Sustainability within automotive industry has been an important topic that is covered in several studies. Due to the multi-aspect nature of sustainability and the variety of the factors need to be taken in consideration when choosing a material, the decision-making process could be challenging. This study focuses on lubricants within the automotive industry and proposes a framework consisted of three milestones that aspire to assist automotive manufacturers in sustainable lubricant selection. The study uses LCA as an environmental assessment tool for fully formulated lubricants and multicriteria decision matrix to include other criteria indicators in the decision-making process quantitively. The study also contributes to the literature by performing LCA for fully formulated lubricants. The framework was applied on well-established case company within the automotive industry (Volvo Cars Corporation) in Sweden. The results showthe importance and significant impacts of the inclusion of the additives in LCA studies done on lubricants using CV joint grease as a case study. It also shows the effect of the organisational preferences on the final results of the framework.

In traditional planning process, energy analysts work on finalized architectural designs and have limited capability to amend inefficient energy features such as high aspect ratio. Energy efficiency being a major part of sustainable design, the need for performance-oriented design tools has become imminent. There is a wide range of energy simulation tools across the world. Crawley et al. (2005) proposes a plain comparison of the most common ones based on vendor-supplied information. The present report aims to identify simulation tools that can help architects making energy-efficient design decisions in early stage of building process and the most suitable programs will be tested on a standard case in Stockholm area with respect to their architecture, functionalities, usability and limitations.

Stormwater management is a problematic area and has during the last 20 years been given an increased attention due to more pollution in the cities. The increased pollution and contaminants in stormwater implicates risks for animals, humans, the ecosystem and receiving recipients. Due to the increased attention, authorities, government and other stakeholders have developed measurements to deal with the problem. Stormwater accommodations and other type of stormwater detainment has been developed with increased modern technology and functionality to fit specific areas where different type of pollutants can vary. Stormwater treatment are necessary because it creates social, environmental and technical advantages combined with protection of ecosystem, increased multifunctionality when combining for example stormwater ponds in nature, parks or urban and rural environment. This report describes seven diverse types of stormwater accommodations systems; rain garden, stormwater ponds, wells, screen basins, infiltration trenches, pipe-/concrete magazine and swales in accordance from Structor Mark Stockholm. From these seven accommodations, three were chosen to be included in Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). The purpose of the MCDA was to evaluate four different categories linked to stormwater, which are environment, social, technology and economical categories. These categories are broad concepts; therefore, parameters were developed to narrow down the areas within the concept, from which the area of investigation was founded within. The parameters created for each category are degree of purification for the environmental category, performance and maintenance for the technological category, aesthetical and social benefits for the social category and costs and risk for the economical category. The criteria developed from these parameters are specific topics that was scored from the scale between 0-5, where 0 = insignificant, 1= Low, 2= Moderate, 3= Major, 4=High, 5= Very high. A reference option was also created, considered as “no commercial treatment of stormwater”, only to transport stormwater. This reference option was also referred to as a zero-alternative and is drainage by piping. The scoring was conducted by stakeholders and citizens of Stockholm. The scoring of the three chosen stormwater accommodations and the reference alternative after calculating the mean value and summarize it resulted in that stormwater pond received the highest overall score of 11.9 followed by rain gardens 11.4, infiltration trench 11.3 and drainage by piping 7.3. The stakeholders are influential people that works either with stormwater, layout and planning or maintenance personnel. Citizens of Stockholm provided inputs only in regards of the social aspects. A total of 20 stakeholders were contacted and 5 stakeholders participated in the scoring procedure. Citizens were interviewed on the street; a total of 60 people was asked to participate and 13 people decided to participate in the scoring procedure of the social aspects. Although, the attendance of stakeholders was low, they are still considered important to this project since they provided the scoring of the criteria for each respective category (environment, technology, social and economic). In regards of the low attendance by stakeholders, this resulted in a way that it became hard to distinguish the result between the different stormwater accommodation. Therefore, it