Abstract
Elevation data are fundamental to many applications, especially in geosciences. The latest global elevation data contains forest and building artifacts that limit its usefulness for ...applications that require precise terrain heights, in particular flood simulation. Here, we use machine learning to remove buildings and forests from the Copernicus Digital Elevation Model to produce, for the first time, a global map of elevation with buildings and forests removed at 1 arc second (∼30 m) grid spacing. We train our correction algorithm on a unique set of reference elevation data from 12 countries, covering a wide range of climate zones and urban extents. Hence, this approach has much wider applicability compared to previous DEMs trained on data from a single country. Our method reduces mean absolute vertical error in built-up areas from 1.61 to 1.12 m, and in forests from 5.15 to 2.88 m. The new elevation map is more accurate than existing global elevation maps and will strengthen applications and models where high quality global terrain information is required.
Where high‐resolution topographic data are available, modelers are faced with the decision of whether it is better to spend computational resource on resolving topography at finer resolutions or on ...running more simulations to account for various uncertain input factors (e.g., model parameters). In this paper we apply global sensitivity analysis to explore how influential the choice of spatial resolution is when compared to uncertainties in the Manning's friction coefficient parameters, the inflow hydrograph, and those stemming from the coarsening of topographic data used to produce Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). We apply the hydraulic model LISFLOOD‐FP to produce several temporally and spatially variable model outputs that represent different aspects of flood inundation processes, including flood extent, water depth, and time of inundation. We find that the most influential input factor for flood extent predictions changes during the flood event, starting with the inflow hydrograph during the rising limb before switching to the channel friction parameter during peak flood inundation, and finally to the floodplain friction parameter during the drying phase of the flood event. Spatial resolution and uncertainty introduced by resampling topographic data to coarser resolutions are much more important for water depth predictions, which are also sensitive to different input factors spatially and temporally. Our findings indicate that the sensitivity of LISFLOOD‐FP predictions is more complex than previously thought. Consequently, the input factors that modelers should prioritize will differ depending on the model output assessed, and the location and time of when and where this output is most relevant.
Key Points
Sensitivity of flood inundation predictions to different input factors shown to be more complex than previously thought
The most influential model input factor for predicting flood extent changes during the flood event
Spatial resolution is much more influential for localized predictions of water depth than for flood extent
Has the executive role of the European Commission changed since the euro area crisis? Intergovernmentalists point to the increased role of the member states and the Council at the expense of the ...Commission and other supranational institutions. This article examines how the Commission has responded to the expansion of fiscal and economic rules such as the regulations that strengthen the EU's statistical competence and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack. Based on interviews conducted with key staff, we find that these rules have created significant co-ordination, information and analytical demands on the Commission. The latter has enhanced its horizontal and vertical co-ordination efforts, prioritized staff for the Directorate-Generals conducting surveillance activities, added DGs to these efforts, and reorganized their organizational structures to promote a deeper understanding of the member states' fiscal and economic policies. Using a principal-agent, approach this article explains how the Commission has increased its role in European integration process.
Flooding is one of the most common natural hazards, causing disastrous impacts worldwide. Stress-testing the global human-Earth system to understand the sensitivity of floodplains and population ...exposure to a range of plausible conditions is one strategy to identify where future changes to flooding or exposure might be most critical. This study presents a global analysis of the sensitivity of inundated areas and population exposure to varying flood event magnitudes globally for 1.2 million river reaches. Here we show that topography and drainage areas correlate with flood sensitivities as well as with societal behaviour. We find clear settlement patterns in which floodplains most sensitive to frequent, low magnitude events, reveal evenly distributed exposure across hazard zones, suggesting that people have adapted to this risk. In contrast, floodplains most sensitive to extreme magnitude events have a tendency for populations to be most densely settled in these rarely flooded zones, being in significant danger from potentially increasing hazard magnitudes given climate change.
