The emergence and/or growth of cities without an appropriate urban space occupation planning makes Brazilian cities present the typical problems of urban centers in less developed countries. This manner of urbanization reflects in problems which interfer in environmental quality and, consequently, in the life quality of the residents. Due to the intense changes provoked by human action on the urban ecosystem, it shows its working and characteristics more and more different from the natural systems. The pressures exerted by human activities and their dynamics on natural environment, makes it necessary the search for a new development pattern with a guarantee of a natural capital to future generations. That provokes discussions about the urban process sustainability. With the objective of making an environmental assessment of the urban area of small cities, a methodology based on the approach model called PEIR (Pressão, Estado, Impacto, Resposta PSIR (Pressure, State, Impact, Response) was applied in this work with the elaboration of an urban environmental indicator matrix. The application of this matrix in the small city of Nossa Senhora das Dores, located in the state of Sergipe, was based on the assumption of the urban process (non) sustainability. The PEIR matrix indicator characterization provided, according to the causes and the agents, the comprehension of the environmental degradation process. The results revealed a non sustainable urban process and showed anthropic pressures on environment with degradation and permanence of an environmental debit due to the lack of responses from the society and the local managers. These results can be useful as subsidies to the increment of new actions from public policies, providing a way that leads to the city sustainable development. / O surgimento e/ou expansão de cidades sem um adequado planejamento de ocupação dos espaços urbanos, faz com que as cidades brasileiras apresentem os problemas típicos dos núcleos urbanos dos países menos desenvolvidos. Esta forma de urbanização reflete em problemas que interferem na qualidade ambiental, conseqüentemente na qualidade de vida dos residentes. Devido às intensas mudanças provocadas pela ação humana no ecossistema urbano, este apresenta características e funcionamento cada vez mais distintos dos sistemas naturais. As pressões exercidas sobre o meio ambiente natural, através das atividades humanas e sua dinâmica, faz com que se busque um novo padrão de desenvolvimento, onde haja garantia de um capital natural para as futuras gerações, razão de provocar discussões quanto a sustentabilidade do processo de urbanização. Objetivando fazer uma avaliação ambiental da área urbana de cidades de pequeno porte, aplicou-se uma metodologia fundamentada no modelo de abordagem PEIR (Pressão, Estado, Impacto, Resposta), com a elaboração de uma matriz de indicadores ambientais urbanos. A aplicação dessa matriz na cidade de Nossa Senhora das Dores/SE, baseou-se no pressuposto da (in)sustentabilidade do processo de urbanização. A caracterização dos indicadores da matriz PEIR aplicada, proporcionou, segundo as causas e agentes, a compreensão do processo de degradação do meio ambiente. Os resultados obtidos revelaram um processo de urbanização insustentável, apresentando pressões antrópicas sobre o meio ambiente, com degradação e permanência de um passivo ambiental diante da ausência de respostas por parte da sociedade e gestores local. Estes resultados obtidos poderão ser utilizados como subsídios ao incremento de novas ações de políticas públicas, proporcionando um caminho rumo ao desenvolvimento sustentável da cidade.

