Hey, guys. Great to be here today. Really excited to be in Helsinki, talk to you guys about configuration management and WordPress. It's pretty technical, and I think I owe it to you guys to explain a little bit about what I was thinking when I was going into this talk and just the idea behind it. So I've worked with the multi-tiered environment for a long time, long enough to know that it's a useful way to work as a developer. I know this is going to be a technical talk. Wanted to see how many of you are technical, how many people in here today are developers. You guys can raise hands. OK, that's great. So there's at least 47 of you that are developers. Anyways, so we're talking about multiple tiers, and the reason why is because when you are working on a site sooner or later, you're going to want to make changes on a server without affecting your live site. So you don't want to have something happen to your visitors. As they're viewing the site, what happens if your code is not right and you manage to break something? You don't want to have somebody see a broken site. That's bad user experience, and we can do better than that. So the reason why we have multi-tiered environment is so that we can develop. We're safe. We know that we can test things, whether it's on our local development environment or it's on the staging environment. And once we're ready, we can push that to our live site. So with that in mind, there's a problem about how do you get your data to go from one server to another, and what are all the parts that you need to make your data the same across a site, and what needs to be the same and what needs to be different. And that's where configuration comes into play. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some background and data in WordPress. Then I want to show you how to do three things. So syncing code base, uploads, and database. And then I want to talk about configuration management with a really cool plugin that allows most people to manage configuration. So about me, I work at WP Engine as a sales engineer. Does anybody know what technical sales is or what technical sales does? OK, a couple of you. So it's relatively different. I'm not a developer all the time, but I do get technical on occasion. But really, I'm working to make sure that people, when they come onto WP Engine, are on the right spot. And so we're giving them the best solution. So that said, I've been a developer for about 15 years. Prior to that, I've worked with content management all the way back. I remember my first time working with the content management system. I was amazed by being able to change a theme and that magic that you could have one click and change to a different theme, entirely different design. It just opened up a really cool door for me, and I thought it was pretty amazing. I've worked with open source technology for most of my career. At some points, I've worked with proprietary systems, but I really enjoy the WordPress community and open source and being able to contribute and use the software and actually be a part of the software that we use. So I've also done some speaking in WordCamps. I've done maybe five last year, and starting about two years ago, probably 15 or so engagements. And it was something that I've never done before, and I really enjoy. All right, so let's get into data and WordPress. The types of data that WordPress has and configuration. So I looked up the definition of configuration management. And just Wikipedia, it gives me the task of tracking and controlling changes in the software. Today, I want to focus on the controlling software, controlling changes rather than the tracking. I think there's many ways that we can audit and see what's being changed, but the controlling and deploying is a little bit more important. WordPress uses several different types of data. So if you're using the WordPress core files, you have PHP files, JavaScript, CSS. So that's your code base. So all of those are files that are written to disk. WordPress uses database to store its content, so posts and pages and anything like options are all stored in the database. You can use transients and object caching. It's a little bit more advanced, but a different type of data that expires at a certain point. You'll also use uploads, so anything that's uploaded to WordPress is stored in the media library as an asset. So these would be typically larger files. And then I've also called out configuration here, because I think that even though it's part of the PHP file, so it's similar to core files, it's a little bit different, because that will change. So your configuration will vary across your deploys, but the code stays the same. So we always want to configure things differently, and you'll see why in a couple of minutes we'll go into the reason why configuration would be different, even though it's the same site, and you're just essentially duplicating the site on a different server. So if I wanted to deploy a WordPress site, simply all I need to do is take the database, the files, and the uploads, and move that to another system. So at the core of it, that gets me my file. That gets me my site on another environment. So let's say I copied my site from production down to development, so I want to do some testing, some coding. That's all I'd need to work with, but that's not going to give you a working WordPress install. You're going to need to create another WordPress config file, and that will contain your settings for database and potentially different settings for development. So if you're developing with certain variables, let's say you're debugging. You'd want to have that on your development environment, but it doesn't need to be on your production environment. And sometimes this configuration will have sensitive information. So when you're working with multiple environments, you will have some things that are going to be the same across the environment, but then you'll also have those unique settings, like I was saying, as far as testing, debugging. Credentials will always change. So you'll have different database credentials, which are stored in that config file. And that is sensitive information. You want to keep that outside of version control, so it makes sense to take the config file and not include it in your version control if you're using it. So I looked at a system called .emv, and .emv is a way to manage configuration across multiple servers. And it works pretty simply by requiring a certain file based on the environment that you're in. So you would set a variable in that configuration, and you'd say, this is what I need to include. So this file gets included for this environment. It's relatively simple. There are other systems like it. And I've even seen this done just by People's Custom Code. And it's a really great way to keep those credentials out of version control, but also manage the configuration based on the environment. I've included a link here at the bottom, so that you can take a look afterwards. I'll share this presentation on SlideShare. You can download and set this up yourself relatively simply. Let's get into syncing things. So if we're going to sync the code base, there's actually two really simple ways to do this. So you're either going to pull your files down via File Transfer Protocol, so FTP or SFTP, or you'll use version control if you're using it on your site. So something like Git, and you'll use a Git push. You'll push your site to a server, or you'll pull it down if you're doing development. And so that really gives you all of the files that you need for your code base.  So you're maintaining that sync between them. You can use FTP, and you can sync FTP, but less reliably, because you could always make changes. And you're not, unless you're putting all files up, it's hard to know if everything has been pushed to production. And version control is great, because it allows you to say, I only want to push these files. I don't want to push all of the files. Let's just be concerned with anything that's WordPress core. But some of these config files, we can leave out. And that's exactly what we'll do with the WP config file. So for uploads, your uploads directory, where you've got all of the files that users may have, it's not going to be something that you want to keep in version control, because these are going to change, and this could potentially be a massive amount of files. So it doesn't make sense to waste time syncing these when you don't have to all the time, although there are a couple of ways that you can sync the uploads. The first would be to copy everything, copy all of the files from production to your local development environment. And of course, if you're doing this for the first time, you'll need to do that. But maybe on an ongoing basis, you only need to know what's changed. So you can copy all the files that you need. And then there's another method where you can point to your live server and actually use the files there. It's my favorite, and I'll show you how that's done. So copying all files, again, you're going to use FTP. You can download all those files with a client app if using an FTP app, or it can be done on the command line. If you're more technical, comfortable with the command line, and you have access to SSH, a great solution is to use R-Sync. But again, it requires SSH access. You may not have that on some hosting providers, especially if you're using a shared hosting. So you may have to go back to FTP. So for deployment, if you want to copy only a few files, there's a great feature in WordPress, which allows you to organize your uploads. And this is a setting that you can change in WordPress. It essentially puts things in folders by year and by month. So if you only wanted to download everything from 2017, that'd be simple to do. And this is what it looks like. I'm just showing from March all the files that I've added to my site. And in this case, I just simply want to grab anything from 03 and 04 and pull that down to my local, and I'd have everything for 2017. So for the case of using things where you don't necessarily want to download all the files, this plugin is fantastic. What it allows you to do is look locally for a file. And if it's not there, then use your production server. So I don't have to actually copy any files down to my local dev. I can just use this plugin to automate that. There's some configuration that has to happen. It took me a couple of tries to get this working, must admit, but it's relatively simple. And this configuration is an example of something that you'd want to keep on your dev environment, but not in your production environment, because it doesn't apply to production. It's only for development. What you're doing here is defining the site URL. So my site, admin.local, that's my local dev site. I'm saying uploads by proxy is local, and then I'm also giving an uploads by proxy site, so where the images will be pulled from. And this is well-documented as well at the uploads by proxy plugin page in the repository. So database migration, I think this is one of the more trickier things, but there are