The global awareness of urban wetlands as areas where crucial issues as urban growth and policies against climate change overlap, must be addressed with critical urgency on developing countries with rapid rates of transformation. The late consciousness about the environmental value of Bogota wetlands have created a rich field of discussion regarding the role of these places in the city, but specially and what constitutes the main purpose of this investigation, the development of a vision which could lead to new kinds of physical interventions between the protected areas and the existing urban settlements. This work aims at recognizing and providing basic principles to guarantee that these physical realities are compatible with the needs of the main natural elements which constitute these ecosystems. Referring to urban ecology principles, wetlands and human settlements are intended as part of the same ecosystem and their reciprocal relations from an urban design perspective is the object of this investigation. The Jaboque wetland, for its size and location, offers interesting conditions to carry on the morphological investigation in order to define series of principles which explore this new physical dimension, and in particular, the construction of concept-plan and master-plan guidelines, aiming at overcoming typical limitations of general and not site-related policies, and finally which could influence actions on other wetlands with similar characteristics.

The paper is a critical revision of the sufficiency of sustainability reporting frameworks to represent sustainability performance. The paper sustains that while frameworks facilitate recording, classifying, and summarizing sustainability data (i.e. economic, social and environmental), they are insufficient to represent organizational sustainability performance. Using Systems Theory and systems proprieties the thesis illustrates how sustainability reporting frameworks fail to sufficiently represent sustainability performance as an organizational management tool.

The international development arena has been transformed in the last two decades. On the one hand, NGOs have become more market oriented, both in terms of their business models and in terms of their approach. On the other hand, private actors have also become more socially engaged, and advances in technology and communications have brought new opportunities for market sector actors to create social impacts. The result has been an increasing trend of social enterprises (SEs), hybrid organisations created for a social purpose but participating actively in the market for their subsistence. This paper examines the differences between traditional NGOs, funded mainly by government grants and donations, and these new actors that rely primarily on market-based income. Furthermore, this study tries to examine how Dutch NGOs and SEs are creating links between activities focused on market building and actual participation in markets, a challenge that Helmsing and Knorringa identified in 2008. To do this, 21 SEs were interviewed and another 16 NGOs were studied on the basis of interviews (5) and their annual reports, strategy papers and official websites. We find that there are three ways in which NGOs and SEs are successfully “bridging the gap” between market building and market participation: i) through official partnerships, ii) individually by tapping market and non-market sources of funding, using new technologies and leveraging from new forms of private philanthropy, and iii) by selling specialized “market building” services that guarantee an active participation of the private sector. Furthermore, the ability of SEs to engage in market building activities and of NGOs to participate in the market depends largely on their origins and the business models and financial strategies that they adopt.

The present research explores the growing field of studies of Minority Language Media by focusing on two case studies, Wales and Colombia. The research seeks to answer the question of how the complex, hybrid identity of media producers negotiate their various identity allegiances in the preparation and broadcast of output for Minority Language Media. The research process takes an interpretative and qualitative stance to interviews with producers and participant observation of the production process, to determine the impact of the different negotiations of identity upon linguistic output. This analysis allows for a comparative discussion which provides new elements for the study of Minority Language Media from manifold perspectives: it evidences the impact of certain identifications on the linguistic output of media, it shows the various stances that may be adopted in regards to the purpose and interest of Minority Language Media, and it provides a set of examples which enable a discussion about the development of the field of studies beyond the European remit from whence it stems. Finally, this research seeks to lay the foundation for new aspects of interest in the developing field. 

From 2006 to 2008 the world was hit by major food price increases. The effects of these were felt worldwide and have been studied in several countries. The objective of this dissertation is to assess the specific impacts on urban households in Colombia and to quantify their welfare losses as well as the aggregate city poverty increases. Using total expenditures as a measure of household welfare, the study employs household survey information combined with disaggregated price data for the 13 main capital cities and 13 basic food commodities to address the proposed objectives. The analysis starts with the nominal adjustment of the poverty line caused by the increase in the basic consumption basket and then simulates short and medium term impacts of the price surge. These are measured in terms of monetary expenditure at the household level and using poverty headcount rate and poverty gap indicators at the aggregate level. The medium term increase in poverty is around 3%, both in the extreme and overall cases. However sub-national results vary significantly from these averages, being Barranquilla the city most affected. In addition, households with lower initial welfare and educational level, as well as female headed ones seem to be hit the hardest. These results could be applied to develop more efficiently targeted programmes directed to protect household entitlements towards a food price crisis. They could also be used to establish benefit levels or expansion directions of existing conditional cash transfer programmes that intend to improve nutritional and poverty conditions in Colombia. Finally the results become even more relevant considering the likely recurrence of events like these in the near future.

Sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI), which is innovation directed at improving social, environmental, and economic conditions, is being studied and used as a way to address the risks and opportunities organisations have in these three areas. This research explores the use of Performance Management (PM), meaning the strategy and processes used in organisations to define and improve performance, as a way to develop SOI capabilities in companies. The conceptual model used is based around four concepts: SOI, which describes what is to be achieved, organisations, or learning organisations, as the place where this can happen, PM, which explains how this can be accomplished, and individuals and teams as the central subject that describe who is this targeted for. The research was based on a literature review around these areas and a set of semi-structured interviews to managers and senior directors of large multinational organisations with innovation or sustainability related roles. Through the analysis and interpretation of this data, the results validated the effectiveness of PM to improve SOI in organisations, as well as uncovering six specific opportunity areas to leverage it more effectively. The latter are summarised as: purpose or vision offering direction, values that enable autonomy and celebrate trying, daring and shared goals, resources committed for the long run, sustainability literacy, and enabling business processes. The research contributes to the literature by outlining pathways to connect sustainability practices with other business practices, especially Human Resources, the area of study of PM. Additionally, it contributes to the practice of SOI by providing guidelines to identify and act on potential areas of opportunities to leverage on PM to develop SOI capabilities.

Research Question Starting with the research question -Why are individuals at professional services firms motivated or inhibited to share knowledge? This case study gives an elaborate picture of the knowledge sharing behaviors and the motivations of a group of technology consultants. The insights obtained from this research reveal valuable lessons to increase the propensity of these individuals to share their knowledge. Problem Businesses such as management consultancy and technology consultancy are recognized for their heavy investment in human capital while minimizing the use of tools and machinery. It is in this setting where managing knowledge has become critical to performance and the process of sharing knowledge has been identified as a key source of competitive advantage. Although much theory is available in this area, organizations often experience difficulties taking knowledge management into practice. Among other problems, it has been observed that there is a poor understanding of the employees who carry the knowledge and what their perceptions are. One approach drawn from social sciences has addressed this situation by focusing on the motivations of the individuals to engage in knowledge sharing. It brings attention to the personalized, diffuse nature of knowledge and that transferring knowledge is an effort-insensitive activity, thus requiring certain degree of motivation. A relevant development in this direction is the Alignment Model of Motivational Focus, which stresses that the decision on an individual to share knowledge is not only affected by personal motivations, but also by the alignment, or association, to the groups it belongs to. While this model is recent and has not been tested, its original approach and its focus on knowledge-intensive firms provide a suitable foundation to prolong the research on knowledge sharing. Objective In line with the theoretical and practical implications of focusing on professional services firms, this research aimed to explore the knowledge sharing behaviors in this industry and to identify the motivations of the individuals to engage in the process. Once reached a conclusion on the most relevant forces steering the individuals, the author sought to draw corresponding management practices that would increase the propensity of the workforce to share its knowledge. Methodology The research was structured in the form of a case study on an IT-consulting unit within a large professional services firm in the Netherlands. It made use of in-depth interviews with the consultants and direct observations of their behaviors, while the Alignment Model of Motivational Focus was implemented as main conceptual model to structure the data. Given the strict qualitative nature of the study, specialized software was utilized to code and analyze the data. The analysis focused on evaluating the frequency of key concepts and establishing relationships among them. Findings It was found that the individuals are mainly driven by personal motivations, but also by the alignment to their team, the alignment to the organization and the alignment to their professional discipline. Eight motivational forces seem to have a major impact in stimulating knowledge sharing behaviors. Their ranking in order of importance is: -Most important: Reciprocity -Personal success -Expectations from the team -Team success -Perceived value of knowledge by others -Availability of resources -Personal Status - Least important: Contribution to project practices This list is the result of proposing a modified version of the Alignment Model of Motivational Focus specific to professional services. The new model excluded the motivations of gaining financial rewards and of gaining personal influence, as they do not seem to correspond to the work in this industry. In addition, reciprocity was a motivation not contemplated in the original model but here it was found to have a central role. These disparities appear to be related to the distinctive features associated with the professional services industry, such as the importance of networking and the heavy weight given to the individual achievements. Furthermore, it was found that there are a various barriers inhibiting the individuals to share knowledge. The most significant ones are the perception that there is not enough time to invest in sharing, and that the management does not provide enough support for this process. Practical implications The results of the case study provide the groundwork to design improvement measures to increase the likelihood that knowledge will be shared among the employees of professional services firms. A set of seven managerial practices were identified that may effectively stimulate knowledge sharing in line with the perceptions and ambitions of the individuals. In no particular order: 1. Strengthen networking skills 2. Make knowledge contributions publicly visible 3. Have formal procedures to record and share lessons learned 4. Integrate knowledge sharing into the performance appraisal 5. Offer explicit, non-financial rewards 6. Develop a knowledge sharing culture 7. Exhibit leadership Incorporating these practices in the knowledge management strategies of professional services firms and keeping sight of the behavioral responses of the workforce will offer valuable insight to gain an enhanced organizational performance.

