Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has gained increasing prominence as a means of accommodating the goals of sustainability in development planning since the 1990s. However, SEA faces considerable difficulties before it becomes a widely accepted and enduring practice. The concepts of SEA and sustainability are complex. SEA has necessarily to deal with a variety of planning and decision-making contexts, and in addition there is a problem of integrating SEA with planning. This combination of factors makes the future role of SEA in environmental planning highly challenging. Literature on sustainability, environmental assessment, and planning suggests that application of sustainability-led and context-dependent principles for SEA can assist in the realization of goals of sustainability. Meanwhile, the effective integration of SEA and planning processes can serve as a means by which sustainability objectives, urban planning practice and SEA application might be addressed. Central to this integration are institutional arrangements which define the extent to which SEA can promote sustainability. This research has been designed to explore the opportunities offered by SEA to provide the degree of strategic connectivity required to strengthen the position of sustainability concerns in the formulation of policies and planning. In particular, it defines the requisite principles and institutional conditions for using SEA as a tool for facilitating sustainability in the context of urban planning in Chinese cities. The research employs a primary case study design, and multiple data and analytical methods which have involved surveys, key informant interviews, secondary data and direct observation. SEA was introduced as part of the 2003 Chinese environmental impact assessment (EIA) law for use with government plans and programs at various levels. The incorporation of SEA into the master plan for city development in the city of Dalian was the first attempt at the use of SEA in any Chinese city and was designed to serve as a demonstration project for other cities to follow. However, the Dalian SEA case was not successful, highlighting the difficulty of facilitating sustainability goals and achieving integration with the planning process. The problems were complex but could be reduced to two major issues: lack of explicit guidelines or principles for the application of SEA, and fundamental institutional impediments. The research concluded that to increase the effectiveness of SEA application in China it is imperative to formulate a set of explicit and sustainability-based principles for SEA and reform the institutional arrangements for environmental assessment and planning, enabling the integration of SEA and planning processes.

Environmental objective 17: Sustainable consumption - An attempt to integrate the global impact of the Swedish consumption with the environmental objectives system   The aim of this report was to integrate the global impact of the Swedish consumption withthe environmental objectives system through presenting a suggestion for a seventeenth environmental objective – Sustainable consumption. How the Swedish consumption pressures the global environment and methods to measure the affects was investigated. The pressure was divided into five main fields: climate, air, water, land and chemicals. The impacton humans and the biodiversity was also discussed, as well as differences between how men and women affect the environment and get affected when the environment changes. Chosen methods for calculating the impact had to be able to measure the pressure the Swedish consumption has on the environment, and thus humans and the biodiversity. The results show that the Swedish consumption has large internal and external impact on the environment. The methods that met the reports criteria and were analyzed were environmental input-output analysis, ecological footprint, water footprint, carbon footprint and environmental space. An earlier proposal for a seventeenth environmental objective was reviewed, called Restricted environmental pressure in other countries. In the discussion anew environmental objective was presented together with six stage goals. They were based o nthe main fields of environmental pressure. The measuring methods that were suitable and complete were suggested as indicators, namely ecological footprint and carbon footprint. To integrate the global aspect of the Swedish consumption with the environmental politics it’spossible to introduce a new environmental objective. Sustainable consumption is an attempt to do that.

The use of ocean wave energy for electricity production has considerable potential, though it has proven to be difficult. A technology utilizing the heaving (up-and-down) motions of the waves was conceived at Uppsala University in the early 2000´s, and is being further developed for commercial use by Seabased Industry AB. The purpose of this master´s degree project was to increase the knowledge of the environmental performance of Seabased´s wave energy conversion concept and identifying possible areas of improvement. This was done by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a hypothetical prototype wave power plant. All flows of materials, energy, emissions and waste were calculated for all stages of a wave power plant´s life cycle. The potential environmental impact of these flows was then assessed, using the following impact categories: • Emission of greenhouse gases • Emission of ozone depleting gases • Emission of acidifying gases • Emission of gases that contribute to the forming of ground-level ozone • Emission of substances to water contributing to oxygen depletion (eutrophication) • Energy use (renewable and non-renewable) • Water use The methodology used was that prescribed by the ISO standard for Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) and further defined by the International EPD Programme.The potential environmental impact was calculated per kWh of wave power electricity delivered to the grid. The main result of the study is that the potential environmental impact of a wave power plant mainly stems from the manufacturing phase. In particular, the production of steel parts makes a large contribution to the overall results. Future wave power plant designs are expected to be considerably more material efficient, meaning that there are large possibilities to improve the environmental performance of this technology.