a couple of ways that you can go to do this. You can use WPCLI. Again, this is gonna be a little bit more advanced. This will be something that you would need to have command line chops. You'd need to install WPCLI, not very complicated, but definitely an extra step. You can use, you can FTP your files and then import them through MySQL. That's also a little bit more advanced because it's command line based, or you can use third-party plugins. Many plugins available. I won't go into them, but there's ways to do this. If you just want to deal with a plugin, that's no problem. So to do the database import, you're actually, there's three different methods. So WPCLI has some commands available that will let you do that natively. MySQL import, so directly with MySQL. And then you can use on some hosts, you can use PHP MyAdmin, or another visual interface to MySQL. One of the cool things that I found about WPCLI is using aliases. So the concept of aliases is, it gives you a shortcut to remote into another server. So instead of having to log into another server via SSH, I can do that simply by adding this shortcut into a command. So my workflow is, let's say I wanted to see WPCLI Info, but I wanted to see that on my production machine. So the production, I'm not working on production, it's another server somewhere else. I would use WP at production CLI Info. So behind the scenes, this is going in, connecting over SSH, it's running the command, and then returning the data to my local directory. You can set this up, it's simple configuration, and it's documented well on the WPCLI site. I think it's lesser known, but a really useful tool if you're working, and you wanna have a certain very streamlined workflow. It's not very hard to SSH and get used to going into a directory, especially if you're a technical user, but this does make it quite a bit easier, and I find the workflow to be pretty simple. So really the main advantage here is, I just put a simple prefix in front of my WPCLI command, and I'm able to run something on a remote server. So for syncing the database across environments with WPCLI, I've put an example up that shows you how to remote into the production environment and export the database. Then reset the database on dev, and then import that my SQL file, that SQL export, and then change the URLs. So essentially it's going up to production, grabbing that SQL file, and then I'm just cleaning out my database, and then importing the file. So four commands, relatively simple, and important to change those URLs because if you have any URL saved in your database, they won't work, they'll point to the live site. That's also well documented. There is a Gist available, which I have linked right there. All right, so let's get into the configuration management piece. I think this is really cool because sometimes you don't want to have everything saved into WordPress, you don't want to copy the entire database, you just want to make a few changes. So let's say we change the setting on our dev environment and we just want to push those changes up, this can be done with configuration. And in this case, I don't have to deploy the entire database, and this could actually be really risky too. If I'm copying my database from development to production, I risk overwriting some production data. So what if my editors are logged into the production site and they've created new content? So that could actually be overwritten if I don't have the most recent version of the database. So obviously you're gonna save time and you don't really need to sync the data. So some examples of these differences that you might want to deal with in configuration are constants like the site URL, home URL. You don't want to have the same plugins enabled in your production environment, so definitely any of those dev plugins uploads by proxy for example, you wouldn't want to have that on the production environment. And then there's also a situation where on a live site, you may have users that make changes and you may want to replicate those changes and only take the settings that have changed. So there's a way to do this with this plugin called WPCFM. I think this is really cool because it allows you to version your changes. This is inspired for me by a Drupal module called Features. So I think this works in a relatively similar way. It allows you to take some of the settings in the database, in the options table, and some of the other tables in your WordPress database and save them directly as files. And in this way, you can check it into version control and push those changes. So you're not copying the entire database, just a subset. You can organize and customize these settings that you want to push. And it's going to be easier for you to keep things consistent or if you don't want to keep things consistent across multiple environments. So primarily, WPCFM works with options. It saves these options together as bundles and you can create custom bundles. Once we get through the slides, I'll jump to show you the plugin and how it works. I think it's relatively simple for most people to use, but it can also be done through the command line through WPCLI as well. So, and again, the idea is we're going to save those settings to a file and then we're going to pull them into a database on a different server rather than copy the entire database. So this data for WPCFM is saved into a JSON array. So it's in the WPContent that creates a folder called config and it keeps everything as JSON files. And you can manage these settings in the WordPress dashboard. I'll show you how that looks. And it gives the non-technical users a way to alter these settings as well and manage these settings if they're not able to access the command line or to access the file system or repository. So the data that you can manage is mainly options. You can manage site meta, taxonomy, and custom fields. And I think this gives you a good range of things that you can actually keep and store and manage. If you're using a plugin, you're building a plugin and you're using options, you can save those options as well. Using WPCLI, these are a bunch of commands that would help you to use it. So it's actually very simple. The concept here is you're going to push changes to disk. So I push my settings to a file and then I pull them into the database. You can see some other commands. So there's a diff which shows you the difference between what's on your disk and what's in the database. And you can create these bundles as well through WPCLI. So that brings me too close to the end here. I hope that I've been clear enough to make a couple of good points. So codebase, if you're using version control, that will help you to sync the code across multiple environments. Uploads, you can pull down regularly with RSync or you can use uploads by proxy or FTP. WPCLI is a great way to sync your database, keep things in check, other ways to do that as well, but I think that massively simplifies workflow. And the main point is that configuration will differ across multiple environments, but you can still manage that in a central place. I am Edmund Turbin on Twitter. I'm Spice Cadet and I wanted to thank you guys so much for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you. So I have a second to go through the WPCFM plugin. You have time. Yeah. Excellent. Okay, we'll take a look. All right, so just quickly I'll show you what this looks like. Oh, okay. So I have gone to my WordPress install locally and this is the WPCFM page. So if I wanted to, so I've created a couple of these bundles which store settings. I've got one for active plugins. And so what you're looking at here is an option, right? So I've selected the active plugins option and it saves that information to a file. So I have the ability here to see the difference, to push those changes to disk and then pull that into the database. So just really simply, if I've got new code that's been committed, I could pull it in to the database, import those changes. So I've done that also with my theme mods. So any settings that are available to the theme to change. So which I can make sure that my theme is the same on my development and production environment and also taxonomy.  You have a really big list of things that you can manage. So you can pick out things individually or if you want to grab everything, it's possible to do that as well. So you can select all of these options and just push them at an atomic level. So what this looks like in your install is, I'll just clear that out. So I've got a couple of files here. So I've gone into that directory where all of these files are saved. So it's wp-content-config and I've listed out the files. So I've got a couple of JSON files there and I can show you what the settings actually look like. So my taxonomy has all of the settings for taxonomy. So everything there would be committed to the repository and then you can pull that in with WPC FM. That's really it. That's the main points that I wanted to make. I wanted to open it up to questions. Oh, I have a note for myself. Go ahead. So I have some WP Engine swag available at the speaker table. If you guys are interested, a couple of hats, stickers, just stop by and see me over there after the presentation. Thank you guys. Thanks. Thanks, Edmund. Now please raise your hands. If you have any questions for Edmund, there must be something. Oh, it's good. Everybody understands. At least I don't have a job done. Either that or everybody is super confused. Yeah. Oh, super hungry. I want it. It could be that also. Let's get some lunch. Could you get a mic? We can get your mic. I have a mic. There it is. Yes, now it's working. You mentioned that the WPC FM creates JSON files. Let's say you have multiple developers working in one project. In my experience, JSON and Git is kind of painful because like machine created files in version control is just resolving the conflicts all over again. How do you manage that? Yeah, I can see that being an issue. I've not thought of it. So not a good answer, honestly. But I think what my concern here was is just getting those settings up to the production environment. So potentially you want to ignore those settings. So rather than commit them to the repository, just use the WPC-LI commands to make sure they're in sync. Although you're sort of risking not having the same configuration. So the whole point of having it in version control is that you know that those settings are going to be the same. But I do see the concern there, yeah. Any more questions? Here's one from Daniel. I might be trolling here, but when are you going to have WPC-LI on WP Engine? That is a great question. That was a bad one. So it's been on our roadmap for some time. We have a beta available, which allows you to go in and actually do WPC-LI in our user portal. It is something that we're continuously developing and the next iteration will be on the command line as it should be. So I've seen a little bit of movement there. I don't have any sort of dates or timings around it, but it is being worked on. And that's super, super good news. That was very exciting.


