Search results for "Mining"

Scale-up of electrodialysis with bipolar membrane (EDBM) unit for valorisation of waste brine by experimental analysis

2022

The MOBI-Kids Study Protocol: Challenges in Assessing Childhood and Adolescent Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields from Wireless Telecommunication Tec…

2014

The rapid increase in mobile phone use in young people has generated concern about possible health effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) and extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields (EMF). MOBI-Kids, a multinational case–control study, investigates the potential effects of childhood and adolescent exposure to EMF from mobile communications technologies on brain tumor risk in 14 countries. The study, which aims to include approximately 1,000 brain tumor cases aged 10–24 years and two individually matched controls for each case, follows a common protocol and builds upon the methodological experience of the INTERPHONE study. The design and conduct of a study on EMF exposure an…

A Survey of Active Learning for Quantifying Vegetation Traits from Terrestrial Earth Observation Data

2021

The current exponential increase of spatiotemporally explicit data streams from satellite-based Earth observation missions offers promising opportunities for global vegetation monitoring. Intelligent sampling through active learning (AL) heuristics provides a pathway for fast inference of essential vegetation variables by means of hybrid retrieval approaches, i.e., machine learning regression algorithms trained by radiative transfer model (RTM) simulations. In this study we summarize AL theory and perform a brief systematic literature survey about AL heuristics used in the context of Earth observation regression problems over terrestrial targets. Across all relevant studies it appeared that…

A Survey on Gaussian Processes for Earth-Observation Data Analysis: A Comprehensive Investigation

2016

Gaussian processes (GPs) have experienced tremendous success in biogeophysical parameter retrieval in the last few years. GPs constitute a solid Bayesian framework to consistently formulate many function approximation problems. This article reviews the main theoretical GP developments in the field, considering new algorithms that respect signal and noise characteristics, extract knowledge via automatic relevance kernels to yield feature rankings automatically, and allow applicability of associated uncertainty intervals to transport GP models in space and time that can be used to uncover causal relations between variables and can encode physically meaningful prior knowledge via radiative tra…

Batch Methods for Resolution Enhancement of TIR Image Sequences

2015

Thermal infrared (TIR) time series are exploited by many methods based on Earth observation (EO), for such applications as agriculture, forest management, and meteorology. However, due to physical limitations, data acquired by a single sensor are often unsatisfactory in terms of spatial or temporal resolution. This issue can be tackled by using remotely sensed data acquired by multiple sensors with complementary features. When nonreal-time functioning or at least near real-time functioning is admitted, the measurements can be profitably fed to a sequential Bayesian algorithm, which allows to account for the correlation embedded in the successive acquisitions. In this work, we focus on appli…

Statistical biophysical parameter retrieval and emulation with Gaussian processes

2019

Abstract Earth observation from satellites poses challenging problems where machine learning is being widely adopted as a key player. Perhaps the most challenging scenario that we are facing nowadays is to provide accurate estimates of particular variables of interest characterizing the Earth's surface. This chapter introduces some recent advances in statistical bio-geophysical parameter retrieval from satellite data. In particular, we will focus on Gaussian process regression (GPR) that has excelled in parameter estimation as well as in modeling complex radiative transfer processes. GPR is based on solid Bayesian statistics and generally yields efficient and accurate parameter estimates, a…

Assessing forest landscape structure using geographic windows.

2001

Landscape structure, interpreted as indicator of functional processes, has become a main attribute of multiresource forest inventories, enhancing its value with respect to society needs. This approach implies effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems to obtain a global view of the inventoried landscapes and to understand the ecological functions of large spatially-heterogeneous landscape mosaics. Landscape structure often reveal extremely complex patterns that can only be very roughly characterized by methods of Euclidean geometry. Conversely, fractals can be applied to adequately describe many of the irregular, fragmented patterns found in nature. In …

Green LAI Mapping and Cloud Gap-Filling Using Gaussian Process Regression in Google Earth Engine

2021

For the last decade, Gaussian process regression (GPR) proved to be a competitive machine learning regression algorithm for Earth observation applications, with attractive unique properties such as band relevance ranking and uncertainty estimates. More recently, GPR also proved to be a proficient time series processor to fill up gaps in optical imagery, typically due to cloud cover. This makes GPR perfectly suited for large-scale spatiotemporal processing of satellite imageries into cloud-free products of biophysical variables. With the advent of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform, new opportunities emerged to process local-to-planetary scale satellite data using advanced machine …

Whether and How Social Work Could Address the Long-Term Socio-environmental Risks Caused by the Mining Industry in Northern Finland

2018

Despite underlining the importance of the commitment of states and international organizations, the discourse on human security is seldom explicit about who the actors or frontline workers are that operationalize the framework. One such group of practitioners that is possibly involved, but largely unacknowledged, is social workers, especially as social work as a discipline, profession and social movement has a value base and overall goals that are very similar to the human security approach. In social work, the categories of economic, food, environmental and community security fall within the discourse of human security, particularly with the currently evolving ecosocial (ecological/environ…

Working in a boom-town: Female perspectives on gold-mining in Burkina Faso

2009

Abstract In Burkina Faso, informal mining camps attract girls and women from rural areas because they offer a variety of income generating activities and access to urban consumer goods. Moreover, migration to the mines also allows for a different life-style and greater personal freedom. On the other hand, by going to the mining camps, girls and women risk acquiring a bad reputation in their communities because they are suspected of having illicit sexual relationships. In fact, relationships with gold miners and the material benefits connected with them are among the lures of the gold mines. Thus, from a female perspective migration to the gold mines is fraught with ambivalence, which is exp…