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has gained increasing prominence as a means of accommodating the goals of sustainability in development planning since the 1990s. However, SEA faces considerable difficulties before it becomes a widely accepted and enduring practice. The concepts of SEA and sustainability are complex. SEA has necessarily to deal with a variety of planning and decision-making contexts, and in addition there is a problem of integrating SEA with planning. This combination of factors makes the future role of SEA in environmental planning highly challenging. Literature on sustainability, environmental assessment, and planning suggests that application of sustainability-led and context-dependent principles for SEA can assist in the realization of goals of sustainability. Meanwhile, the effective integration of SEA and planning processes can serve as a means by which sustainability objectives, urban planning practice and SEA application might be addressed. Central to this integration are institutional arrangements which define the extent to which SEA can promote sustainability. This research has been designed to explore the opportunities offered by SEA to provide the degree of strategic connectivity required to strengthen the position of sustainability concerns in the formulation of policies and planning. In particular, it defines the requisite principles and institutional conditions for using SEA as a tool for facilitating sustainability in the context of urban planning in Chinese cities. The research employs a primary case study design, and multiple data and analytical methods which have involved surveys, key informant interviews, secondary data and direct observation. SEA was introduced as part of the 2003 Chinese environmental impact assessment (EIA) law for use with government plans and programs at various levels. The incorporation of SEA into the master plan for city development in the city of Dalian was the first attempt at the use of SEA in any Chinese city and was designed to serve as a demonstration project for other cities to follow. However, the Dalian SEA case was not successful, highlighting the difficulty of facilitating sustainability goals and achieving integration with the planning process. The problems were complex but could be reduced to two major issues: lack of explicit guidelines or principles for the application of SEA, and fundamental institutional impediments. The research concluded that to increase the effectiveness of SEA application in China it is imperative to formulate a set of explicit and sustainability-based principles for SEA and reform the institutional arrangements for environmental assessment and planning, enabling the integration of SEA and planning processes.

Transportation by trucks plays a major role in North America’s economy. The growth of this industry will increase the loads on existing roads and highways and raises the possibility of overloaded vehicles, which causes significant damage to the pavement and consequently will reduce the lifespan of the roads. Weigh-in-motion (WIM) systems technology helps to address the challenge of overloaded vehicles. This technology provides traffic monitoring, collects data for pavement research and design, and improves the capacity of static weigh station operations. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about the behaviour of WIM sensors installed in different environments, which affects reliable and precise data gathering. More knowledge is required on proper installation procedures, pavement design for WIM systems, choice of sensor type for location, and calibration processes. This research is intended to explore the behaviour of WIM piezoelectric sensors under different loads and environmental conditions. Specifically, the effects of air and pavement temperature, and weight and speed of trucks are examined with respect to the estimation accuracy of WIM sensors. To accomplish this, three WIM systems composed of different piezoelectric transducers were installed at the CPATT test site at the Waste Management facility of the Region of Waterloo in 2007, and two WIM systems were installed between exits 238 and 250 on Highway 401 eastbound near Woodstock, Ontario. It was concluded that the output of the polymer piezoelectric sensor is influenced by temperature and weight factors but not by normally observed vehicle speed differences. While temperature can be compensated for, not enough information has been gathered yet does the same for weight factor. It should be noted that very low speeds (e.g. < 50 km/hr) result in significant errors for all the sensors, so that in congested sections WIM results should be interpreted accordingly. These results will be useful for investigating the effects of environmental conditions on other WIM systems and for predicting the responses of sensors in actual installation environments. This will assist in the recommendation of: (1) alternative and transparent calibration procedures for the WIM sensor systems, (2) and improved benefits of least expensive technology.

In Canada, interest in regional strategic environmental assessment as a framework for assessing cumulative environmental effects is growing. Strategic environmental assessment, and in particular regional strategic environmental assessment, is generally regarded as the preferred assessment framework within which to address cumulative effects due to its broad scale of assessment and its focus on influencing future development. However, very little research has been done to confront the challenges, either conceptually or methodologically, in operationalizing strategic environmental assessment at a regional scale and in assessing cumulative environmental effects in this regional and strategic context. This dissertation advances work in this area by defining a conceptual framework and generic methodology for regional strategic environmental assessment that deliberately integrates cumulative effects considerations.<p> The research methodology includes a literature review, framework and case reviews, and three sets of interviews with Canadian and international practitioners, academics, and administrators knowledgeable on strategic environmental assessment and cumulative effects assessment issues. The research results are reported in four manuscripts. The first manuscript presents a typology of current approaches to regional cumulative effects assessment. The second manuscript reviews lessons from recent attempts at regional-scale, strategically-focused environmental analysis in Canada that include an impact assessment component and explicit attention to cumulative environmental effects. The third manuscript presents a structured framework for regional strategic environmental assessment in Canada, and the fourth manuscript discusses conceptual and methodological challenges that accompany the integration of strategic environmental assessment and cumulative effects assessment.<p> Significant findings include that cumulative effects assessment does indeed represent a significant conceptual and methodological challenge in a strategic assessment context and that cumulative effects assessment in this context requires more than simply adding up direct effects. Further, this research indicates that the seminal contribution of regional strategic environmental assessment is to determine the pace and nature of future development in a region, including significant regional environmental thresholds, targets, and limits; and to inform decision makers of the broader, the slower-moving, the farther-reaching, and perhaps the more insidious currents of environmental change. Moving forward, there is a need to further develop and demonstrate approaches to cumulative effects assessment in a strategic context, develop a supportive legislative and regulatory framework for regional strategic environmental assessment in Canada, and define the unique contribution of regional strategic assessment in relation to regional planning and management.

