Exploring the Juggling of Responsibilities with Space-Time Accessibility Analysis

The ways employed parents negotiate and combine employment and caring responsibilities has recently attracted increased attention in the social sciences. Nonetheless, many studies provide only limited insight into the opportunities that specific physical, institutional, and cultural contexts offer to parents for "juggling" responsibilities. Space-time accessibility modeling might be used to fill this gap, although its conceptualizations of human subjects, space, and time need to be rethought in light of feminist geographic concerns. We propose ethnographic or narrative space-time accessibility analysis as a partial and situated way of alerting readers/spectators to the ways constraints coalesce into opportunities for juggling responsibilities. The approach is illustrated through a case study of a highly educated mother who has to reconcile fixed employment times, chauffeuring her son to childcare, and a lengthy commute via the congested highways around Utrecht in the Netherlands.     

社会文化制度对门禁社区发展的影响——中国和荷兰的对比研究

作为后现代城市主义的典型空间形态,门禁社区在全球的蔓延引起了学界的广泛关注。当前对门禁社区发展机制的探讨主要集中于全球性宏观社会环境和消费者需求的层面,但对供给方的推动和制约因素关注不够。本文从制度视角出发,以中国和荷兰为案例,分析了门禁社区发展的异同,并具体从住房开发政策过程、历史传统和价值观两方面去理解和解释产生这种差异的原因。研究既是对从供给角度研究门禁社区的补充和拓展,同时也显示了本土制度环境解释人文地理学问题的必要性和重要性。指出在借鉴西方理论理解中国城市空间结构和社会变迁问题的同时,也不可忽视中国自身历史文化因素和社会制度背景。     

The influence of changes in tidal asymmetry on residual sediment transport in the Western Scheldt

This study fits into a wider research program from RWS RIKZ concerning the exchange of sediment between the coast and the tidal basins, Western Scheldt and Wadden Sea, which are the largest basins along the Dutch Coast, over different time-scales. For both basins, questions about the evolution of the import/export at the mouth recently arose. In case of the Western Scheldt, which is the subject of this study, mainly the uncertainty about the future developments after the change from import to export at the mouth was noticed in the 1990s, which necessitated a more detailed study of this area.     

Stakeholder analysis of the governance framework of a national SDI dataset – whose needs are met in the buildings and address register of the Netherlands?

ABSTRACT

National spatial data infrastructures are key to achieving the Digital Earth vision. In many cases, national datasets are integrated from local datasets created and maintained by municipalities. Examples are address, building and topographic information. Integration of local datasets may result in a dataset satisfying the needs of users of national datasets, but is it productive for those who create and maintain the data? This article presents a stakeholder analysis of the Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG), a collection of base information about addresses and buildings in the Netherlands. The information is captured and maintained by municipalities and integrated into a national base register by Kadaster, the Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency of the Netherlands. The stakeholder analysis identifies organisations involved in the BAG governance framework, describes their interests, rights, ownerships and responsibilities in the BAG, and maps the relationships between them. Analysis results indicate that Kadaster and the municipalities have the highest relative importance in the governance framework of the BAG. The study reveals challenges of setting up a governance framework that maintains the delicate balance between the interests of all stakeholders. The results provide guidance for SDI role players setting up governance frameworks for national or global datasets.     

Dealing with Uncertainty in Flood Risk Assessment of Dike Rings in the Netherlands

Current flood protection policies in the Netherlands are based on design water levels. This concept does not allow for a proper evaluation of costs and benefits of flood protection. Hence, research is being carried out on the introduction of a flood risk approach, which looks into both the probability of flooding and the consequences of flooding. This research is being carried out within the framework of a major project called the Floris project (FLOod RISk in the Netherlands). To assess the probability of flooding the Floris project distinguishes different failure modes for dikes and structures within the dike ring. Based on a probabilistic analysis of both loads and resistance the probability of failure is determined for each failure mode. Subsequently the probabilities of failure for different failure modes and dike sections are integrated into an estimate of the probability of flooding of the dike ring as a whole. In addition the Floris project looks into the different consequences of flooding, specifically the economic damages and the number of casualties to be expected in case of flooding of a particular dike ring. The paper describes the approach in the Floris project to assess the flood risk of dike rings in the Netherlands. One of the characteristics of the Floris project is the explicit attention to different types of uncertainties in assessing the probability of flooding. The paper discusses the different starting-points adopted and presents an outline on how the Floris project will deal with uncertainties in the analysis of weak spots in a dike ring as well as in the cost benefit analysis of flood alleviation measures.     

