Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / This study assesses the present level of household water access and the willingness to pay in South Africa. Although the general literature informs that progress has been made in positing South Africa above the levels found in most African countries, there are some marked inequalities among the population groups and across the provinces, with some performing well and others poorly in this regard. The study looks at the extent to which households differ in terms of water access and willingness to pay according to the province of residence. The study focuses on household heads; male and female, through different social and demographic attributes, by taking account of variables such as age, education attainment, geographic areas, and population group to name but a few. The data used in this study comes from the 2007 General Household Survey (GHS) conducted by Statistics South Africa. The scope is national and employs cross tabulation and logistic regression to establish relationships and the likelihood of living in a household with access to safe drinking water in South Africa. Results presented in this study suggest that the difference is determined by socio- demographic characteristics of each household such as age, gender, population group, level of education, employment status income, dwelling unit, dwelling ownership, living quarters, household size and income. It throws more light as to what needs to be taken into account when considering demand and supply of and priorities for water intervention from the household perspective. / South Africa

I Sverige har ungefär 1,2 miljoner människor enskild dricksvattenförsörjning och en stor andel av dessa har problem med vattenkvalitet. En utvärdering av reningstekniker har inletts av företaget Ecoloop och Utvecklingscentrum för vatten och detta examensarbete fördjupar och följer upp de inledande resultaten från det projektet. Med hjälp av en litteraturstudie, modellering i Visual MINTEQ och fem fallstudier utvärderades reningsteknikerna jonbytarfilter och nanofilter avsett för enskild dricksvattenförsörjning med avseende på reduktion av föroreningarna bly och uran. Fallstudierna visar att jonbytarfilter kan fungera väl för att reducera uranhalter men en viss inkörningsperiod förekommer där bieffekter, exempelvis kemisk smak, kan förekomma samt att underhåll är viktigt för att fortsätta ha en hög reduktionsgrad. Fallstudierna kunde ej besvara ifall nanofilter är en lämplig reningsteknik för ändamålet att reducera halter av bly och uran under de gränsvärden som finns, eftersom de membranfilter som använts i fallstudierna visade sig ha för stor porstorlek för att kallas nanofilter. En slutsats är att det är viktigt att fortsätta med provtagning av vattnet även efter att ett filter installerats. Utöver det genomfördes intervjuer och en enkätundersökning som undersökte hur kommuner i Sverige arbetar för att möta enskilda brunnsägare i deras utmaningar med vattenkvalitet. Intervjuerna och enkätsvaren visar på en variation där några kommuner jobbar aktivt för att stötta de enskilda brunnsägarna med rådgivning, bidrag och förebyggande åtgärder medan andra kommuner är mer passiva och låter de enskilda ta eget ansvar för sitt vatten. / About 1.2 million people in Sweden rely on their own private drinking water supply for their daily needs and a large portion of those have problems with water quality. An evaluation of water treatment technology intended for private wells has been initiated by the companies Ecoloop and Utvecklingscentrum för vatten and this master’s thesis further develops and follows up the initial results. By conducting a literature review, doing modelling in Visual MINTEQ and carrying out five case studies the two water treatment techniques nanofilter and ion exchange are evaluated in the context of domestic water supplies with water quality problems caused by either lead or uranium. The case studies shows that ion exchange filters can reduce uranium in drinking water below the threshold value but with some initial side effects (i.e., chemical taste of the water). The case studies could not show if nanofilters are suitable to reduce lead or uranium from domestic water supplies, since the pore size was found to be too big for the membrane filters used in the case studies to be called nanofilters. This concludes that it is important to proceed with sampling of the water even after installing a filter for water treatment. Additionally, interviews and a survey were conducted which investigated how municipalities in Sweden are working to meet private well owners in their challenges with water quality. The answers from the interviews and the survey displays a variation where some municipalities are actively supporting the private well owners through counselling, grants, and preventive measures while other municipalities are more passive and leaves the individual well owners responsible to look after their water quality by themselves.