Water quality is a critical component of aquatic ecosystems, and impairments caused by the cumulative effects of human activities can threaten water security, ecosystem health and biodiversity, and ecosystem services that support human livelihoods, health, and well-being. Protecting water quality and managing the human activities that can contribute to cumulative effects remains the most important, though poorly understood and under-researched problem facing sustainable water quality management in Canada (Johns & Sproule-Jones, Schindler & Donahue, 2006) and around the world (Patterson, Smith, & Bellamy, 2013; UN-Water, 2011). For decades, federal and provincial governments in Canada have introduced, and experimented with, policy tools that are intended to assess and manage cumulative effects, yet, point source management approaches remain by far, the preferred policy tool. The results of this study indicate that part of the reason why cumulative effects assessment and management approaches have not evolved is because policy tools intended to address questions about environmental governance are being implemented as environmental management tools. Questions of environmental governance should be inclusive and focused on how the environment is used now and in the future for societal benefits. Conversely, management questions are narrower in scope and serve to operationalize these goals. This research highlights the challenge with identifying and developing critical relationships between the array of agencies and institutions responsible for governing and managing water quality, as well as the need to devise strategies to ensure these relationships are maintained over time if progress towards managing cumulative effects to water quality can be achieved. / Graduate

Contributing to sustainable development is commonly noted as an overall goal for both Sustainability Appraisal (SA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). Over a decade ago, EU Directive 2001/42/EC (SEA Directive) reinforced the need for strategic assessment of plans and programmes in the UK. However, the SEA Directive does not stipulate the methodological approach and, as environmental matters are devolved to the individual nations of the UK, implementation is varied. This research considers strategic assessment processes in England and Scotland and the implications of system variation upon the contribution made to sustainable development. Attention is paid to the purposes expressed for strategic assessment, the roles and relationships between actors and organisations involved and also the processes, practices and outcomes of SA and SEA. Two case studies of SA in England and two of SEA in Scotland as applied to development plans are analysed. A range of purposes for both SA and SEA are identified, including; regulatory compliance, identifying and documenting impacts, considering options and alternatives, allowing consultation, and informing and influencing plans. This research concludes that there exists variation between cases in the ambition held for strategic assessment, ranging from basic compliance to influencing plans. This research then focuses on the relationships between actors and organisations involved in SA and SEA with particular attention given to the role of assessment practitioners, planners and consultees. It is found that independence or ‘distance’, to provide legitimacy, and ‘closeness’, to enable influence, are both considered desirable features of the relationship between planning and assessment. In addition, overlap between consultation on both plans and assessment reports adds complexity to the role of consultees. Finally, this research concludes that strategic assessment influence is largely limited to marginal modifications to policy wording and explanatory text, including; strengthening language, increasing clarity, cross referencing to other policies and plans, and requiring lower tier assessments. Thus, strategic assessment fails to achieve more substantial influence, significantly limiting its ability to contribute to sustainability transition in development planning. A number of institutional barriers to increasing strategic assessment influence and contribution to sustainable development or sustainability are identified.

Yes

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has the potential to improve strategic planning. However, meeting this expectation is a major challenge since SEA practice still constraints itself to assess the impacts of strategic planning initiatives. To advance the role of SEA beyond impact assessment, it has been argued that SEA needs to adapt to strategic planning contexts. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on how SEA should adapt to strategic planning contexts as these are complex, vary considerably and carry high levels of uncertainty. Against this background, the aim of this thesis is to contribute to the development of SEA by creating knowledge on ways in which it can be contextualized to different strategic planning situations. Three case studies addressing different values and strategic planning contexts were designed from which experiences on SEA conceptualization were drawn. The results show that developing strategic focused SEA frameworks that enhance dialogue, collaboration and knowledge generation on multiple values can address issues such as: the lack of data and objectives in developing planning contexts; gaps in knowledge and uncertainty associated to environmental monitoring in transboundary contexts; and the recognition of the importance of ecosystem services and their needed green qualities in urbanizing contexts. Based on the gained case study experiences, it is argued that SEA contextualization can mean addressing strategic planning intentions, identifying and engaging actors, deriving and prioritizing key values, collaborating to generate knowledge on key issues, and using this knowledge to shape strategic planning. Due to the complexity of the issues involved, contextualizing SEA is considered to be challenging to achieve and requires time and resources. However, based on the SEA case studies, it can be argued that the value added to strategic planning outweighs these requirements. Continuing to study the practice of context adaptable, strategic focused and participatory based SEA processes may contribute to advance SEA’s role beyond impact assessment and enable reaching its expected potentials. / <p>QC 20150525</p>

