Transport plays essential roles in almost all economic activities and our daily lives. Transport flows are often agglomerated in soͲcalled transport corridors linking urban and/or commercially important areas.Clearly, it is desirable for transport to be efficient and sustainable, thus there are several onͲgoing initiatives to develop major, often transnational, transport corridors.Diverse stakeholders are affected by and/or involved in the development of these corridors, including travellers, transport buyers,transport service providers and transport authorities (local, regional, national and transnational). Governance of the corridors can be regarded as the interactive involvement of these stakeholders in their development and subsequent management.This is a licentiate by publications based on a covering essay that summarises and synthetises four articles. The topic focuses on the development of a framework for designing governance structures formajor transport corridors, by examining the variables that should be considered, the structural and procedural organisational possibilities, and both stakeholders’ participation and interactions. A qualitative research approach has been applied, as deeper understanding of the underlying issues is needed. Several studies have been performed, in conjunction with the Bothnian green logistic corridorproject, to illustrate key concerns. These studies have included literature reviews, studies of documents describing governance of major European transport initiatives, and interviews with key individualsinvolved in the development of European transport corridors. An international study has been established and supervised to gather experiences from other research projects, including an open workshop for discussion between representatives of various stakeholder groups. In addition, a casestudy of the Bothnian corridor has been performed, including focus group discussions with principal stakeholders.Main findings from the literature studies concern both the design of governance structures and their socioͲpolitical integration. The findings show that there is no universal solution for governance structuresas they have to be adapted to the social, economic and political context, and should have a sufficient flexibility to meet changing requirements. They also show that collaboration between public, private and other stakeholders to address issues earlier handled by a single authority is becoming increasinglycommon, also within the field of transport, particularly when public investment budgets are restricted. Another main finding is that broad stakeholder inclusion is advantageous and engaged leadership crucial for a successful outcome. Both structural and procedural aspects of a governance structure influence theoutcome and need to be considered when designing one. The international study and the workshop confirmed most of these literature findings and additionally highlighted the need for clear goals, objectives and rules for collaboration. Stakeholders´ diverse needs of connecting to a governancestructure were discussed in the workshop. The document studies and the interviews enhanced knowledge of European transport corridor establishment and management practices.

This licentiate thesis is part of a larger case study that examines the built cultural heritage in Kiruna’s urban transformation. The research study presupposes it is necessary to address cultural significance of the built environment in urban planning practice. In Sweden, a conservation planning strategy emerged during the 1980s, in response to the extensive urban renewals that took place in many towns over the decades before. In spite of this, there are many examples of how demands for urban renewal challenge urban conservation.The aim of the thesis is to explore how the concept of built cultural heritage is understood in contemporary urban planning and how urban planning practice affects the built cultural heritage. The main research question is: how are buildings and built environments transformed into cultural heritage?The analysis draws on concepts such as ‘heritagisation’, ‘heritage’ and ‘authorised heritage discourse’. Heritagisation is defined as a process in which something, such as a built environment, turns into heritage. Heritage is perceived as a social and cultural construction in which values and meanings are attributed to, for instance, built environments. There is a distinction between official heritage that is authorised by legislation and unofficial heritage, which is not formally recognised. The authorised heritage discourse is characterised as a hegemonic heritage discourse favouring the monumental and aesthetically appealing, being a concern for heritage specialists.The research is performed as a qualitative, interpretative intrinsic case study of Kiruna’s contemporary urban transformation. The case study is triangulated using multiple methods and a variety of data. The main methods used are text analysis of records, planning documents and media coverage as well as semistructured interviews and observations.Kiruna was established in 1900, with the mining company LKAB as the main stakeholder, in order to provide housing for the large number of workers required in the iron ore industry. The hopes were very high for the design of the new town and some of Sweden’s most famous architects, planners and artists at the time were hired. From the 1980s until 2005, the town’s built environments were recognised as built cultural heritage. Local, regional and national authorities collaborated in protecting designated buildings. In 2004, it became publicly known that subsidence caused by mining activities would affect the settlement; the town would, therefore, be relocated. This has caused controversies around the management of the built cultural heritage in the urban transformation processes. The case of Kiruna illustrates the impact of legislation in defining built cultural heritage and the influence of the authorised heritage discourse on urban planning practice. There are, however, difficulties in implementing the notion of cultural heritage as socially and culturally constructed into urban planning processes; rather, the heritage is perceived as a fixed entity. It is suggested that also unofficial heritage should be recognised in the urban planning processes, in order to manage the long-term urban transformation process.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p> Currently, GHG emissions from buildings represent approximately 44% of the total emissions in the U.S. (Architecture 2030, 2013b). Buildings are "in the grip of a dangerous greenhouse gas (GHG) habit " (Kirby, 2008, p. 6). Some researchers claim that if approximately two-thirds of the new and renovated stock in the U.S. will be built between now and 2050 (Ewing, Bartholomew, Winkelman, Walters, &amp; Chen, 2007), there is a significant potential for the building sector to reduce its emissions.</p><p> This thesis studies the main GHGs, their global warming potential (GWP) and the sources of emissions within buildings. In general, when thinking about GHG emissions reductions in buildings, the attention goes to reducing operations energy usage, since electricity from the combustion of fossil fuels is the most responsible for CO₂ emissions within buildings. But in fact, there are other GHG that can be reduced and whose GWP is higher than CO₂. Carbon neutral buildings reduce emissions in a holistic way, considering other sources of emissions rather than just operation (La Roche, 2012).</p><p> Building codes and regulations do not seem to give enough attention to GHG emissions reductions. Neither are some voluntary rating systems, such as LEED. LEED has been adopted as a benchmark for many Federal Agencies and institutions; usually the minimum requirement is to become LEED Silver certified, which is proven that is not enough for carbon neutrality (The American Institute of Architects, 2012b).</p><p> Finally, a framework has been developed to guide architects, builders and developers on how to design, build and operate a zero emissions building, thus minimizing the purchase of carbon offsets.</p>

