our authors can publish in journals beyond the construction-related areas, to disseminate their theoretical insights into other disciplines, and to contribute to the strength of this journal by citing our articles in more mono-disciplinary journals. This would contribute to the future of the journal in a very strong and developmental way. The greatest danger we face is in excessive self-citation, i.e. referring only to sources within the CM&E literature or, worse, referring only to other articles in the same journal. The only way to ensure a strong and influential position for journals and university departments like ours is to be sure that our work is informing other academic disciplines. This is what I would see as the future, our logical next step. If, as a community of researchers, we are not producing papers that challenge and inform the fundamentals of research methods and analytical processes, then no matter how practically relevant our output is to the industry, it will remain derivative and secondary, based on the methodological insights of others. The balancing act between methodological rigour and practical relevance is a difficult one, but not, of course, a balance that has to be struck in every single paper.

Earnings management in firms seeking to be acquired

Empirical evidence regarding accrual-based earnings management around mergers and acquisitions has been setting-specific as far as target firms are concerned. This might be due to the fact that target firms cannot always anticipate an acquisition proposal, and thus lack the motive and the time necessary to manage their earnings in order to facilitate or impede the deal. In this paper, we provide clear evidence of downward earnings management by a sample of target firms that have both time and motive to engage in such actions. These are firms that publicly announce their intention to be acquired. Publicly ‘seeking a buyer’ represents a rather unusual corporate event, and we find that these firms engage in downward earnings management in the years surrounding the ‘announcement year’. To some extent, this result is explained by overrepresentation of low performance and growth among these firms, and it can be interpreted under alternative explanations. Furthermore, we show that such downward earnings management negatively affects the probability for a ‘seeking buyer’ firm to secure an acquisition within a reasonable amount of time, a possible indication of efficient diligence by prospective buyers having a preference for firms ‘seeking buyer’ with no informationally obscure earnings.

Estimated lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden using time-to-event analysis

Maintenance planning of road pavement requires reliable estimates of roads’ lifetimes. In determining the lifetime of a road, this study combines maintenance activities and road condition measurements. The scope of the paper is to estimate lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden with time to event analysis. The model used includes effects of pavement type, road type, bearing capacity, road width, speed limit, stone size and climate zone, where the model is stratified according to traffic load. Among the nine analyzed pavement types, stone mastic had the longest expected lifetime, 32 percent longer than asphalt concrete. Among road types, ordinary roads with cable barriers had 30 percent shorter lifetime than ordinary roads. Increased speed lowered the lifetime, while increased stone size (up to 20 mm) and increased road width lengthened the lifetime. The results are of importance for life cycle cost analysis and road management.

Flood Risk Management In Small Urban River Using A Sustainable Urban Drainage System: Wortley Beck, Leeds, Uk

In the UK, urban river basins are particularly vulnerable to flash floods due to short and intense rainfall. This paper presents potential flood resilience approaches for the highly urbanised Wortley Beck river basin, south west of the Leeds city centre. The reach of Wortley Beck is approximately 6km long with contributing catchment area of 30km2 that drain into the River Aire. Lower Wortley has experienced regular flooding over the last few years from a range of sources, including Wortley Beck and surface and ground water, that affects properties both upstream and downstream of Farnley Lake as well as Wortley Ring Road. This has serious implications for society, the environment and economy activity in the City of Leeds. The first stage of the study involves systematically incorporating Wortley Beck’s land scape features on an Arc-GIS platform to identify existing green features in the region. This process also enables the exploration of potential blue green features: green spaces, green roofs, water retention ponds and swales at appropriate locations and connect them with existing green corridors to maximize their productivity. The next stage is involved in developing a detailed 2D urban flood inundation model for the Wortley Beck region using the CityCat model. CityCat is capable to model the effects of permeable/impermeable ground surfaces and buildings/roofs to generate flood depth and velocity maps at 1m caused by design storm events. The final stage of the study is involved in simulation of range of rainfall and flood event scenarios through CityCat model with different blue green features. Installation of other hard engineering individual property protection measures through water butts and flood walls are also incorporated in the CityCat model. This enables an integrated sustainable flood resilience strategy for this region.

