This thesis examines the marketing and public relations industries in a sub-region of the West Midlands GOR, which stretches from Birmingham to the country towns and villages of Warwickshire and Worcestershire. The area is characterised as a hotspot for particular knowledge intensive businesses and entrepreneurial activity. By undertaking a whole sector analysis the formation and embeddedness of firms within the tight-knit marketing and PR community are elucidated. Examining acts of entrepreneurship and firm formation highlight the importance of different factors in the individual decision-making processes of new enterprise start-ups. This produces a plethora of small business organisations that service clients at distance using information and communication technologies (ICT), coupled with the concomitant industry expertise and contacts. There is a stretching of networks, enabled by ICT, whereby pre-existing relationships continue to be exploited. Consequently all firms, including home-based businesses and micro firms are easily established and represent a plethora of business models engaging in networks at a range of spatial scales. This thesis argues that BPS sectors are characterised by a plurality of business organisations which are crucial for the continual development of the sectors. Integral to this are ICT which facilitate a set of extensively and intensively flexible business organisations.

Urban redevelopment in Chinese cities is significant for urban growth. This study aims to investigate the dynamics of governance of urban redevelopment in Guangzhou, China from 1990 to 2015 under the Chinese authoritarian regime. The connections between such governance and the authoritarian regime are the key to understand the governance dynamics; this is the main contribution of this research. This study explores 5 research objectives to achieve research aims by qualitative methods: (1) the institutional background; (2) patterns of governance; (3) purposes of governance; (4) mechanism of governance; and (5) a Guangzhou mode of governance. The research findings of 5 research objectives are (1) institutional background can be described as a land-oriented pro-growth authoritarian regime. (2) The patterns of governance have three various phases, the Primitive Market Phase (1990–1996) as a semi-market mode of governance; the Pure Government Phase (1998–2006) as a semi-hierarchy mode; and the Multiple Players Phase (2006–2015) as a semi-network mode. (3) The purpose of governance is to pursue economic growth in various conditions. (4) The mechanisms to produce governance modes are driven by the Chinese authoritarian regime. (5) A Guangzhou mode of governance can be established based on the comparison between Guangzhou, other Chinese cities and a simplified picture of Western cities. There are three main arguments in these findings, the governance modes in Guangzhou are dramatically changeable; these changes aim to adapt changed environments to realise growth; the authoritarian regime of Guangzhou is an important reason for this adaptive capacity.

This thesis describes a study of the distribution and behaviour of natural and manmade radionuclides in the intertidal environment of south west Scotland. This work is particularly concerned with transport processes affecting radionuclides and with the application of radionuclides as tracers of natural environmental processes. Results are presented for study sites at Ardmore Bay in the Clyde Sea Area and Skyreburn Bay, Wigtown Martyr's Stake and Netherclifton in the Solway Firth with the radionuclides investigated being 134Cs, 137Cs, 210Pb, 238Pu, 239. 240Pu 241 Am, 238U, 232Th and 230Th. The study confirms and extends an existing model for particle associated Sellafield waste radionuclide transport to the intertidal areas of the Solway Firth and the work, moreover, establishes that the same supply mechanism operates in the floodplain, or merse, areas of the Solway Firth. Inventories of the order of 10e5, 10e4 and 10e4 Bq m -2 are derived for 137Cs, 241Am and 239,240 Pu respectively in the merse sediments, indicating inventories for these nuclides of the order of 7, 1 and 1 TBq in the total area of the merse deposits of the Solway Firth. A description is provided of a study of uranium movement through the Solway floodplain silts in the vicinity of a uranium mineralization vein and it is established that uranium migration for distances of up to 55m can be observed with continuous removal from solution during transport by uptake by iron/manganese oxides and organic materials. The removal process is characterised by a 10m halving distance. The radionuclide data are considered in the context of tracer studies of various environmental processes including large scale sediment movement in the Irish Sea, local sediment movement in particular bays and, at individual sites, mixing and accumulating processes.

