Topography, Natural Features, Geography, Location, Technology, etc.
2.1. Topography, Natural Features, Geography, Location,
Technology, etc.
Generally, topography is understood as the
arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area for example
its hills, valleys, or rivers, or the representation of these features on maps.
The topography of a particular area is its physical shape, including its hills,
valleys, and rivers. Topography is the study or detailed description of the
surface features of a region. Topography is the process of detailed mapping of
the configuration of a region. Topography is also the land forms or surface
configuration of a region. Topography is the method of surveying of a region's
surface features. Technically, Topography
is the study of the shape and features of the surface of the Earth and other
observable astronomical objects including planets, moons, and asteroids.
The topography
of an area could refer to the surface shapes and features themselves, or a
description, especially their depiction in maps. This field of geoscience and
planetary science is concerned with local detail in general, including not only
relief but also natural and artificial features, and even local history and
culture. Topography in a narrow sense
involves the recording of relief or terrain, the three-dimensional quality of
the surface, and the identification of specific landforms. This is also known
as geomorphometry.
In modern usage, this involves generation of
elevation data in digital form. It is often considered to include the graphic
representation of the landform on a map by a variety of techniques, including
contour lines, hypsometric tints, and relief shading. An objective of topography is to determine the position of any
feature or more generally any point in terms of both a horizontal coordinate
system such as latitude, longitude, and altitude. Identifying (naming)
features, and recognizing typical landform patterns are also part of the field.
A topographic study may be made for a variety of reasons: city planning and
geological exploration have been primary motivators to start survey programs,
but detailed information about terrain and surface features is essential for
the planning and construction of any major civil engineering, public works, or
reclamation projects.
2.1.2. Natural Features:
Geographical
features are naturally-created features of the Earth. Natural geographical features consist of landforms and ecosystems.
For example, terrain types, physical factors of the environment are natural
geographical features. A landform is a natural feature of the solid
surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a
given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Typical landforms include hills,
mountains, plateaus, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such
as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean
ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins.
Landforms are
categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope,
orientation, stratification, rock exposure, and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such
as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes,
and numerous other structural and size-scaled i.e. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs.
mountains elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies
and sub-surface features. Oceans and continents exemplify the
highest-order landforms. Landform elements are parts of a high-order landforms
that can be further identified and systematically given a cohesive definition
such as hill-tops, shoulders, saddles, fore-slopes and back-slopes.
Some generic
landform elements including: pits, peaks, channels, ridges, passes, pools and
plains. Terrain or relief is the third or vertical dimension of land surface. A human settlement is the settlement,
locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The
complexity of a settlement can range from a small number of dwellings grouped
together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. Settlements
may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities. A settlement may have known historical properties such as the date
or era in which it was first settled, or first settled by particular people.
Human settlement have man made
features and whatever is not human made features can be termed as natural
features.
2.1.3. Geography:
Geography is the
study of the physical features of the earth and its atmosphere, and of human
activity as it affects and is affected by these, including the distribution of
populations and resources and political and economic activities. Geography is the study of places and the
relationships between people and their environments. Geography is often
defined in terms of two branches and approaches: human geography and physical
geography.
Human geography deals with the study of
people and their communities, cultures, economies, and interactions with the
environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Human
geography largely focuses on the built environment and how humans create, view,
manage, and influence space. Physical geography is the study of Earth’s
seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Physical
geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural
environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere. Physical geography examines the natural
environment, and how organisms, climate, soil, water, and landforms produce and
interact. Human geography is the study of the distribution of networks
of people and cultures on Earth’s surface.
The difference
between these approaches led to a third field, environmental geography, which
combines physical and human geography and concerns the interactions between the
environment and humans. Environmental
geography is concerned with the description of the spatial interactions between
humans and the natural world. It requires an understanding of the
traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that
human societies conceptualize the environment. Environmental geography has emerged as a bridge between the human
and the physical geography, as a result of the increasing
specialization of the two sub-fields. Furthermore, as human relationship with
the environment has changed as a result of globalization and technological
change, a new approach was needed to understand the changing and dynamic
relationship. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography
include: emergency management, environmental management, sustainability, and
political ecology and regional geography.
