Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.

A detailed dam safety evaluation (in Sweden called FDU) was performed in 2009 by WSP where stability control was performed for Långströmmen power plant with associated spillways. This evaluation concluded that stability could not be ensured, and risk of sliding occurred. The evaluation is based entirely on the recommendations outlined in RIDAS, the power companies guidelines for dam safety, and it is clear that extensive renovations are necessary to stabilize the dam.In this work, the stability will also be checked with guidance through new proposals on guidelines for concrete dams sliding stability, ELFORSK?s report 08:59. This report considered the guidelines in RIDAS as oversimplified, both from an international perspective, but also with regard to the current state of knowledge regarding dam safety.

Green Cargo är den största aktören för godstransporter på järnväg i Sverige. Dotterbolaget Road&Logistics erbjuder kombinerade transporter bestående av järnväg och lastbil. Järnvägen utnyttjas för de långväga transporterna och lastbilarna för slingtrafiken. Med hjälp av crossdockingterminaler samlastas även gods från olika lastbärare till en enhet. Detta för att optimera kapacitetsutnyttjandet, vilket ger synergieffekter i form av miljövinster och sänkta kostnader.

This thesis aims to illustrate how environmental impact can be reduced, through the use of lean concrete. It also illustrates how environmental data can be applied to a house through implementation with BIM. In this study a unique concrete structure developed by Swedish Cement and Concrete Research Institute is assessed for environmental impact, by calculating the carbon dioxide equivalents using LCA methodology. The construction is a sandwich element where the concrete is made ??up of three layers.

This study aims to explore how a gardening project with elderly living in Djuröhemmet, a nursing home outside Stockholm, affected them regarding psychological well-being and their experience of participation during the planning and construction of the memory garden. The gardening project is new in its kind by allowing the residents to influence the design of the garden by sharing the project leader their gardening memories from previous parts of their life and by wishing for specific plants and items.  The method being used was qualitative interviews where we interviewed seven people living in Djuröhemmet who participated in all or parts of the project. The theoretical framework is Molins (2004) definition of participation, but also theories of meaningfulness, social needs and gerotranscendence were applied. The results indicate that the participants did not realize that their involvement during the planning helped developed the garden.

?Boverket? the Design Regulations in Sweden, also called BKR has for a long timebeen the mandatory standard that has guided and regulated construction design. Butat the end of 2010 BKR was replaced with Eurocode. This report deals with thecomparison of these two standards when it comes to wood construction. Duringwinter 2009/2010 there were many roof collapses due to excessive loads on theroofs across Sweden.

Byggbranschen brottas idag med en hel del fel och brister i byggprocessen. Exempel på problem är bl.a. höga byggkostnader, kvalitetsbrister samt att det förekommer slarv och okunskap. Produktiviteten i byggbranschen har inte utvecklats lika mycket som i tillverkningsindustrin som använder sin ledningsfilosofi Lean Production.Syftet med detta examensarbete är att få insikt i vilka vanliga fel och brister som förekommer i byggbranschen, samt att kunna ge förslag till förbättringar i enlighet med lean-tänkande. När man talar om Lean i byggsammanhang benämns det Lean Construction.

Recent years there has been discussed how the critical situation in the housing market threatens the Stockholm region's growth. The thesis objective is to examine whether there is a scientific link between the lack of housing supply and growth. The thesis also intends to identify solutions for increased housing construction, for instance by examining the conditions for a greater regional perspective and influence on the region's housing supply. The thesis empirical study is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Government, municipalities and the housing industry.In Sweden, research on the relationship between housing shortages and growth has not been conducted to that extent it can be said to exist scientific evidence regarding the growth threat. However, in Britain and the U.S, empirical studies show that a lack of housing supply has hindered growth through negative impact on countries' gross domestic product.

This is an interview based qualitative case study on two Women's Migrant Associations in Malmoe, which I interpret as being part of a women's movement, with characteristics of a new social movement. The aim of this study is to get a deeper understanding on how the collective identity is being constructed, in this women's movement where the membership is not based on an exclusive ethnic identity.I make a two dimensional analysis that departs from a social constructivist underpinning, including the theories Transversial Politics, Postcolonial feminism and New Social Movement Theory.First I analyze the construction of collective identity from the external social and cultural context, and get confirmed that the collective identity of the movement is based on a common experience of social exclusion and a plurality of actions that aims to fight the structural injustices based on gender and ethnic discrimination. Secondly I analyze how the collective identity is being constructed and maintained from the interactions between the members of the movement, from an understanding of Transversial Politics. My findings show that the members of the movement interact in a participatory democratic way which generally corresponds to Transversial Politics. According to Transversial Politics this can lead to a construction of an empowered inclusive collective identity for the members and as my empirical study confirms it also means possibilities for deconstruction of boundaries between social groups..

Att leva med kronisk sjukdom påverkar personen och dennes liv på många olika sätt. Vardagen kan upplevas oförutsägbar och aktiviteter kan behöva anpassas efter tillståndet. Kronisk obstruktiv lungsjukdom (KOL) är en irreversibel och progressiv sjukdom som förutspås vara den tredje största dödsorsaken i världen år 2030. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att beskriva upplevelsen av hur det sociala livet påverkas hos personer med KOL. Arton kvalitativa vetenskapliga studier analyserades med kvalitativ manifest innehållsanalys.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.

This essay is a comparative empirical study of ethnic integration mainly of the Russian-speaking minorities in the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in a post-communism setting. As Lithuania has a Polish minority that is as large as the Russian-speaking, they too shall be included in the study but not as thoroughly as the Russian-speaking minority. Thus the problem is: to what degree are the ethnic minorities integrated with the titular nations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? In order to study ethnic integration I have set up a theoretical framework largely based on Weiner?s theory of integration. The theoretical framework focuses on three dimensions: Citizenship, Identity and Segregation.

The purpose of this thesis in Library and Information Science (LIS) is to examine concepts related to multiculturalism in Sweden. It aims to look beyond the rhetorical construction of these concepts, in an attempt to clarify the actual purpose of commonly emphasizing the importance of mulicultural library services. Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as theories on ethnicity and intersectionality constitute the theoretical frame. The material consists of selected anthologies, handbooks and articles in Biblioteksbladet from 1974?2014, as well as a small case study.

HAFA Bathroom Group has given us the assignment to develop a standardized back panel for their bathroom cabinets. This cabinet is going to be applied to most of their current and future cabinet solutions. To this point, they have constructed unique suspensions-and back panels for most of their cabinet models. They have also been forced to pull wiring and assemble the cabinets differently because of factors like; position of the wall sockets, dimensions of the cabinets and their shapes.The company wants to distance themselves from their current solution, firstly because the cost of having manpower to design each individual suspension solution, secondly because they will save a lot of money when the manufacturing process requires a minimum of components to be constructed. As a result of this, the company can use their resources better to develop future products.The main idea is that the consumer isn?t required to change the suspension or back panel when they decide to buy a new cabinet.

Before the European construction standards were introduced in January 2011, it was mainly themethod in BBK04 that was used for calculating punching capacity in concrete structures, and in lesscommon cases the method in BHB. The method of BBK04 is easy to use and have had the samestructure since the first was published in 1979. The Concrete handbook method (BHB) where usuallyonly used when a higher punching capacity was needed and the cross-sectional height where fixed,calculations using this method entails more work, but will in return usually give a higher capacity. Italso allows the use of shear reinforcement to increase the cross-section capacity. The method ofcalculating punching shear in EC2 differs largely from the methods of BBK04 and BHB.