Landslide investigations during pandemic restrictions: initial assessment of recent peat landslides in Ireland

Landslides involving peat are relatively common in Ireland, upland areas of Great Britain and subantarctic islands. Bogflows and bog slides are less common types of peat failure and almost unknown outside Ireland. Unusually, three of these occurred in 2020 including one bogflow at a windfarm that gained much adverse media attention, and a small but damaging peat slide was also reported. The aim of this paper is to determine the extent to which the new bog slide and bogflows are consistent with previous examples in terms of their contexts, characteristics and possible causes, particularly relating to commercial forestry operations. Aerial video footage of all three landslides obtained by local people using drones, and ground-based footage of one of them in progress, allowed a detailed examination of their characteristics and contexts to be made despite the global travel and activity restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The windfarm bogflow appears to have resulted from removal of toe support by an earlier peat flow that was itself probably caused by construction of an access road; the other two landslides were most likely triggered by rainfall. All three are consistent with previous examples of their respective types in their general characteristics and appear to be associated with well-known causal factors including hydrological, topographic and/or forestry influences. Forestry operations probably contributed to the occurrence of two of the landslides and restricted the expansion of two of them.

Concern, Conception, and Consequence: Re-thinking the Paradigm of Higher Education in Dangerous Times

Discussion of the role of universities in relation to broad issues of sustainability has been current for some decades, although predominantly at the margins of debate and policy. Yet a recent rapid rise of concern—catalyzed by mounting evidence of climate crisis, biodiversity loss, pandemic disease and further systemic issues -is focusing renewed attention on the adequacy of the response of higher education to unprecedented times of urgency, uncertainty and threat. Whilst it is now widely acknowledged that the fate of the planet and of humanity hangs in the balance, there still remains an astonishing disconnect between pressing signs of global change, and the relatively closed world of higher education. A trend toward greening universities' operations is positive, but fails to engage or galvanize the cultural and value shift toward a holistic and ecological zeitgeist that is now necessary to generate widespread institutional systemic change. This paper delves into deep causal factors that have historically impeded the ability of universities to respond fully and effectively to present and probable future realities, pointing to the foundations of Western thought such as reductionism, objectivism, dualism, individualism, anthropocentrism, rationalism, instrumentalism and technocentrism that shape mainstream education policy and practice, overlain and reinforced in more recent times by neo-liberal conceptions of the purpose of universities in a modern economy. It is argued that these elements of our culturally shared worldview constrain our ability to perceive and respond deeply, fully and wisely to the global predicament, but also maintain destructive patterns of development. Whilst there is increasing acceptance that education must “transform” in order to—in turn—be transformative in effect, there is less clarity about the guiding assumptions and ideas that inform mainstream policy and practice, and about the philosophic value bases that can facilitate transformative educational thinking, policy and practice. A framework of three broad and complementary components of paradigm—Concern, Conception, and Consequence—is employed to outline the shape of the systemic paradigmatic shift that universities need to urgently navigate in order to maximize their ability to respond fully to contemporary socio-economic and ecological conditions and trajectories.

The Root Cause Analysis and Successful Control of an Oilwell Blowout in the Middle East

In 2017, a blowout and explosion occurred in a drilling oilwell in the Middle East. After drilling to the depth of 2,610 m, tripping was decided in order to change the bit. When the crew were pulling the drill string out of the hole with the drill-string being at the depth of 1332 m, blowout and explosion occurred. The well was a development well drilling almost horizontally (82 degrees inclination angle) into a highly-pressured gas-cap and oil pay-zone of the oilfield. In this work, following a brief explanation of the root causal factors of the incident, we give an account of the blowout control methods applied to put an end to the blowout. Both the top-kill method and the bottom-kill method by relief well drilling, were simultaneously implemented to control the blowout. Finally, the blowout was successfully controlled by the bottom-kill after 58 days. During top-kill operations, all equipment was cleared away and this contributed to proceeding to permanent abandonment immediately after the relief well success. Finally, the adverse effect of the blowout on the environment (HSE) was qualitatively discussed.