The aim of this study was to assess the environmental sanitation conditions with regard to water, sanitation, waste management and personal hygiene of households of Dukem town in Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study design was used to conduct the research. A total of 391 households had participated in the study. Majority of households had access to improved source of drinking water. The mean per capita per day water consumption of the households was low. Two-thirds of households had improved toilet facilities. Availability of improved waste management was grossly inadequate. Two-thirds of households had washed hands after visiting toilet. Generally households had good domestic environmental sanitation conditions but it also emerged that the households were deprived from full range of access to the most essential environmental sanitation services. Therefore, the inadequate level of service to the study area could be seen as opportunity for further focused improvements towards universal access to improved environmental sanitation. / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

This thesis investigates the influence that cultural differences have in the designing of products and services that encourage sustainable lifestyles. This was researched through a case study of dishwashing practices in Mexico and the UK, and the development of a methodological framework for supporting designers working in cross-cultural contexts. Designers can shift user behaviour to be more responsible, and by doing this, reduce a product s impact on the use phase of its lifecycle. Nevertheless, designing products that successfully drive behaviour towards a more sustainable path can only be accomplished if they are conceived to fit the user and the specific context of interaction. In order to do so, designers must truly understand the users, and take into account the complex web of factors that lay behind individual behaviour. A comprehensive review of the literature established an understanding of human behaviour and the emergence and evolution of practices and routines. This brought to light the diverse behavioural patterns in different contexts; and was further investigated with a scoping study in two different locations (Mexico and the UK), exploring general water consuming practices in the home, specifically manual dishwashing practices. The preliminary findings shaped a study that aimed to deepen the understanding of these practices in the selected sites, involving the use of Cultural Probes and videoing people in their common kitchen environment. A robust and clear image of washing-up practices emerged with rich and detailed data presented in different media, ideal to be implemented in a design process. To this end, a series of multicultural Personas were created as the direct outcome of the Cultural Probes and the scoping study, giving way to the design studies phase of the project, carried out with industrial design students in Mexico and the UK. A design brief for sustainable washing up practices was delivered. Design experiments were used to provide interesting evidence of the influence in the design process of the designers understanding of the target user. The findings indicate that designers benefit from exploration and creativity tools tailored directly from the user-research findings in the early design process. This increases the level of empathy towards the user, particularly making it easier to design for users with different needs and contexts than the designers themselves. It also helps designers to better apply design for sustainable behaviour framework to their concept designs.

O setor residencial reflete a cultura do uso excessivo da eletricidade para aquecimento de água. Para este uso final, a inclusão de gás e complementação com energia termo-solar pode apresentar vantagem por se tratar de energia final mais compatível com os processos de transformação em energia útil na forma de calor. A inclusão destas fontes pode propiciar uma diminuição de sobrecarga no sistema elétrico e da eletrotermia no setor residencial. Este trabalho faz uma avaliação econômica dos sistemas de aquecimento de água elétrico, a gás e solar. Os sistemas são analisados considerando custos de infra-estrutura, com diferentes disponibilidades de uso, custos de equipamentos e de operação para vários níveis de consumo. A avaliação é aplicada a 3 tipologias de edificações verticais representativas no mercado da construção civil da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Os custos de serviço de aquecimento de água quente estão apresentados em função do volume de água consumido. / The residential sector reflects the culture of the indiscriminate use of electricity water heating. Inclusion of gas and thermosolar energy to the electrical supply system may present advantages as they are more compatible to consumer\"s heat transformation processes. In addition these new sources of energy may decrease the electrical and electrothermal system overload in the residential sector. This study is an economic evaluation of the electric, gas and solar water heating systems. The heating systems are analyzed taking in consideration infrastructure costs, and equipment and operation costs for different levels of consumption. The evaluation is applied to three typologies of vertical residential edifications that represent the civil construction market of the São Paulo metropolitan area. The costs of water heating service are presented in function of the consumed volume of water.

The aim of this study was to assess the environmental sanitation conditions with regard to water, sanitation, waste management and personal hygiene of households of Dukem town in Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study design was used to conduct the research. A total of 391 households had participated in the study. Majority of households had access to improved source of drinking water. The mean per capita per day water consumption of the households was low. Two-thirds of households had improved toilet facilities. Availability of improved waste management was grossly inadequate. Two-thirds of households had washed hands after visiting toilet. Generally households had good domestic environmental sanitation conditions but it also emerged that the households were deprived from full range of access to the most essential environmental sanitation services. Therefore, the inadequate level of service to the study area could be seen as opportunity for further focused improvements towards universal access to improved environmental sanitation. / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

