Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) are a microclimatic phenomenon which manifests as a significant increase in the temperature of cities compared to their surrounding areas. Recently the phenomenon has been enforced by the tendency to climate change and in particular by extreme climate events. This book presents and analyzes the results of a project to deve...
The book presents the results of an in-depth comparative study assessing the implementation of the EU Pharmacovigilance Directive in six EU Member States. By going beyond legal transposition and instead focusing on practical implementation, this study aims to close a gap in EU compliance research. Based on qualitative interviews with relevant actor...
Governments have known since the 1960s that smoking results in irreversible health damage. This book examines why governments have done so little to combat this when they have been aware of the problem and its solutions for decades. What are the strategies and decisions that make a difference, given that policy environments are often not conducive ...
This book deals with contestations "from below" of legal policies and implementation practices in asylum and deportation. Consequently, it covers three types of mobilization: solidarity protests against the deportation of refused asylum seekers, refugee activism campaigning for residence rights and inclusion, and restrictive protests agai...
This book shows the factors linking information flow, social intelligence, rights management and modelling with epistemic democracy, offering licensed linked data along with information about the rights involved. This model of democracy for the web of data brings new challenges for the social organisation of knowledge, collective innovation, and th...
This book offers something for everyone working with market segmentation: practical guidance for users of market segmentation solutions; organisational guidance on implementation issues; guidance for market researchers in charge of collecting suitable data; and guidance for data analysts with respect to the technical and statistical aspects of mark...
Predicting the time needed to complete a project, task or daily activity can be difficult and people frequently underestimate how long an activity will take. This book sheds light on why and when this happens, what we should do to avoid it and how to give more realistic time predictions. It describes methods for predicting time usage in situations ...
This book consolidates experiences from across Europe on the design, development, implementation and evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures for healthcare. It provides insights with practical relevance for those involved or interested in the planning and implementation of such infrastructures and includes 11 empirical cases o...
This book investigates why, despite more and more resources devoted to safety training, expectations are not entirely met, particularly in the industrial sectors that have already achieved a high safety level. It not only reflects the most precious viewpoints of experts from different disciplines, different countries, with experiences in various in...
This open access publication discusses exclusionary rules in different criminal justice systems. It is based on the findings of a research project in comparative law with a focus on the question of whether or not a fair trial can be secured through evidence exclusion. Part I explains the legal framework in which exclusionary rules function in six l...
This book discusses how Norwegian shipping companies played a crucial role in global shipping markets in the 20th century, at times transporting more than ten per cent of world seaborne trade. Chapters explore how Norway managed to remain competitive, despite being a high labour-cost country in an industry with global competition. Among the feature...
By examining the implementation dynamics of EU Readmission Agreements (EURAs), this book addresses the practical reasons why irregular immigrants cannot be expelled. EURAs are one of the vital legal instruments framing EU external migration law with regard to the expulsion of irregular immigrants, yet their implementation has met with various obsta...
This book reports on the results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the framework of the APPRAISAL FP7 project to determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach to air quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop air quality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Follow...
This book is an open access publication.Forest ecosystems in Central Europe are changing as a result of anthropogenic influences and changing climate conditions. As such, a large-scale monitoring programme was undertaken in order to understand the influence of site modification, deposition of air pollutants, and climate.
This book presents the sci...
This book showcases the burgeoning area of applied research at the intersection between weather and climate science and the energy industry. It illustrates how better communication between science and industry can help both sides. By opening a dialogue, scientists can understand the broader context for their work and the energy industry is able to ...
This open access volume is about how to research the influence of our changing media environment. Today, there is not one single medium that is the driving force of change. With the spreading of various technical communication media such as mobile phone and internet platforms, we are confronted with a media manifold of deep mediatization. But how c...
This book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among ...
This book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. ...
The open access book discusses human health and wellbeing within the context of built environments. It provides a comprehensive overview of relevant sources of literature and user complaints that clearly demonstrate the consequences of lack of attention to health in current building design and planning. Current designing of energy-efficient buildin...
This open access textbook is the first to provide Business and Economics Ph.D. students with a precise and intuitive introduction to the formal backgrounds of modern financial theory. It explains Brownian motion, random processes, measures, and Lebesgue integrals intuitively, but without sacrificing the necessary mathematical formalism, making them...
This book discusses both the theory and practical applications of self-correcting data, commonly known as error-correcting codes. The applications included demonstrate the importance of these codes in a wide range of everyday technologies, from smartphones to secure communications and transactions. Written in a readily understandable style, the boo...
The Anthropocene is the human-dominated modern era that has accelerated social, environmental and climate change across the world in the last few decades. This book examines the challenges the Anthropocene presents to the sustainable management of deltas, both the many threats as well as the opportunities. In the world's deltas the Anthropocen...
This book explores the collision between the sustainable energy transition and the Internet of Things (IoT). In that regard, this book's arrival is timely. Not only is the Internet of Things for energy applications, herein called the energy Internet of Things (eIoT), rapidly developing but also the transition towards sustainable energy to abat...
Maritime or marine spatial planning has gained increasing prominence as an integrated, common-sense approach to promoting sustainable maritime development. A growing number of countries are engaged in preparing and implementing maritime spatial plans: however, questions are emerging from the growing body of MSP experience. How can maritime spatial ...
Modern information and communication technologies, together with a cultural upheaval within the research community, have profoundly changed research in nearly every aspect. Ranging from sharing and discussing ideas in social networks for scientists to new collaborative environments and novel publication formats, knowledge creation and dissemination...
This book explores the implications of acknowledging uncertainty and black swans for regulation of high-hazard technologies, for stakeholder acceptability of potentially hazardous activities and for risk governance. The conventional approach to risk assessment, which combines the likelihood of an event and the severity of its consequences, is poorl...
This timely book addresses the conflict between globalism and nationalism. It provides a liberal communitarian response to the rise of populism occurring in many democracies. The book highlights the role of communities next to that of the state and the market. It spells out the policy implications of liberal communitarianism for privacy, freedom o...
It explores the diverse phenomena which are challenging the international law of the sea today, using the unique perspective of a simultaneous analysis of the national, individual and common interests at stake. This perspective, which all the contributors bear in mind when treating their own topic, also constitutes a useful element in the effort to...
This book provides a set of conceptual, empirical, and comparative chapters that apply a public policy perspective to investigate the political and institutional factors driving the use of evidence to inform health policy in low, middle, and high income settings. The work presents key findings from the Getting Research Into Policy (GRIP-Health) pro...
Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond poli...
Just how strong is the movement of big data analytics to the cloud? This report, based on a survey by O'Reilly data analyst John King, reveals that the desire among corporations to adopt big data-as-a-service is gaining momentum-and that many organizations with big data cloud experience are likely to expand their use.
King's recent sur...
Think Java is a hands-on introduction to computer science and programming used by many universities and high schools around the world. Its conciseness, emphasis on vocabulary, and informal tone make it particularly appealing for readers with little or no experience. The book starts with the most basic programming concepts and gradually works its wa...