All new households were to be constructed with "near zero energy house standards" (NZE-house) by the year of 2020. The ambition to construct energy-efficient buildings had to increase rapidly in the spring of 2013.The purpose of this report was to increase the interest for building contractors to construct apartment buildings with passive house standards. By locating and evaluating experiences from an existing passive house a case study including interviews, field visits and document analysis was made. Research of literature regarding other passive houses in Sweden also helped to answer the following questions:- What positive and negative experiences have the study of the passive house meant to the involved stakeholders and residents?- What improvements can be made based on identified experiences?- How can an apartment building be designed as a passive house based on possible improvements?By collecting good and bad experiences, as well as improvements and potential design proposals, a diagram was created designed as a tool for developers when constructing apartment buildings with passive house standards.

Through previous studies during my education, I have experienced that chemical deicing road salt is a known problem, mainly in southern Sweden. Road salt causes damage to the environment and also damage to vehicles and structures such as bridges, etc. Road salt causes vehicles and steel constructions to rust, leading to increased costs for repairs of damage to structures. Road salt also causes damage to the plants and the economy to suffer, when plant material and soil needs to be replaced. In order to get closer to a solution, I put up three questions.

Glulam?s position at the Swedish market for building constructions has been established over the past decades. Factors affecting glulam demand are found both in global and national contexts as well in customer attitudes and knowledge of the material. Arguments for environmentally friendly and sustainable construction processes and energy-efficient designs are nowadays common, which is something that should motivate increased usage of wood as a renewable material. For the glulam industry to increase its sales, improve profitability and thereby gain market share in present competitive climate, reliable market information and updated market intelligence is required.

Title: How to Construct the Perfect Scandal ? a study of the news reported by Expressen concerning the SD-scandalAuthor: Linnea IvarssonThis C-paper presents the incident concerning the political party Sverigedemokraterna in Expressen in November 2012. The newspaper was the main source of the news reporting with the mobile phone camera film from the occurance and led the way of the news reporting in Sweden about three party members.The paper investigates how the story telling of the so called SD-scandal was constructed, using Critical Discourse Analysis as the analysis method combined with selected parts from the analysis method of critical linguistics. The theories that have been used to establish the results of the analysis are Critical Discourse as a theory based on Norman Fairclough and Teun A. van Dijks theoretical keystones combined with Sigurd Allerns and Ester Pollacks theories and schematic point of view on the constructions of political scandals in media.With the theories and analysis methods above mentioned the results turned out to confirm the theory about how political scandals in media are constructed and designed with certain strategies and agenda.

Eco certification of small housesTo construct an environmental friendly building and show that as a company you care for the environment, is presently very attractive in the Swedish real estate market.This degree thesis covers the environmental certification called ?Svanenmärkning? the Swan, witch is the Swedish equivalent to the European standard ?the EU Flower?. It is concentrated on the certification process in small houses that the Swedish institute of standard, SIS, has presented. We have worked together with the company Faluhus witch is a Swedish producer of small family houses.Faluhus is located in the town of Borlänge, Dalarna and has produced family houses since the 1950:s. They have a great heritage born in the old Swedish mining culture, with great wooden mansions and country homes.

European Union has made a new decision that all new built houses by 2020 shallbe near-zero energy houses. Boverket?s definition of near-zero energy housesintends buildings with good energy performance in which a proportion of theamount of energy that must be added to the building is made of renewable energy.Passive House is a set of requirements from FEBY designed to build energyefficient buildings. This is achieved by reducing loss of heat through the buildingenvelope and to take advantage of the passive heat from solar radiation,installation and heat sources like people living in the house.This project has been made with help of Anebyhus and one of their model houseshave been examined from the report?s issues, including Anebyhus?s energyperformance, requirements for the manufacturing and assembly, how theenvelope must be improved to fulfill the requirements for the Passive House andwhat energy calculation programs are available on the market.The report aims to provide solutions for energy efficient houses that are adaptedfor production of house building.Two visits to Anebyhus has been done to study their manufacture and assemblyof building elements.

This is a final year project considering constructional techniques for joining cavity walls. The project is related to an ongoing scientific programme about the restoration of The City wall of Visby located on Gotland. The programme was set by Riksantikvarieämbetet as a reaction to a collapse of the outer masonry wall shell which took place in February 2012.The City wall of Visby is a medieval fortification built out of limestone during the 13th century. The wall is constructed as a cavity wall with two separate masonry shells connected to each other through an intermediate core. During the 14th century the wall was heightened which lead to a higher stress, especially in the outer wall face.

