Noise is today defined as an unwanted sound that invades the lives of many people in their homes and at work. During a construction phase a large amount of noise is generated that often leads to community complaints. The construction business has to face this issue today when larger infrastructure projects are performed in highly dense areas. Therefore the aim of this Master’s Thesis is to investigate the effect construction noise has on humans and the perceived annoyance in the concerned studied areas, which Bilfinger Berger is contractor for. The impact was studied on both the third party around a construction site on Södermalm, Stockholm and on Bilfinger Berger’s employees on the site. The work concerns three areas, which are situated in the inner city of Stockholm and represent contracts of the infrastructure pro-jects Citybanan and Norra länken. The extensive noise emission during an infrastructure project is affecting the surrounding environment both due to the high noise level that is generated from a number of machines and work activities. Also due to the extensive time frame a project of this kind has. Therefore it is a complex problem to handle and essential for both contractor and client to handle properly. By using appropriate mitigation measures through both the planning stage, the construction phase and clear information towards all parties the impact can be reduced. Through a literature study among the existing science and observations of which mitigation measures are used today to reduce the noise level on sites, a base of theoretical knowledge could be built up for this study. The real noise impact among the affected parties was performed through a survey, which gave results that could be evaluated and discussed. The results from the surveys show that the third party around the workplace is definitely affected by the noise generated from the production. It is also possible to assume that the most affected are persons, which spend a lot of the daytime at home, and therefore feels the noise very disturbing and has to adapt their life after the project’s progress. Through the survey among the employees at Bilfinger Berger a certain acceptance exist towards the noise even if they feel disturbed by the noise. The conclusion drawn from this is that the human attitude to noise impact becomes more positive if they have the knowledge about why and how it arises even if the noise has the same impact on everyone. Therefore the noise issue has to be raised in future projects, even during the tender phase when noise is always easier to control in an earlier stage.

It is estimated that transport sources in developing countries contribute about 4% of the global fossil carbon dioxide versus 18% by industrialized countries. The cost of urban air pollution is estimated to be 2% of GDP in developed countries and more than 5% in developing countries. With an annual vehicle registration growth of over 30% in 2008 and a population growth rate of 6%, the number of automobiles in Kampala city of Uganda is expected to continue growing exponentially. Most of the vehicles used are imported into the country when quite old with worn out engines and low energy efficiencies. As a result, such vehicles profusely emit exhaust gases which may be harmful to both human health and the environment. Controlling pollution from the transport sector is vital to improving the quality of air and protecting public health. The objective of this dissertation was to determine the level of pollution from automobile exhaust gases in Kampala City and its impacts on human health and the environment. The study involved the analysis of tail pipe emissions using a gas analyser. It covered mini buses, motorcycles and personal vehicles which constitute 92% of the Kampala vehicle parc. It was established that the main types of exhaust gases from the automobiles were CO2,  NOx, CO, NO and HC. The findings estimated the highest level of NOx tail pipe emissions at 0.15 mg/m3, HC emissions at 2.59 mg/m3, CO at 110 mg/m3 and 286.6 mg/m3 for CO2. The reported ambient air emissions were estimated at 0.18 ppm, 14000 ppm and 1.3 ppm corresponding to NO2, CO2 and CO, respectively. The study further investigated the impact of four mitigation methods on emission levels using the LEAP model. The impact of increasing penetration of city buses, introduction of tail pipe emission standards and hybrid cars and improvement of vehicle fuel economy were investigated. It was found that if left unabated, the emissions will continue to grow with the increasing number of motor vehicles. Implementation of the proposed mitigation methods resulted in a reduction in the GWP reduced by 52%, 51%, 17% and 8.5%, respectively. It is recommended that a comprehensive motor vehicle pollution control program be designed to implement the proposed NEMA vehicle emission standards. Establishment of an integrated transport system promoting the growth in number of city buses should be made a priority to reduce on emission levels and enable the decongestion of Kampala city.

The Swedish forest is currently being debated as to how it should be managed to provide climate mitigation. Forest management can contribute to climate mitigation in mainly two ways. Either through increased sequestration and storage of carbon in the forest or as a consequence of the substitution effect, through which emissions can be avoided by utilizing harvested wood products to replace other emission-intensive products. However, these two climate benefits are at odds with each other, as efforts to increase the sequestration of carbon in the forest by increased conservation will decrease the amount of harvested biomass available for substitution. This fact has led to a disagreement between scholars regarding the climate benefits of increased forest conservation versus the climate benefits of maintaining a high harvest level. The climate benefit of increased forest conservation is influenced by how much additional carbon the growing forest can sequester over time. The climate benefit of forest harvest is instead directly related to the level of achieved substitution effect. As the substitution level is dynamic, it may change in the future due to various technological, economic, and societal developments, which would influence the potential climate benefit of forest harvest. In addition, intensifying forest management as a means to increase forest growth is also commonly suggested as a possible measure for enhancing the climate mitigation potential of the Swedish forest. This study aimed to investigate how the climate mitigation potential of different forest management regimes develops over time based on different potential levels of achieved substitution effect. Based on input data from the National Forest Inventory, the Heureka RegWise system was used to simulate the impact on sequestration of carbon dioxide and the available harvested biomass to be used for substitution for the different forest management regimes over a 150-year period. The results indicate that increased forest conservation provides a higher climate mitigation potential throughout a majority of the 150-year period. However, the climate benefit of increased conservation does diminish over time due to the set-aside forests' declining ability to sequester additional carbon. The rate at which the forest management regimes without increased conservation can catch up is influenced on which level of substitution that is applied. The results also indicate that increased utilization of growth-enhancing practices increases the climate mitigation potential of forest management.

