Stateless and Citizenship Rights in the Middle East: the Case of Kuwait

This article examines Kuwaiti citizens' views towards expanding citizenship rights to disenfranchised groups. Using survey data from 1581 Kuwaiti citizens in 1998, the author focused on the influence of Kuwaitis' social statuses, cultural affiliations, social networks and religious beliefs. Are attitudes toward inclusion specific to the national origin of the excluded? It was found that variables connoting status decrease support for the stateless. Cultural adherence to Islamic nationalism and Pan‐Arabism and those who follow the media regularly positively influence support for the stateless. These findings suggest that citizens' attitudes about inclusion/exclusion are specific to the national origin of the dis‐enfranchised.     

Analytical Collapse Study of Lightly Confined Reinforced Concrete Frames Subjected to Northridge Earthquake Ground Motions

Review of older non seismically detailed reinforced concrete building collapses shows that most collapses are triggered by failures in columns, beam-column joints, and slab-column connections. Using data from laboratory studies, failure models have previously been developed to estimate loading conditions that correspond to failure of column components. These failure models have been incorporated in nonlinear dynamic analysis software, enabling complete dynamic simulations of building response including component failure and the progression of collapse. A reinforced concrete frame analytical model incorporating column shear and axial failure elements was subjected to a suite of near-fault ground motions recorded during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The results of this study show sensitivity of the frame response to ground motions recorded from the same earthquake, at sites of close proximity, and with similar soil conditions. This suggests that the variability of ground motion from site to site (so-called intra-event variability) plays an important role in determining which buildings will collapse in a given earthquake.     

Land suitability assessment for locating industrial parks: a hybrid multi criteria decision‐making approach using Geographical Information System

Industrial areas play a critical role in urban and regional planning, especially for developing countries where reliable strategies for these areas can promote economic and environmental efficiency. The present study provides an integration of hybrid multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) theories and Geographical Information System (GIS) processes in order to assess the suitability of an industrial location. Unlike traditional models, an efficient decision analysis demands handling uncertainties and considering dependencies between criteria. The proposed MCDM framework uses fuzzy theory because of the vagueness of experts' judgements. Moreover, Decision‐Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is employed to investigate interrelationships among the criteria. In the proposed empirical solution, analytic network process (ANP) principles are used to deal with systematic interactions. We considered several factors such as accessibility, topography, proximity, and socioeconomic characteristics in the decision‐making procedure for a sustainable industrial park. The system is applied to Hamadan province, Iran to determine appropriate locations that are the results of the aggregation of criteria maps in a GIS environment. The results demonstrate that accessibility and economic indicators are essential for choosing an industrial park's location. Additionally, the proposed method can be applied for an efficiency evaluation of available industrial parks.