Originally developed in the 1970s for the optimal control of systems governed by partial differential equations, the adjoint method has found several successful applications, e.g., in meteorology with large-scale 3D or 4D atmospheric data assimilation schemes, for carbon cycle data assimilation in biogeochemistry and climate research, or in oceanographic modelling with efficient adjoint codes of ocean general circulation models. Despite the variety of applications in these research fields, adjoint methods have only very recently drawn attention from the ocean acoustics community. In ocean acoustic tomography and geoacoustic inversion, where the inverse problem is to recover unknown acoustic properties of the water column and the seabed from acoustic transmission data, the solution approaches are typically based on travel time inversion or standard matched-field processing in combination with metaheuristics for global optimization. In order to complement the adjoint schemes already in use in meteorology and oceanography with an ocean acoustic component, this thesis is concerned with the development of the adjoint of a full-field acoustic propagation model for shallow water environments. In view of the increasing importance of global ocean observing systems such as the European Seas Observatory Network, the Arctic Ocean Observing System and Maritime Rapid Environmental Assessment (MREA) systems for defence and security applications, the adjoint of an ocean acoustic propagation model can become an integral part of a coupled oceanographic and acoustic data assimilation scheme in the future. Given the acoustic pressure field measured on a vertical hydrophone array and a modelled replica field that is calculated for a specific parametrization of the environment, the developed adjoint model backpropagates the mismatch (residual) between the measured and predicted field from the receiver array towards the source. The backpropagated error field is then converted into an estimate of the exact gradient of the objective function with respect to any of the relevant physical parameters of the environment including the sound speed structure in the water column and densities, compressional/shear sound speeds, and attenuations of the sediment layers and the sub-bottom halfspace. The resulting environmental gradients can be used in combination with gradient descent methods such as conjugate gradient, or Newton-type optimization methods tolocate the error surface minimum via a series of iterations. This is particularly attractive for monitoring slowly varying environments, where the gradient information can be used to track the environmental parameters continuously over time and space. In shallow water environments, where an accurate treatment of the acoustic interaction with the bottom is of outmost importance for a correct prediction of the sound field, and field data are often recorded on non-fully populated arrays, there is an inherent need for observation over a broad range of frequencies. For this purpose, the adjoint-based approach is generalized for a joint optimization across multiple frequencies and special attention is devoted to regularization methods that incorporate additional information about the desired solution in order to stabilize the optimization process. Starting with an analytical formulation of the multiple-frequency adjoint approach for parabolic-type approximations, the adjoint method is progressively tailored in the course of the thesis towards a realistic wide-angle parabolic equation propagation model and the treatment of fully nonlocal impedance boundary conditions. A semi-automatic adjoint generation via modular graph approach enables the direct inversion of both the geoacoustic parameters embedded in the discrete nonlocal boundary condition and the acoustic properties of the water column. Several case studies based on environmental data obtained in Mediterranean shallow waters are used in the thesis to assess the capabilities of adjoint-based acoustic inversion for different experimental configurations, particularly taking into account sparse array geometries and partial depth coverage of the water column. The numerical implementation of the approach is found to be robust, provided that the initial guesses are not too far from the desired solution, and accurate, and converges in a small number of iterations. During the multi-frequency optimization process, the evolution of the control parameters displays a parameter hierarchy which clearly relates to the relative sensitivity of the acoustic pressure field to the physical parameters. The actual validation of the adjoint-generated environmental gradients for acoustic monitoring of a shallow water environment is based on acoustic and oceanographic data from the Yellow Shark '94 and the MREA '07 sea trials, conducted in the Tyrrhenian Sea, south of the island of Elba. Starting from an initial guess of the environmental control parameters, either obtained through acoustic inversion with global search or supported by archival in-situ data, the adjoint method provides an efficient means to adjust local changes with a couple of iterations and monitor the environmental properties over a series of inversions. In this thesis the adjoint-based approach is used, e.g., to fine-tune up to eight bottom geoacoustic parameters of a shallow-water environment and to track the time-varying sound speed profile in the water column. In the same way the approach can be extended to track the spatial water column and bottom structure using a mobile network of sparse arrays. Work is currently being focused on the inclusion of the adjoint approach into hybrid optimization schemes or ensemble predictions, as an essential building block in a combined ocean acoustic data assimilation framework and the subsequent validation of the acoustic monitoring capabilities with long-term experimental data in shallow water environments.