Welcome everybody. My name is Andre Pilda. I'm Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs and thank you for joining us this morning. We have with us three FPA ambassadors that'll explain to you a little bit what that means in their presentation to help you understand a bit more about what it means to be a Carleton students in a program offered by a unit of the Faculty of Public Affairs. So again, three students are here to talk about their experiences. So what I will, or one alum and two students, in what I will do is I will introduce our three speakers first and then turn it over and then question and answer period later on. So first, may I introduce Taylor, who is a 2020 graduate of the Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice with a concentration in psychology. Taylor worked and helped us do for the successful release of Mr. Seuth Kamra, a Sri Lankan author and father who is arbitrarily detained for writing a children's novel that depicted homosexuality. And Tori is a fourth year student also in the Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice, but with a concentration in sociology. Taylor received a co-curricular record star achievement in second year for adding nine positions to her record. And finally, Resna is a fourth year student in the Bachelor of Arts with honors in law and a concentration in business law and a minor in business.  So anyways, with that in mind, I'll pass it over to Taylor to get us started. Hi, I'm Taylor. Okay, so I just wanted to say that, first of all, I chose to come to Carleton and this program because it's a very specialized and niche program that I think is only offered at very few schools and in Canada. And I was very excited that this program was offered because it was something I was very interested off the bat, but something that I did learn in my first year going into it is that it's not, it is the rigorous study of criminal Criminology, it's criminal theory, you're learning a lot of theories and a lot of things that are applied in practice. And it's, I know some people are interested because it's really cool and sensationalized in news and, you know, TV shows and movies, but I think it's really important to emphasize that it is a lot of hard work. And although it can kind of like cross the line of being sometimes very sensationalized and media and like movies and over used to seeing in popular culture. We are doing the academic study of it. So you have to be prepared to take in a lot of theory and a lot of knowledge and be able to apply that into the real world. And I think that's the most important thing. When I graduated. Yeah. And then, so as was mentioned, I have, I had a lot of extracurricular activities that I decided to join during my time at Carleton as someone who Knows they would like to work with individuals with people. I thought it was important to enhance my Like my verbal skills, my interpersonal skills. So I joined the debating team and I, it was extremely helpful to just test you Right away with being able to speak in front of people that you don't know and maybe on topics that you're not so informed of and you just kind of get over that nervousness that you have You know, like for oral speaking and public speaking, and it helps you become very comfortable and and also also increase You know, researching stuff in a short a short amount of time and then being able to present that in a very coherent manner as well. So I would really emphasize joining any extracurriculars that are that you are That you find that would help you for your future career. If you don't know yet anything that's interesting for you, just anything to Anything to help you once you leave Carleton because you will be working in the real world. So just always keep that in mind that all the all the theories and knowledge that you're going to be learning Like that the goal of that in the end is so you can apply that one day in the real world. And then something I wish I knew when I started university is that At first you might it might seem like you don't know at much at all. And you feel kind of very like a relevant in the field as just a young student. But now that I've graduated, I've participated in so many Like events and I've met so many people in my last year. I worked at the Ottawa Crown Attorney's Office for the entire year. That was my field placement that you can choose doing your third or fourth year and from knowledge if you have good enough grades. So I suggest working hard enough. So you are able to apply for these positions Because it was the best decision I've ever made in my life. Honestly, and I'm I still keep in touch with my supervisor who is a Crown Prosecutor and I just met with for coffee with her actually yesterday and I still watch her court cases. I watched her secure court case through zoom with her yesterday. Just there's a lot of things you can get involved in and don't be afraid to do it because that this is really your opportunity to seize and cap it off. And the last thing I want to say was your professors are. Well, I don't know if I was extremely lucky. But every professor I had at Colton, I was inspired by and I had amazing relationship with they're always there for you. They will always try and accommodate you the best to your needs. Just go to class and, you know, redo your readings and be a good student. And you will do well and you will succeed. One of my professors brought in an old student of hers and he mentioned how we did an internship in Washington DC and I asked him afterwards for the contact information because it really intrigued me and I actually just called them up. And asked them if I could volunteer for them for the summer and this was last summer and they said, sure. And so I did an internship with them and I ended up working with a provoked legal clinic in DC and I authored allegation letters to the university. Nations and I learned how to like utilize United Nations treaty bodies and all these things. And that's how we ended up actually bringing Mr. Sethic Romero, who is from Sri Lanka. And all of this is because of a professor. Who is my law professor for criminal law and she brought in her old student and I went up to him at the end and I asked for the contact information and I just called them up and you have to do things like that and it will get you to really great places. So be motivated and you will succeed. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. So, okay. So Tori, good. Yeah. Hi everyone, my name is Tori. I am a fourth year student now in criminology with a focus in social. I'm really excited for you guys to start your degree criminology has been awesome. I find it to be kind of a misfit degree in the sense that it's so broad that people go in for a whole bunch of different reasons. And sometimes they go in just to kind of get into university and see what they like, but you'll totally find your way. First year is a really fun and exciting time so I'm super excited for you guys. This is a super cool degree in the sense that we get to do so many things you get to do law, social psych and cram those are mandatory and then you get to pick specificities. And I think that's so so cool.  And so I never, I was never taught about our indigenous history and so sociology 1001 and 1002 just like blew my mind and I'm sure there are going to be classes like that for you guys to for whatever you're interested in definitely take electives that, you know, spark your interest we have so many they're really cool. So, for extracurricular activities. I so I got the star CCR war because I added nine to my CCR. I did things like foot patrol. I did PMC volunteering it's a really easy way to volunteer if you're already doing notes and making notes for your classes for yourself it's really easy just to send them into it's something to look to look into. But my favorite one was the Carlton University Criminology and Criminal Justice Society so it's literally the society of our degree. Not like if you have friends and psych or law or anything like that they can totally come into like it's an open society, but it definitely paved the way for my degree, I would say like I first year I really didn't know what I want to do and I saw this society and was like okay well I guess I'll go into it. And through that I've gotten so many volunteering experiences so many like networking experiences so many friends all those kinds of things I moved up from being a basic like member to them being director of volunteers and careers where I did for separate volunteering experiences for people in criminology last year and then this year I'm secretary and it's just absolutely amazing. So I would definitely tell you to look into that because we have awesome volunteering positions. I don't know what it's going to be like with COVID but we used to have panel events as well where I know people got jobs, I know people got volunteering experiences. It was really cool. I got volunteering experiences from it as well, it was really cool. And then one thing I wish I knew in first year I had a really awesome fall orientation leader in first year so she kind of set me up for like marks and field placement and now in my thesis. But I wish I knew how to get involved better Carlton has amazing volunteering experiences there are little ones in the corner is that if you don't pass by you'll never see it like one of my favorite ones has been for patrol. For patrol does like safe walks and walk and talk and stuff for Carlton and you want to have you would like it. Students, if they're not feeling safe or anything. It's patrol background you learn all your 10 codes I don't know if anyone's kind of in this for like being a police officer or security or something like that but volunteering with for patrol is not only extremely easy. It's right on campus especially if you're going to be there for like residency but great shifts great people and like I said like you get that experience you can put on your resume of I've already patrolled and I'm first year. I already know my 10 codes and I'm first year, which is crazy it's really really good. And if you volunteer for things like Panda I don't know if you guys have heard of that but if you volunteer for things like that, not with COVID but like in the next years hopefully. That's easy experience of working with people who are intoxicated or like medical stuff like that just really easy things to have on your resume and have a really good time at Carlton and get you integrated into the Carlton community as well. And the other thing I would ask you guys to do is meet with your profs. So if your prof has an office hour please go. I don't care if it was a question that you already know of. It helps so much with not only networking annoying professors like Taylor was saying like everything that she, she got from the professors but I got my thesis professor from doing this and networking. So with that you're going to find in fourth year if you want to do your thesis, you're gonna have a lot of problems, because people have already networked people have already went to their people to the profs that they like office hours, introduced themselves been a familiar face. So, if not the office hours then hopefully, you know when you are back in school going up to them being like hi, I'm you know, whatever, and I really like what you do I think we have overlapping interests, I might reach out to you later on for a thesis or like a masters. If you think of doing masters at Carlton stuff like that. But yeah something I wish I did a lot earlier and I found a lot of people doing catch up with third and fourth year.  