Academic literature on the topic 'Relational Buffer Zones'

AbstractAmidst calls for containing an assertive Russia, politicians and pundits have been debating whether Ukraine should serve as a ‘buffer zone’ between the Russian and Western spheres of influence. These debates provide an opportunity to revisit the long and varied history of major powers’ efforts to manage buffer zones. We draw on this history to learn the conditions under which buffer zones succeed or fail to stabilise regions, how buffers are most successfully managed, and when alternative arrangements for borderlands work better.

State security and survival are critical issues in the rough regional environment of the Horn of Africa. Ensuring security for a state and its population is a priority and a raison d'ětre for any government. The buffer zone has emerged as a key strategy for nations in the Horn of Africa to manage successfully the security challenges of the several failed states in their neighborhood. Buffer zones are established adjacent to the borders of stronger states that oversee the buffer zones' affairs directly or through proxies. This essay explores the practical aspects of power asymmetries between successful and failed states from the perspectives of two officials in successful states who deal directly with this security challenge within the constraints of current norms and practices of sovereignty. The situation in the Horn of Africa provides insights into the effects of failed states on the security of their neighbors and the challenges that failed states present to the wider international community.

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 208764, “A Better Set of Eyes: Computer Vision Technology To Monitor Safety Zones and Automate Drillpipe Tally,” by Douglas Watson, Helmerich and Payne; Kenneth Morton, CoVAR; and Sarah Kern, SPE, Helmerich and Payne, et al. The paper has not been peer reviewed. An indispensable item for every roughneck is the tally book, used to measure and count the drillpipe entering and exiting the wellbore. Traditional manual entry is prone to error, leading to potential mistakes in the calculated drilling depth and poorly sequenced lithologies. Computer vision technology has shown promise in other industries with its ability to automate similar recognition and counting tasks. A dual-use system has been developed in which the same cameras for pipe counting can be used for red-zone-entry detection, potentially enhance the safety of the drilling process. A Dual-Use System: Monitor Safety Zones and Automate Drillpipe Tally Drilling-depth measurement commonly is performed using the drillpipe itself, and it happens in two places. It is first measured using a tape measure or pipe strap as the pipe lies on the pipe delivery system (PDS) rack before it is loaded into the stands. Then, the pipe segments are counted above the rig floor as the pipes enter and exit the borehole. This count, combined with the pipe-tally measurements, is used to determine the depth of the hole. These two work locations—ground-level PDS and rig floor—also are areas where existing procedures are in place to reduce the likelihood of serious injury. In the case of the PDS area, where pipe lengths are measured, it is dangerous to enter any time the PDS is in operation. This dangerous red zone is defined as 45 ft on each side of the PDS. Numerous industry advances over the years have made the area safer. These methods, including buffer zones (creating an understood area not to be entered or to be avoided for personal safety) and barricades (a physical block or reminder to manage entry into a high-risk buffer zone), communicate visually the potential for hazardous situations. While proper inspection, planning, and buffer-zone and barricade procedure development does communicate the safety-critical nature of the PDS environment, the potential remains for dropped-object events and tubular-handling events that can cause significant injuries or fatalities.

Abstract It is widely believed that international law does not enable to protect effectively the wreck of the ms Estonia against looting. The protection regime established under the 1995 ms Estonia Treaty is binding and violations against it can be effectively sanctioned in respect of only the nationals of its few States Parties, resulting in numerous jurisdictional gaps. This study argues that the law of the sea and administrative law provide the means for safeguarding the ms Estonia wreck against pilferers. Estonia has repeatedly designated tiny buffer zones around relatively modern shipwrecks outside its territorial sea. Finland can follow this practice in relation to the ms Estonia wreck that lies less than 19 nm from its baselines. In effect, Finland would be entitled to regulate and authorize activities directed at the shipwreck with the right to exercise its enforcement jurisdiction against persons that disturb the peace of the mass grave.

