How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.

/pdf/carbon-capture-and-storage-ccs-the-way-forward-11rgsqyer0.pdf

Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

As renewed international efforts are needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the livestock sector can contribute its part. An important emitter of greenhouse gas, it also has the potential to significantly reduce its emissions. This report provides a unique global assessment of the magnitude, the sources and pathways of emissions from different livestock production systems and supply chains. Relying on life cycle assessment, statistical analysis and scenario building, it also provides estimates of the sector’s mitigation potential and identifies concrete options to reduce emissions. The report is a useful resource for stakeholders from livestock producers to policy-makers, researchers and civil society representatives, which also intends to inform the public debate on the role of livestock supply chains in climate change and possible solution.

Tackling climate change through livestock : a global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities

/pdf/accelerating-progress-towards-universal-water-sanitation-and-26k9mb0q.pdf

Accelerating Progress towards Universal Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): Governance, Technology and Data for Urban Settings

This study outlines the results of current climate conditions for the city of Modling, Klagenfurt and Salzburg located in Austria. Furthermore, it will analyse specific measures regarding climate adaptation, which are potentially realizable. To characterize the current climate conditions with the average number of summer days per year (SD y−1), we use the microscale urban climate model MUKLIMO_3, in combination with a trilinear interpolation method. For the reference model simulation, we use atmospheric observations from 1981 to 2010 provided by one weather station located in a rural site near each city. We combined different land use data sets with various spatial resolutions to evaluate precise properties for the land use classification. Furthermore, we compared changes in SD y−1 to the reference simulation to evaluate the effectiveness of the here proposed adaptation strategies. Specifically, we consider two types of adaptation measures: (i) an increase in the shortwave reflectivity of impervious and sealed areas and (ii) an increased number of low-vegetated areas (i.e. lawns on streets and at roof level) and high-vegetated areas (i.e. bushes and trees). The results of the individual simulations indicate a substantially decreased SD y−1 by up to − 7.3 (− 10.9%) for the case of highly reflective roofs and up to − 7.7 (− 22.7%) for the case of an increased number of trees. A combination of both pathways leads to a decrease in SD y−1 by up to − 19.4 (− 29.3%), indicating a clear potential to mitigate the heat burden in each city.

Supporting Climate Adaptation Measures in Small- to Medium-Sized Austrian Cities Using Climate Modelling

Medication Abortion a Reasonable Option for Pregnancy of Unknown Location.

Semantic Segmentation and Random Forests for Land Cover Classification on In-Situ Lucas Landscape Photos

Citizen science and crowdsourcing applications have witnessed explosive growth during recent years. Reasons include new technological innovations and the desire of citizens to engage with environmental issues and scientific research. IIASA has developed several tools relevant to forest cover monitoring and mapping, including the Geo-Wiki.org portal (Fritz et al., 2009, 2012), mobile applications (e.g. GeoWiki Pictures) and a gaming approach (i.e. Crop Capture – See et al., 2014). The team at IIASA runs crowdsourcing competitions to encourage people to participate; incentives include prizes and coauthorship on publications resulting from analysis of the data. The data collected through Geo-Wiki have been used for independent validation of existing land cover maps and production of hybrid land cover and forest maps (Fritz et al., 2013; See et al., 2013; 2014; Schepaschenko et al., 2015). A number of global forest cover products have been made available in the recent past. However, these datasets often contradict one other when compared spatially, and they are typically inconsistent with national statistics. In this paper we compare freely available remote sensing products with a sample collected via Geo-Wiki using high resolution imagery provided by Google Earth. This sample contains around 22K training points, where the percentage of forest cover was estimated. We applied the method of geographically weighted regression to calculate hybrid forest cover products both calibrated with FAO FRA statistics and not calibrated. Independent validation shows that the hybrid products are better than any of the individual products. These products are presented at http://geo-wiki.org both for exploration and download.

Linda See

Papers

Accelerating Progress towards Universal Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): Governance, Technology and Data for Urban Settings

Supporting Climate Adaptation Measures in Small- to Medium-Sized Austrian Cities Using Climate Modelling

Medication Abortion a Reasonable Option for Pregnancy of Unknown Location.

Semantic Segmentation and Random Forests for Land Cover Classification on In-Situ Lucas Landscape Photos

A citizen science application for improving the spatial distribution of global forests