To investigate the liquefaction mitigation capability of Rammed Aggregate Piers® (RAP) in silty sand, blast liquefaction testing was performed at a soil profile treated with a full-scale RAP group relative to an untreated soil profile. The RAP group consisted of 16 piers in a 4x4 arrangement at 2 m center-to-center spacing extending to a depth of 9.5 m. Blasting around the untreated area induced liquefaction (ru ≈1.0) from 3 m to 11 m depth, producing several large sand boils, and causing settlement of 10 cm. In contrast, installation of the RAP group reduced excess pore water pressure (ru ≈0.75), eliminated sand ejecta, and reduced average settlement to between 2 to 5 cm when subjected to the same blast charges. Although the liquefaction-induced settlement in the untreated area could be accurately estimated using the CPT-based settlement approach proposed by Zhang et al. (2002), settlement in the RAP treated area was significantly overestimated with the same approach even after considering RAP treatment-induced densification. Analyses indicate that settlement after RAP treatment could be successfully estimated from elastic compression of the sand and RAP acting as a composite material. The composite reinforced soil mass, surrounded by liquefied soil, transferred load to the base of the RAP group inducing settlement in the non-liquefied sand below the group. This test program identifies a mechanism that explains how settlement was reduced for the RAP group despite the elevated ru values in the silty sands that are often difficult to improve with vibratory methods.

