According to the “Ältestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus” philosophy resolves itself into poetics at the end. Hölderlin elaborates this idea in his poetic fragments. The article describes the systematic impact of Hölderlin’s concept of „Wechsel der Töne“ on the act of composing poems. On the example of the seven keywords of an unwritten poem „Ovids Rükkehr nach Rom“, the article focusses on a specific metamorphosis: the one from a pure intellectual and pre-lingual realm into the lingual sphere of a concrete poem. Thereby it becomes clear that the way of thinking (in its pre-lingual sense) is poetic; the process of thinking transforms itself into a genuine poetic progress, and vice versa the structure of a poem turns out to be part of a creative development of thinking. By contrast, the described transformative process elucidates an impact of contemporary poetics, because transformation as a core issue is mostly only referred to linguistic, social, or cultural aspects.

This paper characterizes several ways of transferring knowledge via lyric poetry. It is argued that conveying information via schemata is a prevalent mode of that kind. But there are also others like employing a concise use of language or pointing at other texts using intertextual references. Besides, many poetry books establish some sort of a lyric sequence to further elaborate a certain topic. As information in lyric poetry is not only schematized, but also sketchy, from a critical reception point of view it may also be highlighted that recipients can make use of it as some kind of a template that enables them to gain new insights related to their own living environment. The important role of schemata as well as the other kinds of knowledge transfer specified in this paper are exemplified with reference to the contemporary poetry of ageing and with a special focus on several poems by Harald Hartung. As ageing is a process that becomes more and more important to western societies due to demographic development, the poetry of ageing and of old age in particular may serve as a tool for gaining knowledge and especially knowledge of what-it-is-like regarding that topic. This adds even more authority to the question of how knowledge is transferred via literature and lyric poetry in particular.

The paper gives a survey on the German tradition of didactic poems and nature poems from the 18 th century to the immediate present. The early modern pattern of nature as a peaceful Arcadia, the enlightenment pattern of nature reflecting God in every detail, and the romanticist pattern of nature that is impenetrable but nevertheless a permanent object of longing (“Sehnsucht”) are proved to be models of nature poetry that are the most important reference points up to now. The poems about nature written in the early 21st century refer to these models as well as to their destruction and deconstruction by the modernists and avantgardes of the 20th century. The most convincing poets devoting their attention to nature today play with these traditions with artistic perfection and in an ironic manner at the same time. Often, annotations, essays, and talks on nature are accompanying the lyrical texts. In the present, female writers are the authors of some of the best poems about nature. In several poems, the relationship between love and nature appears under new perspectives. Other important subjects are the landscapes of far-away countries.

Literature and thus also historical poetry want “not only to convey factual truth and to exhort subjective truthfulness, but also to give orientation for the – in whatever respect – correct or appropriate world behavior” (Lamping 2013: 65f.). The question of this paper is to what extent and how the 9/11-poems of Thomas Kling and Durs Grünbein offer a specific counter-historiography beyond the dichotomies of truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, in order to achieve a different level of knowledge. Due to the exhibited self-relatedness Grünbein presents not only in his essayistic pretext but also in his poem „September-Elegien“ mainly a subjective truthfulness rather than any certain orientation-knowledge. Kling’s historiographical-wrapped and complex instrumented poem „Manhattan Mundraum Zwei“ offers over-temporal, metaphysical-existential (counter-)truths and gives orientation beyond media-presented “facts” about 9/11.

This article analyses the depiction of school as a place of knowledge in contemporary poetry in English. In dealing with the poetry of Jean Breeze (Jamaica/GB), Gillian Clarke (Wales/GB), Carol Ann Duffy (England/GB), Thabo Jijana (South Africa), Meena Kandasamy (Tamil Nadu/India), Claudia Rankine (USA) and Edwin Thumboo (Singapore), it does not only enable the reader to draw pedagogical conclusions from poetic evidence. The article differentiates further between a poem’s potential of knowledge and its process of knowledge developed during its reception; taking, additionally, into account how its reception might interfere with the poem’s potential of knowledge and even with its author’s intention. Eventually, each poem highlights an important anglophone region ranging from the United States, the Caribbean, India and South Africa to the British Isles and Singapore. Hence, each poem is also interpreted in its cultural and historical context. Last but not least, the article tries to undertake a comparative analysis of the role of contemporary German-language poetry within educational contexts in Germany.

