Water and environmental resources which provide opportunities for households are threatened by human activities that leads to pollution. The research objectives were to understand the contribution water makes to the livelihoods of urban and peri-urban households; the factors influencing perceptions, attitudes and behaviour in relation to surface water and environmental quality, and measures for promoting community participation in water and environmental management. Ten communities were selected in Accra and its surrounding communities to reflect different levels of infrastructure provision for the study. Four focus group discussions were held in each community, with a mixed group, men, women, and young adults. Issues which emerged were investigated further in a structured household questionnaire survey involving 443 respondents. Key informant interviews were held with the most important government and non government regulatory, research and service provision departments and organizations in water, sanitation, and the environment sectors. Water samples from some of the selected communities were analyzed in the laboratory to compare with respondents’ perceptions. Among the households surveyed, 59.14% were engaged in a water dependent occupation which contributed over 80% of household income in some cases. The study also found that perceptions of water and environment are influenced by the existing social and cultural setting. There were common concepts which helped groups to interpret and make meaning from their environment. The prospects for successful water and environmental interventions can be enhanced through an understanding of this local knowledge and perceptions. There was no clear relationship between attitudes and environmental behaviour or between attitudes and socioeconomic status. Actual behaviour was influenced by ability to pay for services, their availability and the influence of shared community norms. Although citizen participation in water and environmental management decision making is very limited at present, community collective action holds good prospects for future interventions in water and environmental management.

Electrospinning was examined for its potential to create functional materials. Three distinct electroactive materials were electrospun into fibers and fiber mats and then characterized with the intent of determining their utility in aerospace and biomedical applications such as micro-air vehicles and the cardiovascular system. Electrospun Graft Elastomers demonstrated potential as actuators, as electromechanical strain testing showed comparable response to the film form of this material. Further improvement of electroactive response was realized with high dielectric inclusions and fiber orientation. Electrospin processing imparted piezoelectric properties to the fibers of poly(vinylidene fluoride). Differential scanning calorimetry and infrared spectroscopy indicated a degree of control over crystalline phase in poly(vinylidene fluoride) fibers based on electrospinning conditions. An increase in dielectric constant in the direction of fiber orientation proved that electrospinning also caused alignment of single-walled carbon nanotubes within the fibers. Ultem®/aligned single-walled carbon nanotube fiber nanocomposites were also fabricated; these showed evidence of enhanced piezoelectric strain response relative to fibers composed of the matrix alone. Thermal and static mechanical testing of all three types of fibers revealed no significant findings that would limit their use in abovementioned applications. Extract biocompatibility tests did not indicate severe adverse reaction of L929 mouse fibroblast cells to fiber mats for either Graft Elastomers or poly(vinylidene fluoride). These contributions prove that functional electroactive materials can be produced utilizing electrospinning as the processing method. This technique is simpler and cheaper to carry out, and resulting fiber mats showed comparable or improved properties and performance compared to other physical forms of the same materials.

Research on the incorporation of environmental considerations into product design is now into its third decade. A recognised way of reducing environmental impacts is through the adoption of DfE tools into the design process. These design tools are intended to assist the designer when attempting environmental design. The potential benefit of DfE tools is fundamental to the success of future design and manufacture. However, utilization by design specialists remains limited. Investigation of the structure and internal mechanisms present in DfE tools has painted a clearer picture for why some tools work well and why others do not. By understanding what makes some tools better than others it has been possible to distil the fundamental features and characteristics from the tools that perform the best, and develop the next generation DfE tool framework. Verification has been possible through quantitative analysis and user testing using a prototype tool, which exploits the framework. The increase in effectiveness could potentially reduce the time taken to conduct an environmental assessment of a product and therefore lead to tools with improved appeal, potentially improving adoption by designers in industry. The significance of this study is that it will lead to a better understanding of how designers interact with DFE tools and methods. By understanding this relatively unknown aspect of DFE tools it will be possible to design future tools to be more effective and useful for the designer.

