Airline data for global city network research: reviewing and refining existing approaches

Information on air passenger flows is potentially a prime data source for assessing spatial patterns in the global city network, but previous analyses have been hampered by inadequate and/or partial data. The ensuing analytical deficiencies have reduced the overall value of these analyses, and this paper examines how some of these deficiencies may be rectified. First, we review the rationale for using airline data to analyse the global city network. Second, we assess the data problems encountered in previous research. Third, we elaborate on the construction of datasets that may circumvent some of these problems. The proposed refinements include the omission of the hub function of major airports and ways to extract relevant business flows from the data.

Identifying China’s leading world city: a network approach

This paper reports our research on China’s world cities. Formal network analysis of air passenger linkages for recent years among China’s most populous cities and among many of the world’s largest cities allows us to identify the country’s leading world city from among the leading Mainland candidates, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. We theorize our findings about China’s world cities in relation to both global forces (and China’s increasing entanglement with them) and the policies and actions of the national state. We examine the national and global urban network through a longitudinal, two-level analysis of airline passenger travel for four time points between about 1990 and 2005. We show that Beijing was China’s leading world city at the beginning of the time period, a status it lost nationally in as early as 1995, and then globally 10 years later. On the other hand Shanghai became China’s leading world city, and it acquired this status first nationally in 2000, and then globally in 2005. The changing status of the Chinese capital corresponds to the country’s increasing involvement with the capitalist world economy. Shanghai’s ascendance as the leading world city in China may indicate that global forces have come to play an increasingly important role relative to that of the developmental state.

Spatial and temporal knowledge representation

Knowledge Representation (KR) originated as a discipline within Artificial Intelligence, and is concerned with the representation of knowledge in symbolic form so that it can be stored and manipulated on a computer. This article surveys that part of KR that is concerned with the representation of space and time, with particular reference to the use of such representations in geographical information science.

Space Physics Interactive Data Resource—SPIDR

SPIDR (Space Physics Interactive Data Resource) is a standard data source for solar-terrestrial physics, functioning within the framework of the ICSU World Data Centers. It is a distributed database and application server network, built to select, visualize and model historical space weather data distributed across the Internet. SPIDR can work as a fully-functional web-application (portal) or as a grid of web-services, providing functions for other applications to access its data holdings.

Assessment of suffosion-related hazards in karst areas using GIS technology

This paper describes an application of the geographic information system (GIS) technology to a ground stability assessment in the karst area of Dzerzhinsk, Russia. In the stability analysis, the groundwater level changes in the karst aquifer could cause suffosion sinkholes when the gravitational force was greater than the soil strength. The GIS technology was used to combine various data and to delineate the zones of potential gravitational collapse and suffosion collapse in the area.

Logics of change for military-to-wildlife conversions in the United States

Since 1988, more than 20 US military bases have been redesignated as national wildlife refuges. In order to understand the processes of these military-to-wildlife (M2W) conversions and their implications, I examine three logics that help to produce these particular changes: Biodiversity, Brownfields, and Serendipity. These logics contribute to a broader discourse of ecological militarization that frames military practices as compatible with and contributing to environmental protection. I focus on the case of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Colorado, USA, to examine how these logics of conversion are mobilized into practice, and what such changes mean as they bring militarism and environmental conservation together in reconfigured spaces.

Melt inclusion formation mechanisms and compositional effects in high-An feldspar and high-Fo olivine in anhydrous mafic silicate liquids

Important aspects of melt inclusion formation and potential compositions effects have been addressed through a series of experiments using anorthite/fosterite saturated anhydrous mafic liquids. Experimental charges were cooled from 1,300 to 1,230 and 1,210°C at rates of 1–10°/min followed by 0–24 h isothermal periods. Hopper and skeletal crystal morphologies with variable degrees of completeness developed during the cooling period. Planar overgrowth of these textures during isothermal periods led to the formation of inclusions, the majority of which formed after 6 h of isothermal run time. We suggest that the change in morphologies is related to a decrease in growth rates and changes in dominant growth mechanisms. In general, inclusion compositions were uniform and similar to the host glass, indicating that with the isothermal times required for most inclusions to form, a boundary layer was not entrapped that could be detected within the limits of our analyses.