Walter Benjamin developed his concept of the “aura” on the basis of the poetry of Baudelaire and applied this term to objects of art, nature, and man. Georg Picht transformed Benjamin’s aura-concept into a method of pre-rational knowledge forms, whose mediums includes foremost music, but also poetry and art. In modern nature poetry the varieties of aura cognition can be determined and described with the help of Benjamin’s and Picht’s concepts: Gennadij Ajgi creates poetic equivalents for the experience of nature-aura; Keijiro Suga makes a diagnosis of aura of areas of natural sites or landscapes and their historical transformation through war and nuclear catastrophe (Fukushima); Christian Lehnert translates auratic communication with nature in poetic conversations.

On account of its constitution as a temporally organized sequence of verbal utterances, typically presented from a speaker’s subjective perspective, lyric poetry is particularly suited to simulate mental processes and thereby mediate forms of cognition and insight. Indeed, the presentation of cognitive phenomena can be considered one of the prime functions of lyric poems throughout the history of poetry. For the analysis of such processes in poems a transgeneric narratological approach is here proposed, which is ultimately based on the anthropological fact that human existence is inescapably subject to temporality and change and that individuals are therefore permanently concerned with understanding, structuring, planning or preventing change. For this purpose, they employ the basic operation of narration in their communication both with others and themselves as well as in the production and reception of the various artistic genres, not only in fiction, drama and film, but also in lyric poetry. Poems employ narrative elements in a variety of modes which are specific to poetry, such as psycho-narration, mini-narratives, condensed, implicit or metaphorical narratives. A central device for structuring and interpreting a narrative sequence is the event, a transformation or decisive turn in the chain of changes, which then constitutes the moment of cognition or insight in the poem. The presentation of such a mental transformation from the speaker’s limited subjective perspective allows for a critical assessment of status and motivation of the process of cognition on the part of the reader. This transgeneric narratological approach to the cognitive dimension of lyric poetry will first be demonstrated with the analysis of an older prototypical example, W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”, and then applied to three recent, complex British-Irish poems, Eavan Boland’s “The Making of an Irish Goddess”, Kathleen Jamie’s “The Way We Live” and Paul Muldoon’s “Why Brownlee Left”, exemplifying the range of variation in which lyric poetry can perform and mediate mental processes of cognition.

The problem of this volume is not so much ‚Lyrik‘ but rather ‚Erkenntnis‘ (knowledge, cognition). This paper, therefore, discusses a revision of the notion of ‚erkennen‘ (knowing, realizing, understanding), explaining it as a way of transforming our way of thinking things at the same time as understanding ourselves and other cognizant beings. In this way, the notion of knowledge / understanding is to be freed from the narrow restrictions of science, by which most of us have acquired the habit of limiting understanding to specific scientific methods. Beyond the bounds of established scientific standards, the practice of philosophical thinking reveals analogies to the practice of lyrical thinking. Both try to explore new ways of thinking beyond the limits of established methodological guidelines. Which characteristics do they share, which differences remain? But most of all, how can these nonscientific ways of searching for knowledge be protected from confusion and disorientation? How may their ways of thinking be legitimized? Where do they lead? A major thesis of the paper argues that both ways of searching for knowledge, poetry and philosophy, question the generally accepted distinction of analytical and synthetic judgements. This distinction is a constitutive element of any scientific discourse manifesting itself in the importance of the introductory definitions of its specific basic terms. They start from the common experience that seemingly evident words and notions, by being used in unaccustomed ways, may change their meanings, i.e. their relations to other words and notions. Both in their own traditions, experimental practices of thinking poetry as well as philosophy, may succeed in opening up new ways of perceiving of things as well as realizing the thinkers’ own position in the world while attempting to convince others to join them in doing so.