was hard to determine which stormwater accommodation that was the best out ofthe ranking provided by the MCDA. A benefit by using MCDA as a tool in this case, gave an indication that the MCDA can work as a framework to decision makers, even though the result in this case became difficult to manage and distinguish between the different stormwater accommodations. Finally, the method, layout and analysis itself can provide means of measurements for stormwater investigations when the purpose is to choose between the best stormwater systems included in the MCDA. Inputs from stakeholders concluded that depending on what type of existing circumstances, there must be a site-specific evaluation to treat every area as a unique area, before deciding what type of stormwater accommodation to apply to that specific location. / Dagvattenhantering är ett problematiskt område som under de senaste 20 åren har fått allt mer uppmärksamhet då mer föroreningar uppdagats i städerna. Den ökande föroreningen av dagvatten tenderar att orsaka en större risk för djur, människor, ekosystem och recipienter dit dagvatten rinner. På grund av uppmärksamheten som dagvattenhanteringen har fått, har myndigheter, regering och andra intressenter utvecklat dagvatten teknologin ytterligare för att skapa en modern dagvattenstrategi för att handskas med problemet. Dagvattenhantering är nödvändigt eftersom den skapar sociala, miljömässiga och tekniska fördelar samt om dagvattensystemen kombineras med funktionalitet så kan detta ge ökat skydd för ekosystemen samt förbättrad hälsa hos befolkningen i städerna. Den här rapporten beskriver sju olika typer av dagvattensystem så som; rain gardens, dagvattendammar, brunnar, skärmbassänger, svackdiken, rör-/betong magasin samt krossdiken på begäran av Structor Mark Stockholm. Utav dessa 7 dagvattensystem, ingick 3 anläggningar i en så kallad multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Syftet med en MCDA är att utvärdera fyra olika kategorier som kan förknippas med dagvattenhantering. Kategorierna är miljömässiga, sociala, tekniska och ekonomiska. Dessa kategorier utger dock ett brett budskap och för att begränsa analysen så skapades parametrar. Dessa parametrar skapas utifrån varje enskild kategori. För den miljömässiga kategorin skapades parametern grad av rening, för den tekniska kategorin skapades parametern prestanda och underhåll, för den sociala kategorin skapades parametern estetiska och sociala fördelar, och slutligen för den ekonomiska kategorin skapades parametern kostnader och risker. Utifrån dessa parametrar skapades sedan kriterier med specifika huvudämnen som kan bedömas enligt en poängskala från 0-5 där 0 = insignificant, 1=Low, 2= Moderate, 3= Major, 4= High, 5= Very high. Tre dagvattensystem inkluderas i MCDA vilket var; rain gardens, dagvattendammar, krossdiken vars syfte är att rena och fördröja dagvatten. Ett referensalternativ skapades också som ävenkallas ”zero-alternative”, vilket anses inte ha någon rening av dagvatten utan är endast ett transportsystem för dagvatten. Detta referensalternativ kallas drainage by piping. Poängsättningen gjordes av intressenter och invånare i Stockholm. Intressenterna är människor som arbetar med dagvattenhantering antingen på planeringsstadiet eller ute i fält som drift och underhålls personal. Invånare i Stockholm bedömde endast den sociala kategorin eftersom det kan sakna kunskap och insyn i det miljömässiga, tekniska och ekonomiska detaljerna. Totalt kontaktades 20 intressenter där 5 personer valde att medverka i MCDA. Invånare i Stockholm intervjuades på stan, totalt frågades ca 60 personer varav 13 personer valde att medverka i poängsättningen. Poängsättningen av de tre valda dagvattensystemen samt referensalternativet, efter beräkningav medelvärdet samt den totala summeringen resulterade i att dagvattendammar fick den hösta poängen 11,9 hamnade rain garden på andra plats med 11,4, krossdike på tredje plats med 11,3 samt referensalternativet på en fjärde plats med 7,3. De tre dagvattensystemen hade ett relativt liknande slutgiltigt resultat. Dock så skilde sig den individuella kategoriska bedömningen av miljömässiga, tekniska, sociala samt ekonomiska aspekten med större varierande resultat. Även om deltagandet av intressenter var relativt lågt, endast 25 % av det kontaktade intressenterna valde att ställa upp, så anses dessa intressenter vara viktiga för det här projektet då de, utifrån deras kunskap, bedömer det uppsatta kriterierna och det är denna bedömning som resultatet baseras på. Resultaten mellan det olika dagvattenanläggningarna som var inkluderade i MCDA var svåra att särskilja, troligtvis beroende på att ingen viktningsmetod användes. Däremot så är en fördel med MCDA som verktyg i det här fallet, att det gav en indikation på att MCDA kan fungera som ett stödjande verktyg för beslutsfattare även om resultatet i det här fallet var svårt att särskilja. Själva metoden, upplägget och analysen kan användas som medel för att avgöra vilken typ av dagvattenanläggning som passar bäst utifrån de kriterier som är uppsatta. Slutligen så gav intressenterna en påvisning att dagvattenanläggningar ska konstrueras så att hänsyn tas till omkringliggande omständigheter, där varje plats ska ansesvara unik. Det krävs en platsspecifik utredning där hänsyn till geologiska, geotekniska,hydrologiska samt infrastrukturella och miljömässiga aspekter bör utredas innan valet av dagvattensystem bestäms.

