‘We are managing!’ Uncertain paths to respectable adulthoods in Accra, Ghana     

Thilde Langevang 《Geoforum》2008,39(6):2039-2047

Studies have shown that the life experiences and future prospects of young people in many parts of the world today are more complex and less predictable than those of past generations. This has led to a recognition of the need to reconsider the conceptual frameworks applied in youth studies. Thus far, research within geography has mainly focused on young people’s paths to adulthood in the Global North or on particularly vulnerable children’s lives in the Global South. In this paper an approach based on the ‘social navigation’ of ‘vital conjunctures’ is adopted to explore the complex ways in which young people in Ghana navigate their way through life in a city marked by economic hardship and neo-liberal reform. The stories of three young people are presented to show the variety of life conditions, the complex social positions they occupy and their various and shifting future imaginations. The actions of these young people are steered by prevailing cultural ideals and social expectations of what a desirable and respectable future entails and by the actual space of possibility in the urban space they move through. It is argued that achieving respectable adulthoods in present-day Accra is a complicated and convoluted journey involving the careful management of social relationships.  相似文献   

Integrating Uncertainty Theories with GIS for Modeling Coastal Hazards of Climate Change     

Peter J. Cowell  Thomas Q. Zeng 《Marine Geodesy》2003,26(1):5-18

Prediction of coastal hazards due to climate change is fraught with uncertainty that stems from complexity of coastal systems, estimation of sea level rise, and limitation of available data. In-depth research on coastal modeling is hampered by lack of techniques for handling uncertainty, and the available commercial geographical information systems (GIS) packages have only limited capability of handling uncertain information. Therefore, integrating uncertainty theory with GIS is of practical and theoretical significance. This article presents a GIS-based model that integrates an existing predictive model using a differential approach, random simulation, and fuzzy set theory for predicting geomorphic hazards subject to uncertainty. Coastal hazard is modeled as the combined effects of sea-level induced recession and storm erosion, using grid modeling techniques. The method is described with a case study of Fingal Bay Beach, SE Australia, for which predicted responses to an IPCC standard sea-level rise of 0.86 m and superimposed storm erosion averaged 12 m and 90 m, respectively, with analysis of uncertainty yielding maximum of 52 m and 120 m, respectively. Paradoxically, output uncertainty reduces slightly with simulated increase in random error in the digital elevation model (DEM). This trend implies that the magnitude of modeled uncertainty is not necessarily increased with the uncertainties in the input parameters. Built as a generic tool, the model can be used not only to predict different scenarios of coastal hazard under uncertainties for coastal management, but is also applicable to other fields that involve predictive modeling under uncertainty.  相似文献   

Uncertainty in predictions of oil spill trajectories in open sea     

P. Sebastio  C. Guedes Soares 《Ocean Engineering》2007,34(3-4):576-584

A method is introduced to calculate and to account for the uncertainties in the predictions of oil spill trajectories using a classic oil spill model. The method considers the output of the oil spill model as a function of random variables, which are the input parameters, and calculates the standard deviation of the output results which gives a measure of the uncertainty of the model given the uncertainties of the input parameters.Instead of a single trajectory that is calculated by the oil spill model using the mean values of the parameters, a band of trajectories can be defined when various simulations are done taking into account the uncertainties of the input parameters. This band of trajectories defines envelopes of the trajectories that are likely to be followed by the spill given the uncertainties of the input.The method is applied to an oil spill that occurred in open sea near Madeira Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, in December 1989. The simulations allow the understanding of how a change in the wind direction drove the spill towards the Islands.The envelope of likely trajectories that is obtained with the uncertainty modelling shows a band of trajectories that is in better agreement with the observations than the single trajectory simulated by the oil spill model, based on mean parameters.  相似文献   

高空大气温度变化趋势不确定性的研究进展   总被引：4，自引：0，他引：4  

郭艳君 《地球科学进展》2008,23(1):24-30

IPCC第4次评估报告指出：近50年来,全球对流层温度趋于升高、平流层趋于下降;同时强调了研究结果中普遍存在的不确定性,造成不确定性的主要原因是原始资料、台站选取和不同均一化方法。从理论基础入手,系统地总结了国内、外近年来高空大气温度长期变化趋势的研究成果及其不确定性产生的主要原因,详细介绍了高空大气温度序列的质量控制和均一化方法,并对我国探空台站温度序列的不确定性进行了探讨。利用静力学方法进行质量控制,以最大资料缺测率30%作为序列取舍标准,用两相回归法和再分析序列均一化处理116个中国探空站高空温度序列。研究结果表明,1958年以来我国对流层中低层趋于升温,其中1980年以后升温尤为明显;而平流层下层显示降温。   相似文献   