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Container ports,local benefits and transportation worker earnings

Over the past 50 years, containerization has both enabled and reflected the articulation of increasingly concentrated and complex global trade flows. Once close infrastructural, economic and institutional ties between seaports and port cities have been loosened, since major ports now serve producers and consumers in widely dispersed hinterlands. This process has been especially intense in North America, where west coast ports serve markets across the continent. At the same time, many of the external costs of increased port activity are incurred in port cities. Hence, questions about the changing nature of employment in port and related goods-handling sectors have become increasingly important for understanding the share of economic benefits received by port cities. This paper focuses on the effects of containerization, and related changes in transportation regulation, on port-logistics worker earnings in major United States port cities since 1975. A difference-in-differences framework is used to examine the relative annual earnings of dock, trucking and warehouse workers in major container port cities. The analysis shows that, with notable exceptions, port-logistics worker earnings in major container ports are not necessarily higher than those of comparable workers. The findings provide further insights into the strained relationship between seaports and port cities in the era of containerization and economic globalization.

Visual methodologies through a feminist lens: South African soap operas and the post-apartheid nation

Using a discussion of South African soap operas, I will place the idea of visuality in a discourse analysis that incorporates a feminist epistemological lens, or an epistemology that integrates reflexivity and an acknowledgment of the dialogic nature of visual media. Through this discussion, I will examine the possibilities that dialogism provides for unpacking and exploring the politics of imperfect translation between the visual and the textual. These methodological interventions, I argue, will help enrich discussions of the visual’s role in the contested realm of geographic imaginations and move beyond the distanced position of the masculine gaze.

Tornado shelters and the manufactured home parks market

Manufactured or mobile homes represent a fast growing portion of the housing market but are particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. In the US over 40% of tornado fatalities occur in mobile homes even though they comprise about 8% of US housing units. We examine the market for tornado shelters in manufactured home parks in Oklahoma. Almost 60% of parks in the state have shelters, with 90% of the shelters underground. Parks with shelters are not concentrated in urban areas but spread across the state, with parks with shelters in 32 counties. We find that rents for lots in parks with shelters are 5–8% higher, which generates sufficient revenue to approximately pay for shelters, but the point estimate is statistically significant in only one specification.

Mapping flood pressure points: assessing vulnerability of the UK Fire Service to flooding

A vulnerability index for the Fire Service in the UK has been designed to identify vulnerable locations during episodes of severe floods. Taking recent case studies with the UK Fire Service, the patterns of vulnerability, in terms of demand on time and resources, can be explained by investigating the environmental causes and their interaction with the adaptive capacity of the response agencies.

What conditions supply chain strategies of ports? The case of Dubai

Recent academic debates about port competition have centered on the strategic responses of port authorities, operators, managers and owners to the emergence of global supply chains. The competitive performance of a port authority or operator, given the rise of the integrated logistics sector, depends increasingly on its strategic relationship to these supply chains and rather less on traditional port competition factors such as hinterland size and physical infrastructure. However, there are few empirical studies investigating the degree to which particular port actors are capable of inserting themselves into global supply chains. In this article we ask what factors condition the supply chain strategies of port actors. We hypothesize that the strategic supply chain choices of a port authority or operator are conditioned by the territorialized institutional framework in which the dominant actors in a port operate. We apply these insights through a case study of the transformation of Dubai Port Authority, and the rise of Dubai Ports World (DPW).

The regionalization of urban natural disasters in China

An integrated urbanization level (CL) index and an integrated natural disaster intensity (QC) index were developed on the basis of Disaster System Theory and China Natural Disaster Database for integrated urban disaster risk assessment. Integrated quantitative assessments of the urban socio-economic system and the intensity of hazards in China were carried out by the Model-Tupu (map series) and inter-feedback process using digital map technology. On the basis of this assessment, China can be regionalized into three regions, namely, coastal urban disaster region, eastern urban disaster region and western urban disaster region, 15 sub-regions and 22 units. These results can provide a scientific basis for determining a city’s disaster risk management and natural disaster relief regionalization in China.