The relationship between poetry and cognition appears, at first glance, as hardly compelling as that of art and science, of feeling and thinking, or even of intuition and analysis. For this reason, its analysis is fundamentally concerned with questions from philosophical and literary criticism perspectives: Which forms of “cognition” are possible in poetry? In what way and in what forms can poetry also be a medium of generation and/or mediation of cognition, experience or even knowledge and truth? And which processes, matters, or “information” are thereby privileged? Are there subgenres of poetry, for example historical poetry, reflective poetry or didactic poetry, that are especially relevant as regards cognitive functions? And can cognition also be mediated through aura, Stimmung or experience?

Lyrik gilt vielfach als hermetisch, gefühlszentriert oder ästhetisch überdeterminiert. Daher ist das Verhältnis von Lyrik und Erkenntnis auf den ersten Blick so wenig zwingend wie das von Kunst und Wissenschaft, von Fühlen und Denken oder auch von Intuition und Analyse. Die Beiträge des Bandes widmen sich aus philosophischer und literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive Praktiken und Formen, die sich in der Lyrik, insbesondere in der Gegenwartslyrik, möglicher Erkenntnisfunktionen bedienen. Dabei geht es um grundsätzliche Fragen zum Verhältnis von Lyrik und Erkenntnis: Welche Formen von ‚Erkenntnis‘ sind in der Lyrik überhaupt möglich? Inwiefern und mit welchen Formen kann Lyrik auch ein Mittel der Generierung und/oder Vermittlung von Erkenntnis, Erfahrung oder gar Wissen und Wahrheit sein und welche Verfahren, Inhalte oder ‚Informationen‘ werden dabei bevorzugt? Gibt es Subgenres der Lyrik, beispielsweise Geschichtslyrik, Gedankenlyrik oder Lehrdichtung, die im Hinblick auf Erkenntnisfunktionen besonders relevant sind? Und kann Erkenntnis auch durch Aura, Stimmung oder Erlebnis vermittelt werden?

This thesis sheds light on the heterogeneous hedging behavior of airlines. The focus lies on financial hedging, operational hedging and selective hedging. The unbalanced panel data set includes 74 airlines from 39 countries. The period of analysis is 2005 until 2014, resulting in 621 firm years. The random effects probit and fixed effects OLS models provide strong evidence of a convex relation between derivative usage and a firm’s leverage, opposing the existing financial distress theory. Airlines with lower leverage had higher hedge ratios. In addition, the results show that airlines with interest rate and currency derivatives were more likely to engage in fuel price hedging. Moreover, the study results support the argument that operational hedging is a complement to financial hedging. Airlines with more heterogeneous fleet structures exhibited higher hedge ratios. Also, airlines which were members of a strategic alliance were more likely to be hedging airlines. As alliance airlines are rather financially sound airlines, the positive relation between alliance membership and hedging reflects the negative results on the leverage ratio. Lastly, the study presents determinants of an airlines’ selective hedging behavior. Airlines with prior-period derivative losses, recognized in income, changed their hedge portfolios more frequently. Moreover, the sample airlines acted in accordance with herd behavior theory. Changes in the regional hedge portfolios influenced the hedge portfolio of the individual airline in the same direction.