Yeah, so hi everyone my name is Resda and I'm in my fourth year of business law.  Okay, so why did I choose business law. Well, honestly, going in I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I may have been in the middle of like watching suits while I was choosing programs and so I was like, you know what business law sounds great. And then of course like I did a follow up research on it and I was really intrigued with with just how like the law works, because obviously, like they help sort of like structure is our society. And because we're always surrounded by business everywhere I just thought they would make a really nice compliment with each other. And so I thought you know why not and then if I don't like it. It's super easy to like change over. And so, but of course, because I am graduating in business law. So it means that I really enjoyed the program. And so what I learned, like going through my degree is that like in your first year is really the best sort of place to sort of test out different courses, but also like different activities around campus. In regards to the degree, if you are going into a law program in your first year, you only have to do one mandatory course, which is a lost 1001 and lost 1002, but they're actually the same basically part one and part two of like the same course. So everything else is elective and so you can really sort of branch out. If you think that you are into psychology, you can try them out. If you think you're into African studies, you can try that out either. Like there's a lot of like different like courses that you can try. That's really nice because then Indiana can sort of help formulate a concentration for you or even a minor if you decided to go into one. But yeah, so what sort of I learned from like my degree is that like start planning from day one. I know that a lot of people say that first year is a time to sort of relax. And then also you can do that, but like it won't maximize your potentials to achieving your goals. And so, for example, like a lot of the courses in your last year, you probably want to like do them but once you get into your last year you find out that like you didn't meet the prerequisites. And so it's really good to have everything set out in like your first year you could even like do what I do and then sort of just make a list of like all the courses I would take throughout my whole four years. And so that'll sort of help sort of like keep you on track with everything and make sure that you are following your objectives. Yeah, so that's really, so that's really like what I wanted you guys first to like know from all this. And then also like what Taylor and Tori have mentioned always be involved. I know that like first year I learned that it's super easy to either like not be involved at all or be too involved. And so I want you guys to sort of like be in the middle. So don't be, don't just go to your courses and then go home and then that's it. But actually try to reach out and like try to be involved with things because of course it'll, it'll make your university experience more fun. For example, like every year I would like to go to the different expo like expo presentation that event that happens like in the beginning of the year. It basically shows up like present all like different clubs and societies on campus that's available. And so you can try a lot of them out. But of course, like this year with everything being online, that'll be a lot harder, but I'm sure that like Carlton will find like a way to sort of reach out to students and then show them all the different opportunities that's available. So, but if not, you could always try again next year when everything to hopefully open up. So yeah, again, like it's really easy to not be involved at all or be too involved, which is me. I would, I think I got carried away and was like involved in everything. But I think that sort of helps narrow down what I like and what I don't like. And so being too involved is better than not being involved at all. And sort of from that, I was able to like sort of narrow down what I want to volunteer in and just sort of focus on that and like build report and like relationships with different people I volunteer with.  I really did learn a lot from it. Like I grew as a person before I was a really a shy and introverted person. The idea of just socializing or public speaking scares me. I'd be like, no, no, thank you. But I thought, you know what, like, if I don't start getting out of my comfort zone now, then when when will I do that. So why not do it now. So that's what I did. I signed up. It was really nerve wracking at first. But honestly, you'll just get like used to it. And so from being an ambassador, I learned a lot of things I learned about like the different researchers and ideas that our faculty members and students are doing. And that really helps me with like my papers, and also to sort of hone in on like what I'm interested in. And also I learned a lot of how to network like networking does sound like scary at first because like what do you do do just like go up to person like what do you talk about and stuff like that. But honestly, if you're really interested in what they do. And you really want to know more from them. Like networking is great and events that I volunteer for, we get people from all different types of backgrounds and so I was able to ask, like, what business lawyers I was able to ask like criminal prosecutors and like even profs from like different countries about like what they think of like a particular research like topic is. And so, and also you can learn a lot of like different opportunities that that's available from them to And so yeah it's like it's really great like all these like soft skills and experiences that you learn in your undergrad can really like spill over to after undergrad into your workplace or whatever path you decided to take afterwards. So definitely my advice would be to get involved like, like you never know like without me volunteering for the Carlton University research research opportunity program I wouldn't have known about it, and I wouldn't have been able to enter and actually like win the competition. And then because from that competition now I am more prepared on what to do, like how to go about with like my honors paper, and also because like you need a supervisor for that. I was able to get some get a prof to supervise with me. And now he's also willing to supervise for my honors paper which again as Tori I've mentioned is really hard to do because they can only take so many people. And so it's really, it's really just great to like get out of your comfort zone and sort of just just learn more about you like university is just not about like learning what you want to go into for your careers, but also just to like know about like who you are and like what you like to do besides studying. And so yeah, so definitely get out there. And I hope that even though everything is online this year I hope you'll make the best of it and also hopefully next year when we do resume that you'll be able to sort of experience Carlton to like the fullest. So thank you so much. Thank you so much to Taylor, Tori and Red stuff for sharing your experiences. The chat for everybody is now open to questions. I like to mention to that if you have any questions that are specific to getting into a course or switching around courses or minors or majors. It's best to talk to an academic advisor for questions such as these. So you can go on to Carlton.ca and get an online appointment with an academic advisor. It's best to meet with them once a semester, at least once a year. They will help you keep on track and get what you're looking for, as well as ensure that you graduate on time. I'm going to answer general questions based on experiences and opinions. So anybody who wants to either unmute their mic and ask the question either to one ambassador or all three, or if you want to put them in the chat you can do so now. While we are waiting for the first few questions to come in. I have a question to pose to our ambassadors. How did you find the workload in person versus online. Were you asking us that. Yeah. Okay. Because I had a few online courses. So the workload, I find can be very comparable. I find that staying on top of it is very different. I think that when you have a class that you kind of have to be there for and you're already on campus. I found I got my readings done because I just be like well, I'm going to go to Roosters and eat some lunch and read my readings or start my paper or ask questions when it's in person. Whereas when you're on online and on your own, it's all on you. And it's a little bit harder with with good motivation and good time management skills. It's definitely it's fine. Some people