The emergency of malnutrition, in all of its forms, and physical inactivity among children and adolescents as serious public health challenges, especially in resource-limited low- and middle-income countries is concerning and requires attention. Data on the prevalence of unhealthy weight status and levels of physical inactivity among children and adolescents in these low- and middle-income countries are limited, not systematically collected nor are they well documented. Accurate prevalence estimates, and an informed understanding of the relationships among movement behaviours and weight status of children and adolescents, are required to facilitate evidence-informed interventions and public health policies in these countries. The main purposes of this dissertation were to examine relationships between lifestyle behaviours and weight status among primary schoolchildren in Mozambique; compare body mass indices and movement behaviours of Mozambican schoolchildren to those of children from other countries; and use these findings to highlight important data gaps that exist in low- and middle-income countries. First, the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance’s Report Card development methodology was used to conduct thorough narrative literature searches, identify data gaps and research needs which subsequently informed research questions and primary data collection. A published protocol that was developed for the multinational cross-sectional International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment was adopted and used for primary data collection among urban and rural schoolchildren in Mozambique (n=683), to facilitate data comparability. Anthropometric (weight, height, percent body fat, bioelectric impedance, mid-upper-arm circumference, waist-circumference) and accelerometry (nocturnal sleep, sedentary time, various intensities of physical activity) data were objectively measured by trained personnel. Data about lifestyle behaviours (diet and movement behaviours), demographics and environmental (home, neighbourhood, school) factors associated with child weight status were collected using context-adapted questionnaires. As part of this dissertation, six manuscripts were developed and submitted for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Overall, the narrative literature searches revealed a dearth of information about prevalences of unhealthy weight status, and key lifestyle behaviours among children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries. Results from data collected in Mozambique showed overweight/obesity to be an emerging public health concern, especially among urban children (11.4%), while thinness still persists and is more prevalent among rural schoolchildren (6.3%). Moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity, active transport and mother’s body mass index were found to be important modifiable correlates of weight status for Mozambican children. Distinct differences in the prevalences and correlates of lifestyle behaviours (sleep and physical activity) were observed between urban and rural children in Mozambique. The findings showed that mean moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity was lower (82.9±29.5 minutes/day) among urban compared to rural Mozambican children (96.7±31.8 minutes/day). Compared to children from 12 other countries, on average, children from Mozambique had lower body mass indices, higher daily moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity, lower daily sedentary time and comparable sleep duration. For example, rural Mozambican children had lower mean BMI z-scores (-0.5±0.9) than the rest of the sample (0.4±1.3), 46 more minutes of daily moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity, and 99 less minutes of daily sedentary time than the other children. Furthermore, linear distributions of study site-specific body mass index (positive), minutes of daily moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (negative), and daily sedentary time (positive) by country human development index were observed. Compared to others, children from the urban Mozambican site closely resembled those from Nairobi Kenya on body mass index and movement behaviours, whereas those from rural Mozambique were distinctly different from the rest of the sample on many indicators. Findings from this dissertation highlight the importance of including participants from low, medium, high, and very high-income countries in multinational studies investigating contextual and environmental factors related to childhood weight status. The findings revealed important differences between urban and rural children supporting the need to include both in study samples and especially in low- and middle-income countries where the majority of people live in rural areas. Finally, findings from this dissertation have demonstrated that despite the reported global progress in the availability of data about obesity and related factors among children and adolescents, gaps still exist and need to be filled in low- and middle-income countries.

Dynamic building simulation is increasingly necessary for accurately quantifying potential energy savings measures in retrofit projects, to compliant with new stricter directives from EU implanted into member states legislations and building codes. For good result the simulation model need to be accurately calibrated. This requires actual weather data, representative for the climate surrounding the given building, in order to calibrate against actual energy bills of the same period of time. The main objective of this degree project is to combine observed weather (temperature, humidity, wind etc.) data with modeled solar radiation data, utilizing the SMHI STRÅNG model system; and transform these data into AMY (Actual Meteorological Year) files to be used with building simulation software. This procedure gives actual weather datasets that will cover most of the urban and semi urban area in Northern Europe while still keeping the accuracy of observed weather data. A tool called Real-Time Weather Converter was developed to handle data retrieval & merging, filling of missing data points and to create the final AMY-file. Modeled solar radiation data from STRÅNG had only been validated against a Swedish solar radiation network; validation was now made by the author with wider geographic coverage. Validation results show that STRÅNG model system performs well for Sweden but less so outside of Sweden. There exist some areas outside of Sweden (mainly Central Europe) with reasonable good result for some periods but the result is not as consistent in the long run as for Sweden. The missing data fill scheme developed for the Real-Time Weather Converter does perform better than interpolation for data gaps (outdoor temperature) of about 9 to 48 hours. For gaps between 2 and 5 days the fill scheme will still give slightly better result than linear interpolation. Akima Spline interpolation performs better than linear interpolation for data gaps (outdoor temperature) in the interval 2 to about 8 hours. Temperature uncertainty was studied using data from the period 1981-2010 for selected sites. The result expressed as SD (Standard Deviation) for the uncertainty in yearly mean temperature is about 1˚C for the Nordic countries. On a monthly basis the variation in mean temperature is much stronger (for Nordic countries it ranges from 3.5 to 4.7 ˚C for winter months), while summer months have less variation (with SD in the range of 1.3 to 1.9 ˚C). The same pattern is visible in sites at more southern latitudes but with much lower variation, and still lower for sites near coast areas. E.g. the cost-near Camborne, UK, has a SD of 0.7 to 1.7 ˚C on monthly basis and yearly SD of 0.5 ˚C. Mean direct irradiance SD for studied sites ranges from 5 to 19 W/m2 on yearly basis, while on monthly basis the SD ranges from 40 to 60 W/m2 for summer months. However, the sample base was small and of inconsistent time periods and the numbers can only be seen as indicative. The commonly used IWEC (International Weather for Energy Calculations) files direct radiation parameter was found to have a very strong negative bias of about 20 to 40 % for Northern Europe.  These files should be used with care, especially if solar radiation has a significant impact of on the building being modeled. Note that there exist also a newer set of files called IWEC2 that can be purchased from ASHRAE, these files seems not to be systematically biased for North Europe but haven’t been studied in this paper. The STRÅNG model system does catch the trend, also outside of Sweden, and is thus a very useful source of solar radiation data for model calibration.