Who’s afraid of red, yellow and green?: Redlining in Rotterdam

Redlining research is common practice in the US but not in other countries. Does this imply redlining does not take place elsewhere? This paper presents evidence from Rotterdam, the second largest city of the Netherlands, showing that in the 1990s it was impossible to get a home mortgage in large parts of the city. However, after Rotterdam joined the National Mortgage Guarantee (an institutional control measure) in 2000, hardly any evidence of redlining was found. This paper not only shows that redlining takes place outside of the US context, but also that a (discursive) treatment based on case study research has the possibility to gain a fuller understanding of redlining practices than a statistical/correlation analysis of mortgage data. Interviews with key actors are instrumental to unravelling how, why and when those in power make their decisions: agents are structured by the existing system while, at the same time, some of these agents have the power to re-produce as well as re-structure (transform) the system. One of the geographical outcomes of the agency-structure interaction is that credit is “redirected away from poorer to richer (and therefore “safer”) groups” as part of a strategy of risk avoidance [Leyshon and Thrift, 1997]. Thus redlining, like any other form of financial exclusion, deepens and accentuates prevailing levels of uneven development by creating geographical variations in access to the financial system [Dymski and Veitch, 1992].     

Transatlantic latest Cretaceous mosasaurs (Reptilia,Lacertilia) from the Maastrichtian type area and New Jersey

Cranial and postcranial elements of the mosasaurid reptiles Mosasaurus hoffmanni Mantell 1829 and Plioplatecarpus marshi Dollo 1882 from the Maastrichtian type area, and of Mosasaurus maximus Cope 1869 and Plioplatecarpus depressus (Cope 1869) from New Jersey are compared. Views held by previous authors are discussed. It is concluded that these European and North American taxa are conspecific.     

Aminostratigraphy of Middle and Late Pleistocene deposits in The Netherlands and the southern part of the North Sea Basin

A review of all available amino acid racemization D (alloisoleucine)/L (isoleucine) data from the whole shell of four molluscan species from Late and late Middle Pleistocene deposits of the Netherlands is presented. The data allow the distinction of 5 aminostratigraphical units, NAZ (Netherlands Amino Zone) A–E, each representing a temperate stage. The zones are correlated with marine isotope stages 1, 5e, 7, 9, and 11 respectively. Apart from NAZ-D (MIS 9), in all aminozones the marine transgression reached the present-day onshore area of the Netherlands. The transgression during NAZ-C (Oostermeer Interglacial: MIS 7) seems to be at least as widespread as its counterpart during NAZ-B (Eemian: MIS 5e) in the southern bight of the North Sea Basin. The stratigraphic position of the Oostermeer Interglacial is just below deposits of the Drente phase of the Saalian and because of this position the interglacial marine deposits have formerly erroneously considered to be of Holsteinian age. Neede, the ‘classic’ Dutch Holsteinian site, is dated in NAZ-E (MIS 11), like Noordbergum. Although the validity of these zones has been checked with independent data, some overlap between succeeding zones may occur. The relation between amino acid data from elsewhere in the North Sea Basin and the Netherlands amino zonation is discussed. The deposits at the Holsteinian stratotype Hummelsbüttel in North West Germany are dated in NAZ-D. This interglacial correlates with MIS 9. The Belvédère Interglacial, which is of importance for its archaeology, is in NAZ-D (MIS 9) and therefore of Holsteinian age as well. The lacustroglacial ‘pottery clays’ in the Noordbergum area are deposits from two glacial stages, which can be correlated with MIS 8 and 10 (the Elsterian). The pottery clay that is considered equivalent to the German ‘Lauenburger Ton’ correlates with MIS 10.     

The geography of regional websites: Regional representation and regional structure

Regional administrations present themselves in many different ways on the internet. A content analysis of regional websites in the Netherlands and Northwest Germany revealed this diversity. Geographical factors can partly explain these differences. Mapping the five principal aspects of the geographical representations of regional administrations revealed some spatial clusters. These regional representations are also linked to the geographical characteristics of regions. Competitive mid-sized regions focus more on economic items. Different types of peripheries vary much more in how they present themselves on the internet. The way regions present themselves is linked to the polarising influence of regional competition, but there is still considerable freedom for regions to present a distinct region image.