Die vorgelegte Dissertation trägt den Titel Regularization Methods for Statistical Modelling in Small Area Estimation. In ihr wird die Verwendung regularisierter Regressionstechniken zur geographisch oder kontextuell hochauflösenden Schätzung aggregatspezifischer Kennzahlen auf Basis kleiner Stichproben studiert. Letzteres wird in der Fachliteratur häufig unter dem Begriff Small Area Estimation betrachtet. Der Kern der Arbeit besteht darin die Effekte von regularisierter Parameterschätzung in Regressionsmodellen, welche gängiger Weise für Small Area Estimation verwendet werden, zu analysieren. Dabei erfolgt die Analyse primär auf theoretischer Ebene, indem die statistischen Eigenschaften dieser Schätzverfahren mathematisch charakterisiert und bewiesen werden. Darüber hinaus werden die Ergebnisse durch numerische Simulationen veranschaulicht, und vor dem Hintergrund empirischer Anwendungen kritisch verortet. Die Dissertation ist in drei Bereiche gegliedert. Jeder Bereich behandelt ein individuelles methodisches Problem im Kontext von Small Area Estimation, welches durch die Verwendung regularisierter Schätzverfahren gelöst werden kann. Im Folgenden wird jedes Problem kurz vorgestellt und im Zuge dessen der Nutzen von Regularisierung erläutert. Das erste Problem ist Small Area Estimation in der Gegenwart unbeobachteter Messfehler. In Regressionsmodellen werden typischerweise endogene Variablen auf Basis statistisch verwandter exogener Variablen beschrieben. Für eine solche Beschreibung wird ein funktionaler Zusammenhang zwischen den Variablen postuliert, welcher durch ein Set von Modellparametern charakterisiert ist. Dieses Set muss auf Basis von beobachteten Realisationen der jeweiligen Variablen geschätzt werden. Sind die Beobachtungen jedoch durch Messfehler verfälscht, dann liefert der Schätzprozess verzerrte Ergebnisse. Wird anschließend Small Area Estimation betrieben, so sind die geschätzten Kennzahlen nicht verlässlich. In der Fachliteratur existieren hierfür methodische Anpassungen, welche in der Regel aber restriktive Annahmen hinsichtlich der Messfehlerverteilung benötigen. Im Rahmen der Dissertation wird bewiesen, dass Regularisierung in diesem Kontext einer gegen Messfehler robusten Schätzung entspricht - und zwar ungeachtet der Messfehlerverteilung. Diese Äquivalenz wird anschließend verwendet, um robuste Varianten bekannter Small Area Modelle herzuleiten. Für jedes Modell wird ein Algorithmus zur robusten Parameterschätzung konstruiert. Darüber hinaus wird ein neuer Ansatz entwickelt, welcher die Unsicherheit von Small Area Schätzwerten in der Gegenwart unbeobachteter Messfehler quantifiziert. Es wird zusätzlich gezeigt, dass diese Form der robusten Schätzung die wünschenswerte Eigenschaft der statistischen Konsistenz aufweist. Das zweite Problem ist Small Area Estimation anhand von Datensätzen, welche Hilfsvariablen mit unterschiedlicher Auflösung enthalten. Regressionsmodelle für Small Area Estimation werden normalerweise entweder für personenbezogene Beobachtungen (Unit-Level), oder für aggregatsbezogene Beobachtungen (Area-Level) spezifiziert. Doch vor dem Hintergrund der stetig wachsenden Datenverfügbarkeit gibt es immer häufiger Situationen, in welchen Daten auf beiden Ebenen vorliegen. Dies beinhaltet ein großes Potenzial für Small Area Estimation, da somit neue Multi-Level Modelle mit großem Erklärungsgehalt konstruiert werden können. Allerdings ist die Verbindung der Ebenen aus methodischer Sicht kompliziert. Zentrale Schritte des Inferenzschlusses, wie etwa Variablenselektion und Parameterschätzung, müssen auf beiden Levels gleichzeitig durchgeführt werden. Hierfür existieren in der Fachliteratur kaum allgemein anwendbare Methoden. In der Dissertation wird gezeigt, dass die Verwendung ebenenspezifischer Regularisierungsterme in der Modellierung diese Probleme löst. Es wird ein neuer Algorithmus für stochastischen Gradientenabstieg zur Parameterschätzung entwickelt, welcher die Informationen von allen Ebenen effizient unter adaptiver Regularisierung nutzt. Darüber hinaus werden parametrische Verfahren zur Abschätzung der Unsicherheit für Schätzwerte vorgestellt, welche durch dieses Verfahren erzeugt wurden. Daran anknüpfend wird bewiesen, dass der entwickelte Ansatz bei adäquatem Regularisierungsterm sowohl in der Schätzung als auch in der Variablenselektion konsistent ist. Das dritte Problem ist Small Area Estimation von Anteilswerten unter starken verteilungsbezogenen Abhängigkeiten innerhalb der Kovariaten. Solche Abhängigkeiten liegen vor, wenn eine exogene Variable durch eine lineare Transformation einer anderen exogenen Variablen darstellbar ist (Multikollinearität). In der Fachliteratur werden hierunter aber auch Situationen verstanden, in welchen mehrere Kovariate stark korreliert sind (Quasi-Multikollinearität). Wird auf einer solchen Datenbasis ein Regressionsmodell spezifiziert, dann können die individuellen Beiträge der exogenen Variablen zur funktionalen Beschreibung der endogenen Variablen nicht identifiziert werden. Die Parameterschätzung ist demnach mit großer Unsicherheit verbunden und resultierende Small Area Schätzwerte sind ungenau. Der Effekt ist besonders stark, wenn die zu modellierende Größe nicht-linear ist, wie etwa ein Anteilswert. Dies rührt daher, dass die zugrundeliegende Likelihood-Funktion nicht mehr geschlossen darstellbar ist und approximiert werden muss. Im Rahmen der Dissertation wird gezeigt, dass die Verwendung einer L2-Regularisierung den Schätzprozess in diesem Kontext signifikant stabilisiert. Am Beispiel von zwei nicht-linearen Small Area Modellen wird ein neuer Algorithmus entwickelt, welche den bereits bekannten Quasi-Likelihood Ansatz (basierend auf der Laplace-Approximation) durch Regularisierung erweitert und verbessert. Zusätzlich werden parametrische Verfahren zur Unsicherheitsmessung für auf diese Weise erhaltene Schätzwerte beschrieben. Vor dem Hintergrund der theoretischen und numerischen Ergebnisse wird in der Dissertation demonstriert, dass Regularisierungsmethoden eine wertvolle Ergänzung der Fachliteratur für Small Area Estimation darstellen. Die hier entwickelten Verfahren sind robust und vielseitig einsetzbar, was sie zu hilfreichen Werkzeugen der empirischen Datenanalyse macht.

