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.

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.

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.

Activities, conducted in the logistics sector, contribute to pollute the world. Especially, road transportation contaminates the environment with the release of exhaust emissions. Transport volumes as well as the proportion of the road sector are constantly rising, which intensifies its environmental impacts. In order to determine the main culprits of pollution, Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) are used. These concepts are mostly ambiguous, fuzzy and hard to present in a comprehensive way. The main purpose of the present thesis is to develop an analysis in order to investigate the environmental impacts of road transportation along a certain supply chain. An academic resource was used as database, in order to develop and test an exhauste mission calculation in cooperation with a case company. Besides CO2, this assessment also focuses on the measurement of other exhauste missions like Nox, PM or CO. Furthermore, economic factors like, costs caused per transport are calculated. Aspects, like capacity utilization, the use of environmentally friendly tires or eco-friendly driving styles, are included in the analysis. These factors influence fuel consumption and thus the final production of exhaust emissions. A detailed description of each factor and calculation step is illustrated in this thesis. Due to a high complexity of transportation, this analysis is limited to road transportation. The fundament of the analysis builds the categorization of crafts due to the Euro standards. Hence, just transports conducted with crafts, manufactured within the European Union, can be evaluated. A validation test and in-depth interviews were conducted in order to approve the practicability of the developed assessment. During this process, strengths and weaknesses of the analysis were identified. Finally, the analysis is critically examined by showing its application constraints as well as prospective development opportunities. An enlargement, to include other transport modes, material handling activities in order to measure impacts during intermodal transportation along a whole transportation chain, is a prospect outlook.

In this thesis, different ways to evaluate social business are compared and discussed.The relatively new concept “social business” is used to describe a private sector enterprise, the purpose of which is not primarily to maximise profit but to achieve a social mission. However, in doing so, it needs to be sustainable in financial terms, and this means that sufficient profitability is a necessary condition. (Environmental sustainability is another important prerequisite, which is not discussed in depth here).Assessing the success of a social business, it is therefore necessary to evaluate both the social impact and the financial viability. This means, on one hand, using appropriate evaluation methods that have mainly been developed for the public sector and the civil society. Such methods are based on unequal power relations requiring accountability – a concept not normally used in the private sector, where funding is based on a voluntary exchange of money for goods or services. On the other hand, not all traditional methods for assessing performance in a private sector company are suitable for determining financial sustainability in a social business. Nevertheless, existing methods should be used where appropriate.Among the findings are:- the importance of the local context and particular features, which makes comparisons between different social businesses difficult, and which necessitates adaptions of assessment methods- that several financial indicators, used for for-profit business, may also be useful for social business (especially those related to revenue trends and liquidity). However such indicators are based on accounting (history) rather than a forward-looking analysis of the business environment, and may not be fully comparable.- that the main purpose of impact evaluation is the need to improve operations, but also to enhance legitimacy among stake-holders and – to some extent – regulators and prospective investors. Stake-holder involvement is therefore normally an advantage.- that methods that build on monetising outcomes and impacts (for example Social Return on Investment) are normally less appropriate than models that use non-monetary forms for publishing evaluation results, eg. anecdotal analyses- that with the exception of evaluations done by the academia to increase knowledge, available resources will normally not be sufficient to carry out fully fledged external evaluations using methods to establish a counterfactual situation.The development of social business also challenges traditional economic assumptions of the profit maximising individual through introducing such concepts as solidarity, social capital and citizenship. The fact that in several ways, social business crosses the borderline between on one hand the private sector and on the other hand public sector and civil society makes it necessary for representatives from many different academic fields to cooperate closely in future research: economics, business administration, political and social scientists etc.

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.

Small warm-water streams in the southeastern United States experience significant differences in temperature, as well as changes in physical parameters due to seasonal fluctuations. It has been generally thought that fish assemblage patterns change as a direct result of these seasonal variations. This study was designed to determine the effects of variable flow regimes on fish species composition, diversity, and abundance. Eight small warm-water streams in four national parks (Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Fort Donelson National Battlefield, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, and Russell Cave National Monument) were sampled May-June 2005 for the summer trials, October-November 2005 for the fall trials, and April 2006 for the spring trials. All trials were conducted when water levels and flows were at normal seasonal stages. Fish populations were determined by electrofishing a 100-m reach at each site. Physical parameters including temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH, and flow rate were also measured at each site. From summer to fall, the majority of the streams decreased in flow until temporary pools were formed. The lack of flow caused increased temperatures, decreased dissolved oxygen, and increased conductivity levels. As a direct result, overall fish abundance and diversity values decreased. From fall to spring, all the streams increased in flow, which brought back the riffle to pool habitat sequences. Dissolved oxygen levels increased, conductivity levels decreased, and temperatures became more stable. As a result, overall fish abundance and diversity values increased. Results indicated that fish assemblage patterns in the four parks did change as a direct result of the seasonal variations in habitat and water quality.