In this thesis a method for evaluating investments in small scale hydro power is presented. An analysis of the future position that small scale hydro production will have on the Nordic electricity market is also carried out. This is done by an inventory of technology and economic and environmental aspects. The inventory is also a guide as to how the project should be implemented.Hydrolyzer is the name of the Excel tool developed to evaluate investments. The tool requests input data from the user and then evaluates the investment and generates a sensitivity analysis.

Food insecurity is a great problem worldwide and Ethiopia is one of the sub-saharan countries that are suffering from poverty and food insecurity and a large part of the population are living in a state of undernourishment. To reduce these problems, a successful horticulture production can be an important factor. Compared to other crops, fruit production in Ethiopia has not been a large part of the agricultural sector. However, the demand on the domestic market is increasing as well as the production for avocado and mango. To increase food security it is important to focus on ways to decrease post-harvest losses of food products and not only have the productivity of agriculture in focus.

Staden Sulaymaniyah ligger i den kurdiska delen av Irak och har på senare år utvecklats då många valt att flytta från landsbygden till den centrala delen av staden. Nybyggandet sker under tidspress och långsiktigt hållbara lösningar prioriteras inte. Målet är att ta fram ett hus som är anpassat för majoriteten av befolkningen och samtidigt få ett bra och energieffektivt inomhusklimat. En faktainsamling genomfördes för att ge bakgrundsinformation till projektet. Vidare gjordes en planlösning till huset i AutoCAD vilken har använts som grund till utformningen av huset och smarta lösningar.

This report has been performed for WSP Construction Design located at Arenavägen 7 in Stockholm. WSP Construction Design is one of the leading departments in Sweden in construction solutions regarding everything from building construction to industrial building. Great competencies regarding steel, wood and concrete constructions are available within the department which is well sought.Crane girders used in the industry are exposed to large loads that vary over time that includes instantaneous lifts and the crane girders movement which lead to the phenomenon fatigue in the crane girder and its ingoing welds. A control of fatigue needs to be performed after a certain lifespan measured in time which in turn is converted to a number of loadcycles. When the number of loadcycles amounts to a greater number the input welds resistance will have been reduced and the rate of utilization thereby increased.

Timber floating operations in Scandinavia during the 19th and 20th centuries has contributed to severe negative impacts on riverine ecosystems. Increase in water velocity and lack of stream bed heterogeneity as a result of stream channelization lead to increased bed load transport. Since availability and recruitment of new suitable spawning substrate in Scandinavian watercourses is sparse, spawning habitats for salmonids has become a scarce commodity. Lately, increasingly more attention has been given to the recreation and improvement of brown trout (Salmo trutta) spawning habitats in restoration projects. While much of the research on spawning habitat has been focused on evaluation of the influence that the constructed spawning grounds have on fish populations, few studies have been conducted to evaluate the persistence of these constructions over time. I evaluate erosion of constructed spawning beds as an effect of sediment transport attributable to water discharge.

Den svenska klädimporten har ökat dramatiskt och vårt samhälle har förändrats till ett konsumtionssamhälle där vi shoppar efter ?köp och släng? istället för ?slit och släng?. Den ökade klädkonsumtion är ett omdiskuterat samhällsproblem och mode är en färskvara som uppdateras i en allt snabbare takt. Ett stort utbud tillsammans med de låga priser som klädmarknaden är uppbyggd av uppmuntrar till impulsköp vilket gör det allt svårare för kunden att fatta medvetna köpbeslut. I denna studie kommer vi att utgå från Armstrong och Kotlers modell av köpbeslutprocessens som är uppbyggd av fem steg som innefattar hela processen.

Climate change is an increasingly widely known concept. In the EU the construction sector is responsible for more than a third of the carbon dioxide emissions and 40 % of the total energy use. In Sweden, measures have been taken to prevent this climate change. By 16 targets, three of which can be linked to the construction sector, Sweden will reduce the negative trend. None of the three goals with relation to the construction sector will however be achieved before 2020.

In Örebro, the car traffic share does not tend to decrease. The crowdedness on some of the bus routes is high at times. Investigations show that the residents of Örebro want a city centre whose street environment is more restrictive of car traffic and better for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. To decrease the car traffic share a rapid, convenient, clear, effective and environmental friendly public transport with high frequency and strong capacity in a short, direct and logical network is needed. A modern tramway fulfils these criteria.At first, this report describes factors that are important to take into consideration when planning a tramway.