Anticipating Future Environments

Anticipating Future Environments PDF Author: Shana Lee Hirsch
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574748X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Drought. Wildfire. Extreme flooding. How does climate change affect the daily work of scientists? Ecological restoration is often premised on the idea of returning a region to an earlier, healthier state. Yet the effects of climate change undercut that premise and challenge the ways scientists can work, destabilizing the idea of “normalcy” and revealing the politics that shape what scientists can do. How can the practice of ecological restoration shift to anticipate an increasingly dynamic future? And how does a scientific field itself adapt to climate change? Restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin—a vast and diverse landscape experiencing warming waters, less snowpack, and greater fluctuations in precipitation—may offer answers to some of these questions. Shana Hirsch tells the story of restoration science in the basin, surveying its past and detailing the work of today’s salmon habitat restoration efforts. Her analysis offers critical insight into scientific practices, emerging approaches and ways of thinking, the incorporation of future climate change scenarios into planning, and the ultimate transformation—or adaptation—of the science of ecological restoration. For scientists and environmental managers around the globe, Anticipating Future Environments will shed light on how to more effectively cope with climate change.

Anticipating Future Environments

Anticipating Future Environments PDF Author: Shana Lee Hirsch
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574748X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Drought. Wildfire. Extreme flooding. How does climate change affect the daily work of scientists? Ecological restoration is often premised on the idea of returning a region to an earlier, healthier state. Yet the effects of climate change undercut that premise and challenge the ways scientists can work, destabilizing the idea of “normalcy” and revealing the politics that shape what scientists can do. How can the practice of ecological restoration shift to anticipate an increasingly dynamic future? And how does a scientific field itself adapt to climate change? Restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin—a vast and diverse landscape experiencing warming waters, less snowpack, and greater fluctuations in precipitation—may offer answers to some of these questions. Shana Hirsch tells the story of restoration science in the basin, surveying its past and detailing the work of today’s salmon habitat restoration efforts. Her analysis offers critical insight into scientific practices, emerging approaches and ways of thinking, the incorporation of future climate change scenarios into planning, and the ultimate transformation—or adaptation—of the science of ecological restoration. For scientists and environmental managers around the globe, Anticipating Future Environments will shed light on how to more effectively cope with climate change.

Managing Project Uncertainty

Managing Project Uncertainty PDF Author: David Cleden
Publisher: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780566088407
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
By picking up where traditional risk management techniques begin to fail, this book brings together leading-edge thinking from a variety of disciplines and shows how these techniques can be used to conquer uncertainty in projects. The book addresses five key questions: Why is there uncertainty in projects? How do you spot the symptoms of uncertainty, preferably at an early stage? What can be done to avoid uncertainty? What strategies can be used to deal with project uncertainty? How can both the individual and the organisation learn to cope more effectively in the future?

An Uncertain Future - Anticipating Oil in Uganda

An Uncertain Future - Anticipating Oil in Uganda PDF Author: Annika Witte
Publisher: Göttingen University Press
ISBN: 3863953606
Category : Petroleum
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
The discovery of oil in Uganda in 2006 ushered in an oil-age era with new prospects of unforeseen riches. However, after an initial exploration boom developments stalled. Unlike other countries with major oil discoveries, Uganda has been slow in developing its oil. In fact, over ten years after the first discoveries, there is still no oil. During the time of the research for this book between 2012 and 2015, Uganda’s oil had not yet fully materialised but was becoming. The overarching characteristic of this research project was waiting for the big changes to come: a waiting characterised by indeterminacy. There is a timeline but every year it gets expanded and in 2018 having oil still seems to belong to an uncertain future. This book looks at the waiting period as a time of not-yet-ness and describes the practices of future- and resource-making in Uganda. How did Ugandans handle the new resource wealth and how did they imagine their future with oil to be? This ethnography is concerned with Uganda’s oil and the way Ugandans anticipated different futures with it: promising futures of wealth and development and disturbing futures of destruction and suffering. The book works out how uncertainty was an underlying feature of these anticipations and how risks and risk discourses shaped the imaginations of possible futures. Much of the talk around the oil involved the dichotomy of blessing or curse and it was not clear, which one the oil would be. Rather than adding another assessment of what the future with oil will be like, this book describes the predictions and prophesies as an essential part of how resources are being made. This ethnography shows how various actors in Uganda, from the state, the oil industry, the civil society, and the extractive communities, have tried to negotiate their position in the oil arena. Annika Witte argues in this book that by establishing their risks and using them as power resources actors can influence the becoming of oil as a resource and their own place in a petro-future. The book offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of Uganda’s oil and the negotiations that took place in an oil state to be.