Dieser Artikel erschien in der Zeitschrift "Deutschunterricht" 1995. Er porträtiert den syrischen Schriftsteller, der sich unter dem Pseudonym Rafik Schami einen Namen gemacht hat.

1907 erschien das Violoncello erstmals in der Filmgeschichte. Als Hauptinstrument in einem kurzen Slapstick der französischen Firma Pathé. - Der Beitrag erschien in der Festschrift für den Barockcellisten Gerhart Darmstadt.

This working paper examines the concept of metabolism and its potential as a critical analytical lens to study the contemporary city from a political perspective. The paper illustrates how the metabolism concept has been used historically, both as a metaphor to describe the technological, social, political and economic dimensions of human-environment relations, and as a concrete analytical tool to quantify and better understand how flows of matter and energy shape the territorial and spatial configurations of cityscapes. Drawing on the example of the urban water metabolism of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), it is argued that contemporary approaches to metabolic analysis should be extended in two ways to increase the integrative potential of the urban water metabolism concept. On the one hand, the paper demonstrates that a political ecology approach is particularly well-suited to illuminate the contested production of urban environments and move beyond a narrow technical, managerial and state- centric focus in research on urban metabolic relations. On the other hand, the paper advocates for an approach to metabolic analysis that views the urban environment not simply as a relatively static exteriority that is produced by dynamic flows of matter, energy and information, but rather as a dynamic, nested and co-evolutionary network of complex biosocial and material relations, which in itself shapes how various metabolisms interact across scales. The paper then concludes by briefly discussing how a combination of metabolic analysis and political ecology research can inform urban water governance. In sum, the paper emphasizes the need for metabolic analysis to remain open to a plurality of different knowledge forms and perspectives, and to remain attentive to the inherently political nature of material and technological phenomena in order to allow for mutually beneficial exchanges between various scholarly communities.

The main socio-ecological pressures in five wetlands in the Greater Accra Region were first identified and then summarized by reviewing the relevant literature. As a second step, fieldwork in the region was carried out in 2016 to further examine the pressures identified in the literature. Most research on the wetlands in Ghana was published around the year 2000. Yet, similar socio-ecological pressures persist today. Based on both, fieldwork observations and the literature review, these pressures were ranked using the IUCN pressures system analysis framework. It is suggested that further research needs to proceed with uncovering how trade-offs between ecosystem and quality of life can be defined.

