مطالب

The rapid and intensive progress in science and technology in the world, despite its abundant advantages and gifts of welfare and comfort for the mankind, in many ways, it has pushed human security to face grave tragic events. To give an example, the progress in chemistry before the Great War, made it possible to produce and use toxic gases including Phosgene gas causing enormous deaths of both military personnel and civilians. Another example in man’s progress in nuclear physics led to innovating nuclear bomb with no precedent and unheard of in terms of mass destruction and ruins. In turn, the international humanitarian law, despite its progress in recent decades, has had been slower than the development of aforementioned scientific progresses. Nonetheless, one should consider the point that those disciplines of human sciences have more essential and fundamental principles that provide it with the ability to prevail with new conditions and situations. To elaborate the subject, although the international humanitarian law lacks explicit rules, regulations and treaties in addressing many of the modern armaments and warfare, it still possesses the principle of distinction, principle of unnecessary pain and suffering, principle of preventing vast and long-term damages that could be enforced on new arms by assessing its legality in order to boost human security. The present paper aims at studying various aspects of this issue.

Geographic information and analysis provide a wide range of data and techniques to monitor and manage natural resources. As an important case, in arid and semi-arid areas, water management is critical for both local governance and citizens. As a result, the estimation of water potential brought by snowmelt runoff and rainfalls seems to be very useful and important for these areas. Hydrological modeling needs vast knowledge about integrating all relating parameters. In this work, different data sources including the remote sensing observations, meteorological and geological data are integrated to supply spatially detailed inputs for Snowmelt Runoff Modeling in a watershed, located in Simin-Dasht basin in the northeast of Tehran, Iran. Because of high temporal frequency and suitable spatial coverage, MODIS optical images have been chosen to map snow cover. The MODIS 8-day snow map product with spatial resolution of 500m (MOD10A2.5) is used to compute the snow cover area. In addition, during the snowmelt period in 2006-2007, archived meteorological and geological data are used to provide snow runoff modeling (SRM) parameters and variables. Also Landsat ETM+ images with better spatial resolution (30m) and less temporal coverage (16 days) are used in 2007 snowmelt period to compare the model accuracy with same conditions. Evaluation of the runoff outputs in both of models reveals good agreement with real data that prove SRM capability in modeling basin’s daily and weekly runoff. Model accuracy shows better satisfactory of snow runoff modeling results within snow cover area derived from Landsat ETM+ data and MODIS snow product was less accurate in modeling. Although using MODIS model accuracy was less, but still it is recommended due to less further process and providing better temporal coverage during snowfall and snowmelt season. Future works in this criterion could be concentrated on SRM forecast improvement using fusion with other measurements or combining physical models.

Today, there is a plethora of literature on the process of accelerating growth of science and technology in Iran. Assuming technology as a social construct of modern society, and in the light of Ricoeurian hermeneutic approach, this paper aims, first, to show the resemblance of the current discursive relationship between the Iranian society and technology to a "discourse of faith" and, second to explain how this discourse has roots in the preceding one which can be considered as a "discourse of suspicion". To do so, the paper first, builds a conceptual model based on the Ricoeurian theory of interpretation, where, by analogy, modern technology is compared to the text and the user of the technology as its reader. Then, it introduces two episodes of relationship between technology and its Iranian users in the public policy of the post-revolutionary era: distanciation and appropriation. It concludes that the current growth of scientific endeavors serves as the material base for an Iranian discourse of techno-nationalism; a new self-identification which motivates the elites to develop new bases for national self-esteem.

Security is one of the most critical factors affecting the quality of urban spaces. Nowadays, most of these spaces have become merely pathways with neither social life nor sense of belonging to it. Insufficiency of public surveillance along with weak sense of control and surveillance results in spaces with high crime rate. In the late 60s and early 70s, high crime statistics in open urban spaces around America and Europe, forced many city planners to provide physical and cultural solutions for it. Sensitive environmental design can simultaneously prevent the occurrence of crime and increase the control and surveillance over the public spaces. The main purpose of this paper is to achieve the most critical factors enhancing safe urban spaces. The research method is descriptive analysis and is done by comparative study on three outstanding theorists’ point of view toward the subject. Research findings identify that crime prevention is largely achieved through applying territoriality, surveillance and social interaction factors in environmental design.

Earthquake has always endangered cities. This article mainly focuses on the question “whether seismic damages could be diminished through the presentation a preventive operational pattern dealing with physical and nonphysical features of civil defense”. Tehran, the most populous metropolis among Iranian cities is to the south of Alborz mountain range, located on potentially dangerous fault- lines. By Civil Defense Emergency Management (CDEM) preventive guidelines in a part of district 10 of Tehran, within the Ray fault’s danger zone, it is recommended that the earthquake vulnerability zoning plot of the area be compiled and accordingly, operational solutions encompassing organizing open spaces, redistributing and re-allocating land uses, enhancing relocating disaster management centers to more commanding locations are offered to be implemented within the physical structure of the area. The IHWP method and the Raster Calculator tool in GIS have been used for compiling the zoning of earthquake vulnerability.

Nigeria has had several housing programmes and policies geared towards the provision of housing her citizens since colonial era to the post-colonial period. The Nigerian Government had always been directly involved in the provision of housing for the public servants and with the advent of the public-private partnership initiative, the low-income public servants’ acceptability of this new housing policy was exامینed through a survey researchin which questionnaires were administered on public servants in the three tiers of government. The new housing policy through public-private partnership promises to make housing available and affordable to this class of the citizens. The study reveals that the low-income public servants embrace the public-private partnership initiative in housing provision. Recommendations were proffered in making the public-private partnership in housing delivery a workable panacea for the housing problems of the low-income members of the society.