Joseph Awange - Böcker

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are a cornerstone of modern geodetic positioning, but their true potential extends far beyond traditional applications. GNSS Applications to Monitor Natural Hazards presents a systematic, step-by-step methodology for leveraging satellite-based positioning to detect, analyze, and mitigate environmental threats-from floods and droughts to seismic shifts and landslides. As climate change intensifies natural hazards, this book bridges the gap between theory and practice, offering researchers, engineers, and policymakers reproducible techniques to enhance early-warning systems. For the first time, it also explores AI-enhanced GNSS, demonstrating how machine learning can unlock real-time hazard prediction and adaptive monitoring. Designed for both experts and newcomers, this work translates cutting-edge research into actionable strategies, empowering readers to harness GNSS technology for a more resilient future. Whether optimizing disaster response or decoding subtle environmental changes, this book is an essential guide to reducing the impact of catastrophic events through innovation.

Covers a wide variety of techniques with numerous Illustrative examples to link GNSS applications to real situationsProvides easy to follow, step-by-step procedures enhancing understanding of complex methodologiesDelivers simplified theoretical concepts to enable non-GNSS experts to understand

This second edition includes updated chapters from the first edition as well as five additional new chapters (Light detection and ranging (LiDAR), CORONA historical de-classified products, Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs), GNSS-reflectometry and GNSS applications to climate variability), shifting the main focus from monitoring and management to extreme hydro-climatic and food security challenges and exploiting big data. Since the publication of first edition, much has changed in terms of technology, and the demand for geospatial data has increased with the advent of the big data era. For instance, the use of laser scanning has advanced so much that it is unavoidable in most environmental monitoring tasks, whereas unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs)/drones are emerging as efficient tools that address food security issues as well as many other contemporary challenges. Furthermore, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are now responding to challenges posed by climate change by unravelling the impacts of teleconnection (e.g., ENSO) as well as advancing the use of reflected signals (GNSS-reflectometry) to monitor, e.g., soil moisture variations. Indeed all these rely on the explosive use of “big data” in many fields of human endeavour.Moreover, with the ever-increasing global population, intense pressure is being exerted on the Earth’s resources, leading to significant changes in its land cover (e.g., deforestation), diminishing biodiversity and natural habitats, dwindling fresh water supplies, and changing weather and climatic patterns (e.g., global warming, changing sea level). Environmental monitoring techniques that provide information on these are under scrutiny from an increasingly environmentally conscious society that demands the efficient delivery of such information at a minimal cost. Environmental changes vary both spatially and temporally, thereby putting pressure on traditional methods of data acquisition, some of which are highly labour intensive, such as animal tracking for conservation purposes. With these challenges, conventional monitoring techniques, particularly those that record spatial changes call for more sophisticated approaches that deliver the necessary information at an affordable cost. One direction being pursued in the development of such techniques involves environmental geoinformatics, which can act as a stand-alone method or complement traditional methods.

The book introduces the latest methods and algorithms developed in machine and deep learning (hybrid symbolic-numeric computations, robust statistical techniques for clustering and eliminating data as well as convolutional neural networks) dealing not only with images and the use of computers, but also their applications to visualization tasks generalized by up-to-date points of view. Associated algorithms are deposited on iCloud.

Richly illustrated with diagrams, equations and tables as well as examples of every day survey tasks. It also covers new topics, such as the global navigation satellite system’s (Real Time Kinematic-RTK), which are increasingly used in a wide range of everyday engineering applications.

Richly illustrated with diagrams, equations and tables as well as examples of every day survey tasks. It also covers new topics, such as the global navigation satellite system’s (Real Time Kinematic-RTK), which are increasingly used in a wide range of everyday engineering applications.

