I detta arbete studeras hur vinterklimatet i Sverige kommer att skilja sig åt mellan perioderna 2071-2100 och 1971-2000, med avseende på parametrarna temperatur, nederbörd, vind, snödjup och snöutbredning. Klimatmodelldata (CORDEX) i upplösningen 12.5 km baserade på tre olika strålningsdrivningsscenarier (RCP-scenarier) behandlades i Matlab och modellerades över Sverige. För att analysera upplösningens betydelse tillhandahölls även data i upplösningen 50 km för en tioårsperiod. Scenariot RCP 8.5 kan ge så mycket som 10 grader varmare vintrar, med uppemot 50% mer nederbörd. För RCP 2.6 förändras nederbörden med -5 till 20%, och temperaturen ökar med 1-4 grader. Antalet dygn med nederbördstillfällen kommer att vara oförändrat oavsett RCP-scenario; istället kommer mängden nederbörd per tillfälle generellt att bli större. Detta bekräftas av antalet dygn med kraftig nederbörd, som kommer att öka med 20%, 37% respektive 68% för RCP 2.6, 4.5 respektive 8.5. Temperaturökningen blir mer påtaglig i norr än i söder. Vinden uppvisar inga tydliga mönster, vilket korresponderar med historiska observationer. Även RCP 2.6 innebär en förminskning av snödjup och -utbredning, vilket kraftigt förstärks med RCP 8.5. Dessa förändringar kommer bland annat att medföra ökade vintervattenflöden och större risk för laviner och översvämningar, och snöberoende näringslivsaktörer som exempelvis skidanläggningar kommer att drabbas hårt av förändringarna. Regionala klimatmodeller med grövre upplösningar kan inte illustrera lokala geografiska variationer, vilket har i särklass störst betydelse för nederbörden och snödjupet. / How the winter climate in Sweden will differ between the time periods 2071-2100 and 1971-2000 is reviewed in this work. The investigated parameters are temperature, precipitation, wind, snow depth and snow distribution. Climate model data (CORDEX) with the resolution 12.5 km based on three different representative concentration pathways (RCP scenarios) were processed in Matlab and projected over Sweden. For a thorough analysis of the significance of the regional model resolution, data with the resolution 50 km was provided for a ten year period. The RCP 8.5 scenario could implicate a 10 degree increase in temperature, and upto 50% more precipitation. For the RCP 2.6 scenario, the precipitation alters with -5 to 20%, and the temperature increases with 1-4 degrees. The number of days with precipitation events remain unaltered regardless of RCP scenario, instead the amount of precipitation in general increases for each precipitation event. This is verified when looking at the amount of days with heavy precipitation, which will increase with 20%, 37% and 68% for RCP 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5, respectively. The temperature change will be more substantial in the north than in the south. The wind does not show any distinct patterns, which corresponds with historical observations. Even RCP 2.6 implies a diminishment of snow depth and snow distribution, which drastically amplifies for RCP 8.5. These changes will among others bring about increased winter water flow and a bigger risk for avalanches and floodings. Snow dependent businesses, for instance ski resorts, will be heavily affected by the changes. Regional low resolution climate models cannot illustrate local geographical variations, which by far has the biggest importance for modelling precipitation and snow depth.

The purpose of the project is to determine the impact of solar cells and electrical vehicles on the future electricity grid and distribution network. Future electricity grids will be affected differently than it does today. Therefore, it is important to determine the impacts so that the current electricity distribution system can be developed and redesign to achieve the future demand. In Sweden, government has changed rules and laws in order to make it easier for private sector to invest in renewable energy sources. Our project focused on the impact of the solar cells and electric vehicles on the low voltage electricity distribution. Solar cells have become more popular than ever and that leads to many countries in utilizing their energy needs from solar and the same is going to happen here in Sweden. It is needed to find out how the impacts on the low voltage grids will be if many private individual install solar panels in their own homes and what will happen when they start to supply electricity, which is excess from the production of their solar cells, back to the grid? What should be done in order to maintain the electricity’s quality in term of voltage? Meanwhile, electric vehicle popularity rises every year, which means that electricity demand will rise proportionally with the number of electric cars in the country. Should something be done with the power supply to meet the power needs of electric cars? Is it possible to use the electrical car battery as a backup power? How electric vehicle charging’s behavior will impact on the low voltage? In this project, data and pictures has taken from different sources and consolidated for analysis purpose. This thesis contained information about solar radiation, solar cells, electric vehicles, and batteries, rules for installation of solar cells regulations, electricity grids, and electrical power quality, results of researching and eventual solutions for expected problems. / <p>Presentation har gjort med båda svenska och norska språket . </p>