The speciation of trace metals plays a very important role in conditioning their biogeochemical cycles in the marine system. Their species are found to be strongly related to organic matters such as humic acids (HA) and fulvic acids (FA). This thesis aims to develop appropriate techniques to improve our understanding of the speciation of some trace metals, mainly in marine waters. Lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and chromium (Cr) which are widely used in industry were analytzed. The concentration of lead in uncontaminated seawater is between 10 and 100 pM, whilst in coastal waters it is higher at up to low nanomolar levels. Little is known about the chemical speciation of lead since it is difficult to be determined at picomolar levels. The work in this dissertation was to develop a suitable electrode and procedure to determine lead in seawater, with the objective that the electrode could be applied for in-situ measurement (without reagents) and for speciation. Several electrodes and materials were tested, including a solid bismuth rod and different microwire materials. Vibration was used to enhance mass transport, instead of solution stirring, to decrease detection limits and facilitate in-situ monitoring. The bismuth electrode was found to be suitable for monitoring lead in coastal waters: it is mercury-free and therefore environmentally friendly, but insufficiently sensitive for oceanic lead concentrations. Comparison of microwires of carbon, gold and silver showed that all of these bare electrodes give a signal for lead, but they suffer variable interference from cadmium, although this is minor if the cadmium concentration is lower than lead. A large improvement was obtained by coating the electrodes with mercury, which gave good peak resolution between cadmium and lead, and good sensitivity. The carbon and gold electrodes had good reproducibility and sensitivity when the mercury was renewed for each measurement. Once coated with mercury, the silver electrode formed amalgam with the silver which could not be completely removed. This electrode was thus not suitable to be used as a renewable mercury film electrode. However, as a permanently amalgamated silver electrode, it was found to have good sensitivity for lead, good separation from cadmium, and was stable for long time usage. This electrode, the silver amalgam microwire (SAM) electrode, was selected for further speciation study of Pb in oceanic waters. Optimum conditions for using the SAM electrode for trace lead detection in seawater involve the use of conditioning potentials. The limit of detection for lead was 4 pM lead in acidified seawater and 12 pM lead in seawater of pH 8. The higher limit of detection at pH 8 is due to the inorganic speciation at that pH. The SAM electrode was successfully used for pseudopolarography of lead to determine its organic complexation. This method was calibrated using model compounds and applied for the first time to estuarine, coastal and oceanic samples at natural concentrations of Pb. It was found that lead occurs mostly as a labile (reactive, organic) species, with a smaller fraction as a strongly organically bound species. The SAM electrode was also tested for chromium analysis using cathodic stripping voltammetry (CSV) in natural waters. Its detection limit is as good as the mercury drop electrode but reduces consumption of mercury.

Zero valent iron nanoparticles (nZVI) are being used in environmental remediation of contaminants due to their reducing properties. Toxic chemicals such as hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) are released into environmental waters from industrial effluent and are capable of triggering life threatening diseases in humans. Solution phase Cr(VI) has can be converted to less harmful trivalent chromium (Cr(III)) using nZVI, which decreases the oxidation state. Cr(III) binds to iron and can be removed, thereby decreasing the concentration of solution phase Cr(VI). The nZVI have a high specific surface area though aggregate in solution which decreases specific surface area. In this study rhamnolipid surfactant capped nZVI of 50 nm were synthesized and were compared to nZVI without any incorporated surfactant using various characterization methods. At 10mg/L rhamnolipid incorporated nZVI and maintained a core size of 50 nm whilst raw nZVI z-average diameter increases from 341 nm to 1993 nm forming micron sized nZVI aggregates. It was determined that 1 gram of micro sized nZVI was able to convert 3 mg of Cr(VI) whilst 1 gram of nZVI was able to convert 36 mg in the same time period indicating that rhamnolipid was able to disperse particles and increase efficiency of the reaction.

Thesis aims to assess recent trends in banking, focusing mainly on the marketing mix. While processing the thesis, the recent developments, which have a significant impact on modern trends in financial markets, are taken into account. The author analyze marketing approaches, financial statements, customer composition and other factors present in the GE Money Bank, a. s. Findings are formulated as recommendations for the marketing of GE Money Bank, a. s.