Ecologist Tom Dale and Vernon Gill Carter Published a book ¡mTopsoil and Civilization¡n in 1955, There is a paragraph in the prolog¡G ¡uCivilized human always can temporarily control the environment mostly. Their main problem caused of the misconceiving that the temporary control can be forever. They misconceive that they are the ¡§dominator of the world¡¨, but don¡¦t realize the rule of the nature at all. Human no matter civilized or not, nevertheless, is the son not the master of nature. If they want to sustain and maintain the ecological environment, their behavior must follow the rule of nature. If they try to evade these rules, the consequence usually ruins the surrounding environment what nurture them. When the environment gets worst rapidly, their civilization declines too.¡v It seems to be a fate, like Morrie said in ¡mTuesday with Morrie¡n¡G¡uEvery one knows he will die, but nobody takes it as real.¡vHuman does not only treat his own life like this way, but also the environment what they survive and live in! From 1992, ¡¦Rome Club¡¦ published the book ¡mThe limit of growth¡n, the consciousness of environmental protection started to head up. Some issues like Ecology of commerce, Sustainable development, Land ethics, Deep ecology and Environmental economic came out one after one. Purely economic and efficient considering of design and production can¡¦t satisfy these kinds of demand. For this sake, International Standard Organization issued out the ISO-14000 series and accepted worldwide gradually. ISO-14040¡GLife Cycle Assessment¡Aevaluating the impact to the environment from material input, manufacturing, transportation, using, recycle, disposal, by other words--- ¡¥from the cradle to grave¡¦. LCA try to use quantitative concept to interpret the environmental impact or damage from human made product. It may provide environmental protection user a systematic thinking to distinguish which product is environmental amity product, which is not; also could be a stand for environment strategy. Applied on the production, it can be a good tool for ¡¥Green Design¡¦ thinking, to reduce the impact to the environment from every stage in production. This thesis is going to study the 6V4Ah Lead acid battery that used widely in the market. Quoting LCA¡¦s indications and SimaPro 4.0 software developed by Pre Consultants B.V. as the database and tools to evaluate the impact and damage to our environment. About the basic data bank, we adopt the local databank built by ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) for years and the data included in SimaPro software. Those are Pre4, PreNL, BUWAL250 and IDEMAT96. Following the analysis procedures as Classification, Normalization, Evaluation by both impact orientation method --- Eco-indicator 95 method and damage orientation method --- Eco-indicator 99 method to evaluate this product¡¦s LCA study. Further more, look forward to provide a potential evaluation way to evaluate and compare to other various batteries.

In an event of environmental impact assessment (EIA), encouraging public participation is particular important during the process of open deliberation attributed to the following reasons. First, people may contribute vital environment information to support decision making for the authority in charge. Secondly, through the process of participation, not only satisfying the right of "be aware" for people but establishing the consensus toward a feasible alternative in advance. In the past several years, Decision Support Systems (DSS), through the integration of human intelligence and software engineering, has been widely used to solve semi-structure or ill-structure problems. Nevertheless, DDS is designed for single user. In most situations involving many stockholders, a decision may not be made simply by a single person but by a group of people after reaching some agreement. It is therefore important to develop Group Decision Support System (GDSS) to deal with such problems. The current research employs the concept of GDSS and develops the prototype of a GDSS for promoting "public participation" in EIA. Such system fully integrates various techniques to cover "Delphi", "Certainty Factor", and "3D Geographic Information System (GIS)". "Delphi" is used as the mechanism to facilitate the reduction of dissentient view, while "Certainty Factor" offers an easy yet effective approach to evaluate public opinion under a multi-criteria decision making environment. Finally people can visualize the future landscape of all alternatives with the virtual scene generated by 3D GIS. To make the general public aware the EIA related information, the GDSS also takes full advantage of the Internet to deliver message in multimedia form. The case study to demonstrate the usage of such GDSS is the transportation project of building a sightseeing cross-harbor cable car between Mt. qi-hou and Mt. shou. Through using the GDSS by the stockholders, more people are willing to take part in EIA and thus put "public participation" in practice. In consequence, the authority in charge of EIA may make more appropriate decision in light of the results from public participation.

Thesis (PHD)--University of Montana, 2009. / Contents viewed on November 25, 2009. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. / Matthew J. Realff, Committee Member ; Farrokh Mistree, Committee Member ; Berdinus A. Bras, Committee Chair. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-195).