O setor residencial reflete a cultura do uso excessivo da eletricidade para aquecimento de água. Para este uso final, a inclusão de gás e complementação com energia termo-solar pode apresentar vantagem por se tratar de energia final mais compatível com os processos de transformação em energia útil na forma de calor. A inclusão destas fontes pode propiciar uma diminuição de sobrecarga no sistema elétrico e da eletrotermia no setor residencial. Este trabalho faz uma avaliação econômica dos sistemas de aquecimento de água elétrico, a gás e solar. Os sistemas são analisados considerando custos de infra-estrutura, com diferentes disponibilidades de uso, custos de equipamentos e de operação para vários níveis de consumo. A avaliação é aplicada a 3 tipologias de edificações verticais representativas no mercado da construção civil da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Os custos de serviço de aquecimento de água quente estão apresentados em função do volume de água consumido. / The residential sector reflects the culture of the indiscriminate use of electricity water heating. Inclusion of gas and thermosolar energy to the electrical supply system may present advantages as they are more compatible to consumer\"s heat transformation processes. In addition these new sources of energy may decrease the electrical and electrothermal system overload in the residential sector. This study is an economic evaluation of the electric, gas and solar water heating systems. The heating systems are analyzed taking in consideration infrastructure costs, and equipment and operation costs for different levels of consumption. The evaluation is applied to three typologies of vertical residential edifications that represent the civil construction market of the São Paulo metropolitan area. The costs of water heating service are presented in function of the consumed volume of water.

Magister Economicae - MEcon / In this thesis, I explore the allocation and use of water for productive and domestic purposes in the village of Siyandhani in the Klein Letaba sub-area, and how the allocation and use is being affected by new water resource management and water services provision legislation and policies in the context of water reform. This problem is worth studying because access to water for domestic and productive purposes is a critical dimension of poverty alleviation.The study focuses in particular on the extent to which policy objectives of greater equity in resource allocation and poverty alleviation are being achieved at local level with the following specific objectives: to establish water resources availability in Letaba/Shingwedzi sub-region, specifically surface and groundwater and examine water uses by different sectors (e.g. agriculture, industry, domestic, forestry etc.,); to explore the dynamics of existing formal and informal institutions for water resources management and water services provision and the relationship between and among them; to investigate the practice of allocation and use of domestic water; to investigate the practice of allocation and use of irrigation water.The study concludes that there is a problem of water scarcity in the study area and that the water scarcity is caused by the growth in the population, specifically in the Giyani area; these problems are exacerbated by financial and institutional obstacles within local institutions of governance. The water scarcity is not, therefore, natural but anthropogenic in nature.The water scarcity is not felt by all sectors, however: some farmers have access to water for irrigation, while many others face great challenges in their farming activities.Overall, people in Siyandhani and surrounding villages surrounding villages in the Letaba Catchment do not have access to water because of human action, hence the use of the concept of manufactured scarcity. The lack of access to water, it is argued,leads to the violation of the human right to water. This study concludes that water reform, which is widely seen as a priority for South Africa, has not yet reached the villages of the Klein Letaba.

This work deals with the topic – Heating with the use of large radiating structures. Theoretical part contains distribution underfloor heating, wall heating and ceiling heating. This topic is applied to the specified building. The project deals with preparing of domestic water, wall heating and underfloor heating. Experimental part deals with the measurement of ceiling heating.

The Lunsemfwa river catchment is of paramount importance to the Zambian economy, particularly with regards to energy, agricultural and water for domestic, as well as wildlife. Water shortages during dry spells in the area present a huge problem for the various stakeholders in the basin. As the impact of climate variability increases in the basin, water resources managers in the basin are increasing challenged to efficiently allocate decreasing reserves of water resources against increasing levels of demand. This paper attempts to highlight the value of water resources to the earlier mentioned sectors; hydropower, agriculture and households, in order to inform allocation decisions in the Lunsemfwa catchment area of Zambia. The paper uses the SDDP method to investigate the average cost of electricity production, coupled with market electricity prices to ascertain the value of a unit of electricity given reservoir outflow levels. The PF method was used to evaluate the marginal value of water is agriculture, while the value of water for domestic consumers was evaluated using the Contingent Valuation method, particularly the willingness to pay, which essentially uses market prices to represent the consumers’ willingness to pay. A value of US$93/MWh is attached to hydropower produced here, while the marginal value of water in agriculture is estimated to be US$0.068/m3. The willingness to pay for connection to piped water is approximately US$34.13, while the monthly value is US$6.9. The Gross Financial Value (GFV) generated from hydropower, agriculture and domestic water supply is US$24,174,000, US$ 262,083,045.91 and $7,140,000.00 respectively.