[Abstract]: The disposal of animal waste has become a problem in many parts of the world due to the rapid growth in the number and the size of intensive animal industries. Safe waste disposal sites are rarely available and the relocation and/or treatment of animal waste is seldom economically viable. The reuse of animal waste for energy recovery and re-feeding is also not popular. Animal waste is a valuable source of plant nutrients and a very good soil conditioner, and has been commonly applied as fertiliser to agricultural fields. However, due to the increasing oversupply of animal waste in recent years, it has often been applied in excess to the agricultural fields. Excessive application of animal waste, without due consideration of its implications, is a serious concern. The run-off and leaching losses of nutrients from the fields fertilised with animal waste have contributed significantly to the eutrophication and toxic blue-green algae blooms in surface water systems and nitrification of ground water systems. It has also led to nutrient imbalances in the soils and odour pollution to the surrounding communities. The animal waste, which is a valuable source of plant nutrients, has thus become both an economic and environmental burden, and there is a need to develop a strategy for its sensible use as a fertiliser in agricultural fields. Sensible use of animal waste involves the consideration of all the agricultural, environmental, social, and economical limitations. A rational method of achieving this is to restrict the use of animal waste to sites suitable for such uses, identify areas where it can be relocated and applied economically, limit the application rates to a safe level, and observe appropriate manure management practices. This study addressed each of these components by developing a comprehensive manure application plan (MAP) for the site-specific use of animal waste as fertiliser in agricultural fields. Various geographic information systems (GIS) based techniques, including a weighted linear combination model and map algebra based cartographic modelling, were employed to achieve the goal. The appropriateness of the existing techniques and procedures were evaluated and modified to meet the current input requirements. New methods of analysis were devised as necessary. The Westbrook sub-catchment of the Condamine River catchment in south-east Queensland was selected as the study area. The sub-catchment covers 24,903 hectares and contains 39 intensive animal industries. The catchment is also a part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which has been suffering from toxic blue green algae blooms recurrently since 1991. This study identified that only about one-fifth of the sub-catchment area is suitable for animal waste application. Depending on the method of site suitability analysis and the number of input factors used the suitable area ranged between 16 and 22 percent. This comparatively small area is mainly due to the presence of a large proportion of non-agricultural areas in the sub-catchment. The suitable areas were also found to have various degrees of suitability for waste application. However, the degree of site suitability was affected by the number of input factors used in the analysis, the weighting of the factors, and the method of factor attribute standardisation. Conventional methods of weighting input factors were found to be cumbersome and not particularly suitable. Hence, this study developed a new ‘objective oriented comparison’ method of factor weighting. Standardisation of input factors using a continuous, rather than discrete, classification (ie fuzzy set) method was found to be more consistent in degree of suitability determination. The discrete classification of factor attributes into classes of different numbers and sizes, and the weighting of classes to a sum of one, were identified as a limitation in using this standardisation method. A new ‘weight adjustment’ method was devised and demonstrated to reduce factor-weighting biases. The suitable sites, degree of site suitability, and other relevant spatial and non-spatial information were processed within a GIS framework to develop a comprehensive manure application plan. The inherently high presence of available phosphorus in the soils of the study area was recognised and the P2O5 content in the manure was used as the basis for determining manure application rates. A complimentary nitrogen supply map was also generated. Manure management practices applicable to the areas with a lower degree of suitability were also suggested.

<p>The problem of increasing eutrophication encouraged the Baltic States to implement new measures, which would help to decrease the nutrient load into the Baltic Sea. Constructed wetlands are considered as one of the possible solutions to the problem of nutrient leakage from agricultural areas in Sweden.</p><p>The aim of this study was to identify the best wetland locations in the Lake Ringsjön basin (in southern Sweden, Scania) using Land Score System (LSS) based on Geographic Information System (GIS). The required area of wetland was calculated on the base of average daily discharge in the whole basin. Next, the possible wetland sites were compared with the location of major nitrogen leakage sources (municipalities, and agriculture). The scenario, which came out from the implemented model (the wetland area required for each sub basin in the Lake Ringsjön basin), was compared to the two scenarios investigated by Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), where wetlands covered 0,4 and 2% of the total cropland area in the Lake Ringsjön basin.</p><p>The result shows that the second SMHI’s scenario relates in some sub basins to the required wetland area calculated in my model. However, in some cases the wetland area seems to be underestimated.</p>