The European Semester is an information-driven surveillance system that relies upon budgetary and economic statistics collected from the European Union's memberstates and analyzed by the European ...Commission. This is true for both the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). This article employs Principal-Agent theory to analyze the politics of asymmetric information in the EDP and MIP. The study explores how the statistical requirements of the Six-Pack have been enforced by the Commission and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council to strengthen the EDP, even as the statistical integrity of the MIP received less protection. The article examines how the misrepresentation of statistics by Spain's Autonomous Community of Valencia provoked the first financial sanction in the history of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the Commission's unsuccessful efforts to strengthen the reliability of MIP statistics.
The ability to generate new meaning by rearranging combinations of meaningless sounds is a fundamental component of language. Although animal vocalizations often comprise combinations of meaningless ...acoustic elements, evidence that rearranging such combinations generates functionally distinct meaning is lacking. Here, we provide evidence for this basic ability in calls of the chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps), a highly cooperative bird of the Australian arid zone. Using acoustic analyses, natural observations, and a series of controlled playback experiments, we demonstrate that this species uses the same acoustic elements (A and B) in different arrangements (AB or BAB) to create two functionally distinct vocalizations. Specifically, the addition or omission of a contextually meaningless acoustic element at a single position generates a phoneme-like contrast that is sufficient to distinguish the meaning between the two calls. Our results indicate that the capacity to rearrange meaningless sounds in order to create new signals occurs outside of humans. We suggest that phonemic contrasts represent a rudimentary form of phoneme structure and a potential early step towards the generative phonemic system of human language.
In response to a rapid decline in world oil prices, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman introduced a new economic blueprint called Saudi Vision 2030 and the accompanying National ...Transformation Plan that would enable the Kingdom to diversify its heavily oil-dependent revenue base, reduce its growing budget deficits, balance its budgets, and promote long-term economic growth. This article analyses the goals of the Vision and the policies offered to achieve them, which entail significant reforms to the Kingdom's fiscal and budgetary procedures and policies. This study considers the political and institutional challenges that confront the Saudi Vision and its likelihood of success.
For individuals collaborating to rear offspring, effective organization of resource delivery is difficult because each carer benefits when the others provide a greater share of the total investment ...required. When investment is provided in discrete events, one possible solution is to adopt a turn-taking strategy whereby each individual reduces its contribution rate after investing, only increasing its rate again once another carer contributes. To test whether turn-taking occurs in a natural cooperative care system, here we use a continuous time Markov model to deduce the provisioning behavior of the chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps), a cooperatively breeding Australian bird with variable number of carers. Our analysis suggests that turn-taking occurs across a range of group sizes (2-6), with individual birds being more likely to visit following other individuals than to make repeat visits. We show using a randomization test that some of this apparent turn-taking arises as a by-product of the distribution of individual inter-visit intervals ("passive" turn-taking) but that individuals also respond actively to the investment of others over and above this effect ("active" turn-taking). We conclude that turn-taking in babblers is a consequence of both their individual provisioning behavior and deliberate response rules, with the former effect arising through a minimum interval required to forage and travel to and from the nest. Our results reinforce the importance of considering fine-scale investment dynamics when studying parental care and suggest that behavioral rules such as turn-taking may be more common than previously thought.
The Maastricht Treaty and the Stability Growth Pact demand that EU member states comply with their famous deficit and debt requirements of three and sixty per cent of GDP. Yet, how can the EU's ...leaders be certain that these targets are met? Is a three per cent deficit in Belgium equivalent to one in Italy or France? Making the EMU explores how the Treaty's budgetary surveillance procedure monitors member state budgetary policies, harmonizes their budgetary data, and effectively determines which member states qualified for member status and are subject to the Pact's sanctions. This book provides the first examination of how the EU entrusted the credibility of these critical budgetary figures to a relatively minor European Commission agency, and what effect the surveillance procedure has on the making of the EMU and the enforcement of Maastricht. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780199238699/toc.html
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