Different Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations are available these days. This has led to an increase in the number of satellites available for the user, and that presents different performance levels for the user requirements like accuracy and convergence time. However, these benefits come from different constellations that have different reference times and for some, different frequencies. At the same time, the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has also been presented as being a position solution within a certain level of accuracy and precision. Therefore, it is important to investigate the potential benefits from the PPP with a view to using a single or multi-constellation. These investigations include accuracy, precision, and convergence time. In addition, it is important to look at the individual performance of these constellations regarding the above improvements. This will give a clear decision about adopting a single or multi-constellation. It will also provide an independent solution, for instance for the station coordinates and troposphere, and independent estimated station velocities, without additional cost. This research has been conducted in three stages. Firstly, the research begins with an evaluation of the GPS and the GLONASS (GLO) constellation geometry using a new approach for computing the cumulative dilution of precision (DOP) rather than the conventional DOP which was found to be latitude-dependent. Then it investigates the achievable station coordinate accuracy from PPP scenarios for static positioning after choosing the most appropriate PPP strategy that needs to be followed. Furthermore, the effect of different precise products (satellite orbits and clocks) on the PPP solutions and the difference between those products has been covered. It has been proven that PPP solutions can reach the same precision as a Global Double-Difference (GDD) GPS solution. Most importantly, the PPP GLO is found to be capable of producing similar precision and accuracy when compared to PPP GPS as well as the GDD GPS solution. Secondly, this research also investigates the conventional strategy (using a model for the hydrostatic component and estimating the wet component) for estimating the troposphere Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) from the PPP solutions with an evaluation of the obtained accuracy of the tropospheric ZTD from four tropospheric models. It also presents an alternative strategy (estimating both components using different mapping functions and different process noises) for estimating the tropospheric ZTD from the PPP that can give millimeters of ZTD accuracy without affecting the station coordinate estimation and without relying on any metrological data or models. Validations have been conducted for the new strategy using PPP GPS, PPP GLO and PPP GPS+GLO. Regional validation was conducted over seven consecutive days for seven weeks, using the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain (OSGB) stations in the UK, and long-term (over one year) validation was conducted using 22 stations from the OSGB. The regional and long-term validations have been conducted using three different final precise products (satellite orbits (SP3) and clocks (CLK)), which are the EMX, ESA and GFZ. A global validation using ~76 IGS stations was conducted over a different period. This was conducted in three stages, using the final EMX, final IGS and real-time IGS precise products. It was found that this approach can be used in real-time as well as in post processing without a significant difference between the results. Finally, this research has investigated the potential of using the PPP GLO for crustal motion separate to using the PPP GPS. Consistent horizontal station rates were found between PPP GPS and GDD GPS solutions. It was also concluded that it should be possible to use the PPP GLO for crustal motion, as an independent and precise solution. However, there was a bias in the orientation components of the estimated horizontal station rates between the PPP GLO and both other solutions (PPP GPS and GDD GPS), which was concluded to be a system bias rather than a strategy bias.

Global change is happening at a staggering pace and the impact that change is having in the loss of plant biodiversity is unprecedented. The latest reports on the state of the world’s plants indicate that they face intensifying threats and biodiversity loss on a global scale. However, this rapid global change is also bringing extraordinary technological developments to all scientific fields. Earth Observation by Remote Sensing is undergoing a fast expansion and its capacity to monitor and analyse global environmental changes and their impact in biodiversity is ever growing. This research analyses the current and potential role of Earth Observation in the conservation of plant diversity, identifying the latest technological developments with the greatest potential use in this field. Looking into a plant conservation organisation and through a series of case studies covering a range of spatial and temporal scales, this research brings the latest Remote Sensing technology to the plant conservation community. From collecting and processing very high resolution data for local conservation projects to help determine conservation status of a country’s unique ecosystem to tracking and reporting on global plant conservation targets this research demonstrates that Remote Sensing is instrumental for addressing the observation needs of the plant conservation community.