Regional geography is concerned with the
description of the unique characteristics of a particular region such as its
natural or human elements. The main aim is to understand, or define the
uniqueness, or character of a particular region that consists of natural as
well as human elements. Attention is paid also to regionalization, which covers
the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions. In addition, urban
planning, regional planning, and spatial planning are the related fields of
geography which uses the science of geography to assist in determining how to
develop (or not develop) the land to meet particular criteria, such as safety,
beauty, economic opportunities, the preservation of the built or natural
heritage, and so on. The planning of
towns, cities, and rural areas may be seen as applied geography. There
are four historical traditions in geographical research i.e. spatial analyses
of natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies
of human-land relationships, and the Earth sciences. Geography has been called
"the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the
physical sciences".
Geographers explore both the physical
properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it.
They also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment, and
the way that locations and places can have an impact on people. Geography seeks
to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop
and change over time. Some people have trouble understanding the complete scope
of the discipline of geography because, unlike most other disciplines,
geography is not defined by one particular topic. Instead, geography is
concerned with many different topics—people, culture, politics, settlements,
plants, landforms, and much more.
What
distinguishes geography is that it approaches the study of diverse topics in a
particular way from a particular perspective. Geography asks spatial questions—how and why things are distributed
or arranged in particular ways on Earth’s surface. It looks at these
different distributions and arrangements at many different scales. It also asks
questions about how the interaction of different human and natural activities
on Earth’s surface shape the characteristics of the world in which we live.
Geography seeks to understand where
things are found and why they are present in those places; how things that are
located in the same or distant places influence one another over time; and why
places and the people who live in them develop and change in particular ways.
Raising these questions is at the heart of the “geographic perspective.” The
age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of
exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites
or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers
to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from
piecing together the multiple forces, near and far that shape the way
individual places develop. Studies of the geographic distribution of human
settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the
location of towns and cities.
The geographic perspective helped show
where people were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living
places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their
interactions with the environment. Geographic analyses of the spread of
diseases have pointed to the conditions that allow particular diseases to
develop and spread. For example, a classic example is of Dr. John Snow’s
cholera maps of London. When cholera broke out in London, England, in 1854, Dr.
Snow represented the deaths per household on a street map. Using the map, he
was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump on the corner of
Broad Street and Cambridge Street. The geographic perspective helped identify
the source of the problem i.e. the water from a specific pump and allowed
people to avoid the disease by avoiding water from that pump.
Investigations of the geographic impact
of human activities have advanced understanding of the role of humans in
transforming the surface of Earth, exposing the spatial extent of threats such
as water pollution by manmade waste. These examples of different uses
of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is
important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental
pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.
2.1.4. Location:
The terms
location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the
Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term location generally implies a higher
degree of certainty than place, the latter often indicating an entity with an
ambiguous boundary, relying more on human or social attributes of place
identity and sense of place than on geometry. A location is the place where a particular point or object exists.
Location is an important term in geography, and is usually considered more
precise than "place."
The term
location is also related with the term locality. A locality is a human settlement: city, town, village, or even
archaeological site. Locality is the location of a settlement, or
populated place and likely to have a well-defined name but boundary is not well
defined and varies by context. Karachi, for instance, has a legal boundary, but
this is unlikely to completely match with general usage. An area within a town,
such as Saddar in Karachi, also almost always has some ambiguity as to its
extent.
A place's
absolute location is its exact place on Earth, often given in terms of latitude
and longitude. For example, the NED University is located at 24.9°, degrees
north (latitude), 67.1° degrees east (longitude). It is located at the university
road, after Samama commercial center and before Karachi University in Karachi.
