Small‐scale hydroelectric development as appropriate technology: a case study

1987 ◽  
Vol 29 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
John Lemons
1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Gaber ◽  
M. Antill ◽  
W. Kimball ◽  
R. Abdel Wahab

The implementation of urban village wastewater treatment plants in developing countries has historically been primarily a function of appropriate technology choice and deciding which of the many needy communities should receive the available funding and priority attention. Usually this process is driven by an outside funding agency who views the planning, design, and construction steps as relatively insignificant milestones in the overall effort required to quickly better a community's sanitary drainage problems. With the exception of very small scale type sanitation projects which have relatively simple replication steps, the development emphasis tends to be on the final treatment plant product with little or no attention specifically focused on community participation and institutionalizing national and local policies and procedures needed for future locally sponsored facilities replication. In contrast to this, the Government of Egypt (GOE) enacted a fresh approach through a Local Development Program with the United States AID program. An overview is presented of the guiding principals of the program which produced the first 24 working wastewater systems including gravity sewers, sewage pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants which were designed and constructed by local entities in Egypt. The wastewater projects cover five different treatment technologies implemented in both delta and desert regions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110231
Author(s):  
Francesca Romana Moro

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The Alorese in eastern Indonesia are an Austronesian community who have inhabited two Papuan-speaking islands for approximately 600 years. Their language presents a paradox: contact with the neighbouring Papuan languages has led to both complexification and simplification. This article argues that these opposite outcomes of contact result from two distinct scenarios, and formulates a hypothesis about a shift in multilingual patterns in Alorese history. Design/Methodology/Approach: To formulate a hypothesis about the discontinuity of multilingual patterns, this article first sketches the past and present multilingual patterns of the Alorese by modelling language contact outcomes in terms of bilingual optimisation strategies. This is followed by a comparison of the two scenarios to pinpoint similarities and differences. Data and Analysis: Previous research shows that two types of contact phenomena are attested in Alorese: (a) complexification arising from grammatical borrowings from Papuan languages, and (b) morphological simplification. The first change is associated with prolonged child bilingualism and is the result of Papuan-oriented bilingual strategies, while the latter change is associated with adult second language (L2) learning and is the result of universal communicative strategies. Findings/Conclusions Complexification and simplification are the results of two different layers of contact. Alorese was first used in small-scale bilingual communities, with widespread symmetric multilingualism. Later, multilingualism became more asymmetric, and the language started to undergo a simplification process due to the considerable number of L2 speakers. Originality: This article is innovative in providing a clear case study showing discontinuity of multilingual patterns, supported by linguistic and non-linguistic evidence. Significance/Implications: This article provides a plausible explanation for the apparent paradox found in Alorese, by showing that different outcomes of contact in the same language are due to different patterns of acquisition and socialisation. This discontinuity should be taken into account by models of language contact.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 1862
Author(s):  
Alexandros-Georgios Chronis ◽  
Foivos Palaiogiannis ◽  
Iasonas Kouveliotis-Lysikatos ◽  
Panos Kotsampopoulos ◽  
Nikos Hatziargyriou

In this paper, we investigate the economic benefits of an energy community investing in small-scale photovoltaics (PVs) when local energy trading is operated amongst the community members. The motivation stems from the open research question on whether a community-operated local energy market can enhance the investment feasibility of behind-the-meter small-scale PVs installed by energy community members. Firstly, a review of the models, mechanisms and concepts required for framing the relevant concepts is conducted, while a clarification of nuances at important terms is attempted. Next, a tool for the investigation of the economic benefits of operating a local energy market in the context of an energy community is developed. We design the local energy market using state-of-the-art formulations, modified according to the requirements of the case study. The model is applied to an energy community that is currently under formation in a Greek municipality. From the various simulations that were conducted, a series of generalizable conclusions are extracted.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003452372198937
Author(s):  
Caroline Elbra-Ramsay

This paper reports the findings of a small-scale study seeking to investigate how student teachers, within a three-year undergraduate programme, understand feedback. Feedback has been central to debates and discussion in the assessment literature in recent years. Hence, in this paper, feedback is positioned within the often-contradictory discourses of assessment, including perspectives on student and teacher feedback. The study focused on two first year undergraduate student teachers at a small university in England and considered the relationships between their understanding of feedback as a student, their understanding of feedback as an emerging teacher, and the key influences shaping these understandings. A phenomenological case study methodology was employed with interviews as the prime method of data collection. Themes emerged as part of an Nvivo analysis, including emotional responses, relationships and dialogue, all of which appear to have impacted on the students’ conceptual understanding of feedback as indelibly shaped by its interpersonal and affective, rather than purely cognitive or ideational, dimensions. The paper therefore seeks to contribute to the wider feedback discourse by offering an analysis of empirical data. Although situated within English teacher education, there are tentative conclusions that are applicable to international teacher education and as well as higher education more generally.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2293
Author(s):  
Marina Amadori ◽  
Virginia Zamparelli ◽  
Giacomo De Carolis ◽  
Gianfranco Fornaro ◽  
Marco Toffolon ◽  
...  

The SAR Doppler frequencies are directly related to the motion of the scatterers in the illuminated area and have already been used in marine applications to monitor moving water surfaces. Here we investigate the possibility of retrieving surface water velocity from SAR Doppler analysis in medium-size lakes. ENVISAT images of the test site (Lake Garda) are processed and the Doppler Centroid Anomaly technique is adopted. The resulting surface velocity maps are compared with the outputs of a hydrodynamic model specifically validated for the case study. Thermal images from MODIS Terra are used in support of the modeling results. The surface velocity retrieved from SAR is found to overestimate the numerical results and the existence of a bias is investigated. In marine applications, such bias is traditionally removed through Geophysical Model Functions (GMFs) by ascribing it to a fully developed wind waves spectrum. We found that such an assumption is not supported in our case study, due to the small-scale variations of topography and wind. The role of wind intensity and duration on the results from SAR is evaluated, and the inclusion of lake bathymetry and the SAR backscatter gradient is recommended for the future development of GMFs suitable for lake environments.


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