<p>Effects of functioning transportation infrastructure are receiving more and more environmental and social concern nowadays. Nevertheless, preliminary corridor plans are usually developed on the basis of technical and economic criteria exclusively. By the time of environmental impact assessment (EIA), which succeeds, relocation is practically impossible and only preventative measures can be applied.</p><p>This paper proposes a GIS-based method of delimiting motorway corridor and integrating social, environmental and economic factors into the early stages of planning. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques are used to assess all possible alternatives. GIS-held weighted shortest path algorithm enables to locate the corridor. The evaluation criteria are exemplary. They include nature conservation, buildings, forests and agricultural resources, and soils. Resulting evaluation surface is divided into a grid of cells, which are assigned suitability scores derived from all evaluation criteria. Subsequently, a set of adjacent cells connecting two pre-specified points is traced by the least-cost path algorithm. The best alternative has a lowest total value of suitability scores.</p><p>As a result, the proposed motorway corridor is routed from origin to destination. It is afterwards compared with an alternative derived by traditional planning procedures. Concluding remarks are that the location criteria need to be adjusted to meet construction</p><p>requirements as well as analysis process to be automated. Nevertheless, the geographic information system and the embedded shortest path algorithm proved to be well suited for preliminary corridor location analysis. Future research directions are sketched.</p>

<p>Waste management is a global environmental issue which concerns about a very significant problem in today’s world. There is a considerable amount of disposal of waste without proper segregation which has lead to both economic and environment sufferings. It is still practiced in many cities. There is a tremendous amount of loss in terms of environmental degradation, health hazards and economic descend due to direct disposal of waste. It is better to segregate the waste at the initial stages where it is generated, rather than going for a later option which is inconvenient and expensive. There has to be appropriate planning for proper waste management by means of analysis of the waste situation of the area.</p><p>This paper would deal with, how Geographical Information System can be used as a decision support tool for planning waste management. A model is designed for the case study area in an Indian city for the purpose of planning waste management. The suggestions for amendments in the system through GIS based model would reduce the waste management workload to some extent and exhibit remedies for some of the SWM problems in the case study area. The waste management issues are considered to solve some of the present situation problems like proper allocation and relocation of waste bins, check for unsuitability and proximity convenience due to waste bin to the users, proposal of recyclable waste bins for the required areas and future suggestions. The model will be implemented on the Aurangabad city’s case study area data for the analysis and the results will suggest some modification in the existing system which is expected to reduce the waste management workload to a certain extent.</p>

<p>Products are displayed in a shelf to market and sell to the public. It creates an interest and attracts people towards it. Likewise, any country or city can showcase itself by using Web over the internet which will attract the tourists from around the world. This example can be used for the city of Hyderabad. Hyderabad has truly become an international city and there are many multinational companies establishing themselves. It is rapidly becoming a hot spot for tourists from around the world because of its exotic locations and facilities provided by the government. The city has been famous for historical monuments and culture, but in the recent years it has developed into a world class IT destination for many multinational IT companies and due to this it has attained world recognition on the global scenario. The time is to reap the benefits of this image and promote the city’s tourist sector by globally marketing the tourist attractions, facilities and services in an innovative and better way so that tourists from around the world visit the city and thereby contribute to the country’s economy with the foreign currency.</p><p>This research deals with developing a Web-based GIS application that can promote the city’s tourist activities and also provide the users with an innovative way to access the spatial content of the city. GIS content forms the core component of this application as it provides the users with the spatial information about the place that is very close to reality. It supports the human tendency of “What you see is what you believe” by displaying the spatial information on the map. The application has been developed with the latest mapping server technology provided by Environmental Science Research Institute’s ArcIMS 9.1. This server software provides simple and easy methods to launch a Web-based GIS application over the Internet.</p>