<p>This thesis gives a systematic description of theEnvironmental Load Profile (ELP), an environmental assessmenttool developed for the urban environment. The purpose of thework was to improve the stringency of the system boundaries andfunctional units of the tool. This was achieved by putting theELP structure in the context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)with a special emphasis on system boundaries. To create animproved scientific base for the ELP, a comparative study wasconducted using an evaluative framework for conceptual andanalytical approaches. Here, the ELP tool is compared with foursimilar environmental assessment tools for the builtenvironment.</p><p>Since, energy use in the operation phase is an importantfactor for the overall environmental performance of buildings,a sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate how theselection of heat and electricity mix affects the results of anenvironmental assessment of buildings. Four modes ofelectricity production and two modes of heat production wereapplied on three buildings with different technical systems intheir heat supply. The results show that the choice ofelectricity mix has a great influence on the outcome of anenvironmental assessment (EA) and it is suggested that both anaverage and marginal electricity mix should be applied inEA´s of the built environment. Further, it is argued thatconsequences of assumptions made should be explicitlycommunicated in the EA report, to allow the decision-makersrather than the analysts to make the final evaluation.</p><p>The ELP is primarily developed to follow up theenvironmental goal‘twice as good’and assess theenvironmental performance of Hammarby Sjöstad, a newcity-district in southern Stockholm. The city-district is builtas a continuation of the inner Stockholm and the first part ofthe project, called Sickla Udde, is nearly finished. The ELPtool was applied in a first case study to answer the questionof how far Sickla Udde has reached in achieving the goal. Theassessment indicates that compared to a reference districtbased on the technology used in 1990, the environmentalperformance of Sickla Udde has reached the goal‘twice asgood’for some environmental load categories and 30percent for others. Although these findings are preliminary,they indicate a development in the right direction. Measurestaken contributing to largest environmental improvements are: amore efficient energy production (improved district heating)and use (e.g. lower U-values in the buildings, energy efficientappliances, heat exchange of ventilation air) and improvedsewage treatment. The results also demonstrate that theenvironmental load from domestic transports can be of the samemagnitude as from the buildings situated within thecity-district. Hence, resources spent to decrease environmentalload in the planning process should primarily be divoted toimproving domestic transportation systems and on optimising theoperational phase of the buildings.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>environmental assessment, urban district,environmental load profile, Hammarby Sjöstad, life cycleassessment, LCA, environmental management, builtenvironment</p>

Les responsables de la conception des produits que nous utilisons tous les jours ont un grand pouvoir car ils sont responsables de la conception d’une très partie du monde qui nous entoure. Tous les produits et services d’aujourd’hui n’étaient autrefois qu’une partie de la nature et l’impact des activités humaines sur cette nature devient de plus en plus préoccupant. Des efforts sont faits à tous les niveaux, des utilisateurs aux multinationales, pour réduire l’impact des hommes mais ce n’est pas une tache simple. Dans une première partie, cette thèse présente le processus de la conception de produits et différents moyens qui peuvent être utilisés pour conduire ce processus vers des solutions plus respectueuses de l'environnement. La conception de produits est une activité complexe qui peut être modélisée comme un processus composé de trois phases – conceptual, embodiement et detailed. Les décisions prises au cours des premières étapes de ce processus conduisent à la majorité des coûts finaux, monétaire, environnementaux, etc., d'un projet. Après ces étapes, toutes modifications apportées au projet augmentent les coûts mais peuvent aussi ne pas être réalisables. Les responsables de la conception de produits ont accès à certains outils afin de produire des objets plus respectueux de l'environnement, dont les directives Design for Environment, qui ne fournissent pas de données quantifiables, et des méthodes basées sur l’ACV, extrêmement gourmandes en ressources et ne donnent pas de résultats fiables avant la modélisation finale. Afin de pallier aux différents points faibles de ces méthodes, cette thèse propose l’approche DA-Ex basée sur l'exergie et l'analyse dimensionnelle. Le but de cette approche est d'utiliser des données faciles d’accès qui peuvent être stockées dans une base de données de faible taille, être