That is the university’s absolute location. Location can sometimes be expressed
in relative terms. Relative location is a description of how a place is related
to other places.
For example, the
NED University is 5 kilometers north of Hasan Square roundabout, in Karachi. It
is also about 500 meters away from Safari Park. These are just two of the
building's relative locations. Directions like north, south, east, and west
help describe where one place is in relation to another. Coordinates of
longitude and latitude help pinpoint the absolute location of a person, place,
or thing. Signs often point in the general direction of a location. A Global Positioning System, or GPS, uses
satellites orbiting the Earth to relate absolute location. Location,
Location, Location. Traditionally, those are the three most important factors
in buying and selling real estate.
2.1.5. Technology:
The use of the
term "technology" has changed significantly over the last 200 years.
Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, and it was used
either to refer to the description or study of the useful arts. The term "technology" rose to
prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial
Revolution. The term's meanings changed in the early 20th century when
American social scientists translated ideas from the German concept of Technik
into "technology."
In German
and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and
technologie that is absent in English, which usually translates both terms as
"technology." By the 1930s, "technology" referred
not only to the study of the industrial arts but to the industrial arts
themselves. In 1937, the American sociologist Read Bain wrote that "technology includes all tools,
machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and
transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them."
Scientists and
engineers usually prefer to define technology as applied science, rather than
as the things that people make and use. The
dictionary definition of technology is "the use of science in industry,
engineering, etc., to invent useful things or to solve problems" and
"a machine, piece of equipment, method, etc. is created by
technology."
The term is often used to imply a specific field of
technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather
than technology as a whole. Technology can be most broadly defined as the
entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental
and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology
refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It
is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or
wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle
accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such
as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of
technology.
The word "technology" can also
be used to refer to a collection of techniques. When combined with
another term, such as "medical technology" or "space
technology," it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge
and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high
technology available to humanity in any field. Technology can be viewed as an
activity that forms or changes culture. Additionally,
technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of
life as it is known.
A modern example is the rise of communication
technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and as a result
has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyber culture has at its basis
the development of the Internet and the computer. Not all technology enhances
culture in a creative way; technology can also help facilitate political
oppression and war via tools such as guns. As a cultural activity, technology
predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of
technological endeavor.
This philosophy of technology is nowadays taken to an
extreme level known as “Technicism” which,
“reflects a fundamental attitude which seeks to control reality, to resolve all
problems with the use of scientific–technological methods and tools."
In other words, human beings will someday be able to master all problems and
possibly even control the future using technology. We must be aware of such
extreme positions because it may mislead us that, technology is the solution to
every problem which is in fact not true because as technology enhanced and
progressed it brought new problems and issues. It also lead to disparity
between rich and poor countries and societies with high morals and low level of
morality.
Technology do not fulfill
the gap between rich and poor or haves and have nots or the people who are very
wealthy and the people who are very poor. The history of technology in
human history give us a lesson of how humans invented tools and techniques to
make the progress of humanity. However, if technology do not progress to make
progress of humanity it would lead to destruction of humanity. Therefore,
humanity shall be the guiding factor for technological progress. The architecture represents the
technology of its time and space.
Thus, learning of technology with
humanity as a guiding principle is a requisite to learn appropriate architecture,
urban design, urban planning and science of built environment. Due to
technological advancements the built environment is changing with availability
of human computer systems in the technologically advanced cities such as Hong
Kong. The application of computer and
communication technologies in every walk of life bringing ubiquitous
technologies.
References:
- From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topography (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://sciencing.com/topography-5479604.html (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-UXrpAjyl0
- From: http://www.kidcyber.com.au/my-community-natural-features/ (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_feature (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8vflwRDPm0
- From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/what-is-geography/ (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.britannica.com/science/geography (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/location.html (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology (retrieved November 25, 2018)
- From: https://www.popsci.com/technology (retrieved November 25, 2018)
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