This thesis contributes to the existing literature on personality traits and economic preference parameters by analyzing the stability of some of the main traits and parameters. Specically, I investigate whether (1) they change as individuals age in the cross-section and by individual, and (2) whether they are affected by an individual's personal situation changes. I use data from a large Dutch household panel survey (DHS) that includes measures for two key economic preference parameters: Risk Aversion and Future Orientation. On personality traits, the dataset contains information on the “Big Five”, a set of five general traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) that are said to capture individual differences in personality, and Economic Locus of Control, a lower-level (i.e. more specic; narrower) trait that measures the extent to which an individual believes economic outcomes are a result of her own actions. My results using pooled cross-section analysis suggest that most preference parameters and personality traits are not stable over time and are changed by many of the events investigated; in particular, there is strong evidence that Big Five Openness is negatively affected by marriage and widowing. Using fixed effects and random effects methodologies on a sub-sample of the data, most of the changes attributed to the events are no longer signifficant but the coefficients of marriage and widowing on Openness remain signifcant of similar size. If personality is modeled as a unit root process and their differences over four years are regressed against event dummies and age group indicators, the effects that are statistically signiffcant reduce to only a few, and the evidence on age instability is also contested. Overall, the evidence suggest that the hypothesis of age stability for most personality traits can be rejected (with the exception of Locus of Control) and only Openness seems to be negatively affected by marriage and widowing.

How can public employees be motivated to pursue important public purposes with intelligence and energy? When employees are motivated to work, a greater State capacity and a better public provision can be achieved. Motivation concerns how behavior starts, energizes, sustains and directs people to attain goals with drive and persistence and the kind of subjective reaction present in the organism while all this is going on. Current literature in public administration, human resource management and psychology argue that motivation fosters employee work performance and, even more, that it affects the degree to which an employee can contribute to an organization’s success. This paper explains the importance of employee motivation, specifically in the public sector, and explores how this concept affects different factors of human resource management such as goal setting, training and development, organizational climate and culture, team-building, appreciation, feedback, rewards and fairness. This analysis is then contrasted with the reality of a specific organization belonging to a specific context: the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For this, the Colombian public sector background – and the Ministry’s in particular – in regards to public employee motivation is illustrated. Through a qualitative research approach, the Human Resources Direction, 4 other top-level management and 34 employees are asked to indicate the main motivators of the staff and the factors that most affect their motivation to work. The results show that, due to the particularities of the Colombian context, there are certain factors that deeply affect the staff´s motivation. Such factors, nonetheless, validate what has been concluded by motivation, psychology and HRM literature and research. Employees in the Ministry, just as any other human being, seek to carry out interesting and purposeful tasks; want to grow and achieve goals; and long for an environment whose climate and culture provides appreciation, feedback and fairness. In this regard, 8 recommendations are provided to help the MFA improve its employees’ motivation and thus productivity, performance and – equally important – happinness (for high motivation is a sign of happier people). Although the recommendations are specific for the MFA, considering that the findings confirm motivation literature and are in accordance with the problems portrayed of the Colombian public sector context, it is also plausible to take them into account for other public sector agencies in Colombia and abroad.

Unnamed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are known for their application in surveillance and tracking with on-board cameras. Videos from UAV usually suffer from jitter and high frequency unintended movements which makes necessary stabilize the footage. This is a Computer Vision problem, particularly difficult due to level of noise in acquisition and different types of scenarios which make hard to implement online stabilizer (on the fly). The present thesis explains in depth algorithms, methods and implementations of the OpenCV module videostab. We presented a version in C++ of videostab in context of video from UAV. Two main blocks constitute the current implementation: motion estimation and motion stabilization. In the former, the system robustly estimates global displacement in between every consecutive pair of frames. The latter can be used in two possible ways: Assuming that estimated motion contains intended UAV motion and high frequency vibrations or assuming that all estimated motion is undesirable. The first case is solved with a Gaussian filter to smooth motions and, in the second case, a filter called Zero Motion was implemented to give sensation of stillness. Results show that the implementation is robust and can work in different scenarios of UAV. Moreover, it is possible to run it in a general purpose computer with high speed performance. Online performance can be achieved using some function with graphic processing unit (GPU).