Water resources systems are designed to operate under a wide range of potential climate conditions. Traditionally, systems have been designed using stationarity-based methods. Stationarity is the assumption that the climate varies within an envelope of variability, implying that future variability will be similar to past variability. Due to anthropogenic climate change, the credibility of the stationarity-based assumptions has been reduced. In response, climate change assessments have been developed to quantify the potential impacts due to climatic change. While these methods quantify potential changes, they lack the probabilistic information that is needed for a risk-based approach to decision-analysis. This dissertation seeks to answer two crucial questions. First, what is the best way to evaluate water resource systems given uncertainty due to climate change? Second, what role should climate projections or scenarios play in water resources evaluation? A decision analytic approach is applied that begins by considering system decisions and proceeds to determine the information relevant to decision making. Climate based predictor variables are used to predict system hazards using a climate response function. The function is used with climate probability distributions to determine metrics of system robustness and risk. Climate projections and additional sources of climate information are used to develop conditional probability distributions for future climate conditions. The robustness and risk metrics are used to determine decision sensitivity to assumptions about future climate conditions. The methodology is applied within the context of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, which sought to determine a new regulation plan for the releases from Lake Superior that would perform better than the current regulation plan and be more robust to potential future climate change. The methodology clarifies the value of climate related assumptions and the value of GCM projections to the regulation plan decision. The approach presented in this dissertation represents a significant advancement in accounting for potential climate change in water resources decision making. The approach evaluates risk and robustness in a probabilistic context that is familiar to decision makers and evaluates the relevance of additional climate information to decisions.

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Materials are one of the areas that require special attention while creating a project's master plan as well as during the daily construction progress. The absence of materials when needed is one of the main causes of loss of productivity at a jobsite. Inefficient materials management can lead to an increase of 50% in work hours. As a result, a detailed plan for the materials management of each construction project is necessary. The critical role of materials management in the success of a construction project motivates the development of a new framework for the process of materials management for the construction industry, specifically the electrical construction industry. Materials management problems have a great impact on general contractors, but are more critical for specialty contractors such as electrical contractors. Based on the co-authors' experience, the construction industry has moved toward specialty contractors in the last decade to the point where at least 80% of the work performed on a typical construction contract is done by specialty contractors. General contractors have become, for the most part, project managers. Currently, materials management functions in the construction industry are often performed on a fragmented basis with minimal communication and no clearly established responsibilities among the parties involved. In addition, the collaboration required among departments has not been considered and implemented. This fragmentation creates gaps in information flow, which leads to delays in material ordering and receiving, expediting costs, excessive inventories of some items and project delays. However, model-based, computerized solutions to materials management problems are proliferating. Unfortunately, the typical electrical contractor may be overwhelmed by the technology required by these solutions and the challenges of implementing them into their business practices. A way out of this dilemma is presented by designing an industry-specific framework for the development of computerized decision support systems for the supply chains of the electrical contracting industry. Decision models are ever-present in the materials management processes of industries other than construction and have proven their worth in improving productivity and profitability. Knowledge-management concepts were applied to design an integrated, effective system of decision-support tools for materials-management decisions of an electrical contractor during the construction phase of a project. The framework developed is valuable in two fundamental ways. First, the framework identifies and describes all phases of materials management for an integrated, holistic view of all factors that affect the total cost of materials and material shortages. The research created detailed mappings of the essential decisions, decision models and data that are required to support supply-chain activities of construction contractors throughout a project life cycle. Second, the framework differentiates those steps in the materials management process that are straightforward applications of methods from those steps that are decisions. For these decisions, that are critical to the performance of the materials management process, we introduce the concept of a decision model and describe how such models can be incorporated into an advanced materials management system. This phase of the research developed a structured systems design of distributed, integrated decision support systems for materials management of the electrical contractor. The research derives the optimal integration of people, decision processes, decision support systems and data that are required to support efficient and effective systems for acquisition, procurement, transport, storage and allocation of material in the construction industry. / Ph. D.