actually really would rather that it be on your own not be sitting in a lecture for three hours. I don't really love it. I don't mind it depends on the course right but I find the workload comparable, but how to do it and kind of the time management of that can be a little bit different. Yeah, I wanted to add just to reiterate what Tori said. So the workload just you have to make sure that you're essentially following a schedule. I mean, it doesn't have to be the same schedule as it is would be in person lecture full point of online is that flexible environment but it's not so it's a free for all. If you do not stay on top of your classes you will end up watching hours of lectures and it will be extremely overwhelming, and it will seem like as it throws a lot to catch up on. Make sure you watch your lecture, like, at least the day of or as soon as you start like having like multiple lectures to watch it even to lectures to watch is a is a lot and it's over to feel overwhelming. So just stay on track with as if you were to attend class. It's essentially the same. All it is is just changing the environment, you just have to make sure to keep on track with the things. That's it. Yeah, and to add on to that and honestly they both have their own like, like pros and cons, like for example with actual lectures you actually have to get yourself there, and you do it, like, you're not putting things off like they have like the schedules there for you. And you can also like interact with like the prof there, instead of like typing it up or like emailing them afterwards you're actually there in the moment. And with online the benefit is that you can sort of everything like you have more time to do everything like you don't have the commuting, you don't have all that sort of stuff and so you can sort of work on different courses all at like the same time and like sort of meet your own time so let's say an 830 lecture you don't actually have to do it at 830 in the morning. And so if you're a night owl you can focus bet and you can focus better at night, you can just do your courses that and so like they both have their own pros and cons it's really about like, like Taylor said like the key is like time management and sort of planning your courses wisely and not getting too overloaded and putting them off until the end. Very well said thank you guys. So also Tori mentioned she would be reading at roosters. So roosters I put in the chat is a student run cafe that is on campus. So that's what she meant there. Camilla asked how do I utilize office hours since the first semester is online, and Dean Andre has answered with office hours will be held online as well. These office hours will be in the course outlines with the days and times for the online office hours. Those outlines will be released online and see you learn near the end of September or sorry end of August early September. Christie has asked, is there a co-op program for criminology students. Actually Dean Andre has answered that as well in the chat. In the criminology program there's a placement with an outside organization that is available. Not everyone can get a placement though, but there is no co-op program available. So I hope that answered your question, Christie. I also answered as well because I did. Of course. I guess in a sense, well, you get credits for it. So you can choose to do it for a full year or half a year and that will either give you a full credit or half the credit. And you essentially work for a certain amount of hours, it's like eight hours per week and that is like you would be going to class. And at the end, you get that credit and it's in the replacement of a class, you're doing a practical experience, you're working in an organization. It can be people have chosen to work with the RCMP, people have chosen to work with the correctional facilities. I chose to work with the Ottawa Crown Attorney's office, but as was mentioned, not everyone can get placement. So make sure you have good grades and you are aware that this is open because it's a really, a really, really, really great experience. I really highly recommend doing it. It was the cherry on top to my last year at Calton and enhanced my CV a lot. And now I'm going to law school because of it as well. Well, congratulations. Thank you so much. Thanks, starter. So we also had a question from Abigail asking what Taylor's concentration was. Concentration with psychology. So that was also answered. So Alexander asks, do you think it's best to not work the first semester you arrive on campus, regardless when that is, since it's important to make friends first. I can, I worked every year of university. So I can say my experience if you'd like. I think that it is definitely your comfort zone. So like if you're finding that classes are really, really hard and you need to focus on your academics. I don't know your situation, you know, like money wise, but if you can not work and maybe focus more on school, you know, big part on school or make friends volunteer do clubs and societies to make friends. Maybe, maybe like focus on that make sure to put yourself your mental health stuff like that first because school is a lot on its own it's a full time job you're you're doing school. But like I worked every year of university. Some years I worked two jobs. So can it work. Absolutely. But like some of the jobs were a little easier to work school around. I did overnights for some of them I got to do homework on some of them stuff like that. It depends for me. Thank you. Go ahead. And just to add on like I also didn't do like I don't have I didn't have any jobs like in my first year and then I started working in my second third and four. And honestly, again, like Tori said it really depends on like, if you think you are financially able to sustain yourself for the first year without work. If you are then yeah take the time to sort of like get familiar yourself with like campus and like your degree and like know what is like your limit on like course wise and everything and then like just have like have fun in your first year Explorer. And then once you actually find your groove, then in second third and fourth year you can sort of incorporate work into your life. Well said. So just a note we do have seven minutes remaining we have a few questions in the chat. So we're going to try to get to everyone's questions but if not I'll let you know what you can do at the end. So Alex has how do you guys feel about the criminology department cutting ties with policing and prison field placements. For me, in my opinion, my answer would be longer than seven minutes so back out. Totally acceptable to if you don't have. This is a pretty intense question. So what what we can do for Alex is that Alex. My name is Stephanie I sent you the invite for this zoom call you can send me your question and I can pass it to the ambassadors and you guys can have a discussion after the fact as well. So Abigail asked is there a big difference between the law program and the criminology and criminal justice program. Honestly, I'm looking at like the calendars and also talking with my friends. In your first year there's not really a lot of differences we're taking all the same courses. Like I like you all have to like take a loss 1000 and sociology courses psychology. I also took criminology 1000. And so in first year, there's definitely a lot of overlap. So if you, let's say you're in law and then you took like criminology and in law like in the law 1000 you also be learning a lot about like criminal law. But if you found that like, oh, criminology and criminal justice suits better for you. It's really easy to switch out in your first year. So that's an option. Fantastic. So Selma has also asked, what kind of marks do you need to get a placement. I think it's just an overall averaging would be plus to be able to apply. However, the higher grades, the better I believe your chances are getting in because they do look through everyone's like application, I guess, separately individually. Yeah, that would be generally the case and then an academic advisor would also be able to tell you exactly what the cutoff is, but always good to be higher. Sorry, what were you going to say there. Yeah, I was going to say that it from Danette who runs the field placement she says it changes every year depends on the averages and stuff like that. And then, yeah, you don't get paid for those placements for the other question in it. So forget it. You got it. Perfect. Thank you. That's great. So instead of getting paid you would get credit for that placement. How do you manage time with taking part in different clubs. That's a great question. For me, I took clubs that I liked, they weren't like work for me, they were ones that those would be kind of not my me time but those would be my social times, I would go to clubs that I like the people of in this, the atmospheres of and I would enjoy that and that would be like my kind of different school. Obviously you can be in clubs that aren't exactly like that for other reasons but it's definitely hard if you don't enjoy the things that you're spending most of your time in. So, yeah, management would be like cutting out kind of social time separate, like separate social time and integrating that time into the clubs that you're doing or the volunteering you're doing really enjoying them so that you had that time. Also, like a lot of the clubs and societies, they do post like their events like after like school hours so it'll be easier for you. So as long as you are able to sort of make time for it afterwards and stick to your schedule you'd be able to like fit it all in. Fantastic. So we had another question in the chat from Beatrice. Are any of you planning on applying to law school and what is the process like. Taylor has answered that in the chat to Beatrice. I'm attending law school this September so if you would like to discuss, please feel free. Enough time but I can just quickly say it depends if you want to obviously stay in Canada and the states and then the UK there's different things but you would have to study for the LSAT. An undergraduate degree and any field doesn't matter you can apply to law school with any