L'aménagement forestier, discipline dont l'émergence remonte à la fin du XVIIIème siècle, repose sur des principes héritiers de siècles de planification forestière à des fins de production de matériau bois. Depuis deux décennies, alors que se développe une société de type tertiaire, la forêt est amenée à contribuer à la satisfaction d'aspirations de plus en plus variées. Tant qu'a prévalu la thèse de l'effet de sillage, l'aménagiste a pu se contenter des principes théoriques en vigueur. La remise en question de celle-ci implique que soient développés de nouveaux principes. La recherche de type empirique a pour objectif d'apporter des éléments de réponse à cette problématique; elle est menée au travers d'analyses croisées via les prismes de l'histoire, du droit, des sciences sociales et de la politique forestière. Elle s'intéresse de plus près au cas de la Région wallonne qui par sa taille, sa situation géographique et son morcellement foncier, constitue un laboratoire intéressant d'un espace rural multifonctionnel et urbanisé. L'étude commence par un état de la question et un exposé des concepts, outils et méthodes émergents. Une étude historique de l'évolution des relations entre l'homme et la nature permet ensuite de saisir la portée de la mutation en cours et d'en comprendre les fondements tant philosophiques qu'économiques et sociaux. L'étude se penche ensuite sur la révision du cadre spatio-temporel de l'aménagement de la nature et des forêts par le service public wallon et ce, compte tenu, entre autres, des contraintes imposées par la mise en place du réseau européen de sites protégés Natura 2000. L'étude se poursuivit par l'évocation d'une solution technologique développée pour répondre aux contraintes de souplesse et d'interopérabilité que requiert la mise en œuvre de ce cadre. Après une mise en perspective générale, les conditions d'une intégration de l'aménagement de la nature et des forêts, discipline plus que jamais à la charnière des sciences de la nature et des sciences humaines, dans le cadre conceptuel du développement durable sont discutées.

L'aménagement forestier, discipline dont l'émergence remonte à la fin du XVIIIème siècle, repose sur des principes héritiers de siècles de planification forestière à des fins de production de matériau bois. Depuis deux décennies, alors que se développe une société de type tertiaire, la forêt est amenée à contribuer à la satisfaction d'aspirations de plus en plus variées. Tant qu'a prévalu la thèse de l'effet de sillage, l'aménagiste a pu se contenter des principes théoriques en vigueur. La remise en question de celle-ci implique que soient développés de nouveaux principes. La recherche de type empirique a pour objectif d'apporter des éléments de réponse à cette problématique; elle est menée au travers d'analyses croisées via les prismes de l'histoire, du droit, des sciences sociales et de la politique forestière. Elle s'intéresse de plus près au cas de la Région wallonne qui par sa taille, sa situation géographique et son morcellement foncier, constitue un laboratoire intéressant d'un espace rural multifonctionnel et urbanisé. L'étude commence par un état de la question et un exposé des concepts, outils et méthodes émergents. Une étude historique de l'évolution des relations entre l'homme et la nature permet ensuite de saisir la portée de la mutation en cours et d'en comprendre les fondements tant philosophiques qu'économiques et sociaux. L'étude se penche ensuite sur la révision du cadre spatio-temporel de l'aménagement de la nature et des forêts par le service public wallon et ce, compte tenu, entre autres, des contraintes imposées par la mise en place du réseau européen de sites protégés Natura 2000. L'étude se poursuivit par l'évocation d'une solution technologique développée pour répondre aux contraintes de souplesse et d'interopérabilité que requiert la mise en œuvre de ce cadre. Après une mise en perspective générale, les conditions d'une intégration de l'aménagement de la nature et des forêts, discipline plus que jamais à la charnière des sciences de la nature et des sciences humaines, dans le cadre conceptuel du développement durable sont discutées.