Although targets for renewable energy exist in Sweden, developing wind energy has proven to be challenging for developers. This is due in part to the demands made by authorities for monetary amounts to be set aside to take care of wind turbine dismantling and site restoration costs at the end of their lifecycle. There has been a large degree of uncertainty surrounding the amounts being demanded and the level to which sites must be restored, partially due to a lack of guidelines. Coupled with ambiguity, there has been a tendency by authorities and developers to use figures from previous high court decisions and previous permit applications to project decommissioning costs for current applications.This thesis evaluates seven different wind farm decommissioning scenarios using a model developed to estimate future costs, with the turbine model and the quantity of turbines being the parameters that vary. The model uses data from numerous sources, including real case decommissioning projects and figures from an existing model that had already been used to forecast costs in Sweden. One of the assumptions of the model developed is that scrap metals in wind turbines will have a residual value when decommissioning occurs; this was not allowed for in a recent decision made by a county administrative board following an environmental high court decision. An argument is made to justify that a minimum scrap value for wind turbines should be considered, based on the findings of the model. A further case is made to allow for the security bonds to be paid over an extended period of time, considering the initial value of wind farms.The results of the model show that the turbine model has an impact on the decommissioning costs and the potential residual value that can be obtained. In addition, the quantity of the wind turbines has a considerable effect on the decommissioning costs. These results suggest that each wind development project should be treated on a case-by-case basis using a calculation-based approach when determining the cost for a security bond. Recommendations for future research include considering wind farm location in the model.

Impacts of Climate-responsive Controls and Land Usage on Regional Climate and Air Quality Marcus A. Trail 201 pages Directed by Dr. Armistead G. Russell Regional air quality impacts public health, visibility and ecosystem health, and is significantly affected by changes in climate, land use and pollutant emissions. Predictions of regional air quality responses to such changes can help inform policy makers in the development of effective approaches to both reduce greenhouse gases and improve air quality. However, major sources of uncertainty exist in predicting future air quality including limitations in the tools used to project future emissions, land use changes and uncertainties associated with predicting future climate. Recently, technical advances in downscaling global climate simulations to regional scales, and, the development of bottom-up operational tools used to forecast emissions have enhanced our ability to account for the complex interactions between population, socio-economic development, technological change, and federal and regional environmental policies. The results show that emissions reductions strategies will continue to play a vital role in improving air quality over the U.S. while CO2 emission reduction policies can have mixed positive and negative impacts on air quality. However, additional costs will be necessary to reach air quality goals due to climate change because deeper emission reductions will be required to compensate for a warmer climate, even if current efforts are predicted to show improvement. The results of this study also show that regional climate and O3 and aerosol concentrations are highly sensitive to reforestation and cropland conversion in the Southeast and these land use changes should be considered in air quality management plans.

No description available.

This study explored the nature of Future Session workshops in current Japan by identifying the motivations, conducting analysis from the point of view a deliberative democracy, and examining the potentials for developing future visions of society. Four workshops were targeted that dealt with a wide range of societal problems and commonly challenged existing societal structures. The study found that the workshops were motivated by the doubt over the current direction of the society, a demand for a crosscutting cooperation between different fields, and a need to foster proactive actors through participatory workshop processes. Accordingly, it is argued that “deliberative democracy of workshops” based on dialogue and collaboration rather than confrontational communication and competition constitutes a Japanese deliberative democracy. The study also shows that the created projects and processes of deliberation contained many critical perspectives towards the dominant societal structure and norms. Finally, it is concluded that the process of actualizing the projects should be reflected carefully and the potential of these methods depends on the overreaching objective of its use.