undergraduate degree. But you would need to study for the LSAT which I would say is for certain people it depends how you are good at testing and speed processing but it is a test that you have to study for and learn about it's not like content wise it's more it's basically learning the test than the methodology of the test but it's definitely doable and you can apply to essentially a bunch of schools through like kind of one portal that you get so it's not too complicated. There's also a few ways to bypass the LSAT but I can discuss that as well. More in detail if you want to email me there's a lot more I could say on this because I also did apply to schools in the UK as well. So yeah if you want to email me or you can discuss this more I don't know if there's a lot of time left if anyone else wants to ask questions. There's two more questions in the chat one I can answer quickly because it was asked earlier and then the other I'll ask to our ambassadors. So the first one is about taking a year off school and how the workload has changed. So the workload will stay about the same as it was in person versus online. It's just the mechanisms are different and there are pros and cons to both. And then our final question for the day is the ambassadors is from Michelle. How can you take the most advantage in your first year in making connections and networking. Maybe there's a lot of ways I think actually each of us have though there we kind of have done the same things but I think we've all gotten to them in different ways. But maybe like just being open you know like like going into a well I guess it's online now it's going to say go into a lecture and say hi to your neighbors but okay I guess that's not very anymore but like but yeah like see what Carlton has like gosh be part of clubs like but take time for yourself and yeah I hope that at one point there will still be that social aspect of university really badly because everything I'm thinking of is like residents like go to like things that are around go to black squirrel that's not just off bank like I don't know but but try try to be part of a clubs and stuff and you'll you'll meet even if it's over zoom you know yeah also don't be afraid to just like for example like call places for volunteer if you're interested in volunteering or even emailing just don't be afraid to just email someone and say you're interested and like you know you're you're interested in doing you know whatever they have to offer during this time you there's still many ways to help people and and you know organizations online. In my first year at Carlton I'm from Montreal and I did not know anyone and I and I was very interested in like meeting people so I joined clubs at Carlton but I was also interested in volunteering with individuals who had been recently released from prison so I literally went on Google and type that in on Google in the Ottawa area and I called maybe three different numbers that were open to volunteer for students who hadn't completed their undergraduate degree yet and one answer and I became a volunteer and I worked there for three years I volunteered there for three years literally just by calling I had no idea you know who they were anything and I just read about them online and I just you know you can do it like that and now it's moved to Zoom as well and you know you're there's still ways to don't be discouraged that things are now online there's still ways to participate and do things you're just changing the form it's not like that everything else should be the same it's just they were just changing the environment and it's scary but don't be afraid to just like email or call someone and be like I'm really interested in doing this like how can I help how can I help your organization how can I help the club just yeah and also like through us what I found is that like if you follow like Carlton like on social media especially on Facebook like Husa and like the student experience office they would post like like random events there and then you'll get notified and so like if you just want to make connection with like new people it doesn't have to be through like clubs or societies you can just join some random activities and then you'll meet people there too so yeah and even just today you've already met so many other people so it's always good to reach out. Thank you so much again to our three ambassadors for helping us today really appreciate it again if anybody has any more questions and needs to reach out feel free to reach out to me Stephanie Boss I sent you the Zoom invitation and I can either help you with your questions or pass them on to our ambassadors that we're here today and then they can connect with you and I just wanted to wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming academic year. Thank you very much to Stephanie and to again to our three ambassadors for being here today and thank you to all of you for joining us have a great weekend everyone bye. Bye everybody.


The prevalence of hyper triglyceridemic waste phenotype, HTWP, was found to be 21.5% in individuals diagnosed with arterial hypertension, AH, and or diabetes mellitus type 2, DM2. Factors such as being female, increasing age, higher body mass index, BMI, higher levels of very low density lipoproteins, VLDLC, and a higher ratio of waste circumference to height were all associated with a greater likelihood of having HTWP.


Hello everyone. Welcome to Rural Water Resource Management NPTEL course. This is week six lecture five. In this current week, we have been looking at surface water storage systems for rural water resource management. We have also looked at the types and what are the issues concerning each type. In today's lecture, we would go through some of the issues and concerns and how to get out of those issues. And also recap of this week's lecture. Let's start with the revival of tanks and lakes or the water bodies. In the previous lecture, we have a case study of Bangalore, where we saw that water lake area has been dimensioned. And because of that, the agricultural farmers are driven out of the system. And there is less water for domestic use because the same urban people have started polluting the water. And that water is not good for urban or good for agriculture and it is a pure waste. Also, the ecological balance has been disturbed, which is the plants, animals, fish and other insects and organisms depending on the water have vanished. So it is very important to save and revive these water bodies. What do you mean by revive? Is once it's polluted to a particular extent, you want to reproduce it to a particular level. So it's revival of the water bodies. How can we do that? Let's look at some measures. Augmentation of storage capacity. So I mentioned that if you have a check-down, a water storage device and water is coming and storing, some of the sediments are deposited on the check-down. This actually leads to a lessening of the volume and also breaking of the dam. So what you can do is you need to augment the storage, which means maintain the sediment level like dredge it and take it out and also make the buns stronger. So maintenance is very important and augmenting, adding to the storage capacity is important. Some people raise the level of the check-down. Some people will dig more deeper so that water can come and store more. So those are some measures. De-silting of tanks and feeders are very, very important, not only in the major tanks and dams, but also the feeder channels which take the water to the farm can have sediments. It has to be clean and free flowing. If you have sediment levels, then it will oppose the water movement and stop it. And also the water would flow out of the system. Let's see a drawing for example. This is your channel. I'm just drawing a cross section and initially water is flowing, which is fine. Slowly your sediment is building up. Now what would happen is the water which was initially flowing through now would flow over because of the sediment. And when it comes over, it comes out of the channel and that is a loss because they want to supply from the dam to the farmer, but in between if the water is flowing out, it is a loss. So you need to be very careful with this aspect. Where in deciliting of tanks and feeders is needed. Regular upkeeping. So you always have to monitor the banks, the embankment, the check dam, etc. I'm just taking check dam for example. If you don't do maintenance and monitoring, they will fail. So one of the big ponds that were supplying water for agriculture and domestic use in the outskirts of Chennai, the Chhambram Balcom Lake broke. And once it broke, the entire city of Chennai was flooded. So if it is very important to make sure the buns and monitoring, keeping on checking all these infrastructure is very important. Participation of farmers and revival of tanks. So we cannot just wait for the government to release funds, time and labor every time to save these tanks. We're not getting into the question is it a mandate or not. We're trying to tell sometimes there is a delay and sometimes there's no funds. So the farmers and stakeholders who are predominantly using these systems have to get together and solve it. If it was one man's problem, then it is different. You have to spend more money and time. If it is a community problem, not my own water problem, but it is the problem for the entire village, then all the villagers can come together and work on it. So this is called the public participatory network or public government participatory because the tanks and the land is owned by the government and the farmers use it and so they participate in revival of these tanks. So this is the public participation. This is very important. This creates the ownership among farmers. So if you look at this NGO work from Dan Foundation, you could see all the local farmers getting in and digging it out, clearing the tank, debris, etc. Just look at the tank walls. All have a lot of sediments, sand, like here uneven sand.  