applicable lors des premières phases du processus de conception lorsque l'artefact étudié n'est pas encore défini en sa totalité, fournir des résultats de qualité comparable à ceux obtenus avec des méthodes et outils existants, et offrir la possibilité d'élargir les domaines étudiés en dehors de l’évaluation environnementale. L'approche DA-Ex considère trois aspects - l'efficacité de la transformation de l’exergie, l'efficacité d'utilisation des ressources, et les émissions environnementales. La possibilité d’extension de l’approche est illustrée avec l’analyse des coûts. Plusieurs études de cas ont été réalisées pour tester l'approche DA-Ex. Les résultats obtenus avec cette approche ont été comparés à ceux fournis par des méthodes et indicateurs existants. / Engineering designers wield a tremendous power as they are responsible for the design of a large part of the world that surrounds us. All artificial products and services were once a pristine bit of nature and the impact that mankind has on this planet is a growing concern at all levels, from single customers to world-wide companies and governments. The task of producing something that does not contribute to this impact is daunting. The first part of this thesis elaborates on engineering design and the ways of influencing product design towards more environmentally conscious solutions. Engineering design is a complex activity that can be modelled as a process made up of three basic phases - conceptual, embodiment, and detailed design. The decisions made during the early stages of this process are responsible for the majority of the final costs, monetary, environmental or otherwise, of a project. Any changes made to the design after these stages not only unnecessarily bring up the costs, but there are also fewer opportunities to make them. The question remains of how designers can be supported during the design process to produce more environmentally conscious artefacts. Design for Environment guidelines are a good start but they do not provide quantifiable data, full LCA methods are extremely resource consuming and do not provide robust results before the design is finalised, etc. In order to alleviate the shortfalls of these methods, the thesis proposes the DA-Ex approach based on exergy and dimensional analysis. The aim of the approach is to use readily available data that can be stored in a lightweight database, be applicable during the early phases of the design process when the studied artefact is not yet fully defined, provide results of comparable quality to those obtained with existing methods and tools, and offer ways of expanding the studies to fields related to sustainability beyond environmental assessment. The DA-Ex approach first considers exergy transformation efficiency, resource use efficiency, and environmental emission metrics. An expansion is also proposed to cost analysis. Several case studies were performed to test the DA-Ex approach. The results obtained with the approach were compared to those provided by existing methods and indicators, although they could not be compared number to number due to the fact that all methods and indicators function with different characterisations and base hypotheses. The next step for the DA-Ex approach is to include a systemic view, as to not only cover the designed artefact in a study but also its environment and what impact it has on it.

Tendo em vista a emergência do turismo como atividade de significativo impacto econômico e, conseqüentemente, de potencial impacto negativo ao meio ambiente, o presente trabalho avalia as perspectivas de aplicação da avaliação ambiental estratégica como instrumento de consideração e ponderação das questões ambientais na tomada de decisão e planejamento do turismo no Brasil. Por meio de revisão bibliográfica e de análise da prática internacional, discute a relação turismo e meio ambiente, os instrumentos utilizados para a gestão ambiental da atividade e as experiências de aplicação da avaliação ambiental estratégica em turismo. Além disso, o trabalho traz um estudo de caso no município brasileiro de Bueno Brandão, no estado de Minas Gerais, com o intuito de apresentar o cenário político e institucional local e avaliar as condições e os desafios para uma possível inserção da avaliação ambiental estratégica no plano municipal de desenvolvimento turístico. Conclui-se que, apesar de já existir certo consenso no que diz respeito a princípios e boas práticas de AAE, as experiências internacionais em políticas, planos e programas de turismo ainda apresentam uma série de imprecisões em termos de metodologia, formas de participação e abordagens. Entende-se que, no Brasil, ainda existe uma série de desafios, metodológicos e políticos, para garantir a inserção do meio ambiente na tomada de decisão de forma participativa. Esse fato ficou claro com as questões identificadas no estudo de caso, especialmente aquelas relacionadas aos mecanismos de participação da sociedade, capacitação do corpo técnico, ações de planejamento