Multi-objective decision-making in environmental management

[Informed multi-objective decision-making in environmental management using Pareto optimality](http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01367.x)

Multi-objective decision making has been the feature of many environmental management cases, yet there is no effective solutions to optimisation problems with multiple objectives. This article proposes non-dominated Pareto optimisation and an evolutionary algorithm that can approximate the non-dominated Pareto frontier. A case study is provided.

The problem seems to be the spatial complexity, which is especially announced in environmental studies, as well as the algorithm's intrinsic complexity. One assumption of this algorithm that cannot be ignored is that approximation to optimised decisions will produce results approximate to the optimised result, which may not always be valid in the non-linear world.

The result space is potentially very large and needs to be reduced to a few decision alternatives that can be understood and chosen from by the decision-maker.

Despite all these possible caveats, this algorithm seems to be in the right direction towards a more holistic assessment and making of environment decisions. And potentially similar ideas can be applied in my research.

Palestinian Freedom of Speech banned in an UK university

This is a case in MY university. The Palestinian Society started a protest against Israel's illegal separation of Palestinians by erecting a miniature wall, and were stopped by the police and the ``wall'' dismantled. If you are interested to follow the link to [YouTube](http://youtube.com/watch?v=uZLwtit8GXM), pay attention to those insightful comments.

I should say the police officer's reason to stop the protest at the entrance of the library is reasonable: obstruction of highway. However his later compliment that the wall should not be erected again anywhere else seems to me unreasonable and a repression of freedom of speech. The Pal Soc definitely have the right to continue the protest without blocking any path.

On the other hand, the student who was arrested by the police may be intentionally irritating the police officer, or may be just a bit too excited. His arrest is an unfortunate result of the incident, however he should be responsible for that.

The real disturbing question is why would someone call the police. A list of possible callers would be: the university, or university on someone's behalf; someone who do not like what Pal Soc did; the Pal Soc itself. In the first case, the university will need not to seek this kind of resort, the security would be enough. Can the security be so afraid of those students? I don't think so. The second, someone who do not like the protest? Possible. And surely they find a good reason to stop the protest. The third case would be very unpleasant to think about, however the possibility is there.

Whatever the case is, the incident is telling that either the expression of legal political opinion is so unbearable to some people here in the university, or the Palestinian students are seeking ways of expression a bit more than the authority can tolerate. Both thinking are very unsettling. The cause of the incident can be the repression of freedom of speech enforced by the authority, or the doubt of Pal Soc on their right of freedom of speech. Neither is desirable. The police's command that the wall should not be erected again is wrong. But further judgment can only be made when more details about the incident is available. A petition is being organised in the university. See how the response goes.

Before further details are present and confirmed, please do not imply that there is any racial issue involved. The available information so far does not suggest anything like this.

Workflow: from AVHRR L1B to GRASS raster

This figure shows the steps involved in turning AVHRR L1b data into GRASS GIS system as raster data. All software involved are Free/Open Source software.

Climate undulation may accelerated vanishing of Fremont Indian

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5856/1540](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5856/1540)


This may not be the most exciting archaeology discovery in the history. As we already know that some tribes Indians have lived on the high cliffs in Utah which were virtually unreachable. However, the disappearing of these tribes from those cliffs reveals an unsettling question: was climate the driving factor?

Evidences show that the possibility is significant, as the article tells. However, what raised my interest to blog it was this paragraph:

> The impact was all the harder because of the previous and intervening wet years, researchers suspect. There's evidence that after each drought the Fremont rebounded as climate improved. "Each time they did that, there seems to be a population boom," says Steven Simms, a Fremont scholar and archaeologist at Utah State University in Logan. But those extra mouths to feed demanded more crops, leaving the culture even more vulnerable to the next dry spell.

This leads my thought to my research area, which was also struck by snowstorms and/or droughts almost every year. Nowadays the people there barely manage to recover after the disasters, therefore the population is only slowly increasing according to official census data. However, the case would be different if they are changed to another mode of life which is more resistant against natural disasters. Could a similar pattern appear afterwards? Will they become more resistant but less resilient and suddenly become fragile in the face of a major disaster? Or, anything similar has happened in the history?