The overall aim of this study is to explore the relations between home-places, mobility and social networks through the home-making of displaced Shan in limbo, and to see how they negotiate belonging during their displacement along the Thai-Burma border. This study highlights how displaced Shan remember, reconstruct and represent homeplaces they left behind and their physically fragmented journeys that led them from home-places to in-between border areas. Furthermore, the study sets out to discover how Shan placed their displacement by repairing their social ties and (re)constructing a feeling of at-homeness. This refers to the issues of how they dealt with their status of Stratified Others from the perspective of state institutions. It demonstrates how the displaced Shan live a double life with a series of tactical practices against their subordinate and oppressed positions. In this sense, although it does not deny displaced people's vulnerability, it sees them as having significant control over their lives, rather than as passive objects or “victims” (Brun: 18). This active role as a tactical agent engaged in the search for security highlights how migrants re-establish themselves and their families in society, differently from those who have citizenship and can travel freely and enjoy their membership (citizenship). Finally, the study also examines how displaced Shan develop and maintain their social connections within and beyond their effective spatial incarceration. They create multilayered constellations of social relations by ‘weaving' social relations through space, creating translocal linkages. This constellation of social relations can be regarded as displaced Shan's fluid translocal lived space forming their ‘home territory' beyond national borders in the face of their protracted displacement. This human-orientated perspective challenges the notion of state-centred ‘national territory' to (re)construct Shan's place affiliation and create a base for their future generations.

The thesis aims to understand: what constitutes urban collaboration and its relationship with policy outcomes? The research develops a conceptual understanding of the public value (PV) (Bardach, 1998; Moore, 1995, Smith, 2004) of Urban Local Authority Collaboration (ULAC) as economic development policy, relative to three theoretical domains in the literature: economic collaboration (i.e. new/old institutional economics: Ostrom 1990, 2016; Williamson, 2000); spatial collaboration (i.e. institutional economic geography: Ostrom, 2010; Gerber, 2015; Tarko and Aligica, 2012), and governance collaboration (i.e. collective action theory: Hulst and van Monfort, 2012; Feiock, 2008, 2013). Theoretically, the ‘institution’ (Amin, 2001; Jessop, 2001; Williamson, 2000; Aligica and Boettke, 2009; Gertler, 2010) is a distinct conceptual dimension connecting the theoretical literature, bridging scholarly boundaries across compatible ontological insights (Bathelt and Gluckler, 2003; and Hay, 2011). A conceptual framework is developed to help understand: a) what ULAC looks like; b) how ULAC creates PV and, c) why institutions explain the PV of ULAC. A purposeful single case study of ULAC (i.e. the Scottish Cities Alliance (SCA): a formalised institutional policy network involving seven Urban Local Authorities (ULAs) and the Scottish Government) involved collecting data using semi-structured interviews, secondary data, policy documentation and non-participant observation. The emergence of the SCA as economic development policy in Scotland – conducive to an institutionally sensitive theoretical approach – presents a valuable opportunity to contribute towards an empirical and theoretical understanding of ULAC. Using template analysis, findings emerged through process-tracing, sense-making and thick narrative descriptions to reveal aggregate dimensions and second-order themes and first-order concepts. The thesis responds to calls for in-depth case study research of the way local government collaboration operates and performs (Hulst and Montfort, 2012), engaging with the ‘fuzzy’(Markhusen, 2003) concepts and processes of ‘urban collaboration’, ‘policy outcomes’ and ‘institutions’ to reveal a lack of empirical and conceptual understanding of how ULAC operates: particularly the role of ‘urban’ institutional context as a ‘key actor attribute’ (Hulst and van Monfort, 2012: 139). Using a critical realist ontology (Jessop, 2005), the research is best suited to Stake’s (2005) interpretive methodological approach to contextualised theorising, using the SCA in Scotland to investigate the ‘contextualised’ Institutional context, to help inductively conceptualise the PV of ULAC as economic development policy. Whilst conscious of the risks of methodological and conceptual ‘stretching’ (Stubbs, 2005: 71) , the research uses Scotland as a case study to conceptualise the more generic, abstract features of ULAC as a ‘theoretically vague’ term that may ‘travel’ (Stubbs, 2005: 71). The results validate a realist perspective of the theoretical role of formal and informal institutions shaping the contextual path dependant nature of the PV of ULAC. The methodological contribution of the thesis highlights how a new evolving model of economic and spatial governance in Scotland, presents potential challenges for the future delivery of urban policy and practice in Scotland, before closing with a discussion of research limitations and recommendations for areas of future academic research.