This report presents the results of a stakeholder mapping exercise carried out in the WaterPower project. The mapping was conducted for the following main research areas of the project: water supply, land use planning and management, wetland management and climate change adaptation/disaster risk reduction. The report gives an overview of the stakeholders that play a role in these respective areas and identifies those who have concomitant responsibilities in different sectors. It represents the first step towards further involvement of stakeholders in the WaterPower project.

Urban flooding cannot be avoided entirely and in all areas, particularly in coastal cities. Therefore adaptation to the growing risk is necessary. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based knowledge on risk informs location-based approach to adaptation to climate risk. It allows managing city- wide coordination of adaptation measures, reducing adverse impacts of local strategies on neighbouring areas to the minimum. Quantitative assessments dominate GIS applications in flood risk management, for instance to demonstrate the distribution of people and assets in a flood prone area. Qualitative, participatory approaches to GIS are on the rise but have not been applied in the context of flooding yet. The overarching research question of this working paper is: what can GIS, and what can it not say about relationships / social relations in adaptation to urban flood risk? The use of GIS in risk mapping has exposed environmental injustices. Applications of GIS further allow model- ling future flood risk in function of demographic and land use changes, and combining it with decision support systems (DSS). While such GIS applications provide invaluable information for urban planners steering adaptation they however fall short on revealing the social relations that shape individual and household adaptation decisions. The relevance of networked social relations in adaptation to flood risk has been demonstrated in case studies, and extensively in the literature on organizational learning and adaptation to change. The purpose of this literature review is to identify the type of social relations that shape adaptive capacities towards urban flood risk which can- not be identified in a conventional GIS application.

The rate and range of ongoing changes in social and ecological systems and particularly the global environmental degradation illustrates the need of holistic and sustainable approaches for the governance of natural resources to ensure their well-functioning for future generations (Rockström et al. 2009). The narrative of common pool resources system such as SES of small-scale fisheries, reports world-wide of stock collapse, environmental degradation and overexploitation (Cinner et al. 2013). In order to understand the complexity of system interactions in those resource systems, the consideration of local scale specific phenomena is of great relevance (Ostrom 2007b). The focus of this thesis consequently is the social-ecological system of a small scale fishery in a heavily urbanised coastal wetland on the fringes of Ghana ́s capital Accra. With the theoretical foundation of the social-ecological system (SES) theory (Folke et al. 2004; Berkes et al. 2003; G. S. Cumming 2011) and the social-ecological system framework (SESF) by Ostrom (2007a) and McGinnis & Ostrom (2014) as analytical tool, the study ex- amines the role of the fishers as focal actor group and the governance system based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) (Berkes et al. 2003). While the common narrative of system collapse is partly confirmed for the focal system, also contradicting findings about the diversity of the actor group, their sustainable and responsible exploitation of the deltas resources have been found, that rather illustrate the fishers as potential cooperation partners for the development of sustainable governance strategies (see Hollup 2000) than simply as bur- den to the system. However, the results also show that in order to achieve sustainable outcomes in the focal SES, so far unsuccessful top-down governance efforts have to work cooperatively with the fishers to challenge the multiple threats to the system from external perturbation and internal changes, in the long run.

This literature review was conducted to identify important wetlands in the Greater Accra Region and to illustrate dominant research trends, prevailing perspectives and corresponding research gaps. Six wetlands systems were identified as most significant lagoon systems, namely the Densu Delta, Sakumo, Muni-Pomadze, Keta, Korle and Songor Lagoons. Research foci for each of the respective wetlands were extrapolated and summarized in a category system. The frequency of different categories illustrates that natural science’s perspectives dominate, as most of Accra’s lagoons have been studied with regard to their ecological, physical and chemical properties. The development of research interest over time and focus on ecological baseline conditions are related to the designation of Ramsar Sites and orientation of national policies towards environmental protection. A research gap was identified, as studies link their findings to human activities but neglect the connection between governance variables and environmental developments. It is suggested to expand the natural science’s perspective on Accra’s wetlands to account for social and political aspects in order to develop a holistic and more sustainable management strategy.

