Engineering Professional

" Climate change refers to changes in the long-term climatic conditions of an area, and is a result of both natural phenomenon, such as volcanic eruption, and human-induced changes in the atmosphere, such as an increase in greenhouse gas emissions".  There is growing consensus within the international scientific community that anthropogenic forces, e.g., land use changes, widespread deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, contribute significantly to climate change. Warming of the climate system is evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea levels. Since 1850, when weather stations around the world began measuring temperature fluctuations, 1995-2005 rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperatures.  While temperature increases are widespread around the world, temperatures have risen faster over land areas than over ocean

Land sharing is a form of land readjustment, usually referring to smaller scale, more local government and community-based efforts.  While land readjustment is primarily a public-private (formal) alliance, land sharing may involve different actors and a range of formal and informal partnerships that develop where more than two actors may be involved depending precisely upon the local circumstances. The concept behind land sharing partnerships is that the landowner (public or private) and the land occupants (squatters) reach an agreement whereby the landowner retains the most economically attractive part of the land parcel and the dwellers are allowed to build houses on the other part, usually with full tenure rights.  In some cases, the public authority or the private owner may build the units and sell them to the previous occupants at subsidized rates. During the 1980's and 1990's, innovative “land sharing” projects were implemented in Thailand and, more rece

Suburban slums in developing countries may be a simple extension of core city slums, driven by the rapid growth of low-income households. They may be the product of laxer enforcement regimes of local governments in suburban areas. They may reflect lower land prices in suburban areas, creating less inducement for public or private stakeholders to evict them. They may reflect past economic geographies, e.g., former industrial communities that have since moved to peri-urban areas. They may emerge in areas that were formerly middle class, as is occurring in some western countries today.  As energy prices increase, housing in urban nodes will rise in price faster than in suburban areas with limited employment and public transport access, resulting in possible disinvestment. Most central city slums are built at high densities – often between 600 and 1,800 people per hectare. The highest density slum in the world is Dharavi in Mumbai, home to over one million people (2003) living in

Acquiring land suitable for urban landfills (such as transfer stations/zones, landfills, incinerators and/or composting plants) can be difficult, not only because of the special site requirements, which are related to geological stability, capacity, soil conditions, etc., but also due to “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) effects.  NIMBY refers to sites commonly opposed to by people living in the immediate area of the proposed site and along the route that the waste transport trucks are expected to use. Even well-managed landfills may produce odors and disease vectors, which lower the value of neighboring property and reinforce NIMBY effects.  Poorly managed sites (and open dumps) pose additional health and environmental risks due to toxins leaching into the soil and water, and generation of hazardous gases. As a result, resistance to siting landfills near existing development is often intense.  The result of this is lengthy travel times to landfills, increasing financial a

Land readjustment is a technique which pools land plots to enable redevelopment of large areas, giving existing plot owners a share of benefits in the re-plotted area.  These benefits usually include both monetary benefits and a new housing unit. This very powerful tool shapes urban form, both in inner-city redevelopment areas and in peri-urban areas. In peri-urban areas, it is particularly useful in shaping urban form where numerous small plots exist. It also enables public authorities and private developers to avoid piecemeal development, thereby enabling large-scale, and thus often more rational planning of transportation and settlement systems in areas of urban land conversion. Although the conceptual elegance of this approach is clear, i.e., it enables win-win situations both for former land owners (who receive a share of the land appreciation through redevelopment, plus usually a housing unit) and the developers, it requires trust by land owners in the local authori

Urban service boundaries are effective in ensuring that new development does not impose an unreasonable financial burden on public sector services.  Availability and cost of service delivery should inform which areas will be designated for new development and which uses will be permitted, in order to achieve more cost-effective and sustainable growth patterns.  Ultimately, it can lead to better environmental infrastructure coverage in new areas on the fringe. Service boundaries also generally contribute to more equitable service costing. Without service boundaries, the majority of urban residents, especially those in inner city areas, subsidize service provision in leapfrogging peripheral communities. Coordinating infrastructure plans with integrated land use and transportation planning offers additional advantages.  Because utility corridors for water, sewage and other services generally run along road easements, installing trunk infrastructure ahead of road building