The dynamic interaction between different water sources plays a key role in the structure and functioning of Arctic stream systems. Ice melt, snowmelt, groundwater and rainfall mix to produce a diverse range of physicochemical conditions. The heterogeneous habitat matrix created is home to a variety of cold stenothermic species. Recent trends in earth surface temperatures associated with global warming have co-in sided with a reduction in global glacier mass balance and a hastening in the onset of spring thaw. This field based study investigated the physicochemical habitat diversity within a glacierized Arctic catchment, Kårsavagge in Northern Sweden. Hydrological, meteorological and physicochemical data spanning 2007 to 2010 were collected with intensive collection during the summer melt seasons of 2008 and 2009. In conjunction with these data, macroinvertebrate and fish sampling was carried out during both of the intensive summer monitoring periods. The key focus of the sampling regime was to compare lateral and longitudinal habitat variability, investigate the extent to which this was linked to dynamic water source interactions by modeling contributions from identified sources and assess the impact of this physicochemical habitat template on the macroinvertebrate and fish communities in the light of predicted climate change. The key findings discussed within are (1) Lateral habitat and biological diversity was equivalent to that observed longitudinally. (2) The ARISE framework used for modeling different water source contributions is applicable to an Arctic scenario, however its utility decreases with increasing catchment size. (3) The key habitat variables structuring macroinvertebrate and fish distribution were concerned with mediating/ mitigating the extent of the glacial signal. A conceptual model is presented that illustrates the potential impact of loss of this glacial signal on local biodiversity.

Urban waste water production increases day by day and its safe treatment and disposal need efficient procedures. In many areas, such effluents are discharged to open water bodies such as lakes, rivers and sea coastal areas. Since there are no perennial streams in arid and semi-arid regions the disposal of treated outfalls is often to dry wadis. However developing an understanding of complex urban systems, where processes act at different space and time scales, is not easy. Dynamical systems approaches have been used for many years in complex feedback systems. So in this work the use of dynamical system modelling is investigated to see if this approach can help develop at least in semi-quantitative way an understanding good enough to aid managers of urban water systems where wadis are involved. The approach taken was to develop a flow and then a solute transport model for the urban system of Riyadh City - Wadi Hanifah. The softwares used was ‘Stella’, and a representation of two aquifers, two soil systems, the sewerage system, the water supply system, the non-urban catchments and the urban drainage system was set up and run using daily meteorological data for about 20 years. The model was compared with limited field data on water levels, flows, flooding, and water quality and modified until results were consistent with field data. Model was then investigated by looking at effects of changing a wide range of hydrogeological and other parameter values, including pipe leakage rates, rainfall, and water supply rate.

Urban transport projects redistribute accessibility and environmental quality across the city, potentially creating disadvantages for some social groups. This thesis investigates whether these effects are cumulative or compensatory in the case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, analysing inequalities in the light of competing principles of social justice. The novelty of this research lies in the interpretation of local environmental effects as factors restraining the mobility of pedestrians. We propose a series of GIS-based indicators, including community severance and noise exposure of pedestrians on the way to work and walking around their neighbourhoods. We found that projects giving priority to private transport have a disproportionate effect on the pedestrian environment of the elderly and low-qualified populations. The analysis addresses two of the most pressing issues in transport equity analysis. The first is the spatial heterogeneity in patterns of inequality. We estimate relationships between socio-economic variables and indicators of the local effects of transport using alternative comparison areas, defined in terms of centrality and commuting destinations. We found that the social distribution of those effects is sensitive to location and spatial scale. The second issue is the nature of the processes leading to inequalities. We show that accessibility and pedestrian mobility have an influence on neighbourhood socio-economic recomposition and on patterns of settlement in newly developed areas. We also analyse the implications of integrating distributive concerns in transport planning. In the design of the optimal route alignment for a new road, these concerns may increase aggregate community severance costs. In the application of traffic restriction policies, there are trade-offs between the welfare of different groups of concern in terms of time to work and pedestrian exposure to noise. In both cases, the achievement of equity may not be compatible with the party-political interests of the policy-maker.