Why do similarly sized peacekeeping missions vary in their effectiveness to protect civilians in conflicts? We argue that peace operations with a large share of troops from countries with high-quality militaries are better able to deter violence from state and non-state actors and create buffer zones within conflict areas, can better reach remote locations, and have superior capabilities – including diplomatic pressure by troop contributing countries – to monitor the implementation of peace agreements. These operational advantages enable them to better protect civilians. Combining data from military expenditures of troop contributing countries together with monthly data on the composition of peace operations, we create a proxy indicator for the average troop quality of UN PKOs. Statistical evidence from an extended sample of conflicts in Africa and Asia between 1991 and 2010 supports our argument.

The trend of increasing automation and integration of digital work flows continues in all disciplines within the industry. An obvious driver is the increasing digital nature of our world; today’s phones and tablets connected to the cloud perhaps have more computing capabilities than supercomputers from 5 or 10 years ago. Another key driver, arguably the reason why intelligent operations came on the radar of most companies, is being able to improve safety and efficiency in the complex operations that are routinely performed in the oil patch. The last couple of years, I have highlighted efforts around remote operations of fields, smart wells, and the acquisition and integration of real-time data. This year, I have focused on recent drilling-related papers that highlight how safety and performance can be improved with more intelligent operations. Paper SPE 208711 discusses a key requirement I see for successful intelligent operations, especially when the operations span disciplines and companies. Having a standard, consistent, and unambiguous lexicon is critical for automation and digital work flows. This paper highlights an effort to spur the standardization of codes across companies to describe drilling, completions, and other well activities. Anybody who has gone through old well files will recognize immediately the value and the need for such standardization of well activity codes. The other two papers (SPE 208764 and SPE 208784) highlight how automation can lead to increased safety on rigs during operations. Companies are using a combination of cameras, wearables, and other technology to monitor personnel in safety zones on rigs to ensure no one is unknowingly in the wrong spot at the wrong time. A familiar analog to this would be the safety improvements in driving because of collision-avoidance systems in cars (where a combination of technologies including cameras, radar, and lidar are used). Standardization of Well Activity Codes. - Paper SPE 208711 describes the efforts of one operator to standardize well activity reporting codes. A key highlighted improvement is a new coding system that captures both what was done (the typical focus of historical well activity codes) and the broader context on why the activity was performed. The new codes have enabled more granular tracking of performance metrics and a simplification of reporting. Significantly, the operator has recognized the need for a standardized set of codes across the industry and has donated the codes they have developed to an industrywide open-source environment. I hope this spurs wider adoption and refinement of reporting standards across the industry. Using Computer Vision To Monitor Safety Zones and Automate Drillpipe Tallies. - Paper SPE 208764 highlights how digitalization can result in safer operations and improved accuracy through the automation of manual tasks. The paper discusses a computer vision system coupled with a neural network model that detects if any personnel are within a restricted pipe-delivery red zone at an unsafe time and sets off an audible warning alarm. The paper also describes how the use of multiple cameras on different levels of the mast automates the measurement and tallying of the drillpipe being run into the hole. Both these aspects have enhanced existing processes (such as the use of buffer zones and barricades and the manual counting of drill pipe) to further improve safety and accuracy. This article in JPT might also be of interest. Automatic Kick Detection and Dynamic Well Monitoring. - Paper SPE 208784 discusses how to reduce the time gap between when drilling operators detect a kick and when they activate the blowout preventers (BOPs). The paper identifies accurate positioning of the drillstring before activating BOPs as a critical step that affects the time gap. The paper describes an architecture that allows automation of the space-out operation and achieves quick and accurate positioning of the tool joint with minimum movement of the drillstring. A critical enabler that the authors describe is being aware in real time of the depth of each tool joint in the wellbore.