I staden finns ingen socialdioxid. Detta sammanfattar den underliggande problemställningen som har legat till grund för hela arbetet. Hur ska vi mäta social hållbarhet och jämställa dess faktorer mot ekologi och ekonomi? Vi står inför en rad stora sociala utmaningar i och med den rådande bostadsbristen och urbaniseringen, detta kräver att vi vågar testa nya metoder i stadsbyggandet. Men hur ska vi utvärdera, mäta och breda plats för det sociala perspektivet? Eller måste vi bara tvingas inse att sociala konsekvenser är ”omätbara”? Hållbarhet som begrepp har många gånger avfärdats för att vara allt för öppet och vitt. Därför krävs det metoder för att definiera hållbarhet och gör begreppet konkret och arbetbart i planeringsskedet. Detta har i Sverige bland annat gjorts för den ekologiska hållbarheten genom miljöbalken och kravet på miljöbedömningar, som sedan kan utmynna i en miljökonsekvensbeskrivning (MKB). För den sociala hållbarheten har det inte på sammasätt utvecklats några verktyg. På senare tid har dock den sociala hållbarheten blivit en allt större fråga. Till exempel har Göteborg genom projektet ”Social hållbar utveckling år 2020” tagit fram en kunskapsmatris för bedömning av social hållbarhet i planeringen. Ett antal mindre kommuner, däribland Gällivare, har tagit fram så kallade sociala konsekvensbeskrivningar (SKB) som är ett verktyg för att konceptualisera den sociala hållbarheten i planeringen. Men hur fungerar egentligen sociala konsekvensbeskrivningar i praktiken och hur kan de integreras i planerings-och gestaltningsprocessen? I arbetet diskuteras begreppet sociala konsekvensbeskrivningar och dess förhållande till det sociala hållbarhetsbegreppet samt vad sociala konsekvenser egentligen innebär. Vidare diskuteras även för-och nackdelar av konceptualisering genom framförallt checklistor och designprinciper. Arbetet omfattas av en generell forsknings-och kunskapsöversikt, samt en fallstudie över Gällivares arbete med social hållbarhet genom strategiska dokument och SKB. Slutligen översätts teorin och analyserna till ett planförslag med fokus på att stärka den sociala hållbarheten i Gällivare.  I arbetet konstateras bland annat att sociala konsekvensbeskrivningar ännu är ett svagt begrepp ur en svensk kontext. Begreppet har inte slagit rot på samma sätt som sitt syskon, MKB, och detta skapar en begreppsförvirring som påverkar SKB-begreppet negativt. För att gå vidare krävs det att vi kan enas om ett begrepp för att förflytta diskussionen från: ”Vad betyder SKB?” till att istället fråga oss ”Hur ska SKB användas för komplettera den övriga planprocessen och konceptualisera sociala konsekvenser på bästa sätt?” För att den sociala hållbarheten ska bli en självklar del av processen krävs det att vi kan enas om ramverk och riktlinjer för att möjliggöra för bredare samverkan och diskussion.

Many planners and researchers pay attention to the potentials of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a planning method. The EIA of a local land use plan or comprehensive plan becomes effective under the Mini-NEPA or State Environmental Policy Act. In this context, this study focuses on the NEPA based EIA of local land use plans in order to examine its effectiveness as part of the planning process. Based on the assumption that systematic environmental assessment will ensure the effectiveness and the quality of a local land use plan, this study evaluate a local land use plan EIA process of California with the quality and effectiveness criteria. / text

This report presents findings from a social assessment of siting a low­ level radioactive waste storage facility in Michigan. The research focused specifically on how people perceive themselves to be affected by the proposed facility and the degree of community support for and opposition to the facility. Social assessment research in the LLRW project consisted of a telephone survey of Michigan residents and an in-depth ethnographic survey of residents in the tri-state area of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Findings from these studies can aid in the development and implementation of a social monitoring program and in the design of community-based measures to mitigate unwanted social impacts.