Urban area is more vibrant in terms of activities. Because of urbanization, cities having high population densities, there is busy life, heavy traffic movement on roads, polluted environment, people having packed schedule.  To minimize the stress full life of city dwellers, it is necessary to have urban development in context with designs and physical infrastructure developments in Jadibuti to sustain itself in terms of node and towns. Residential areas & the commercial centres are the primary focus of urban development. Urban development occurs by expansion into unpopulated areas and/or the renovation of decaying regions.  Urban Development helps cities create sustainable mechanisms for future growth.  Urban development in Jadibuti is the most necessary things now. Communication and social interaction among large numbers of people occur in development area.  Their main role is being loci of socialization in the city and also they are the stages where a

Budgets affect all of us.  Businesses analyze budget policy in order to make investment decisions that impact on growth and employment. As citizens, we depend on the state to provide crucial services and infrastructure.  Whether new roads will be built, whether children will have schools to go to or whether clinics can adequately cater for the health care needs of the population depends, to a large extent, on the way government raises revenues and allocates money to meet various competing and sometimes conflicting needs. The budget is the most important economic policy tool of a government and provides a comprehensive statement of the priorities of a nation.  As the representative institutions of the people, national legislatures are the appropriate place to ensure that the budget optimally matches a nation’s needs with available resources.  Effective legislative participation in the budget process establishes checks and balances that are crucial for transparent and

The first step in the community risk assessment is hazard analysis. Hazards Analysis shows the potential impact of a hazard on a geographical area. It involves seeking relevant information upon all the hazards to which a community is exposed. Determinations of probability, magnitude and impact area can be made on the basis of historical evidence, empirical research or community perception. Vulnerability assessment carries this exercise further by showing how civic infrastructure and population are likely to be affected by a hazard event. It is necessary to first identify physical vulnerabilities such as geographical remoteness of the community and its fragile location. An analysis of socio-economic vulnerability of the community shows the impact on people’s livelihood, income and consumption of the people. It explains the differential impact of a hazard on various groups such as the poor and low-income groups, workers in informal sector, women, elderly, ethnic or racial minoritie

It is necessary that a community should understand the disaster risks to which they are exposed. The community needs to be well informed about the physical features of their location / settlement and the hazard events they are likely to experience.  Such a social consciousness about disasters leads to building an organization / network within the community for risk reduction. It brings together the community around a common program. Such a program needs to have a clear set of objectives and outcomes. It must have well-defined activities, a plan for mobilizing community resources, and a strategy for making it sustainable. Community programs focus on socio-economic vulnerability. They are meant to provide necessary resources to households and communities for better preparedness and mitigation. Though community programs include technical components, they avoid large-scale structural solutions such as embankments, levees and dykes.  They pursue an inter-sectoral and multi-dis

Risk Prevention  We have paid considerable attention to the role of the public sector in disaster risk management. However, as with all development strategies, a multi-stakeholder approach that engages the community is most effective for disaster prevention. Private enterprises could be recruited to sponsor mitigation measures in basic services. For example, the occurrence of flooding can be reduced by ensuring that flood plains are not built upon by private developers, protecting wetlands, and constructing levees along the river banks.  Private and public measures need to work well together – for example, residents in low-lying areas of Jakarta raise the plinth of their houses to protect against floods; however, since public provision of piped water is inadequate, they also dig bore wells that causes the ground to subside.  Research institutions can target public education about mitigation to low-income communities and creating positive incentives to encourage privat

A successful policy response for effective prevention includes information, interventions and infrastructure. Underpinning this policy response is the role of institutions without which any policy response would be ineffectual. Pre-event risk management for natural disasters is a planned and structured approach that aims at: Risk identification and assessment: identifying and prioritizing vulnerable areas and populations through advanced information systems, Risk Control Risk mitigation: reducing the intensity and frequency of the peril and the potential losses through interventions and infrastructure development, and Risk transfer: transferring or spreading the risks through innovative institutions to lessen the burden on the victims and to facilitate the recovery process. Risk identification and assessment is used to monitor risks and enhance early warning of impending disasters. Risk Control measures comprise of mitigation and risk transfer. Mitigation or loss-reduc