This book employs a suite of remotely sensed products and advanced technologies to provide the first comprehensive space-based sensing of Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake that supports a livelihood of more than 42 million people, modulates regional climate, but faces myriads of challenges. Proper understanding of the lake and changes in its physical dynamics (e.g., water level, shorelines and areal dynamics) resulting from the impacts of climate variation and climate change as well as anthropogenic (e.g., hydropower and irrigation) is important for its management as well as for strategic development before, during and after climate extremes (e.g., floods and droughts) in order to inform policy formulations, planning and mitigation measures. Owing to its sheer size, and lack of research resources commitment by regional governments that hamper its observations, however, it is a daunting task to undertake studies on Lake Victoria relying solely on in-situ “boots on the ground” measurements, which are sparse, missing in most cases, inconsistent or restricted by governmental red tapes. To unlock the potentials of Lake Victoria, this book argues for the removal of obsolete Nile treaties signed between Britain, Egypt and Sudan in the 1920s and 1950s, which prohibits its utilization by the upstream countries. The book is useful to those in water resources management and policy formulations, hydrologists, environmentalists, engineers and researchers.In a unique cross-disciplinary approach, the Book articulates the various climatic impacts and explanations from natural and anthropogenic origins, which affected Lake Victoria and its vicinity, including the drastic increase and depletion of water level in the Lake and dams, floods and droughts, water quality/security, crop health, food security, and economic implications. With no exception as in his many publications, Joseph L. Awange used data analysis methodologies including filtering, adjustment theory, and robust statistics, to quantify the hydrologic and other parameters, and their estimated uncertainties.  The Book is recommended for readers from a diverse disciplines, including physical and social sciences, policy, law, engineering, and disaster management. Professor C.K. Shum, Ohio State University.

This book employs a suite of remotely sensed products and advanced technologies to provide the first comprehensive space-based sensing of Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake that supports a livelihood of more than 42 million people, modulates regional climate, but faces myriads of challenges.

On the other hand, it argues on the need for equitable use of the NRB’s waters by all 11 countries within its basin, and doing away with obsolete Nile treaties that were signed by Britain, Egypt and Sudan, which prohibit the use of the Nile by 8 upstream countries.

This book will benefit users in food security, agriculture, water management, and environmental sectors. It provides the first comprehensive analysis of Greater Horn of Africa (GHA)’s food insecurity and hydroclimate using the state-of-the-art Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its Follow-on (GRACE-FO)’s, centennial precipitation, hydrological models’ and reanalysis’ products. It is here opined that GHA is endowed with freshwater (surface and groundwater) being home to the world's second largest freshwater body (Lake Victoria) and the greatest continental water towers (Ethiopian Highlands) that if properly tapped in a sustainable way, will support its irrigated agriculture as well as pastoralism. First, however, the obsolete Nile treaties that hamper the use of Lake Victoria (White Nile) and Ethiopian Highland (Blue Nile) have to be unlocked. Moreover, GHA is bedevilled by poor governance and the ``donor-assistance” syndrome; andin 2020-2021 faced the so-called ``triple threats’’ of desert locust infestation, climate variability/change impacts and COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, climate extremes influence its meagre waters leading to perennial food insecurity. Coupled with frequent regional and local conflicts, high population growth rate, low crop yield, invasion of migratory pests, contagious human and livestock diseases (such as HIV/AIDs, COVID-19 & Rift Valley fever) and poverty, life for more than 310 million of its inhabitants simply becomes unbearable. Alarming also is the fact that drought-like humanitarian crises are increasing in GHA despite recent progress in its monitoring and prediction efforts. Notwithstanding these efforts, there remain challenges stemming from uncertainty in its prediction, and the inflexibility and limited buffering capacity of the recurrent impacted systems. To achieve greater food security, therefore, in addition to boosting GHA's agricultural output, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs suggest that its “inhabitants must create more diverse and stable means of livelihood to insulate themselves and their households from external shocks”. This is a task that they acknowledge will not be easy as the path ahead is “strewn with obstacles namely; natural hazards and armed conflicts”. Understanding GHA’s food insecurity and its hydroclimate as presented in this book is a good starting point towards managing the impacts of the natural hazards on the one hand while understanding the impacts associated with extreme climate on GHA's available water and assessing the potential of its surface and groundwater to support its irrigated agriculture and pastoralism would be the first step towards “coping with drought” on the other hand.The book represents a significant effort by Prof Awange in trying to offer a comprehensive overview of the hydroclimate in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). Prof Eric F. Wood, NAE (USA); FRSC (Canada); Foreign member, ATSE (Australia).