Uncertainty and Information

Uncertainty and Information PDF Author: George J. Klir
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471755567
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Deal with information and uncertainty properly and efficientlyusing tools emerging from generalized information theory Uncertainty and Information: Foundations of Generalized InformationTheory contains comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of resultsthat have emerged from a research program begun by the author inthe early 1990s under the name "generalized information theory"(GIT). This ongoing research program aims to develop a formalmathematical treatment of the interrelated concepts of uncertaintyand information in all their varieties. In GIT, as in classicalinformation theory, uncertainty (predictive, retrodictive,diagnostic, prescriptive, and the like) is viewed as amanifestation of information deficiency, while information isviewed as anything capable of reducing the uncertainty. A broadconceptual framework for GIT is obtained by expanding theformalized language of classical set theory to include moreexpressive formalized languages based on fuzzy sets of varioustypes, and by expanding classical theory of additive measures toinclude more expressive non-additive measures of varioustypes. This landmark book examines each of several theories for dealingwith particular types of uncertainty at the following fourlevels: * Mathematical formalization of the conceived type ofuncertainty * Calculus for manipulating this particular type ofuncertainty * Justifiable ways of measuring the amount of uncertainty in anysituation formalizable in the theory * Methodological aspects of the theory With extensive use of examples and illustrations to clarify complexmaterial and demonstrate practical applications, generoushistorical and bibliographical notes, end-of-chapter exercises totest readers' newfound knowledge, glossaries, and an Instructor'sManual, this is an excellent graduate-level textbook, as well as anoutstanding reference for researchers and practitioners who dealwith the various problems involving uncertainty and information. AnInstructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all theproblems in the book is available from the Wiley editorialdepartment.

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit PDF Author: Frank H. Knight
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602060053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

Speculative Communities

Speculative Communities PDF Author: Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226816028
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"In Speculative Communities, Komporozos-Athanasiou examines the ways that financial speculation has moved beyond markets to shape fundamental aspects of our social and political lives. As ordinary people make exceptional decisions--such as the American election of a populist demagogue or the British vote to leave the European Union--they are moving from time-honored and -tested practices of governance, toward the speculative promise of a different kind of future. Even our methods of building community have shifted to the speculative realm as social media platforms enable and amplify alternative visions of the present and future-these are the "speculative communities" that now shape our personal and political realities. For Komporozos-Athanasiou, "to speculate" means increasingly "to connect," to endorse uncertainty preemptively, and often daringly, as a means of social survival. Finance has thus become the model for society writ large. These financial systems have taken a notable turn in our current era, however. Contemporary capitalism sees the risk-taking, entrepreneurial person being refashioned as a politically disoriented, speculative subject, who embraces the future's radical uncertainty rather than averting it. As Komporozos-Athanasiou shows, virtual marketplaces, new social media, and dating apps function as finance's speculative infrastructures, leading to a new type of imagination across economy and society"--

Handling Uncertainty

Handling Uncertainty PDF Author: Mike Briggs
Publisher: IChemE
ISBN: 9780852954324
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
Acting as a wide-ranging guide for young professionals and a source of reference for managers, this title deals with the subject of uncertainty in the process industries and related fields, in a practical and positive way. It demonstrates how to recognize key features and handle different situations effectively, illustrating the principles for effective action with examples from the author's experience in the process industries.

The Heterogeneous Effects of Uncertainty on Trade

The Heterogeneous Effects of Uncertainty on Trade PDF Author: Ibrahim Nana
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 45

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Book Description
This paper empirically investigates the relationship between uncertainty and trade. We use a gravity model for 143 countries over the 1980-2021 period to assess the impact of uncertainty on bilateral trade. We confirm that, in general, uncertainty has a negative impact on trade. The findings suggest that a one standard deviation increase in global uncertainty is associated with a decline in bilateral trade by 4.5 percent, with fuel and industrial products trade being the most impacted. This negative impact is observed for uncertainty on both sides of the border, with a higher impact of uncertainty from the importing country. The article goes deeper into the analysis and shows that deeper trade integration (horizontal integration) mitigates the negative impact of uncertainty on trade. In contrast, higher participation in global value chains (vertical integration) amplifies the negative effect of uncertainty on trade. We find that geopolitical tensions amplify the deterrent effect of uncertainty on trade. Finally, the result is heterogeneous across income levels, regions, and resource endowment: (a) uncertainty has a negative impact on bilateral trade between Emerging Markets and Developing Economies and Advanced Economies; however, (b) at the regional level, Africa and Europe’s intraregional trade decrease as uncertainty surges. (c) Evidence shows that non-resources-rich countries are more at risk.

Mastering Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering

Mastering Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering PDF Author: Peter F. Pelz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030783545
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
This open access book reports on innovative methods, technologies and strategies for mastering uncertainty in technical systems. Despite the fact that current research on uncertainty is mainly focusing on uncertainty quantification and analysis, this book gives emphasis to innovative ways to master uncertainty in engineering design, production and product usage alike. It gathers authoritative contributions by more than 30 scientists reporting on years of research in the areas of engineering, applied mathematics and law, thus offering a timely, comprehensive and multidisciplinary account of theories and methods for quantifying data, model and structural uncertainty, and of fundamental strategies for mastering uncertainty. It covers key concepts such as robustness, flexibility and resilience in detail. All the described methods, technologies and strategies have been validated with the help of three technical systems, i.e. the Modular Active Spring-Damper System, the Active Air Spring and the 3D Servo Press, which have been in turn developed and tested during more than ten years of cooperative research. Overall, this book offers a timely, practice-oriented reference guide to graduate students, researchers and professionals dealing with uncertainty in the broad field of mechanical engineering.

Getting Skills Right Assessing and Anticipating Skills for the Green Transition Unlocking Talent for a Sustainable Future

Getting Skills Right Assessing and Anticipating Skills for the Green Transition Unlocking Talent for a Sustainable Future PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264982531
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
Policies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of human activities have important consequences for labour markets, jobs, and skills. As employment is shifting towards more sustainable activities, workers are increasingly expected to have skills that support the transition to a greener economy.