The discrepancy in PAMINA between the European image of a cross-border region and cross-border behaviour

Subsidizing cross-border regions is a method to close the gap between citizens and the European Union. This analysis of PAMINA, a cross-border region in the Rhine Valley near Karlsruhe, discusses some of the difficulties of this policy. There are structural mismatches between the scales of different cross-border relations. These vertical mismatches are linked to the differences in the horizontal logics of economic and administrative cross-border relations. Especially cross-border commuting, made possible by European economic integration, has improved the daily life of many inhabitants of this region. Paradoxically this regional success of European economic integration is disconnected from the EU funded cross-border region. They not only relate to different scales, but the same spatial asymmetry generating this cross-border behaviour hinders administrative cross-border cooperation in PAMINA.

Using resistivity measurements for dam safety evaluation at Enemossen tailings dam in southern Sweden

Internal erosion is a major reason for embankment dam failures. Resistivity measurements is an essentially non-destructive technique, which may have the possibility of detecting internal erosion processes and anomalous seepage at an early stage before the safety of the dam is at stake. This paper presents results from part of a dam safety investigation conducted at the Enemossen tailings dam in southern Sweden. Longitudinal resistivity sections, 2D measurements along the dam crest, provided an overview of the whole dam and served to detect anomalous zones. In selected areas, additional cross-sectional 2D surveys gave detailed information about the geo-electrical situations in the embankments. This information is valuable for similar investigations as information about resistivity in embankment construction material is scarce. Known problem areas were associated with low resistivities, even though the resistivity measurements alone did not provide enough information to confidently come to a decision about the status of the dams.

Alternative technologies for rural areas–what about the ‘alternative’ dimension of Wi-Fi?

Summary  The question of alternative technologies for high-speed Internet access lies at the heart of rural development problems. In this paper, we focus on one of those technologies, the system combining satellite technologies and Wi-Fi. Based on an empirical study carried out in three rural areas, we analyze the dynamics of the use and appropriation of that technology by the companies and organizations participating in the experiment. Considered both from a technical and social standpoint, the technology ‘in use’ appears here in its structuring dimensions.

Predicting environmental conditions to minimise salt damage at the Tower of London: a comparison of two approaches

The paper compares the results of two studies of salt damage at the Wakefield Tower, Tower of London. The first, in 1993, was based on semi-quantitative salt analysis and hygroscopicity measurements. The second was based on quantitative analysis and a thermodynamic model, ECOS. Both studies aimed to predict environmental conditions that would minimise salt damage to the interior stonework. Their predictions are markedly different, and this paper examines the reasons for the differences. It is shown that hygroscopicity alone is not a reliable indicator of crystallisation from mixed salt solutions.

Bishops, dioceses and cathedrals: the changing territorial organisation of the Church of England

The pattern of Church of England dioceses has evolved over a period of 1,400 years. It reflects the practical response of the Church to the changing political and demographic patterns of the country. No ideal size and form of diocese was ever devised and few systematic attempts were made to achieve a degree of equity between them. The constitutional link between state and church has inhibited change for the last 80 years, although society has changed significantly. Nevertheless, rapid constitutional reforms, especially in the House of Lords, may be reflected in ecclesiastical reorganisation of the dioceses.

Developing a SPASE Query Language

The advent of the Virtual Observatory has begun an evolution in the space physics data environment. A number of nascent and discipline specific Virtual Observatories have started to emerge with an emphasis on data search and retrieval. As this new data environment takes shape an emphasis will be placed on interdisciplinary communication in attempts to address large scale and global problems. To this end we formulate the development of a query language to facilitate Virtual Observatory to Virtual Observatory communication. Furthermore, we outline the goals of such a language, how it would work and how existing community efforts can be leveraged to speed the development of this query language.

Geographic media literacy: an introduction

In a media saturated world of globalization, information flow and knowledge economies, an interesting paradox exists: geographic literacy appears to be on the decline while geographic information is on the rise. In this introduction to a collection of essays on geographies of the media, we explore this paradox and use Baudrillard’s (1994) work on Simulacra and Simulation to argue that increased mediated information does not produce more meaning, but rather leads to a catastrophe of meaning and the medium. Drawing from McLuhan’s axiom, “the medium is the message,” we posit that with more mediated information there is less meaningful information and as such we need to address geographic media literacy as a primary mode through which to address geographic literacy.