This book will benefit users in food security, agriculture, water management, and environmental sectors. It provides the first comprehensive analysis of Greater Horn of Africa (GHA)’s food insecurity and hydroclimate using the state-of-the-art Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its Follow-on (GRACE-FO)’s, centennial precipitation, hydrological models’ and reanalysis’ products. It is here opined that GHA is endowed with freshwater (surface and groundwater) being home to the world's second largest freshwater body (Lake Victoria) and the greatest continental water towers (Ethiopian Highlands) that if properly tapped in a sustainable way, will support its irrigated agriculture as well as pastoralism. First, however, the obsolete Nile treaties that hamper the use of Lake Victoria (White Nile) and Ethiopian Highland (Blue Nile) have to be unlocked. Moreover, GHA is bedevilled by poor governance and the ``donor-assistance” syndrome; andin 2020-2021 faced the so-called ``triple threats’’ of desert locust infestation, climate variability/change impacts and COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, climate extremes influence its meagre waters leading to perennial food insecurity. Coupled with frequent regional and local conflicts, high population growth rate, low crop yield, invasion of migratory pests, contagious human and livestock diseases (such as HIV/AIDs, COVID-19 & Rift Valley fever) and poverty, life for more than 310 million of its inhabitants simply becomes unbearable. Alarming also is the fact that drought-like humanitarian crises are increasing in GHA despite recent progress in its monitoring and prediction efforts. Notwithstanding these efforts, there remain challenges stemming from uncertainty in its prediction, and the inflexibility and limited buffering capacity of the recurrent impacted systems. To achieve greater food security, therefore, in addition to boosting GHA's agricultural output, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs suggest that its “inhabitants must create more diverse and stable means of livelihood to insulate themselves and their households from external shocks”. This is a task that they acknowledge will not be easy as the path ahead is “strewn with obstacles namely; natural hazards and armed conflicts”. Understanding GHA’s food insecurity and its hydroclimate as presented in this book is a good starting point towards managing the impacts of the natural hazards on the one hand while understanding the impacts associated with extreme climate on GHA's available water and assessing the potential of its surface and groundwater to support its irrigated agriculture and pastoralism would be the first step towards “coping with drought” on the other hand.The book represents a significant effort by Prof Awange in trying to offer a comprehensive overview of the hydroclimate in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). Prof Eric F. Wood, NAE (USA); FRSC (Canada); Foreign member, ATSE (Australia).

This second edition of the book that targets those in computer algebra and artificial intelligence introduces Black Hole algorithm that is essential for optimizing hyperparameters, an important task in machine learning where mostly, stochastic global methods are used as well as ChatGPT, a novel and in the last few years, very popular Generative AI technology. In addition, fisher discriminant, a linear discriminant that can provide an optimal separation of objects, and the conversion of time series into images thereby making it possible to employ convolution neural network to classify time series effectively are presented.

Designed for undergraduate students with no prior computational background, this comprehensive textbook systematically builds essential surveying skills through three structured parts. Part 1 establishes foundational competencies across 10 chapters, beginning with mathematical formulas, coordinate systems, and conversions before progressing to trigonometric angular computations. It covers practical field procedures like intersections, resections, and traversing for horizontal control establishment, followed by earthwork area calculations and circular curve computations for road/rail alignment. The section concludes with cadastral subdivision techniques, reinforced by Chapter 18’s consolidated formula repository and calculator application guide. Part 2 advances to intermediate concepts, addressing significant figures, error propagation, and extended curve designs incorporating superelevation (transition/composite/vertical curves). Geological strike/dip analysis and coordinate transformations are presented alongside detailed Transverse Mercator projection workflows with multi-parameter examples. Part 3 explores specialized topics including least squares adjustment of plane intersections, modern EDM positioning, survey line alignment, and inter-zone Mercator transformations. Featuring 22 chapters with over 500 diagrams, 120 interconnected equations, and 80 reference tables, the book emphasizes practical mastery through worked examples, chapter exercises with solutions, and real-world applications. The progressive structure scaffolds learning from basic arithmetic to advanced adjustments, while the consistent focus on computational precision prepares students for both field practice and further studies. Particular attention is given to visualizing mathematical concepts through surveying applications, with algorithmic approaches presented alongside traditional methods. Ideal for introductory through intermediate courses, this resource balances theoretical rigor with immediately applicable techniques, serving as both a classroom textbook and a lifelong professional reference.