Healthcare is an important part of life in most societies that attract a significant amount of public investment. Primary healthcare is a fundamental branch of the healthcare system where patients and doctors initially meet. Family Medicine Information Systems are developed in an effort to ease the daily work of family doctors with the help of information technology. Such systems are generally used for handling critical tasks such as managing health records of patients, monitoring pregnancy and keeping track of children&rsquo / s vaccination. Like any medical information technology, the usability of such systems is a vital concern for enabling efficient and effective primary healthcare operations. Family Medicine is a recently established practice in Turkey and there are a number of systems in service to aid the daily work of family doctors. However, none of these systems have been subjected to a systematic usability analysis. In this study, a usability analysis of a popular Family Medicine Information System used in Turkey is conducted. By combining several usability evaluation techniques, the study identified several important usability issues and provided recommendations for further improving the system. The main usability issue observed in the system was the overall complexity of the information presented at the main interface that often confused and misled the users. In order to address this problem, it is suggested that features related to the most frequent family medicine operations should be placed on the main screen, whereas remaining features should be organized under auxiliary pages with clear navigation aids.

Several studies in high-latitude catchments have demonstrated the importance of near-stream riparian zones as hydrogeochemical hotspots with a substantial influence on stream chemistry. An adequate representation of the spatial variability of riparian-zone processes and characteristics is the key for modeling spatio-temporal variations of stream-water quality. This thesis contributes to current knowledge by refining landscape-analysis techniques to describe riparian zones and by introducing a conceptual framework to quantify solute exports from riparian zones. The utility of the suggested concepts is evaluated based on an extensive set of hydrometric and chemical data comprising measurements of streamflow, groundwater levels, soil-water chemistry and stream chemistry. Standard routines to analyze digital elevation models that are offered by current geographical information systems have been of very limited use for deriving hydrologically meaningful terrain indices for riparian zones. A model-based approach for hydrological landscape analysis is outlined, which, by explicitly simulating groundwater levels, allows better predictions of saturated areas compared to standard routines. Moreover, a novel algorithm is presented for distinguishing between left and right stream sides, which is a fundamental prerequisite for characterizing riparian zones through landscape analysis. The new algorithm was used to derive terrain indices from a high-resolution LiDAR digital elevation model. By combining these terrain indices with detailed hydrogeochemical measurements from a riparian observatory, it was possible to upscale the measured attributes and to subsequently characterize the variation of total organic-carbon exports from riparian zones in a boreal catchment in Northern Sweden. Riparian zones were recognized as highly heterogeneous landscape elements. Organic-rich riparian zones were found to be hotspots influencing temporal trends in stream-water organic carbon while spatial variations of organic carbon in streams were attributed to the arrangement of organic-poor and organic-rich riparian zones along the streams. These insights were integrated into a parsimonious modeling approach. An analytical solution of the model equations is presented, which provides a physical basis for commonly used power-law streamflow-load relations. / At the time of doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: In press; Paper 4: Manuscript. / Swedish Research Council (VR, grant no. 2005-4289)