So look at all they're carrying is just the debris, the sediments and out of the tank system. As I said, not always you can get all these bulldozers and JCPs to come in, but farmers if they can just quickly combine and work, you can get it out. Sometimes you can be smart in using the government funds like Mandrega. So the Mandrega money can be used for dissenting of these tanks, maintaining these water bodies. So the farmers have to come together first, say, okay, let's work together. We will put our time and some money can come from Mandrega and the Mandrega can be given for like strengthening the concrete labor. Okay, labor cost can be brought in. So this sense of urgency for participation is starting. And a lot of other villages are learning between each other from like Kesari from Madurai, Daan, etc. And they also want to do because you don't need a government to come and tell you to do it. You just watch them how to do and then you do it and that is the role of NGOs and the media like YouTube, everywhere you can see these structures being managed and what activities can be done. For example, this lecture is on YouTube. So a lot of people are getting benefits. Same way, if these monitoring networks and management revival work can be shot on YouTube and shared in the open platform. A lot of farmers can look at it and get benefits along with it. So now I've managed, let's say I asked the community to manage the water body like decent, make the bun stronger, etc. What is also needed is monitoring. Because you cannot manage what you cannot monitor. There's a saying for water especially, you cannot manage something if you cannot monitor it. So monitoring is very important to understand what is the water coming in supply and demand, what is the water use and creating budgets. Detailed water budgets is necessary. So that you can know who's doing water types, who's lift irrigation without telling the community, etc. The monitoring can be used done by mostly sensors, electrical sensors, battery operated, solar power operated, etc, which are nowadays very cheap. You can buy these from the market and they can be used for multiple monitoring. One can be used for water release. For example, I have the reservoir and from the reservoir water is released. So there is a reservoir level. If you know that five hours the closed gate was open, you can say how much the level was before and after and you can know the volume of the water. Also, you can put meters along the channels to regularly monitor the flow discharge out of the structures. The irrigation canal water levels can also be monitored. Remember that the irrigation canals are like a weir, which means it forces water to flow through them. And so there's only a constant velocity discharge that can go through. So if you know the engineering aspects of the canal, like a weir, if you put it in and the height of water, you can really calculate the discharge. Lift irrigation meters. So those pumps that are pulling the water and distributing the water against gravity. Those water should be monitored using meters because the lift can maybe be assumed that, okay, I'm going to lift and put it into a small tank and then distribute the water. While you distribute the water, there could be meters and more importantly, pump meters. Pump is the pumps that you use for lift irrigation and or you can use for groundwater pumping and putting it into farm ponds, etc. So these can actually give you good data about how much water you take and how much water you use. Some of these can also be estimated using proxy data. Proxy data is, for example, for the pump meter. The connection electricity connection is different for domestic use for agricultural use. So if you know a particular farm area and a pump is only using one connection, the meter and the pump efficiency can be used to estimate how many hours the pump ran and based on the efficiency, how many liters it was pumping. So all these can be done. What it's missing is people and capacity to do it. That's put in the issues and concerns. Some people claim meters and data collection is an expensive work. A lot of people don't do it because of the cost involved meters, etc. It is time consuming. You have to set it up. You have to collect the data and then a lot of capacity has to be built for analysis. As I said, you can have these meters, but the meter data has to be converted to a water budget. All the units has to be normalized and that takes some capacity. Simple budgets can be done. For example, a tank, how much water is there, how much trees. So you don't need big capacity. But for most of the other work, there is some capacity needed, training needed, and that can be done by NGOs. No real-time data is available and I just showed a teaser of what can come for real-time, but I'll come back again. So no real-time data is available, which means right now what is the water level in small irrigation structures. It's not a big dams maybe and that is also sensitive data, but small structures, farm ponds, you don't have because of the cost and time involved. And conversion of the data analysis to actions, okay, who's the body that has to take care of these actions is limited. Right now we have pushing the community farmers to take these activities and then manage water better. So the conversion from data to action is done by the community participation. So this real-time monitoring can be taken up by smart agricultural systems. And it is called Agricultural 4.0, where you use a lot of robotics, automated equipment, ICT, IOT and IOE. ICT is the Information Communication Technology, IOT is Internet of Things and IOE is Internet of Everything. So all these different nemologies can be used for, or methods can be used for procuring the data at a low cost and then converting it into information for water budgets, especially for these rural surface water storage systems. Remote sensing tools can help in performing these so-called monitoring and metering activities and GIS networks can be made. Let's look at some examples for monitoring lakes and tanks and water bodies. Remote sensing data. Okay, so what is remote sensing? It is collecting data without touching an object. And we have here a lot of different tools and techniques that can be used for collecting data without touching, which is by using drones, satellites, cell phones, etc. And they can be used for finding the causative factors, causalities of the degradation of the lakes and tanks. Hydrological models can be based on these remote sensing data, wherein results such as floods, water quality and quantity can be obtained. And they can be used for monitoring. You can also plan for effective restoration scenarios based on the remote sensing data. And these data can be used for models, whereas other scenarios can be used. For example, climate change, I want to convert a lake into smaller tanks, for example. Those kind of scenarios can be effectively tested in a hydrological model, which is driven by remote sensing data. And then we give it back to the system. Determination of land use, land cover change is very important. We need to understand how these lakes and water bodies are changing. How is the land around the water body changing? And that can be done only by proper monitoring and evaluation based on data. Since we don't have the data, we are going to use satellite data to look at how the land has changed. Remember in the last class, I showed you an image of the Bangalore Lake. And the Bangalore Lake has evolved. Okay, so during the evolution, it has lost a lot of land for agriculture and urbanization has come up. In those days, we have to go down and do surveys, but now you can just use a satellite image and then take the classification based on the image. The use is basically the spatial resolution and temporal resolution are very, very high, which means I can send a satellite every two weeks and then take this data. And it is really less expensive because most of this data is open source free. So once you establish the land use, land cover change, then alteration and runoff sediment loading increase in pollution can be monitored. Okay, so these determinations are where you'll see change, which is once you change the land, the there is alteration and runoff sediment loading, etc. Can be established easily once you have the change in land cover. And also the downstream users how they are impacted. You have a lake on top, and if you manage it unproperly or polluted the downstream community also faces the change. And those all can be monitored using remote sensing data. Let's see some, at least one or two case studies. But before that, please understand that these data are free and even our own Indian space research organization ISRO has multiple satellites. The satellite data is free and also very focused on these land use, land cover change and mapping of water bodies. So you could quickly run some analysis, at least the area, leave the volume for now, but at least the area, water spread area. If you know it is shrinking, you know that it's not pushing it down.  No, it's not. So it's just a area which is losing water because the area of the water is gone. It's being encroached and the volume will also be gone because of sedimentation, etc. So as a case study, I'm going to show you a region in Dakhoth. And the blue points you see is the check dams. So there are been check dams and I'm comparing data between 1991 and 2017. So this NGO has put in these check dams, but they don't have money to monitor them. As I said, it is expensive and also time consuming. So we use remote sensing data to look at how the land water availability has changed from 1991 to 2017. And it's very important to take the same or similar rainfall time. So you could see that the rainfall is not much different. It is 650 millimeters versus 657 millimeters. And what the study found out is very interesting. We found out that in most regions where the check dam was there, the water availability increased in the land. And that is an indicator, the NDWI, which is an indicator of water availability in the soil in that particular area, shows a considerable increase from red to blue, at least in most regions. And this is purely because of the check dam and the check dam has some lift irrigation which lifts the water into remote areas. For example, this is the river network and there has been a lot of check dams and lift irrigation. From here, the water is now available to this spot where in 1991 there is no availability. So even though you don't have data, these kind of remote sensing methods can help in assessing the benefits of these structures and also putting water budgets which can be useful for the management. But a quick question is, is monitoring alone enough? So for example, I'm doing water monitoring through remote sensing. I'm putting a satellite to monitor where the water is being used, how much water is being used, etc. Is that alone enough? No. As I clearly explained in the previous slide, you need to collect data to understand the water budget. But after that, you have to create new monitoring plans and management plans so that sustainably the water can be used. And for that, there is a lot of hydrological models that are driven by these remote sensing data or observation data. One such model is called a SWAT, which is the soil and water assessment tool. And you could see that the SWAT actually is a very sophisticated model. Most importantly, it sets up the hydrological condition for your study area and it gives multiple scenarios that you could use for using the water. Let's take some example. So first, what you do is you can model the lake tank, how much water comes into the lake because the surface runoff is monitored and modeled using the SWAT model.  