Post Disaster Navigation And Allied Services Over Opportunistic Networks

This book provides the details of developing a digital pedestrian map construction system over the intermittently connected mobile network. Over the past couple of decades, countries across the world, both developing and developed, have witnessed a significant number of disasters. Thus, it has become mandatory for each of the disaster-prone countries to equip themselves with appropriate measures to cope with the challenges of providing post-disaster services. Some of the serious challenges are incapacitated communication infrastructure, unstable power supply and inaccessible road networks. Out of these challenges, the destruction of road networks, especially in developing countries, acts as a major hindrance to effective disaster management. To be more specific, the success of a disaster response operation generally depends on the speed of evacuation and transportation of adequate amount of relief materials at the right time to the disaster-affected areas. Hence, map-based navigation support is a primary requirement for post-disaster relief operations. This book also provides the solution of the two other important post-disaster management services such as situational awareness and resource allocation. Both of these services are invariably dependent on the existence of navigation support. Finally, in order to offer such services, the other challenge is to address the problem of incapacitated communication infrastructure. This book also deals with such challenges in post-disaster scenarios and develops automated post-disaster management services.

This book proposes a framework and strategies for reliable end-to-end post-disaster services using smartphone-based delay-tolerant networks, which can operate even in the absence of conventional network connectivity. It explores various aspects of this challenge, ranging from accurate need assessment, to timely need accumulation, efficient resource allocation, and reliable data dissemination. The book offers insightful reading for all technologists and researchers working in the domain of ICT-based disaster management in developing countries, and will help them grasp the challenges involved in providing post-disaster services in an extremely difficult network scenario, while also offering possible solutions. The book will also benefit disaster management authorities, government agencies, NGOs and other stakeholders, helping them enhance their preparedness through the intelligent use of wireless technologies coupled with smart devices.

At the end of the Second World War, a growing concern that Canadians' civil liberties were not adequately protected, coupled with the international revival of the concept of universal human rights, led to a long public campaign to adopt a national bill of rights. While these initial efforts had been only partially successful by the 1960s, they laid the foundation for the radical change in Canadian human rights achieved by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1980s. In Toward the Charter Christopher MacLennan explores the origins of this dramatic revolution in Canadian human rights, from its beginnings in the Great Depression to the critical developments of the 1960s. Drawing heavily on the experiences of a diverse range of human rights advocates, the author provides a detailed account of the various efforts to resist the abuse of civil liberties at the hands of the federal government and provincial legislatures and the resulting campaign for a national bill of rights. The important roles played by parliamentarians such as John Diefenbaker and academics such as F.R. Scott are placed alongside those of trade unionists, women, and a long list of individuals representing Canada's multicultural groups to reveal the diversity of the bill of rights movement. At the same time MacLennan weaves Canadian-made arguments for a bill of rights with ideas from the international human rights movement led by the United Nations to show that the Canadian experience can only be understood within a wider, global context.

In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints for reconstructing state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation. In reality, African economies and polities are very much informal in character, with informal actors, including so-called Big Men, often using their positions in the formal structure as a means to reach their own goals. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, including the DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia, this comprehensive volume shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent’s conflict areas. Moreover, it demonstrates that without a proper understanding of the impact of these networks, attempts to formalize African states, particularly those emerging from wars, will be in vain.

The Unwilling and the Reluctant: Theoretical Perspectives on Disobedience in the Military and The Apathetic and the Defiant: Case Studies of Canadian Mutiny and Disobedience, 1812-1919 are the first two volumes in a series devoted to disobedience issues in the Canadian military. Now with The Insubordinate and the Noncompliant, the trilogy is complete. Military leadership has both formal and informal dimensions. The formal leadership of any organization must ensure that it minimizes the divergence between institutional aims and the actions of informal leaders. When this separation occurs, the result is sometimes mutiny. These incidents of insubordination and noncompliance represent a form of dialogue between military personnel and their leadership. The Insubordinate and the Noncompliant offers a perspective on the Canadian experience with military mutiny in the twentieth century in an effort to provide relevant lessons for today.

"The assessment builds on the work of the Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative"--Pref.

In our "wireless" world it is easy to take the importance of the undersea cable systems for granted, but the stakes of their successful operation are huge, as they are responsible for carrying almost all transoceanic Internet traffic. In The Undersea Network Nicole Starosielski follows these cables from the ocean depths to their landing zones on the sandy beaches of the South Pacific, bringing them to the surface of media scholarship and making visible the materiality of the wired network. In doing so, she charts the cable network's cultural, historical, geographic and environmental dimensions. Starosielski argues that the environments the cables occupy are historical and political realms, where the network and the connections it enables are made possible by the deliberate negotiation and manipulation of technology, culture, politics and geography. Accompanying the book is an interactive digital mapping project, where readers can trace cable routes, view photographs and archival materials, and read stories about the island cable hubs.