Accurate urban water demand forecasting plays a key role in the planning and design of municipal water supply infrastructure. The reliable prediction of water demand is challenging for water companies, specifically when considering the implications of climate change (Zubaidi et al., 2018). Several studies have documented that weather variables drive water consumption in the short-term, and it enhances the accuracy of the prediction model when it is combined with socio-economic factors. However, the impact of climate change on the municipal water demand has yet to be challenged. To surmount this challenge, more research work is needed to accurately estimate the required quantity of water with increasing water demands. Recently, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been found to be an innovative approach to predict water demand. This PhD study aims to develop a novel methodology to forecast the impact of climate change on municipal water demands for a long-term time series based on the baseline period 1980-2010. It should be highlighted that, based on our knowledge, this is the first study of substantial duration, based on data collected from 1980-2010, which focuses on the associations between monthly climate change and municipal water consumption. A new approach is therefore proposed to quantifying municipal water demands through the assessment of climatic factors, using a combination of a Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) technique, three hybrid computational intelligence algorithms and an ANN model. These hybrid algorithms include a Lightning Search Algorithm (LSA-ANN), a Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA-ANN) and Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO-ANN). The SSA technique is adopted to decompose the time series of water consumption and climate variables to detect the stochastic signal for each time series. In the same context, the hybrid algorithms are used to find the best value of learning rate coefficient and the number of neurons in both hidden layers of the ANN model. Based on the performance of each hybrid algorithm, the most accurate and reliable water demand forecast model will be selected and used for estimating future water consumption. The considered environments of this study are applied in Australia and the United States from America for mitigating the uncertainty associated with the geographic location (the data of the United States of America was used to support the reliability of developing the municipal water demands prediction model). Furthermore, the Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG) model is utilised to simulate future climate factors over three periods (2011-2030, 2046-2065 and 2080-2099) based on the B1, A1B and A2 emission scenarios and seven General Circulation Models (GCMs). The future projection of these climate factors is applied directly to the impact model of water consumption to obtain the projected municipal water demand for different future periods and different greenhouse emission scenarios. The principal findings of this research are the following: from the model perspective, 1) the SSA is a powerful technique when used to remove the effect of socio-economic factors and noise, and detect the stochastic signal time series for water consumption. 2) The ANN model has better performance in term of optimising the correlation between observed and predicted water consumption when using the (LSA-ANN) algorithm. 3) The evaluation of the ANN model (using a validation data set) for Melbourne and Columbia Cities gives a correlation coefficient of 0.96 and 0.95, and the root mean square errors are 0.025 and 0.016 respectively. These findings indicate the capability of the proposed model to predict water demands with high accuracy in different continents. 4) The high performance of LARS-WG model results are found to be appropriate for the simulation of future climate variables. 5) The harmonisation between future monthly water demand (for the periods 2011-2030, 2046-2065 and 2080-2099) and stochastic signals of climate variables, relative to baseline period 1980-2010, emphasises the reliability of the present methodology. However, from the water demand perspective, the water percentage demand (WPD) are likely to rise in winter, drop in summer and fluctuate in both spring and autumn seasons for all periods and under all greenhouse emission scenarios. The results of WPD distribute between -3.5% and 3% for all periods and emission scenarios. The A2 scenario shows the highest and lowest values of WPDs compared to the A1B and B1 scenarios, in particular, in the 3rd period. The mean of seasonal WPD values shows that there is no dominant scenario as the best or the worst case of water demand over all future periods. The highest amount of seasonal demand happens in winter (A2 scenario, 3rd period), and the lowest amount of seasonal demand occurs in autumn (A1B scenario, 3rd period). In conclusion, this study facilitates the conception of the impact of climate change on municipal water demand from the baseline period 1980-2010.