So now I know how much rainfall is happening. Of that rainfall, how much water is coming into the lakes and stuff. It is a very interdisciplinary watershed tool. It's not only for soil, it is not only for water. It is integrating all these multiple disciplines into one tool. And it helps to predict short and long term impacts of these management practices or conversions. Yes, it basically does rainfall and runoff. But it also looks at sediment loading. So once I convert rainfall into runoff, the runoff can pick up sediments so I can look at sediment loading. And the water quality modeling can also be done because once the sediment is done, the movement of fertilizers, etc, pollution, sewage. If you have to give data, then it can model how it moves from one place to the other. It can also be used for assessment of point and non-point pollutions and climate change scenarios. Most importantly, the different climate change model data can be given and management scenarios can be made. This is a very important application of this SWAT model. It not only stops in creating an understanding of the water budget, which is by converting rainfall into runoff and compactilizing different water uses. It also includes climate change for the future predictions on how the hydrology will change. It doesn't stop there. You can also give scenarios, which means, for example, I can say, okay, I don't want to grow sugarcane. I want to grow different crop. How will the water balance be? So those are the scenarios, management scenarios that you can put in the model before you ask the farmers to do it. So with this, we have come to the end of week six, looking at surface water storage systems in rural areas. I'll do a quick recap of week six. We looked at the different water structures present in the rural setting, starting from lakes, tanks, ponds, and how water are being stored, even big dams. We then looked at the access of water from these sources. There's direct access where you have a big channel bringing the water from these dams or reservoirs to your location. There is indirect access by which you have one direct access to the village and from there you take water to your own farmland. So those kind of things are coming under the irrigation schemes. The irrigation schemes can be divided further into gravity versus lift, whereas gravity just is basically the water when you open the gate. It flows down into your farm because of gravity. You don't have to spend energy to take the water down. Whereas lift irrigation is a very particular scheme, which is used to pump the water from the main channel to locations which are not connected by the channels. It has been very beneficial, especially for highly undulating areas where undulation is present, change in elevation, and the water body is present very low in the elevation whereas the land is present very high. So water has been pushed or pumped from that location, low elevation location to a higher location using different energy sources. We also looked at issues and concerns, both in the last and this class, especially the water theft and water fights. Again, water theft is not only in rural areas. A lot of people have predicted the next war would come because of water wars. You could see countries, transboundary countries always fighting for water. For example, in the African regions, the countries have to sign a pact for using the Nile water. And there's always some issues and protections put for the water concerns. In fact, the Cauvery, not even national, but even within the national, I'm saying, you have issues like the Cauvery water issue, which has been one of the oldest water issue in the world in terms of law and still not resolved. So because of that, there's a lot of water theft. So that is one thing. And also, if people don't get access, people are greedy, they want to grow cash crops rather than small crops with small water demand, then there is a lot of water theft happening. And then you have urbanization and conversion, whereas the land around the lake is being first converted into urban. And slowly the encroachment happens into the water bodies and the water bodies are also converted into urban. If you go to Bangalore and Chennai, you would see a lot of land or areas named after a water body because initially it was a water body. For example, Belicherry. Belicherry was the name of the water body that was present in that area. And that was drained and once it was drained, the land was dry and then the construction happened. So all this is kind of your water theft because you have taken it out and now it is a water threat. Those people don't have access to drinking water. They buy the water from far away and that is also not sustainable. What are the ways out? There are multiple ways that we used to see in this lecture. One is communal use, coming together as a group rather than individually maintaining or managing the water. You combine together as a farmer group, for example, and look at what is the demand for all the farmers, not only one farmer. And then you take a collective decision on the water budget, how much water to be stored, how much water to be used. So the first is communal use and communal monitoring, evaluation and revival. So the tank revival is based on community participation. Then you have remote sensing monitoring and evaluations where data, if you don't have data, you still can use the freely available satellite and drone data for monitoring and evaluating your water bodies. And evaluation and management is a key. You cannot just have water levels. It has to be converted to an evaluation of how much water is there and how much can be stored. And those have to be converted to a management plan. These are not new. For example, the Kalanei dam or Anaykut is one of the oldest water body serving still now. It was not boiled by the Britishers, it was built by the Cholan King Karikalan and it still stands and does its duty of storing the water, diverting the water, etc. So all this is not new. What we have done is we have not picked up the traditional knowledge and we have abused the system. For example, urbanization, I'm saying without looking into the water demand. So all this has to be retapped, reworked and then go back to traditional knowledge on how these water bodies are managed. And also look at new technologies and solutions to manage water better. With this, I am concluding the surface water storage system lecture for rural water resource management. In the future lectures, we will look at some case studies and how to come out of these issues collectively. Thank you.


How to Search the Bureau of Economic Analysis website The Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, is a government website that provides access to thousands of statistical tables. To go to the website, type www.bea.gov in your browser. The website is broken down in a variety of ways. It provides multiple access points to get to the data. Thus, you can often access the same data by using different searches. Current U.S. economic information is listed under news. Additional tables are listed under publications and resources. Note the interactive data tables link and symbol. When you see the symbol in the BEA website, it means that you will be able to manipulate the data by date, region, industry, or other criteria. The center of the page is arranged by area, national, international, or regional, by industry, and by integrated accounts. On the right side of the screen, there is a search box, latest statistics, and newly released publications of interest. We will first look for personal income for the Binghamton area. To do this, go to the regional section in the center of the page and click on state and local area personal income. On the next page, note the news and data sections. Under data, click on the local area personal income and employment link. On the following page, click on personal income and population. Then pick metropolitan statistical area. On the next screen, you can pick your metropolitan area or areas. We will select Binghamton. You can also select dates and specific statistics. When done, click next step. Note the bar on the right of the results screen, which gives you options for charting, downloading, and printing. Now let's go back to the BEA homepage. Let's try the search again using the search box on the upper right of the page. We will type personal income Binghamton in the box. From the clustered results on the next screen, click Binghamton. There are multiple results listed in the middle of the page. Let's click the first one. Note that the tables listed may or may not exactly match the table that you pulled up via the first search. This is because the data may be available from multiple documents, not all of which presented in the same way. For additional help, go back to the library's homepage and click the Ask Us link.