E-Government Information Systems (IS) Project Failure in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Literature

E-government information systems (IS) projects experience numerous challenges that can lead to total or partial failure. The project failure factors have been identified and studied by numerous researchers, but the root causes of such failures are not well-articulated. In this study, literature on e-government IS project failures in developing-world contexts is reviewed through the application of qualitative meta-synthesis, design–reality gap analysis, and root cause analysis. In the process, 18 causal factors and 181 root causes are identified as responsible for e-government IS project failures. The most prevalent of the 18 causal factors are found to be inadequate system requirements engineering (with 22 root causes), inadequate project management (19 root causes), and missing or incomplete features (16 root causes). These findings can be of use to future researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to identify methods of avoiding e-government IS failures, particularly in developing-world contexts.

Avoidable Household Food Waste: Diagnosing the Links between Causes and Composition

Problems associated with the wastage of food intended for human consumption are well known and the discarding of edible but unconsumed food—avoidable food waste—is clearly undesirable. Interventions to reduce avoidable food waste need to be suitably informed: understanding the causes and consequences of avoidable food waste is instructive in this regard. One hitherto unexplored approach to understand better the causes of food waste is to elucidate associations between the composition of avoidable food waste and the reasons why it is generated. If such associations can be established, data relating to the composition of avoidable food waste can contribute evidence to underpin interventions intended to prevent or reduce avoidable food waste. The aim of this study was therefore to explore links between the causes of avoidable food waste and its composition, and thereby contribute to the development of management measures. Information relating the commonly reported causes of avoidable food waste and its composition (part-consumed, whole-unused and leftovers) was gathered via a series of participatory workshops involving university students. Outcomes of the workshops indicated that individual causes of avoidable food waste rarely lead exclusively to a single type of avoidable food waste, but some relationships were evident. Five of the 13 causal factors explored were considered to lead to all three types of avoidable food waste; a further five were considered to lead mainly to part-consumed and whole-unused food waste. Potential interventions to effect positive change are explored; the value of classifying avoidable food waste to guide interventions was evident, although approaches would need to be aligned with the observed composition of avoidable food waste and the method(s) of intervention considered. Applications of the approach and outcomes of this study are also considered in a policy context.

Evaluating underlying causative factors for earthquake-induced landslides and landslide susceptibility mapping in Upper Indrawati Watershed, Nepal

The main objective of this study is to understand the overall impact of earthquake in upper Indrawati Watershed, located in the high mountainous region of Nepal. Hence, we have assessed the relationship between the co-seismic landslide and underlying causative factors as well as performed landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) to identify the landslide susceptible zone in the study area. We assessed the landslides distribution in terms of density, number, and area within 85 classes of 13 causal factors including slope, aspect, elevation, formation, land cover, distance to road and river, soil type, total curvature, seismic intensity, topographic wetness index, distance to fault, and flow accumulation. The earthquake-induced landslide is clustered in Northern region of the study area, which is dominated by steep rocky slope, forested land, and low human density. Among the causal factors, 'slope' showed positive correlation for landslide occurrence. Increase in slope in the study area also escalates the landslide distribution, with highest density at 43%, landslide number at 4.34/km2, and landslide area abundance at 2.97% in a slope class (> 50°). We used logistic regression (LR) for LSM integrating with geographic information system. LR analysis depicts that land cover is the best predictor followed by slope and distance to fault with higher positive coefficient values. LSM was validated by assessing the correctly classified landslides under susceptibility categories using area under curve (AUC) and seed cell area index (SCAI). The LSM approach showed good accuracy with respective AUC values for success rate and prediction rate of 0.843 and 0.832. Similarly, the decreasing SCAI value from very low to very high susceptibility categories advise satisfactory accuracy of the LSM approach.