My carbon footprint

This is an initiative by Google UK. [Here](http://www.google.co.uk/CarbonFootprint) is the link and it will become a new tab on your iGoogle page.

My carbon footprint currently is 2.2 tonnes, which is below UK average but my once or twice a year flight back home makes my travelling footprint very close to or exceeding UK average.

A flavour of AVHRR

In the past few days I have been trying to find suitable software and process for AVHRR data processing. The METOP AVHRR format looks like an enigma. It should be compatible to AVHRR, but despite that I tried hard to find a tool to unpack the file, and even tried to write a Fortran program myself, I couldn't find anything that decodes the file downloaded from [CLASS](http://www.class.noaa.gov/).

What made the search not totally fruitless is a image processing tool, [BEAM](http://www.brockmann-consult.de/beam/), which works nicely with AVHRR and a number of other data files. I can use it to open AVHRR 16-bit and 8-bit Level 1b file (10-bit not tested yet), do some simple preprocessing and statistics, then export the file as GeoTIFF or other formats, which can be read by GRASS GIS + GDAL. It is worth noting that BEAM is free as in free speech software published under GPL **v3** and can run on any platform with Java Runtime Environment.

With the help of BEAM and GRASS I managed to produce my first AVHRR-derived NDVI image this afternoon. Seems I am finally on track. In the coming days there are a number of things that I can look at:

- AVHRR Pathfinder data, their advantages and limits, suggested by one of my supervisor;
- Snow and ice cover mapping with AVHRR;
- Time series data and change detection;
- MODIS data and its interoperability with AVHRR.

自由的遥感图像处理解决方案？

因为工作的需要，最近一段时间的工作重点是搜集和处理遥感图像。具体要怎么处理还没有决定，只知道大概要做的东西包括几何校正，大气校正，geoencoding/registration，后期肯定会做 change detection。这些在 ERDAS Imagine 里面是相对简单的，基本都可以点点鼠标解决。但是目前学校的 IT staff 还没有给我的电脑装这套软件，为了立即开展工作我准备找一找自由/开源的替代方案。

在 [http://opensourcegis.org/](http://opensourcegis.org/) 上给出了一个比较全面的与 GIS/RS 有关的自由/开源项目的列表，虽然其中成气候的项目还很少，而且像 Imagemagick 和 Free Type 这样的通用项目都列上去了，不过这方面的开发工作确实比我想象的更多。在 [GDAL](http://www.gdal.org/) 出来后出现了很多 GIS 项目，但地学图像处理方面的软件相对还是很缺乏。

一番比较后我决定使用 [GRASS GIS](http://grass.itc.it/intro/general.php) 和 [nip2](http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=Nip2) 来完成工作。GRASS GIS 是目前自由/开源 GIS 中最成熟的项目（应该不用加“之一”了吧）。以前我用它做过一个简单的模型输出可视化，但没注意到它还有处理遥感图像的功能。看了它的手册和一些搜索之后，结论是它可以用来做几何与大气校正、合成和分类，虽然分类的算法可能没有商业软件包那么多样，不过理论上说可以自己写个实现，已经有人做出了[神经网络分类方法的实现](http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/conf/SANTA_FE_CD-ROM/sf_papers/muttiah_ranjan/muttiah.html)。

nip2 是 [VIPS](http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS) 库的一个前端，号称是介于 Photoshop 与 Excel 之间的图像处理软件。其特点是可以用控件和脚本结合对图像方便地进行复杂的处理。虽然它的设计似乎并没有特别考虑地学应用的需要，但它有一个非常吸引人的特性，就是对大图像的处理速度非常快，而且可以处理大于内存容量的图像。我准备用它来处理观测角度与读数关系不大的图像，也可能用它来做分割和组合。

如果两周后我觉得这两个软件用得比较顺手，可能会一直用它们完成论文。商业软件包确实易用，能够节省一些学习和适应的时间，但我觉得用自由/开源的软件能让自己对 under the hood 的东西了解更多一些，而且现在掌握了 GRASS GIS 以后还可以很快上手 ERDAS Imagine，反之则不然。