Adaptive clinical trials for new drugs or treatment options promise substantial benefits to both the pharmaceutical industry and the patients, but complicate resource allocation decisions. In this dissertation, we focus on sequential adaptive clinical trials with binary response, which allow for early termination of drug testing for benefit or futility at interim analysis points. The option to stop the trial early enables the trial sponsor to mitigate investment risks on ineffective drugs, and to shorten the development time line of effective drugs, hence reducing expenditures and expediting patient access to these new therapies. In this setting, decision makers need to determine a testing schedule, or the number of patients to recruit at each interim analysis point, and stopping criteria that inform their decision to continue or stop the trial, considering performance measures that include drug misclassification risk, time-to-market, and expected profit. In the first manuscript, we model current practices of sequential adaptive trials, so as to quantify the magnitude of drug misclassification risk. Towards this end, we build a simulation model to realistically represent the current decision-making process, including the utilization of the triangular test, a widely implemented sequential methodology. We find that current practices lead to a high risk of incorrectly terminating the development of an effective drug, thus, to unrecoverable expenses for the sponsor, and unfulfilled patient needs. In the second manuscript, we study the sequential resource allocation decision, in terms of a testing schedule and stopping criteria, so as to quantify the impact of interim analyses on the aforementioned performance measures. Towards this end, we build a stochastic dynamic programming model, integrated with a Bayesian learning framework for updating the drug’s estimated efficacy. The resource allocation decision is characterized by endogenous uncertainty, and a trade-off between the incentive to establish that the drug is effective early on (exploitation), due to a time-decreasing market revenue, and the benefit from collecting some information on the drug’s efficacy prior to committing a large budget (exploration). We derive important structural properties of an optimal resource allocation strategy and perform a numerical study based on realistic data, and show that sequential adaptive trials with interim analyses substantially outperform traditional trials. Finally, the third manuscript integrates the first two models, and studies the benefits of an optimal resource allocation decision over current practices. Our findings indicate that our optimal testing schedules outperform different types of fixed testing schedules under both perfect and imperfect information. / Ph. D.

Safety risk assessment forms an integral part of the design and development of Safety Critical Systems. Conventionally in these systems, standards and policies have been developed to prescribe processes for safety risk assessment. These standards provide guidelines, references and structure to personnel involved in the risk assessment process. However, in some of these standards, the prescribed methods for safety decision making were found to be deficient in some respects. Two such deficiencies have been addressed in this thesis. First, when different safety metrics are required to be combined for a safety related decision, the current practices of using safety risk matrices were found to be inconsistent with the axioms of decision theory. Second, in the safety risk assessment process, when multiple experts are consulted to provide their judgment on the severity and/or likelihood of hazards, the standards were lacking detailed guidelines for aggregating experts' judgements. Such deficiencies could lead to misconceptions pertaining to the safety risk level of critical hazards. These misconceptions potentially give rise to inconsistent safety decisions that might ultimately result in catastrophic outcomes. This thesis addresses both these concerns present in SRM processes. For the problem of combining safety metrics, three potential approaches have been proposed. Normative Decision Analysis tools such as Utility Theory and Multi-attribute Utility Theory were proposed in the first and second approaches. The third approach proposes the use of a Multi-Objective Optimization technique - Pareto Analysis. For problems in Expert Aggregation, behavioral and mathematical solutions have been explored and the implications of using these methods for Safety Risk Assessment have been discussed. Two standard documents that contain the Safety Risk Management Processes of the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) and the U.S. Navy were used to structure the case studies. This thesis has two main contributions. First, it evaluates the use of decision analysis in safety decision process of Safety Critical Systems. It provides guidelines to decision makers on how to meaningfully use and/or combine different safety metrics in the decision process. Second, it identifies the best practices and methods of aggregating expert assessments pertaining to safety decision making. / Master of Science / Safety risk assessment forms an important part of the design and development of Safety Critical Systems. Safety Critical Systems are those systems whose failure could potentially result in the loss of human life. Commonly in these systems, standards and policies have been developed to prescribe processes for safety risk assessment. These standards provide guidelines, references and structure to personnel involved in the risk assessment process. However, in some of these standards, the prescribed methods for safety decision making were found to be deficient in some respects. Two such deficiencies have been addressed in this thesis. First, when different safety metrics are required to be combined to provide information for a safety related decision, the current practices of the safety risk assessment do not yield consistent recommendations. Second, in the safety risk assessment process, often multiple experts are consulted to provide their judgment on the criticality of a potential safety risk of the system. The standards and policies that are currently being used, do not provide clear instructions on how to synthesize the judgements of multiple experts. This lack of clear guidelines could potentially lead to an incorrect final judgement on the criticality of the risk and ultimately result in choosing an improper method to reduce the safety risk. This thesis addresses both these concerns present in safety risk assessment process of Safety Critical Systems. For the problem of combining safety metrics, three approaches have been proposed. Two of the proposed approaches make use of normative decision analysis practices and therefore the recommendations reached using these methods will be consistent with the safety objective of the decision maker. The third approach makes use of a traditional concept called -Pareto Analysis which provides a visual method to analyze the advantages and drawbacks of a given safety concern for a system. For problems in combining the judgements of multiple experts a variety of methods was studied. The methods include group consensus and mathematical techniques and the implications of using these methods in safety risk assessment was discussed. The FAA and the U.S. Navy's standard documents and policies were used to frame the discussions. This thesis has two main contributions. First, it evaluates the use of Normative Decision Analysis methods in safety decision process of Safety Critical Systems. It provides guidelines to decision makers on how to meaningfully use and/or combine different safety metrics in the decision process. Second, it identifies the best practices and methods of aggregating expert assessments pertaining to safety decision making.