With ever-increasing pressures on limited water supplies in arid regions, water managers are forced to make critical decisions about the management of water resources - sometimes under considerable uncertainty. Given the large number of stresses on existing water systems, proper management requires the consideration of all different factors that may contribute to water use and consumption. As water management becomes more focused on the issue of sustainability, processes traditionally thought of as non-water-related and irrelevant to water management are now becoming very pertinent. In particular, the consequences of changes in climate, population, land use, and various types of water usage (agricultural, environmental, domestic, and urban) are of considerable interest.With increasing uncertainty about the future, conventional methods of decision-analysis are increasingly unable to suitably quantify the future impacts of policy decisions, and they are also unable to provide a clear contrast between impacts of historical policy decisions and possible future management decisions. An analytical approach that is sensitive to qualitative effects of water-related decision-making will therefore be more useful towards improving management practices. Scenario development is one such tool that can be used to examine future implications of water management, and thereby shed light on the potential consequences of implementing different operational and institutional policies. The objective of this work is to propose a formal scenario development methodology applicable to water resources management issues. This framework is applied and evaluated on a regional scale for the U.S. southwest and on a local scale for the state of Arizona.The research presented here is comprised of several components; (i) a review of existing literature on scenarios, scenario studies, and scenario applications; (ii) a retrospective analysis of water management-related scenario applications that examines the implications of scenario-influenced strategies previously implemented in Arizona, (iii) the adoption of a formal scenario development approach for water resource issues within the arid and semi-arid regions of the U.S., utilizing an example application in the Upper San Pedro Basin in southern Arizona, and (iv) a comprehensive application of the scenario development process to the Verde River Watershed in northern Arizona through a simplified small-scale scenario case study approach.

The potential for electronic media in the newspaper business is interesting. The research about electronic media will bring demands on new thinking in developing new value, income generating services and related business models. An example of electronic media is electronic paper. This paper explores the added value and payment methods for the e-paper. We have conducted future workshops with our target group the reader. On the basis of future workshops this paper shows that interaction, individualization, improved selection and content, environment friendly and saving capabilities are necessities for the e-paper to be successful. We suggest that the e-paper must be more than just an online newspaper for people to buy it.

Despite the world-changing success of the Internet, shortcomings in its routing and forwarding system have become increasingly apparent. One symptom is an escalating tension between users and providers over the control of routing and forwarding of packets: providers understandably want to control use of their infrastructure, and users understandably want paths with sufficient quality-of-service (QoS) to improve the performance of their applications. As a result, users resort to various “hacks” such as sending traffic through intermediate end-systems, and the providers fight back with mechanisms to inspect and block such traffic. To enable users and providers to jointly control routing and forwarding policies, recent research has considered various architectural approaches in which provider- level route determination occurs separately from forwarding. With this separation, provider-level path computation and selection can be provided as a centralized service: users (or their applications) send path queries to a path service to obtain provider- level paths that meet their application-specific QoS requirements. At the same time, providers can control the use of their infrastructure by dictating how packets are forwarded across their network. The separation of routing and forwarding offers many advantages, but also brings a number of challenges such as scalability. In particular, the path service must respond to path queries in a timely manner and periodically collect topology information containing load-dependent (i.e., performance) routing information. We present a new design for a path service that makes use of expensive pre- computations, parallel on-demand computations on performance information, and caching of recently computed paths to achieve scalability. We demonstrate that, us- ing commodity hardware with a modest amount of resources, the path service can respond to path queries with acceptable latency under a realistic workload. The ser- vice can scale to arbitrarily large topologies through parallelism. Finally, we describe how to utilize the path service in the current Internet with existing Internet applica- tions.

A common feature of emerging future Internet architectures is the ability for applications to select the path, or paths, their packets take between a source and destination. Unlike the current Internet architecture where routing protocols find a single (best) path between a source and destination, future Internet routing protocols will present applications with a set of paths and allow them to select the most appropriate path. Although this enables applications to be actively involved in the selection of the paths their packets travel, the huge number of potential paths and the need to know the current network conditions of each of the proposed paths will make it virtually impossible for applications to select the best set of paths, or just the best path. To tackle this problem, we introduce a new Network Path Advising Service (NPAS) that helps future applications choose network paths. Given a set of possible paths, the NPAS service helps applications select appropriate paths based on both recent path measurements and end-to-end feedback collected from other applications. We describe the NPAS service abstraction, API calls, and a distributed architecture that achieves scalability by determining the most important things to monitor based on actual usage. By analyzing existing traffic patterns, we will demonstrate it is feasible for NPAS to monitor only a few nodes and links and yet be able to offer advice about the most important paths used by a high percentage of traffic. Finally, we describe a prototype implementation of the NPAS components as well as a simulation model used to evaluate the NPAS architecture.