A lot of houses built during the Million Homes Programme are in need of major renovation. Today?s technology and materials are better than in the 60?s and 70?s. Both Swedish government and the European Union have set climate goals regarding energy consumption by 2020 and 2050. Achieving these goals would require better standards in buildings than the Building regulations demands, such as Umeå municipality?s construction requirements for new buildings.The report aims to investigate if a renovation of apartment buildings from the Million Homes Programme can reach Umeå municipality?s construction requirements.

This thesis was conducted at SverigeGrepen in Vänge-Körlinge, Uppsala, Sweden.SverigeGrepen is a family business that develops and manufactures a few different parts of different kinds of products. My task is to come up with a good idea that facilitates the coupling of trailers, i.e. from an idea to a fully functioning prototype. The product is intended for use by all customers for all kinds of trailers. The actual goal of the work is to develop a full prototype that you can install and use in the easiest way possible, a prototype that follows the specifications.

Local charges may induce people to change their pattern of consumption by influencing investments and acts in certain directions. Some charges could for example give people incentives to use less natural resources. This study investigates four different local charges and whether they benefit an economical management with natural resources or not. This is carried out by investigating whether there is a polarity between local charges that may influence environmental actions or goods, and effective pollution control set to achieve certain nationally determined environmental goals. The study includes two economic perspectives and investigates on the one hand whether local charges counteract governmental subsidies and on the other hand whether the charges vary between the different municipalities since large differences may lead to cost inefficiency.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant. By also documenting how much time we spent involving users we will show to which degree user involvement is effective. We found out that a couple of fast techniques could get very much result in the form of usability enhancing suggestions to the developers.

This thesis is a case-study of an ongoing court case between the Swedish Competition Agency and Växjö Municipality about a set-up requirement to the long-distance heating system for newly built private houses on municipality owned land. This requirement was set up as part of the municipality?s long-term environmental goals; however the Competition Agency claims that the demand is damaging the free market in the municipality. The purpose of this thesis is to determine which normative assumptions the decision makers have based their actions and re-action on, and whether or not these assumptions are valid, thru theoretical ideal types. This is determined via method of textual analysis.

AbstractThe assignment were assigned by Camatec Industriteknik AB. Camatec is a Karlstadlocated consulting company, they make everything from pilot studies to complete projects in mechanical design and calculation. They even have their own patented product, Camcoil. It is a winder for steel strips and is used for example with hardening of the steel strip. The assignment has been to solve the problems encountered by some customers within this product.

The aim of my thesis is to obtain knowledge of textile wastewater and textile sludge from an environmental perspective, which can be used as a basis for the  ?Sweden Textile Water Initiative? guidelines for a sustainable sludge management. In my study I have mainly focused on textile dyes, salts and metals and their routes during wastewater treatment.This paper is partly a literature review, which I began by identifying the pollutants discharged from each textile process. Then I studied wastewater and sludge quality, environmental aspects, possible treatment and recycling methods. I have also tried to find existing type of guidelines in order to make comparisons.

The housing sector of today represents for almost 40% of the energy consumption, an energy consumption of which the major part consists of non-renewable energy sources. This is not sustainable and utilization of new energy-efficient technologies in buildings can be a step in the right direction, towards a sustainable energy society.This report has been made on behalf of and in cooperation with Älvstranden Utveckling AB in Gothenburg to examine how future energy-efficient technologies can affect the energy demand in energy-efficient multi-dwelling buildings.The report is based on Älvstrandens passive house, Hamnhuset, a house whose energy consumption is far below the BBR's requirements. The report looks at the opportunities for improvement within windows, insulation, solar energy technologies, as well as white goods. Computer simulations are then made to apply the selected technologies into a reference building. Technologies are selected from an energy efficient perspective and no account has been taken of other aspects such as the economy.