Laparoscopic management of iatrogenic lesions

Purpose: To present our series of patients who underwent laparoscopic correction of iatrogenic lesions and a review of the literature.Patients and Methods: We evaluated 23 patients who underwent laparoscopic correction of iatrogenic lesions. Thirteen patients had open surgery, 6 had an endoscopic procedure, and 4 had a laparoscopic approach as the first surgical procedure. Vesicovaginal fistulas (VVF) developed in seven patients after open abdominal hysterectomies, and 1 patient presented with a VVF after ureterolithotripsy. A urethral cutaneous fistula developed in one patient after a laparoscopic resection of endometriosis nodules, and 1 patient presented with a ureterovaginal fistula after a perineoplasty. Three patients presented with encrusted ureteral stents after ureterolithotripsy. Ureteral stenosis developed in seven patients: three after open abdominal surgery, three after ureteroscopy, and one after pyeloplasty. One patient had a ureteral injury during laparoscopic partial nephrectomy, and two patients had bowel injuries after a tension-free vaginal tape procedure and a laparoscopic radical prostatectomy.Results: All patients underwent laparoscopic correction of the iatrogenic injuries. One patient had an early recurrence of a VVF, and one patient had a recurrence of a ureteral stenosis. There was one conversion to open surgery because of technical difficulties and one major bleeding event that necessitated blood transfusion. A lower limb compartmental syndrome developed in one patient.Conclusion: Despite the small number of patients and different types of surgeries performed, laparoscopic management of iatrogenic lesions seems to be feasible and safe in experienced hands. Its precise role in the management of this stressful condition still needs to be determined.

A social network approach to trust management in VANETs

In the past few years, vehicular ad hoc networks(VANETs) was studied extensively by researchers. VANETs is a type of P2P network, though it has some distinct characters (fast moving, short lived connection etc.). In this paper, we present several limitations of current trust management schemes in VANETs and propose ways to counter them. We first review several trust management techniques in VANETs and argue that the ephemeral nature of VANETs render them useless in practical situations. We identify that the problem of information cascading and oversampling, which commonly arise in social networks, also adversely affects trust management schemes in VANETs. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to introduce information cascading and oversampling to VANETs. We show that simple voting for decision making leads to oversampling and gives incorrect results in VANETs. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel voting scheme. In our scheme, each vehicle has different voting weight according to its distance from the event. The vehicle which is more closer to the event possesses higher weight. Simulations show that our proposed algorithm performs better than simple voting, increasing the correctness of voting. © 2012 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC.

Performance of rest myocardial perfusion imaging in the management of acute chest pain in the emergency room in developing nations (PREMIER trial)

Background. Rest myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) is effective in managing patients with acute chest pain in developed countries. We aimed to define the role and feasibility of rest MPI in low-to-middle income countries. Methods and Results. Low-to-intermediate risk patients (n = 356) presenting with chest pain to ten centers in eight developing countries were injected with a Tc-99m-based tracer, and standard imaging was performed. The primary outcome was a composite of death, non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI), recurrent angina, and coronary revascularization at 30 days. Sixty-nine patients had a positive MPI (19.4%), and 52 patients (14.6%) had a primary outcome event. An abnormal rest-MPI result was the only variable which independently predicted the primary outcome [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 8.19, 95% confidence interval 4.10-16.40, P = .0001]. The association of MPI result and the primary outcome was stronger (adjusted OR 17.35) when only the patients injected during pain were considered. Rest-MPI had a negative predictive value of 92.7% for the primary outcome, improving to 99.3% for the hard event composite of death or MI. Conclusions. Our study demonstrates that rest-MPI is a reliable test for ruling out MI when applied to patients in developing countries. (J Nucl Cardiol 2012;19:1146-53.)

Advice on the Management of Ambiguous Genitalia to a Young Endocrinologist from Experienced Clinicians

The birth of a child with ambiguous genitalia is a challenging and distressing event for the family and physician and one with life-long consequences. Most disorders of sexual differentiation (DSD) associated with ambiguous genitalia are the result either of inappropriate virilization of girls or incomplete virilization of boys. It is important to establish a diagnosis as soon as possible, for psychological, social, and medical reasons, particularly for recognizing accompanying life-threatening disorders such as the salt-losing form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In most instances, there is sufficient follow-up data so that making the diagnosis also establishes the appropriate gender assignment (infants with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, those with androgen resistance syndromes), but some causes of DSD such as steroid 5 alpha-reductase 2 deficiency and 17 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency are associated with frequent change in social sex later in life. In these instances, guidelines for sex assignment are less well established.

Wildfire prevention and management in a 3D virtual environment

[EN] This paper describes a wildfire forecasting application based on a 3D virtual environment and a fire simulation engine. A new open source framework is presented for the development of 3D graphics applications over large geographic areas offering high performance 3D visualization and powerful interaction tools for the Geographic Information Systems community. The application includes a remote module that allows simultaneous connection of several users for monitoring a real wildfire event. The user is enabled to simulate and visualize a wildfire spreading on the terrain under conditions of spatial information on topography and fuels along with weather and wind files.