Double Skin Facades (DSFs) have been developed as an alternative technology to improve the thermal performance of conventional fully glazed buildings. Nevertheless, there is little test information on the behaviour and real performance of DSFs. This is specifically the case when the facade has to perform under extreme or moderate summer conditions. The characteristics of thermal overheating of a specific type of DSF with various configurations and its practical control have not been subjected to systematic experimental and computational investigations. This research which is based on an existent load of knowledge, carried out experiments of a full-scale one-storey laboratory chamber of a selected type of Double Skin Facade in which a comparative analysis of the thermal performance is assessed, CFD simulations of the experimental model and a Field Case Study of an existing building in the United Kingdom is also monitored. The basic thermal behaviour in the facade cavity and adjacent room is investigated by a series of parametric studies and basic flow field investigations. Section models of the DSF chamber and the case building were made and modelled using CFD in order to visualise the thermal and airflow behaviour inside the DSF complementing the experimental and field work. The modelling work has demonstrated the feasibility and versatility of the technique for probing the flow and thermal behaviour of double skin facades. It was found that natural ventilation through the cavity by a series of controlled opening shafts on the upper and lower facade are effective means to reduce DSF overheating. It was also observed that the optical properties of cavity elements, cavity depth size, solar control and the basic operation of the facade are key issues to address in order to prevent overheating and additional heat loads from the facade.

No description available.

<p>Heat transfer from building foundations varies significantly in all three spatial dimensions and has important dynamic effects at all timescales, from one hour to several years. With the additional consideration of moisture transport, ground freezing, evapotranspiration, and other physical phenomena, the estimation of foundation heat transfer becomes increasingly sophisticated and computationally intensive to the point where accuracy must be compromised for reasonable computation time. The tools currently available to calculate foundation heat transfer are often either too limited in their capabilities to draw meaningful conclusions or too sophisticated to use in common practices. This work presents Kiva, a new foundation heat transfer computational framework. Kiva provides a flexible environment for testing different numerical schemes, initialization methods, spatial and temporal discretizations, and geometric approximations. Comparisons within this framework provide insight into the balance of computation speed and accuracy relative to highly detailed reference solutions. The accuracy and computational performance of six finite difference numerical schemes are verified against established IEA BESTEST test cases for slab-on-grade heat conduction. Of the schemes tested, the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) scheme demonstrates the best balance between accuracy, performance, and numerical stability. Kiva features four approaches of initializing soil temperatures for an annual simulation. A new accelerated initialization approach is shown to significantly reduce the required years of presimulation. Methods of approximating three-dimensional heat transfer within a representative two-dimensional context further improve computational performance. A new approximation called the boundary layer adjustment method is shown to improve accuracy over other established methods with a negligible increase in computation time. This method accounts for the reduced heat transfer from concave foundation shapes, which has not been adequately addressed to date. Within the Kiva framework, three-dimensional heat transfer that can require several days to simulate is approximated in two-dimensions in a matter of seconds while maintaining a mean absolute deviation within 3%.

<p> The objective for this thesis is to outline a Performance-Based Engineering (PBE) framework to address the multiple hazards of Earthquake (EQ) and subsequent Fire Following Earthquake (FFE). Currently, fire codes for the United States are largely empirical and prescriptive in nature. The reliance on prescriptive requirements makes quantifying sustained damage due to fire difficult. Additionally, the empirical standards have resulted from individual member or individual assembly furnace testing, which have been shown to differ greatly from full structural system behavior. The very nature of fire behavior (ignition, growth, suppression, and spread) is fundamentally difficult to quantify due to the inherent randomness present in each stage of fire development. The study of interactions between earthquake damage and fire behavior is also in its infancy with essentially no available empirical testing results. This thesis will present a literature review, a discussion, and critique of the state-of-the-art, and a summary of software currently being used to estimate loss due to EQ and FFE. A generalized PBE framework for EQ and subsequent FFE is presented along with a combined hazard probability to performance objective matrix and a table of variables necessary to fully implement the proposed framework. Future research requirements and summary are also provided with discussions of the difficulties inherent in adequately describing the multiple hazards of EQ and FFE.</p>