Flextronics Design i Linköping tillverkar prototypskretskort till telekomindus-trin. Examensarbetet tog de fram eftersom de upplever att de har problem medolika områden inom den funktion där själva tillverkningen sker, SMA (SurfaceMount Assembly). De var inte säkra på exakt vilka problemen var men de vis-ste att de rör rutiner, kommunikation, samt materialtillförsel. Genom att i ettexamensarbete definiera och lyfta fram problemen samt ta fram åtgärdsförslag,hoppades företaget att vissa av problem skulle kunna uppmärksammas ochlösas och på det sättet skulle kvaliteten i processerna öka. Genom att förbättravissa områden hoppades de även kunna bli effektivare i sitt arbetssätt vilketi sin tur skulle kunna frigöra värdefull kapacitet, något som är mycket viktigtför Flextronics i Linköping, eftersom de har hög beläggning.Syftet med examensarbetet var att genom en kartläggning tydligt definieraproblemen och ta fram förbättringsområden. Fokus lades sedan på det om-råde som ansågs viktigast att ta tag i. Målet var att ta fram ett konkret åtgärds-förslag, som löser de mest angelägna problemen, och som kan implementeraspå företaget.Kartläggningen bygger främst på ett stort antal intervjuer som gjordes med oli-ka personer som är involverade i SMA och dess stödprocesser. Det visade sigatt det var inom områdena strategier, kommunikation och informationssprid-ning, ansvarsområden, materialrutiner samt personalfrågor som problemenfrämst finns. Inom dessa områden definierades ett stort antal problempunkter,som var och en kategoriserades efter vilket ursprungligt problem de härstam-mar ur, alltså vad som skulle behöva förbättras för att få respektive problem-punkt åtgärdad. Det resulterade i åtta olika förbättringsområden, nämligenåterrapportering, kommunikation, spårbarhet, spill, sårbarhet, plock check, SMA-fel och ansvarsfördelning.Det förbättringsområde som ansågs viktigast att ta tag i var återrapportering.För att kunna förbättra den, och lösa de problem som fanns knutna till detproblemområdet, låg fokus under andra halvan av examensarbetet på att tafram ett informationssystem. Först togs strategier för både utveckling och im-plementering fram och därefter utvecklades systemet med hjälp av program-varan Microsoft SharePoint. Resultatet av arbetet blev informationssystemetReFlex som kommer att implementeras och börja användas på företaget.Med hjälp av ReFlex finns nu möjligheten att effektivisera arbetet på en radpunkter. Tack vare en effektiv återanvändning av informationen kan de frånoch med nu på ett bra sätt utnyttja tidigare erfarenheter, vilket gör att misstaginte behöver upprepas. Problem kommer inte behöva lösas flera gånger, vilketsparar mycket värdefull tid och frigör kapacitet. Kvaliteten i processerna kanöka, då problem kan uppmärksammas på ett smidigare sätt och därmed åtgär-das snabbare. / Flextronics Design in Linköping is an Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS)company and manufactures printed circuit boards assemblies (PCBAs) for thetelecommunication industry. The site in Linköping is focused on prototypingPCBAs. They have problems regarding their SMA (Surface Mount Assembly)line, where the PCBAs are manufactured. The problems were not clearly de-fined in the beginning, but regarded routines, communication and materialsupply. By defining exactly where the major problems were and by solvingsome of these, they hoped that both the quality of their processes and the effi-ciency regarding their methods of working could improve. That could increasetheir capacity, something that would be valuable to Flextronics, since they areoften working above their capacity level.The purpose of this master thesis was to clearly define the problems through asurvey and suggest different ideas about which areas that should be improved.The area considered most important was then chosen for further work. Theobjective was to create a solution that solves as many problems as possible, asolution that could be implemented at Flextronics.The survey that was carried out is based on interviews with people involvedin the processes concerning SMA. The problems showed to involve strategies,communication and information sharing, management of responsibilities, rou-tines regarding material supply, and human resource issues. Within these ar-eas a large number of problem matters were defined. Each of these were cate-gorised based on what type of action that could solve that particular problem.The result was eight different action areas, that each could be the solution todifferent kinds of problems. The areas were; improving possibilities for report-ing and giving feedback, improving communication, improving traceability,decrease waste, decrease the vulnerability, improve routines for plock check,reduce the number of defect PCBAs due to SMA-problems and make the re-sponsibiliies more clear.The action area that was considered most important was increasing the possi-bilities for giving feedback. To make that happen, an information system wasdeveloped. First strategies for development and implementation was formu-lated and after that, the system was developed in Microsoft SharePoint. Thework resulted in the system ReFlex, that will be implemented at Flextronics.ReFlex will give the possibility to make work more efficient in many ways.Thanks to improved feedback possibilities they can now reuse information andtake advantage of prior experiences when starting a new build. The risk ofmaking the same mistake twice will decrease, which will save a lot of timeand thereby increase their capacity. The quality of the processes can also beincreased, since mistakes are more likely to be paid attention to and can therebybe solved faster.