This book providesinformation on the distribution of the available energy resources throughoutthe continent and how it is linked to the development of individual states.Africa is considered one of the poorest continents in the world, mainly becauseits development has historically depended on imported resources includingtechnical expertise. This view and its associated resource management strategyare based on the perception that Africa lacks sufficient energy resources todrive its development agenda. Analyses of individual countries’ energy potentials,exploitation levels and distribution mechanisms are provided with a view toidentifying additional factors that are stifling Africa’s economic development.One critical factor is the relationship between available energy resources andthe energy mixes chosen by different states, and how these can be exploited toproduce the right blend of energy for various applications such as industrial,transport, domestic, and recreational uses. The authors provide an in-depthanalysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different energy sources interms of their environmental, industrialization and distribution costs,impacts, and the development options best suited for improving Africa’seconomic situation. This analysis is based on the assertion that Africa is indeedblessed with abundant energy resources, which have not been effectivelyexploited. The book not only reviews Africa’s energy situation in general, but also revealsthat, while there are certainly circumstances peculiar to individual countries, the similarities, especially within Sub-Saharan African countries, outweigh the differences. That being said, the challenges and available opportunities in each country should be viewed with due consideration given to the prevailing national resource management environment. Many initiatives in Africa fail because of the many loopholes in the management structures, which allow corruption, theft, and mere selfishness to thrive. In addition to the negative impacts of these factors on implementation activities, there is also a general lack of institutional support for initiatives that could otherwise be very progressive. Thus, taken together, these retrogressive practices stifle African energy development plans. The book offers a valuable guide for developers, investors, researchers and environmentalist, providing in-depth insights on the relationship between available energy resources and development trends in Africa. "By harnessing the wind and sun, your vast geothermal energy and rivers for hydropower, you can turn this climate threat into an economic opportunity." US President Obama's address to the African Union (2015)

Improved geospatial instrumentation and technology such as in laser scanning has now resulted in millions of data being collected, e.g., point clouds. It is in realization that such huge amount of data requires efficient and robust mathematical solutions that this third edition of the book extends the second edition by introducing three new chapters: Robust parameter estimation, Multiobjective optimization and Symbolic regression.  Furthermore, the linear homotopy chapter is expanded to include nonlinear homotopy. These disciplines are discussed first in the theoretical part of the book before illustrating their geospatial applications in the applications chapters where numerous numerical examples are presented. The renewed electronic supplement contains these new theoretical and practical topics, with the corresponding Mathematica statements and functions supporting their computations introduced and applied. This third edition is renamed in light of these technological advancements.

This book providesinformation on the distribution of the available energy resources throughoutthe continent and how it is linked to the development of individual states.

This book is the second edition of Environmental Monitoring using GNSS and highlights the latest developments in global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). It features a completely new title and additional chapters that present emerging challenges to environmental monitoring—“climate variability/change and food insecurity.” Since the publication of the first edition, much has changed in both the development and applications of GNSS, a satellite microwave remote sensing technique. It is the first tool to span all four dimensions of relevance to humans (position, navigation, timing and the environment), and it has widely been used for positioning (both by military and civilians), navigation and timing. Its increasing use is leading to a new era of remote sensing that is now revolutionizing the art of monitoring our environment in ways never imagined before.On the one hand, nearly all GNSS satellites (Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), Galileo and Beidou) have become operational, thereby providing high-precision, continuous, all-weather and near real- time remote sensing multi-signals beneficial to environmental monitoring. On the other hand, the emerging challenges of precisely monitoring climate change and the demand for the production of sufficient food for ever-increasing populations are pushing traditional monitoring methods to their limits.In this regard, refracted GNSS signals (i.e., occulted GNSS signals or GNSS meteorology) are now emerging as sensors of climate variability, while the reflected signals (GNSS reflectometry or GNSS-R) are increasingly finding applications in determining, e.g., soil moisture content, ice and snow thickness, ocean heights, and wind speed and direction, among others. Furthermore, the increasing recognition and application of GNSS-supported unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAV)/drones in agriculture (e.g., through the determination of water holding capacity of soil) highlights the new challenges facing GNSS.As such, this new edition three new chapters address GNSS reflectometry and applications; GNSS sensing of climate variability; and the applications in UAV/drones. Moreover, it explores the application of GNSS to support integrated coastal zone management.

It is in realization that such huge amount of data requires efficient and robust mathematical solutions that this third edition of the book extends the second edition by introducing three new chapters: Robust parameter estimation, Multiobjective optimization and Symbolic regression.