Khrushchev’s foreign policy (1953–1964) that characterized by the strategy of “balancing on the edge” is usually recognized as erroneous. Immediately after Stalin’s death, his successors initially feared a nuclear attack from the United States, which their own Air Force and Air Defense were unable to repel or to retaliate. Therefore, in 1954–1955, the Soviet leader attempted to create a buffer zone of neutral states along the perimeter of the USSR’s borders: he stopped the Korean War, proposed the mutual withdrawal of troops from Europe, etc. After the 1955 Geneva Conference, Khrushchev began to act more courageously, because he saw that the U.S. were afraid of the USSR too and didn’t want to attack it first. Trying to use the opportunities of the European colonial empires’ disintegration, the USSR provided to the newly independent states in Asia and Africa a large-scale economic, military, technical, and political support, and first of all, to Egypt and Indonesia, which controlled the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca – key areas on the sea route from Europe to the Far East. The negotiations between Mao Tse Tung and Khrushchev in 1957–1958 reveals their intention to shake up the military blocs created by the Americans near the borders of the socialist camp (NATO, SEATO, the Baghdad Pact). The Soviet leader initiated a series of political crises as interconnected stages of geopolitical offensive against the US position: the Suez (1956), the Syrian (1957), the Middle East (1958), the 2nd Berlin (1958), the Caribbean (1962), etc., which brought the USSR to the brink of war.

The dissertation research examines the socio-economic and political effects of community-based conservation initiatives within the Bagmara buffer zone community forests of Chitwan National Park, Nepal. In particular, the study investigates the role of buffer zones creation in structuring the way rural property rights have been defined, negotiated, and contested, in reinforcing or reducing patterns of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and in influencing how cultural identities are constituted and renegotiated. Using a political ecology framework with a specific focus on theoretical concepts of environmentality and territorialization, I conducted 12 months ethnographic and quantitative survey field research in the buffer zone communities of Chitwan National Park. I focused on documenting socioeconomic conditions and livelihood practices, and interpreting the meanings of residents’ lived experiences. In addition, I critically examined state and non-state conservation and development practices to understand how they work to produce identities, livelihoods, and landscapes in the park’s buffer zone. The ethnographic study documented diverse impacts of community-based conservation initiatives. One of the major effects is the distribution of costs and benefits, specifically elite capture of community forest and tourism benefits. Second is the existing conflict and potential conflict over the control of access, benefits, and territory based on social and cultural identities. Third is the reproduction of caste, ethnic, and class hierarchies. Fourth is the militarization of communities in and around the buffer zone and community forest. Fifth is the production of environmental and non-environmental subjects such as illegals and poachers. Finally, the sixth is the commodification of conservation spaces and subsequent ecological impacts. The research concludes that the discursive representation of humans and non-humans and the discourses and practices of economic development and biodiversity conservation produced and reproduced a number of negative social, political, and ecological consequences in the buffer zone of CNP. This dissertation concluded that the conservation and development practices are territorial projects to govern people and nature.

Our study focuses on the position of protected areas in relation to the transport infrastructure planning and their specific requirements (fragmentation, artificial edge effects, buffer zones, etc.). The presence of transport infrastructure in protected areas is discouraged by the European Union legislation and although their avoidance should be easy, there are numerous cases in which knowledge of the protected areas lacked from the transport infrastructure planning. Our chapter presents the theoretical aspects of integrating protected areas with transportation infrastructures and the main software and methodologies which can be used in the planning process exemplified with case studies. The multitude of challenges found in transportation and conservation planning requires complex decision support systems (DSS), such are the tools based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) we showcased in this chapter.

This paper examines transnational movements at the northern border in 1838, a pivotal year in United States, British, and indigenous relations. In that year, the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions were launched from Maine to Detroit as an attempt by local people on both sides of the border to over throw a small cadre of British elites who dominated a conservative political machine. That same year, Potawatomi of the southern Great Lakes who had traditionally freely crossed the border due to treaty arrangements negotiated at the end of the eighteenth century, utilized these transnational options to flee forced removal by the U.S. government. Similarly, indigenized French, individuals who were the products of over a century of integration into Native communities, were migrating away from these communities as British Indian agents attempted to protect indigenous homelands. At Detroit, a key location for migrating Potawatomi and other Anishinaabe, the movements of these three groups came together, dislocating and relocating families, and at times breaking out into armed conflict that threatened a British/American neutrality agreement. Detroit’s location at the apex of the indigenous buffer zone made the performance of indigeneity a crucial means to negotiate and sometimes thwart the agendas of the two Euro-American nations. Of the three groups, Potawatomi were most successful in maintaining their communities.