This working paper outlines analytical pathways that could contribute to deepening the understanding of water inequalities in cities of the Global South. It brings together the status quo of research on water inequalities in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and studies on Environmental Justice. In doing so, it argues for the need to analytically distinguish between the terms ‘(in)equality’ and ‘(in)justice’. Studying everyday water practices and per- spectives on water (in)justice of different stakeholders would be a suitable entry point for an in-depth ethnographic study that analytically separates water inequalities and water injustices but considers their interlinkages. The working paper is based on a literature review conducted in 2015 in the scope of the WaterPower project.

In der kleinen ostfriesischen Kirchengemeinde W. hat sich im Jahr 1969 ein plötzlicher Todesfall ereignet. Fremdverschulden wird ausgeschlossen. Jemand, der die Hintergründe des Todesfalls aufklären will, stößt allenthalben auf – bisweilen gar aggressives – Schweigen. Eine Geschichte über individuelle und kollektive Schuld, lutherische Kirchenmusik und den Wert, den wir der Kultur und der Tradition beimessen. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Borsla-Preis 2019.

Global food security poses large challenges to a fast changing human society and has been a key topic for scientists, agriculturist, and policy makers in the 21st century. The United Nation predicts a total world population of 9.15 billion in 2050 and defines the provision of food security as the second major point in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As the capacities of both, land and water resources, are finite and locally heavily overused, reducing agriculture’s environmental impact while meeting an increasing demand for food of a constantly growing population is one of the greatest challenges of our century. Therefore, a multifaceted solution is required, including approaches using geospatial data to optimize agricultural food production. The availability of precise and up-to-date information on vegetation parameters is mandatory to fulfill the requirements of agricultural applications. Direct field measurements of such vegetation parameters are expensive and time-consuming. On the contrary, remote sensing offers a variety of techniques for a cost-effective and non-destructive retrieval of vegetation parameters. Although not widely used, hyperspectral thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing has demonstrated being a valuable addition to existing remote sensing techniques for the retrieval of vegetation parameters. This thesis examined the potential of TIR imaging spectroscopy as an important contribution to the growing need of food security. The main scientific question dealt with the extraction of vegetation parameters from imaging TIR spectroscopy. To this end, two studies impressively demonstrated the ability of extracting vegetation related parameters from leaf emissivity spectra: (i) the discrimination of eight plant species based on their emissivity spectra and (ii) the detection of drought stress in potato plants using temperature measures and emissivity spectra. The datasets used in these studies were collected using the Telops Hyper-Cam LW, a novel imaging spectrometer. Since this FTIR spectrometer presents some particularities, special attention was paid on the development of dedicated experimental data acquisition setups and on data processing chains. The latter include data preprocessing and the development of algorithms for extracting precise surface temperatures, reproducible emissivity spectra and, in the end, vegetation parameters. The spectrometer’s versatility allows the collection of airborne imaging spectroscopy datasets. Since the general availability of airborne TIR spectrometers is limited, the preprocessing and data extraction methods are underexplored compared to reflective remote sensing. This counts especially for atmospheric correction (AC) and temperature and emissivity separation (TES) algorithms. Therefore, we implemented a powerful simulation environment for the development of preprocessing algorithms for airborne hyperspectral TIR image data. This simulation tool is designed in a modular way and includes the image data acquisition and processing chain from surface temperature and emissivity to the final at-sensor radiance data. It includes a series of available algorithms for TES, AC as well as combined AC and TES approaches. Using this simulator, one of the most promising algorithms for the preprocessing of airborne TIR data – ARTEMISS – was significantly optimized. The retrieval error of the atmospheric water vapor during the atmospheric characterization was reduced. As a result, this improvement in atmospheric characterization accuracy enhanced the subsequent retrieval of surface temperatures and surface emissivities intensely. Although, the potential of hyperspectral TIR applications in ecology, agriculture, and biodiversity has been impressively demonstrated, a serious contribution to a global provision of food security requires the retrieval of vegetation related parameters with global coverage, high spatial resolution and at high revisit frequencies. Emerging from the findings in this thesis, the spectral configuration of a spaceborne TIR spectrometer concept was developed. The sensors spectral configuration aims at the retrieval of precise land surface temperatures and land surface emissivity spectra. Complemented with additional characteristics, i.e. short revisit times and a high spatial resolution, this sensor potentially allows the retrieval of valuable vegetation parameters needed for agricultural optimizations. The technical feasibility of such a sensor concept underlines the potential contribution to the multifaceted solution required for achieving the challenging goal of guaranteeing global food security in a world of increasing population. In conclusion, thermal remote sensing and more precisely hyperspectral thermal remote sensing has been presented as a valuable technique for a variety of applications contributing to the final goal of a global food security.