As a small and land scarce country, effective waste management is ofoutmost importance in Singapore. In this study the production of biogasthrough anaerobic digestion from the organic fraction of municipal solidwaste (OFMSW) was compared to incineration of the waste. At the momentalmost all of the OFMSW in Singapore is incinerated. Three differentscenarios were compared to the reference scenario (incineration): one with alarge scale biogas plant that can treat half of all OFMSW in Singapore, onewith a medium scale biogas plant about 15 times smaller than the large oneand one with a small scale biogas plant that can treat waste from e.g. ashopping center or a food center.By using life cycle assessment (LCA) the different scenarios were comparedin terms of global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication,energy use and land use.

The idea for the project emerged when Nilorn wanted to get better control over their supplychain and improve operational efficiency. The company also want to reduce their expenses inthe continuous process of improving profitability. By choosing the right option oftransportation and mode of transport there are large potential savings for the company. Thisenables Nilorn to reduce the transportation costs and strengthen the environmentalresponsibilities by reducing their environmental impact.The flow of goods within Nilorn has over the past years increased significantly and most ofthe gods today is transported by air. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the supply chain of thecompany and evaluate the potential economic savings in this area.

In healthcare settings, administrative routines have been made more efficientthrough digitalization of information and the introduction of stationary computers.This situation is especially true when it comes to radiology, where pictures,referrals and patient information now is completely managed by advanced stationarycomputer systems. However, studies have shown that these rationalizationsdo not support flexible and mobile work routines.PocketRIS is a prototype illustrating a mobile terminal for radiology that hasbeen designed to simplify workflow and reduce the cognitive workload of healthcarepersonnel. PocketRIS includes a visualization of the clinicians work situationincluding a personal referral list that can make the user attentive of importantevents.Contextual Design has been used to elicit the basic system requirements for thesystem; 19 contextual inquires was conducted with physicians, nurses and assistantnurses at two different radiology clinics in Sweden during six days. The purposeof the study was also to identify the groups that have the greatest need for amobile terminal. The study was concerned with design and evaluation of differentsolutions with healthcare personnel.The result shows that physicians and assistant nurses have the greatest need ofa mobile terminal.

Social work has gone from being a primarily philanthropic issue to becoming an academic discipline at university level. To ensure its legitimacy social work must be founded on, and developed through scientific research and documented experience. The purpose of this essay is to review the various arguments on social work in order to evaluate their impact on education, which in turn affects students. In addition, it will demonstrate how different forms of knowledge are valued depending on the contexts. As a means of reaching this objective, the following questions are addressed: ?What are the requirements and recommendations on how the education of social work should be structured, and why are these requirements and recommendations important??, ?How has the education of social work been influenced by the perception of valuable knowledge?? and ?How does the education of social work affect students?? The collected material consists of various arguments concerning the development of social work and the education of social work's formation.

AbstractDrinking water is an important resource on Earth both for humans and animals. Although most of the surface is covered by water only a small quantity is available as drinking water. Our manner of living creates a lot of pollution which has an environmental impact. Groundwater has a protracted turnover time in the soil and it can take many years before the effects of human impact are detected. The Swedish environmental object is ?Good groundwater quality? which aims to provide a safe and sustainable supply of drinking water today and in the future.

AbstractFalu Copper Mine and Sustainable DevelopmentKarl-Markus AnsnaesFalu copper mine was Sweden?s oldest mine industry which lasted for almost a thousand years. Throughout the history its area has been vastly contaminated by sulfur oxide. The contaminations has created the mining area to an environmental risk zone which has the ability to spread out into the Falu River. The river has its connections to the Dal River which is discharging towards its mouth in the Baltic Sea.

Den övergripande målsättningen med denna uppsats är att visa hur GIS kan fungera som stöd i en MKB. För att exemplifiera detta genomförs i denna uppsats en specificerad studie kring flygbullerpåverkade områden vid Malmö-Sturup flygplats. Flyg-bullerkartor erhölls från Luftfartsverket (LFV). Analyser gjordes för olika startriktningar om flygbullrets interferens med bland annat människor, naturvård, kulturmiljö, friluftsliv, fastigheter (egendomar) samt med några tätorters expansionspotential. Jämförelser genomfördes mellan flygplanstyperna McDonell Douglas MD80 och McDonell Douglas DC9.