Les matériaux (Si)GeSn sont très prometteurs pour les composants optiques sur puce fonctionnant dans le Moyen Infra-Rouge (MIR). Lors de cette thèse de doctorat, j’ai étudié le Dépôt Chimique en Phase Vapeur d’alliages GeSn. L’épitaxie basse température de Ge pur, de Ge dopé phosphore et d’alliages GeSi a tout d’abord été explorée. L’utilisation du digermane (Ge2H6) au lieu du germane (GeH4) nous a permis d’augmenter considérablement la vitesse de croissance du germanium à des températures en dessous de425 °C. Des concentrations très importantes en atome de P électriquement actifs ont été atteintes à 350 °C, 100 Torr en chimie Ge2H6 + PH3 (au maximum 7.5x1019 cm-3). Nous avons par la suite combiné le Ge2H6 avec le disilane (Si2H6) ou le dichlorosilane (SiH2Cl2) afin d’étudier la cinétique de croissance du GeSi à 475 °C, 100 Torr. Des concentrations de Ge définitivement plus élevées (77-82%) et une meilleure qualité de surface ont été obtenues avec le SiH2Cl2. Finalement, la croissance basse température d’alliages GeSn a été étudiée dans notre bâti d’épitaxie industriel 200 mm. Le digermane (Ge2H6) et le tétrachlorure d'étain (SnCl4) ont été utilisés pour explorer la cinétique de croissance et les mécanismes de relaxation des contraintes du GeSn. Une large gamme de concentrations en Sn, i.e. 6-16%, a été sondée et ces points de fonctionnement utilisés pour épitaxier des couches épaisses de GeSn partiellement relaxées. Nous avons ainsi mis en évidence l’intérêt d’utiliser une structure dite en escalier, en termes de qualité cristalline et de morphologie de surface. Un tel empilement, avec 16% de Sn dans sa partie supérieure, a montré une structure de bande directe et a conduit à une émission laser (dans des micro-disques) à une longueur d’onde de 3.1 µm. Ce laser a fonctionné jusqu’à 180 K et a un seuil de 377 kW/cm² à 25K. / (Si)GeSn is very promising for use in Mid Infra-Red (MIR) group-IV optical components on chip. During this PhD, I have studied the Reduced Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition of GeSn alloys. The very low temperature epitaxy of pure Ge, heavily phosphorous doped Ge and Ge-rich SiGe alloys have first of all been investigated. Using digermane (Ge2H6) instead of germane (GeH4) enabled us to dramatically increase the Ge growth rate at temperatures 425 °C and lower. Very high electrically active P concentrations were obtained at 350 °C, 100 Torr with a Ge2H6 + PH3 chemistry (at most 7.5x1019 cm-3). We have then combined digermane with disilane (Si2H6) or dichlorosilane (SiH2Cl2) in order to study the GeSi growth kinetics at 475 °C, 100 Torr. Definitely higher Ge concentrations (77-82%) and smoother surfaces have been obtained with SiH2Cl2. We have then explored the low temperature epitaxy of high Sn content GeSn alloys in our 200 mm industrial RP-CVD tool. Digermane (Ge2H6) and tin tetrachloride (SnCl4) were used to investigate the GeSn growth kinetics and strain relaxation mechanisms. Large range of Sn concentrations, i.e. in the 6-16% range, was probed and data points used to grow thick, partially relaxed GeSn layers. The benefits of using Step-Graded structures, in terms of crystalline quality and surface morphology, was conclusively demonstrated for thick GeSn layers with high Sn contents. Such a stack, with 16% of Sn in the top part, was direct bandgap and led to a laser operation (in micro-disks) up to 180 K at an emission wavelength of 3.1 µm and with a lasing threshold of 377 kW/cm² at 25K.

This thesis analyses heat health risk spatially in Birmingham (UK) via a combination of remote sensing and GIS techniques, including urban influences which are not generally considered in heat risk assessments or climate change projections. The world’s urban population is growing rapidly, and the risk of extreme heat to human health has been highlighted by recent events such as the 2003 heatwave in Europe, where mortality rates significantly increased. This thesis presents a methodology using satellite data to quantify the surface urban heat island of Birmingham at 1 km resolution, with results showing extreme events are much warmer (\(\sim\)5°C) than average conditions (\(\sim\)2°C). This urban heat island data is combined with social data in a spatial risk assessment, illustrating that many vulnerable people live in areas of increased heat risk. A custom collection of ground based sensors is utilised to investigate the relationship between surface and air temperatures, finding air temperatures are warmer than LST measurements at night. Then UK Climate Projections 2009 are used to explore the influence of the urban heat island on climate projections in Birmingham, showing that changes could be large (90% increase in minimum temperature under 2080s extreme scenarios).

This thesis investigates the impact of precipitation on the UK motorway network, with the aim of determining how speed, flow and accidents are affected. Climate change impact assessments require detailed information regarding the impact of weather in the current (baseline) climate and so this thesis seeks to address gaps in knowledge of current precipitation impacts to better inform future climate impact assessments. This thesis demonstrates that whilst precipitation does impact on traffic speeds, there is no universal significant single factor relationship. Indeed, a key threshold is identified at 0 mm hr-1 – the fastest speeds occur when there is no precipitation and speeds immediately decrease at the onset of precipitation. More detailed findings indicate the impact can be detected in both speed and maximum flow across much of the network as well as a downward reduction in the overall speed – flow relationship. In addition to speed flow, the impact of precipitation on road traffic accidents was also investigated. Fifteen percent of accidents in the UK occur in wet weather. Precipitation related accidents are shown to have a prolonged impact on the road network and can continue to cause a decrease in traffic speed and flow for up to three hours afterwards. With increased instances of heavy precipitation predicted as a result of climate change, these findings highlight the subsequent impact on journey speeds, travel times, traffic flows and the associated economic costs.