scholarly journals Cultivating the Assimilative Perspective in Contextual Engineering – Knowing What You Don’t Know

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Perry Witmer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Direct Interaction ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Site Conditions ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Robust Process

Contextual Engineering methodology affords engineering practitioners a more robust process for identifying socioeconomic and cultural conditions within a client community that could affect adoption and sustainability of a technical infrastructure. This methodology seeks to build an assimilative view of the client through direct interactions, which enable the practitioner to assess critical local conditions without filtering her understanding through the lens of her own experience. Many practitioners assert that direct interaction with a client community is unnecessary to achieve an assimilative view, particularly in an era when information is widely available via the internet, and communication with remote partners is possible using a variety of technologies. But assessments of the perceptions of engineering practitioners engaged in two separate projects in Latin America before and after travel to the client communities demonstrate that their understanding of community conditions were altered dramatically once they interacted with residents and experienced site conditions firsthand.

scholarly journals Innovative passive reinforcements for the gradual stabilization of a landslide according with the observational method

Landslides ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Brezzi ◽  
Alberto Bisson ◽  
Davide Pasa ◽  
Simonetta Cola
Keyword(s):  
Monitoring System ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Fe Model ◽  
Site Conditions ◽  
Observational Method ◽  
Rainy Period ◽  
Sustainable Solutions ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Set Up

AbstractA large number of landslides occur in North-Eastern Italy during every rainy period due to the particular hydrogeological conditions of this area. Even if there are no casualties, the economic losses are often significant, and municipalities frequently do not have sufficient financial resources to repair the damage and stabilize all the unstable slopes. In this regard, the research for more economically sustainable solutions is a crucial challenge. Floating composite anchors are an innovative and low-cost technique set up for slope stabilization: it consists in the use of passive sub-horizontal reinforcements, obtained by coupling a traditional self-drilling bar with some tendons cemented inside it. This work concerns the application of this technique according to the observational method described within the Italian and European technical codes and mainly recommended for the design of geotechnical works, especially when performed in highly uncertain site conditions. The observational method prescribes designing an intervention and, at the same time, using a monitoring system in order to correct and adapt the project during realization of the works on the basis of new data acquired while on site. The case study is the landslide of Cischele, a medium landslide which occurred in 2010 after an exceptional heavy rainy period. In 2015, some floating composite anchors were installed to slow down the movement, even if, due to a limited budget, they were not enough to ensure the complete stabilization of the slope. Thanks to a monitoring system installed in the meantime, it is now possible to have a comparison between the site conditions before and after the intervention. This allows the evaluation of benefits achieved with the reinforcements and, at the same time, the assessment of additional improvements. Two stabilization scenarios are studied through an FE model: the first includes the stabilization system built in 2015, while the second evaluates a new solution proposed to further increase the slope stability.

scholarly journals Adapting Santiago Method to Determine Appropriate and Resource Efficient Sanitation Systems for an Urban Settlement in Lima Peru

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1197
Author(s):  
Ainul Firdatun Nisaa ◽  
Manuel Krauss ◽  
Dorothee Spuhler
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Biofuel Production ◽  
Appropriateness Criteria ◽  
Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
Sanitation Systems

The pre-selection of locally appropriate sanitation technologies and systems is crucial for strategic sanitation planning as any decision is only as good as the options presented. One approach that allows us to systematically consider the local conditions and a diverse range of conventional and novel technologies and systems is the Santiago method. In this paper, we discuss whether the Santiago method can be applied to the case of Latin America and what we would gain from this application. We do so by expanding the Santiago technology library with technologies that have been shown to be promising in metropolitan areas of Latin America, such as condominial sewer, container-based sanitation, and activated sludge. We then apply Santiago to the semi-informal settlement Quebrada Verde (QV) in Lima, Peru. Using Santiago, we were able to generate 265,185 sanitation system options from 42 technologies and 18 appropriateness criteria. A set of 17 appropriate and divers are then selected. The diversity is defined by 17 system templates. To further evaluate these 17 systems, resource recovery and loss potentials are quantified. Higher nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and total solids recovery are observed for systems that combine urine diversion and biofuel production. The case of QV shows that the Santiago method is applicable in the Latin American context.

scholarly journals POWER-KNOWLEDGE RELATIONS IN THE FIELD OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRIQUE LEFF
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Open Dialogue