In order to discuss potential sustainability issues of expanding silage maize cultivation in Rhineland-Palatinate, spatially explicit monitoring is necessary. Publicly available statistical records are often not a sufficient basis for extensive research, especially on soil health, where risk factors like erosion and compaction depend on variables that are specific to every site, and hard to generalize for larger administrative aggregates. The focus of this study is to apply established classification algorithms to estimate maize abundance for each independent pixel, while at the same time accounting for their spatial relationship. Therefore, two ways to incorporate spatial autocorrelation of neighboring pixels are combined with three different classification models. The performance of each of these modeling approaches is analyzed and discussed. Finally, one prediction approach is applied to the imagery, and the overall predicted acreage is compared to publicly available data. We were able to show that Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification and Random Forests (RF) were able to distinguish maize pixels reliably, with kappa values well above 0.9 in most cases. The Generalized Linear Model (GLM) performed substantially worse. Furthermore, Regression Kriging (RK) as an approach to integrate spatial autocorrelation into the prediction model is not suitable in use cases with millions of sparsely clustered training pixels. Gaussian Blur is able to improve predictions slightly in these cases, but it is possible that this is only because it smoothes out impurities of the reference data. The overall prediction with RF classification combined with Gaussian Blur performed well, with out of bag error rates of 0.5% in 2009 and 1.3% in 2016. Despite the low error rates, there is a discrepancy between the predicted acreage and the official records, which is 20% in 2009 and 27% in 2016.

This dissertation deals with consistent estimates in household surveys. Household surveys are often drawn via cluster sampling, with households sampled at the first stage and persons selected at the second stage. The collected data provide information for estimation at both the person and the household level. However, consistent estimates are desirable in the sense that the estimated household-level totals should coincide with the estimated totals obtained at the person-level. Current practice in statistical offices is to use integrated weighting. In this approach consistent estimates are guaranteed by equal weights for all persons within a household and the household itself. However, due to the forced equality of weights, the individual patterns of persons are lost and the heterogeneity within households is not taken into account. In order to avoid the negative consequences of integrated weighting, we propose alternative weighting methods in the first part of this dissertation that ensure both consistent estimates and individual person weights within a household. The underlying idea is to limit the consistency conditions to variables that emerge in both the personal and household data sets. These common variables are included in the person- and household-level estimator as additional auxiliary variables. This achieves consistency more directly and only for the relevant variables, rather than indirectly by forcing equal weights on all persons within a household. Further decisive advantages of the proposed alternative weighting methods are that original individual rather than the constructed aggregated auxiliaries are utilized and that the variable selection process is more flexible because different auxiliary variables can be incorporated in the person-level estimator than in the household-level estimator. In the second part of this dissertation, the variances of a person-level GREG estimator and an integrated estimator are compared in order to quantify the effects of the consistency requirements in the integrated weighting approach. One of the challenges is that the estimators to be compared are of different dimensions. The proposed solution is to decompose the variance of the integrated estimator into the variance of a reduced GREG estimator, whose underlying model is of the same dimensions as the person-level GREG estimator, and add a constructed term that captures the effects disregarded by the reduced model. Subsequently, further fields of application for the derived decomposition are proposed such as the variable selection process in the field of econometrics or survey statistics.