Pipes, pennies, and politics : an exploration of water conservation in the Greater Vancouver area
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines municipal water conservation activities in the Greater Vancouver area. First, I conducted a literature review to provide context for water management within the region, build a case for water conservation, and provide examples of barriers to and drivers of water conservation. Because limited studies exist that have sought to elicit the perceptions of water conservation administrators, I interviewed personnel involved with planning and implementing water conservation activities at the Greater Vancouver Regional District and in the region's municipalities. The results provide an indication of the current circumstances and potential for water conservation in the region. Interviewees identified perceived reasons for water conservation generally, and in relation to specific water conservation initiatives. They also identified positive drivers of change, and a number of obstacles that hinder the advancement of initiatives. In evaluating the potential for water conservation, I infer that there is room for improvement if a change to the status quo is desired. Although interviewees identified a comprehensive array of reasons that necessitate water conservation, when it comes to reasons for specific initiatives, interviewees were principally motivated by practical, political, and financial benefits; environmental and associated social benefits were largely unmentioned, and in some cases, dismissed as insignificant. Only a few interviewees spoke of more holistic reasons. Based on these results, there is an apparent discrepancy between what interviewees think (and practise) and what is declared by literature as the full case for water conservation. Furthermore, interviewees did not live up to the expectations set by the local literature that environmental and social considerations have significance to decision-making when it comes to water conservation. Although interviewees placed much accountability to the public and politicians, overall, the full case for water conservation has not been articulated by water conservation administrators themselves; I infer this to be a shortcoming of the current circumstances. Furthermore, there is a lack of water conservation advocates who view water management from a more holistic perspective; the results indicate the prevalence of perspectives more associated with supply and demand management. In turning the given barriers into drivers, positive opportunities for change can be found.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".