Abstract The current environmental crisis calls for thinking about the state of the world: the thermodynamic-ecological and symbolic-cultural conditions of organic and human life on the planet. In this regard, it stresses the need to realize the unawareness and life’s unsustainability that humanity has created. In this text I discuss and take a stand about some of the concepts and founding and constitutive research lines of political ecology. In this way I pretend to open dialogue by placing in context some of the principles, ideas, and founding viewpoints of political ecology in Latin America and contrasting them with those from the English-speaking school of thought. I intend not only to establish a political socio-geography, but to question the epistemic core of political ecology, and to stimulate a more cosmopolitan critical thinking in order to be able to face the hegemonic powers that lead the world into social and environmental decay

scholarly journals Contriving the Future by Tampering with the Past: A Deferral Tactic in Chinese Internet Censorship

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUSUNG SU ◽  
Siyu Sun ◽  
Jiangrui Liu
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Online Discussions ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Event ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Internet Censorship

How do Chinese information inspectors censor the internet? In light of the assumption that inspectors must follow specific rules instead of ambiguous guidelines, such as precluding collective action, to decide what and when to delete, this study attempts to offer a dynamic understanding of censorship by exploiting well-structured Weibo data from before and after the 2018 Taiwanese election. This study finds that inspectors take advantage of time in handling online discussions with the potential for collective action. Through this deferral tactic, inspectors make online sentiments moderately flow regarding an important political event, and thereafter, past discussions on trendy topics will be mostly removed. Therefore, reality is selectively altered; the past is modified, and the future will be remembered in a ``preferable" way.

scholarly journals The Creation of Beautiful Countryside in the Internet Age: Semantics, Theory and Path-Taking Yuan Ye as an Example

2021 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 05014
Author(s):  
Dong Yue ◽  
Li Gang ◽  
Wu Zhenzhi
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Development ◽  
Mobile Internet ◽  
Rural Culture ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Design Ideas

With the advent of the Internet Age, the rapid development of modern rural construction and urban-rural integration, the revival of traditional culture and environmental improvement and many other factors, the multi-semantic social relationship of the beautiful countryside has been formed gradually based on the space, culture and locality. The reconstruction and reshaping of beautiful countryside in the Mobile Internet Age takes Yuan Ye as a theory and path to improve the quality of Internet rural culture, and combines the current technological innovation to expound such design ideas as poetic charm, adaptation to local conditions and so on in garden culture, injecting new design vitality to the inheritance of cultural resources and construction of modern rural society.

No, it did Not Grow Up because of the Internet

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Jorge Saavedra Utman
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Social Mobilisation ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Web

While there is a general agreement on the contribution that Internet has implied for social mobilisation regarding information and networked sociability, there is a strand sustaining that the web and new technologies of communication have the power to liberate people, introduce democracy and democratize nations. In this paper, the author deals with these perspectives with a special focus on Latin America and Latin American quests for democracy. Taking the case of the Chilean students movement of 2011, he describes and analyses a set of “old” and basic communicative practices located within the walled intimacy of houses, occupied schools and assemblies. This description and analysis brings to the fore mediations that being at the very emergence of the movement, underlies and exceeds the Internet, providing elements to light up what technological determinisms shadow: the senses and sensibilities displayed in practices looking for voice, participation and recognition in the middle of neoliberal democracies.

scholarly journals Constructed Wetlands in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Review of Experiences during the Last Decade

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1744
Author(s):  
Marco A. Rodriguez-Dominguez ◽  
Dennis Konnerup ◽  
Hans Brix ◽  
Carlos A. Arias
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Plant Species ◽  
Constructed Wetlands ◽  
Oxygen Demand ◽  
Free Water ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Latin America And Caribbean ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Low Performance

The review aims to report the state-of-the-art constructed wetlands (CW) in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region not limited to national and local conditions. The aim is with a broader view, to bring updated and sufficient information, to facilitate the use of the CW technology in the different countries of LAC. Thus, 520 experiences extracted from the 169 reviewed documents in 20 countries were analyzed. According to the data, horizontal subsurface flow wetlands are the most reported CW in the region (62%), the second most common CW technology in the region is free water surface CW (17%), then vertical flow systems (9%), followed by intensified constructed wetlands (8%), and finally French systems (4%). The performance for nutrient removal is analyzed, finding that the mean of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Nitrogen (TN), and Total Phosphorous (TP) removal efficiencies varies from 65% to 83%, 55% to 72%, and 30% to 84%, respectively. The results suggest a generally good performance for COD and TN removal, but a low performance for TP removal. Regarding plant species used for CWs, 114 different plant species were reported, being until now the most extensive report about plant species used in CWs in the LAC region.

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