integradas e articuladas, e produção, sistematização, democratização e monitoramento de informações ambientais, de forma a orientar o planejamento e a tomada de decisão. / Considering the raising of the tourism sector as an activity of significant economic impact and, consequently, potential negative environmental impacts, the present work evaluates the perspectives for application of strategic environmental assessment as a tool which can integrate environmental issues into tourism planning in Brazil. Using bibliographical research and analysis of the international practice, this work discusses the relationship between tourism and environment, the environmental management tools used and the practical experiences of strategic environmental assessment in the tourism sector. Beyond that, the work presents a case study in Bueno Brandão, a brazilian town located in the state of Minas Gerais, in which it discusses the political and institutional setting and evaluates the conditions and challenges for a possible insertion of the strategic environmental assessment in the local tourism development plan. Although it already exists certain consensus in strategic environmental assessment principles and good practices, the international experiences in SEA for tourism planning still presents some imprecisions in methodology, public participation and approaches. It is clear that in Brazil there are still challenges in methodological and political approaches to guarantee the insertion of environmental concerns in the decision making and public participation contexts. This fact was confirmed by the issues identified in the case study, mainly, failures related to the mechanisms of public participation, the qualification of the technical staff, integration of planning actions, and the production, systematization, democratization and monitoring of environmental information, in a way to guide the decision making and local planning.

A definição e o estabelecimento da matriz de transportes de um país são desafios que acarretam implicações ambientais além das sociais e econômicas. No contexto brasileiro existem previsões de incorporar a dimensão ambiental no processo de tomada de decisão no Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte em consonância com os pressupostos do desenvolvimento sustentável. A Avaliação Ambiental Estratégica (AAE) é um instrumento utilizado internacionalmente para propiciar essa inserção e facilitar a tomada de decisão mais estratégica. Assim, o objetivo da dissertação foi discutir e estabelecer critérios conceituais de boas práticas de AAE, as possíveis contribuições da aplicação de uma AAE nos Planos de Transporte e aplicar no caso brasileiro Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte (PNLT). Para a consecução do objetivo proposto, o presente trabalho estabeleceu critérios e formulou uma diretriz teórica de boas práticas de AAE a partir da Diretiva Européia 42 de 2001, que trata da implantação e procedimentos de AAE, e de experiências de países como a Escócia, País de Gales e Inglaterra. Esse quadro conceitual foi aplicado no caso brasileiro do Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte. Os resultados obtidos mostram um fraco compromisso do Plano Brasileiro com um efetivo envolvimento da dimensão ambiental no processo de tomada de decisão, evidenciando um descompasso entre o que é preconizado e a prática. A principal conclusão é que o Plano Nacional está direcionado para o crescimento econômico sem a devida inserção da dimensão ambiental. / The definition and the establishment of transport matrix of a country challenges that cause environmental implications as well as social and economic. In the Brazilian context, there are predictions of incorporating environmental considerations into decision-making in the National Plan of Logistics and Transport in line with the assumptions of the sustainable development process. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a tool used internationally to provide this integration and facilitate more strategic decision making. The aim of the thesis was to discuss and establish conceptual criteria of good practice SEA, the possible contributions of applying SEA in Transport Plans and apply the Brazilian case - National Plan of Logistics and Transport (NPLT). To achieve the proposed objective, this paper established criteria and formulated a theoretical guideline of best practices from the European SEA Directive 42 of 2001 that deals with the establishment and SEA procedures, and experience of countries such as Scotland, Country Wales and England. This conceptual framework was applied in the case of Brazil\'s National Plan of Logistics and Transport. The results show a weak commitment of the Brazilian Plan with an effective involvement of the environmental dimension in the decision-making process, showing a gap between what is recommended and practice. The main conclusion is that the National Plan is directed to economic growth without proper integration of the environmental dimension.