Local spatial data infrastructure, Trujillo-Peru

The development of a Municipal Information System, or currently better known as a local spatial data infrastructure, is considered complex due to the required inter-institutional relationships. In many developing countries Geographical Information Systems (GISs) are introduced but the benefits are modest as no changes take place in technical and organisational structure of organisations. Digital databases and computer-aided design (CAD) maps are mushrooming in great variety within different private and public institutions, municipal organisations and even within single departments and with structures similar to the paper period and thus operating on a stand-alone basis.Many national mapping agencies are not able to provide large-scale digital urban base maps, while the absence or low quality of cadastres makes those basic core data sets unavailable or inaccessible. The result is that duplication and incompatible data are frequently observed and also donor-driven stand-alone projects have a limited impact through the lack of institutional embedding and are not able to mature from the project to the institutional level. However, a positive sign is that there is an increasing awareness among data producers and consumers that investments in the development of digital data sets should be combined to reduce costs and increase benefits from especially GIS, and information and communication technology (ICT) in general.Within Trujillo a long-term vision was developed to make full use of ICT and GIS to modernise all operations of the Municipality to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its tasks. However, large investments are not feasible due to the very limited municipal budgets. To guarantee the support of the municipal council, short-term results are required. This paper describes three ‘products’ as part of the vision to develop through a step-by-step approach a local spatial data infrastructure for Trujillo.The three, rather different, products are:

1. fiscal cadastre, to increase municipal revenues through property taxation;

2. an ‘environmental atlas’ based on a compatible spatial and attribute data sets from a variety of organisations; and

3. a municipal website with interactive GIS and meta data information.

The paper concludes with some comments on the institutional and political requirements for the successful development of a local spatial data infrastructure and stresses that such an infrastructure is not a product but an incremental development process that will progress only in case such a process is simple, cost effective, user-friendly, and flexible with clear products.Political interest and institutional stability and genuine interest for inter-institutional cooperation will add much to the success of this process.     

Applicability of a Neuroprobabilistic Integral Risk Index for the Environmental Management of Polluted Areas: A Case Study

Recently, we developed a GIS-Integrated Integral Risk Index (IRI) to assess human health risks in areas with presence of environmental pollutants. Contaminants were previously ranked by applying a self-organizing map (SOM) to their characteristics of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity in order to obtain the Hazard Index (HI). In the present study, the original IRI was substantially improved by allowing the entrance of probabilistic data. A neuroprobabilistic HI was developed by combining SOM and Monte Carlo analysis. In general terms, the deterministic and probabilistic HIs followed a similar pattern: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and light polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were the pollutants showing the highest and lowest values of HI, respectively. However, the bioaccumulation value of heavy metals notably increased after considering a probability density function to explain the bioaccumulation factor. To check its applicability, a case study was investigated. The probabilistic integral risk was calculated in the chemical/petrochemical industrial area of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain), where an environmental program has been carried out since 2002. The risk change between 2002 and 2005 was evaluated on the basis of probabilistic data of the levels of various pollutants in soils. The results indicated that the risk of the chemicals under study did not follow a homogeneous tendency. However, the current levels of pollution do not mean a relevant source of health risks for the local population. Moreover, the neuroprobabilistic HI seems to be an adequate tool to be taken into account in risk assessment processes.     

‘A brutal blow against the democratic normality’: unlearning the epistemology of the political

ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to rethink our understanding of ‘the political’ through an examination of two novels by José Saramago, Blindness and Seeing. Both novels tackle directly a central, if not the central, signature metaphor of Western political thought, namely that of ‘seeing the light’. This metaphor takes many forms and recurs throughout the tradition of Western political philosophy as a source, legitimiser, and validator of knowing, and perhaps even a guarantor of knowledge. In particular, this metaphor has served to make knowable whatever it is that is signified by ‘the political’. By extension, it also means that whatever might be outside of this epistemological frame is rendered unknowable, if not unthinkable. Both of Saramago’s novels provide a fruitful means to recalibrate how we might know ‘the political’. The novels call into question the epistemic signatures that frame our commonly accepted understandings of ‘the political’ and in so doing provoke us further to question how we might move towards unlearning the epistemology of the political.     

Evaluating the causal economic impacts of transport investments: evidence from the Madrid–Barcelona high speed rail corridor

This paper evaluates economic impacts arising from the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) between Madrid and Barcelona. Using difference-in-differences estimation we estimate an average treatment effect for provinces with stops on the HSR line of 2.4% for economic output, 3.3% for numbers of firms, and 1.1% for labour productivity. We complement our DID results with a synthetic control analysis for Lleida and Tarragona, two provinces that we argue were assigned HSR stations largely due to their incidental location. We find that both the number of firms and labour productivity are substantially higher in these provinces than in their synthetic counterparts.     

Does transformational leadership predict group emotional intelligence in work settings? / ¿Es el liderazgo transformacional un predictor de la inteligencia emocional grupal en los contextos laborales?

Contagion of emotions is a widely accepted characteristic of transformational leaders. However, the impact they may have on the Emotional Intelligence of their subordinates is an open question. In this paper, we analyse whether Transformational Leadership (LTF) perceptions influence the Emotional Intelligence of their groups (GEI). This is a novel approach within the actual interest on emotional intelligence and its role in group results. The participants were 272 subordinates from 52 groups that belonged to different private and public organizations in Spain. They completed a questionnaire including the variables of interest. Our study helps to clarify the relations between TFL perceptions and GEI, showing that TFL and GEI relate at the group level and that TFL is one of the predictors of the perception of GEI in work settings. Thus, the development of emotionally competent transformational leaders will produce emotionally competent groups that might increase their performance, efficiency and other processes (i.e., engagement).     

Don't End Up in the Fields: Identity Construction among Mexican Adolescent Immigrants,their Parents,and Sociocontextual Processes

This grounded theory study of 16 Mexican immigrant adolescents and 20 of their parents examines how they construct relational identities within their families, at school, with friends, and in the larger society. Results focus on a core identity bind faced by the adolescents: immigration messages from parents that say, “don't be like me” and the societal message, “you're not like us.” Response to this bind was guided by two contrasting sets of identity narratives: Empowering narratives invited an intentional approach to school and life choices. Restricting narratives maintained an ambivalent approach to school and life choices. Resolution of the identity bind was a collective, ongoing process that has implications for Mexican immigrant families and the professionals who work with them.     

Graphical and Numerical Methods for Detecting Influential Observations in Complex Bingham Data

We describe methods to detect influential observations in a sample of pre-shapes when the underlying distribution is assumed to be complex Bingham. One of these methods is based on Cook's distance, which is derived from the likelihood of the complex Bingham distribution. Other method is related to the tangent space, which is based on the local influence for the multivariate normal distribution. A method to detect outliers is also explained. The application of the methods is illustrated in both a real dataset and a simulated sample.     

Assessing the relevance of higher education courses

The establishment of the European Higher Education Area has involved specifying lists of professional competencies that programs are expected to develop, and with this the need for procedures to measure how every course within a higher education program is aligned with the program's competencies. We propose an instrument for characterizing this alignment, a process that we call assessing the relevance of a course. Using information from the course syllabus (objectives, contents and assessment scheme), our instrument produces indicators for characterizing the syllabus in terms of a competence list and for assessing its coherence. Because assessment involves quality, the results obtained can also be used to revise and improve the course syllabus. We illustrate this process with an example of a methods course from a mathematics teacher education program at a Spanish university.