Uncertainty as the overlap of alternate conditional distributions     

Olena Babak  Clayton V. Deutsch 《Computational Geosciences》2008,12(4):503-512

An important task in modern geostatistics is the assessment and quantification of resource and reserve uncertainty. This uncertainty is valuable support information for many management decisions. Uncertainty at specific locations and uncertainty in the global resource is of interest. There are many different methods to build models of uncertainty, including Kriging, Cokriging, and Inverse Distance. Each method leads to different results. A method is proposed to combine local uncertainties predicted by different models to obtain a combined measure of uncertainty that combines good features of each alternative. The new estimator is the overlap of alternate conditional distributions.  相似文献   

Towards models of strategic spatial choice behaviour: theory and application issues   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Qi Han  Harry Timmermans 《GeoJournal》2006,67(3):195-206

Models of spatial choice behaviour have been around in geography urban planning for decades to assess the feasibility of planning actions or to predict external (competition) effects on existing destinations. Although these models differ in terms of complexity and key concepts, they all have in common that spatial choice behaviour is predicted as a function of the attributes of the choice alternatives and distance or travel time separation only. None of these models do take into account that the attributes of choice alternatives and travel time may be highly non-stationary and that often the utility that people derive from visiting a particular location also depends on the choice behaviour of other individuals. Under these circumstances, individuals may exhibit strategic choice behaviour. That is, they will choose particular choice options taking into account their expected behaviour of others such as to maximize their own utility. The purpose of the proposed paper is to discuss possible models of strategic choice behaviour for these urban planning problems. Theory will be outlined and some critical issues in the application of such models to problems of spatial choice will be discussed.  相似文献   

Regionalization of unit hydrograph Parameters: 2. Uncertainty analysis     

K. -C. Yeh  J. -C. Yang  Y. -K. Tung 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》1997,11(2):173-192

Hydrologic model parameters obtained from regional regression equations are subject to uncertainty. Consequently, hydrologic model outputs based on the stochastic parameters are random. This paper presents a systematic analysis of uncertainty associated with the two parameters, N and K, in Nash's IUH model from different regional regression equations. The uncertainty features associated with N and K are further incorporated to assess the uncertainty of the resulting IUH. Numerical results indicate that uncertainty of N and K from the regional regression equations are too significant to be ignored.  相似文献   

Regionalization of unit hydrograph Parameters: 2. Uncertainty analysis     

K. -C. Yeh  J. -C. Yang  Y. -K. Tung 《Stochastic Hydrology and Hydraulics》1997,11(2):173-192

Hydrologic model parameters obtained from regional regression equations are subject to uncertainty. Consequently, hydrologic model outputs based on the stochastic parameters are random. This paper presents a systematic analysis of uncertainty associated with the two parameters, N and K, in Nash's IUH model from different regional regression equations. The uncertainty features associated with N and K are further incorporated to assess the uncertainty of the resulting IUH. Numerical results indicate that uncertainty of N and K from the regional regression equations are too significant to be ignored.  相似文献   

Model identification for hydrological forecasting under uncertainty   总被引：2，自引：2，他引：2  

Thorsten Wagener  Hoshin V. Gupta 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2005,19(6):378-387

Methods for the identification of models for hydrological forecasting have to consider the specific nature of these models and the uncertainties present in the modeling process. Current approaches fail to fully incorporate these two aspects. In this paper we review the nature of hydrological models and the consequences of this nature for the task of model identification. We then continue to discuss the history (“The need for more POWER‘’), the current state (“Learning from other fields”) and the future (“Towards a general framework”) of model identification. The discussion closes with a list of desirable features for an identification framework under uncertainty and open research questions in need of answers before such a framework can be implemented.  相似文献   

Sea state estimation using multiple ships simultaneously as sailing wave buoys     

《Applied Ocean Research》2019

The article presents initial ideas towards a network-based approach for sea state estimation used for marine operations and other maritime applications. In principle, all available means, ranging from in situ buoys, fleet of ships to remote sensing by satellite and aircraft, could be considered, emphasising that each means and any combinations among may act simultaneously. This study focuses on just one of the means; the use of ships as sailing wave buoys. The article introduces the wave buoy analogy, i.e. ship-as-a-wave-buoy, and it makes a proposal on how to impose (different) weights to the single ship-specific wave spectrum estimates obtained from multiple ships. Moreover, the work includes a discussion about the importance to associate a measure to reflect the (un)certainty of the wave spectrum estimate. The article presents a numerical case study, where multiple ships act simultaneously as wave spectrum-estimators. The case study relies on numerical motion simulations, as appropriate full-scale data is not yet available. In the analysis, it is shown that the use of simultaneous data from multiple ships leads to more accurate wave spectrum estimations.  相似文献