Besides a high distinctiveness, robustness (or invariance) to image degradations is very desirable for texture feature extraction methods in real-world applications. In this paper, focus is on making arbitrary texture descriptors invariant to blur which is often prevalent in real image data. From previous work, we know that most state-of-the-art texture feature extraction methods are unable to ...

The progressive constriction of the Mississippi for navigation since 1837 has caused bottom erosion in some stretches. In others the bottom oscillates up and down with time. The high stages rise much more rapidly. Constriction of the river channel causes flooding and makes floods higher; thus navigation works degrade the protection afforded by levees. The combination of navigation works and lev...

.................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Background and Study Area ....................................................................................... 2 Methods ...........................

Many public goods like dams, fire departments, and lighthouses do not provide direct utility but act more as insurance devices against floods, fire, and shipwreck. They either diminish the probability or the size of the loss. We extend the public good model with this insurance aspect and generalize Samuelson’s efficient allocation rule when self-insurance and self-protection expenditures are pu...

Damage from two earthquakes that occurred in 2007 was surveyed. The 2007 Sumatra earthquake struck Indonesia. The results were typical of damage observed in developing countries from this magnitude event. Due to questinable detailing and inadequate construction practices, there was significant structural damage, including thousands of collapsed structures. The damage exceeded what is expected f...

Surveys have shown that noise from wind turbines is perceived as annoying by a proportion of residents living in their vicinity, apparently at much lower noise levels than those inducing annoyance due to other environmental sources. The aim of the present study was to derive the exposure-response relationship between wind turbine noise exposure in L(den) and the expected percentage annoyed resi...

Wind power has expanded significantly over the past years, although reliability of wind turbine systems, especially of offshore wind turbines, has been many times unsatisfactory in the past. Wind turbine failures are equivalent to crucial financial losses. Therefore, creating and applying strategies that improve the reliability of their components is important for a successful implementation of...

On Earth, large earthquakes commonly cause saturated soils to liquefy and streamflow to increase. We suggest that meteoritic impacts on Mars may have repeatedly caused similar liquefaction to enable violent eruption of groundwater. The amount of erupted water may be comparable to that required to produce catastrophic floods and to form outflow channels.  2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this work, the numerical data related to wind turbine micrositing problem is presented. The data is acquired using the differential evolution algorithm (DEA) at different wind speeds. The data obtained through DEA include total dissipated power, cost per installation of unit turbine, and the efficiency of algorithm after installation of any particular number turbines; and are depicted versus...