Owing to the increased anthropogenic CO₂ emissions over the last several decades, there have been tremendous global efforts in the deployment of renewable energy technologies. However, due to intermittency issues of renewable energy generation and a current lack of reliable long-term energy storage solutions, the development of innovative electrolytes for sustainable energy storage and chemical reactions is an emerging research area. In particular, materials that can host multiple reactions and separations, such as the integrated capture and conversion of CO₂, are highly desired. The direct coupling of renewable energy generation with electrochemical CO₂ conversion to chemicals and fuels is one of the transformative pathways that can aid the global transition to carbon-neutrality, depending on the source of CO₂. However, the current solubility of CO₂ in aqueous electrolytes is quite low (34 mM), thus limiting overall reaction performance. Liquid-like Nanoscale Organic Hybrid Materials (NOHMs) consist of a polymer tethered to a nanoparticle surface and possess a number of favorable properties which are highly desirable in electrochemical applications, including negligible vapor pressure, chemical tunability, oxidative thermal stability and high conductivity. To date, NOHMs have been successfully demonstrated for use as water-lean CO₂ capture solvents, as the polymer canopy can be tuned to capture CO₂ under various sets of operating conditions. Thus, in this dissertation, we have explored the thermal, transport and structural properties of NOHMs in their application as electrolytes enabling the integrated capture and conversion of CO₂. Liquid-like NOHMs functionalized with an ionic bond have been shown to display greatly enhanced oxidative thermal stability compared to the untethered polymer. However, our previous studies were limited in terms of reaction conditions and the detailed mechanisms of the oxidative thermal degradation were not reported. In this study, a kinetic thermal degradation analysis was performed on NOHM-I-HPE and the neat polymer, Jeffamine M2070 (HPE), in both non-oxidative and oxidative conditions. NOHM-I-HPE displayed similar thermal stability to the untethered polymer in a nitrogen environment, but interestingly, the thermal stability of the ionically tethered polymer was significantly enhanced in the presence of air. This observed enhancement of oxidative thermal stability is attributed to the orders of magnitude larger viscosity of the liquid-like NOHMs compared to untethered polymer and the bond stabilization of the ionically tethered polymer in the NOHMs canopy. This study illustrated that NOHMs can serve as functional materials for sustainable energy storage applications because of their excellent oxidative thermal stability, when compared to the untethered polymer. Though NOHMs composed of an ionic bond have demonstrated a high conductivity and an enhanced oxidative thermal stability, their practical application in the neat state is limited by an inherently high viscosity. Thus, when incorporating NOHMs in electrolytes for CO₂ capture and conversion applications, it will be necessary to mix them with a secondary fluid. In this study, a series of binary mixtures of NOHM-I-HPE with five different secondary fluids – water, chloroform, toluene, acetonitrile, and ethyl acetate – were prepared to reduce the fluid viscosity and investigate the effects of secondary fluid properties (i.e., hydrogen bonding ability, polarity, and molar volume) on their transport behaviors including viscosity and diffusivity. Our results revealed that the molecular ratio of secondary fluid to the ether groups of Jeffamine M2070 (λSF) was able to describe the effect that secondary fluid has on transport properties. Our findings also suggest that in solution, the Jeffamine M2070 molecules exist in different nano-scale environments, where some are more strongly associated with the nanoparticle surface than others, and the conformation of the polymer canopy was dependent on the secondary fluid. This understanding of the polymer conformation in NOHMs can allow for the better design of an electrolyte capable of capturing and releasing small gaseous or ionic species. To further investigate the effect of the bond type on the thermal stability as well as the structural and transport properties of the tethered HPE, NOHMs were synthesized by tethering HPE to SiO₂ nanocores via ionic (NOHM-I-HPE) and covalent (NOHM-C-HPE) bonding at two grafting densities. In the neat state, NOHM-C-HPE displayed the highest thermal stability in a nitrogen atmosphere, while NOHM-I-HPE was the most thermally stable under oxidative conditions. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) revealed the presence of multiple types of Jeffamine M2070 (HPE) polymers in aqueous solutions of NOHM-I-HPE (i.e., tethered, interacting and free), whereas only tethered HPE chains were observed in NOHM-C-HPE systems. Moreover, the SANS profiles identified clustering of NOHM-C-HPE in dilute aqueous solutions, but not in the corresponding NOHM-I-HPE samples, suggesting that the different types of HPE chains in solutions of NOHM-I-HPE may be crucial to the uniform NOHMs dispersion. Additionally, our investigation of the viscosity and conductivity of different NOHM-based electrolytes revealed that in response to ionic stimulus, the covalently tethered HPE remained fixed at the nanoparticle surface, whereas there was a partial disassociation of HPE chains from the nanoparticle in NOHM-I-HPE. Overall, the results of this study highlight that NOHMs are highly tunable materials whose properties can be strategically altered by changing the bond type linking the polymer to the nanoparticle, as well as grafting density. Finally, two types of aqueous NOHM-based electrolytes were prepared to study the effect of CO₂ Though NOHMs composed of an ionic binding energy (i.e., chemisorption vs. physisorption) on the CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) over a silver nanoparticle catalyst for the production of syngas, a mixture of H₂ and CO, at various ratios. Poly(ethylenimine) (PEI) and Jeffamine M2070 (HPE) were ionically tethered to SiO₂ nanoparticles to form the amine-containing NOHM-I-PEI and ether containing NOHM-I-HPE, respectively. At less negative applied potentials, PEI and NOHM-I-PEI based electrolytes produced CO at higher rates than 0.1 molal. KHCO₃ due to their enhanced conductivity, while at more negative applied potentials, H₂ production was significantly favored because of the electrochemical inactivity of carbamates and catalyst-electrolyte interactions affecting the selectivity of CO₂RR. Conversely, due to their lower ionic conductivity, HPE and NOHM-I-HPE electrolytes displayed poor CO₂RR performance at less negative applied potentials. At more negative applied potentials, their performance approached that of 0.1 molal. KHCO₃, highlighting how the polymer functional groups of NOHMs are critical to the tunable production of syngas. The results of this study illustrate that more conductive polymer canopies with intermediate binding energies for CO₂ should be explored to improve the performance of NOHM-mediated CO₂ reduction. Altogether, the results of this dissertation demonstrate the ability of NOHM-based electrolytes to be used for systems enabling the integrated capture and electrochemical conversion of CO₂. The polymer grafting density, polymer canopy functionalities, bond type linking the polymer to the nanoparticle, secondary fluid selection and ionic stimulus were all found to play an important role in determining the thermal stability of NOHMs and/or the structural and transport properties of the corresponding NOHM-based fluids/electrolytes, thus highlighting the tunable nature of this class of materials. Additionally, the findings from this dissertation can be applicable to a wide range of energy and environmental applications that require the design and development of novel electrolytes.

The Priority Risk Index is increasingly used as a methodology for quantifying jurisdictional risk for hazard mitigation planning purposes, and it can evolve to meet specific community needs. The index incorporates probability, impact, spatial extent, warning time, and duration when assessing each hazard, but it does not explicitly integrate a vulnerability and consequence analysis into its final scoring. To address this gap, a new index was developed- the Enhanced Priority Risk Index (EPRI). The new index adds a sixth category, vulnerability, calculated from a vulnerability and consequence analysis of the impacts on seven sectors identified in Standard 4.1.2 of the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP). To obtain a vulnerability score, impacts are ranked by sector from low (1) to very high (4), then a weighting factor is applied to each sector. The vulnerability score is added to the EPRI and provides risk levels based on the number of exploitable weaknesses and countermeasures identified within a specific jurisdiction. The vulnerability score and resulting EPRI are scalable and can be applied across jurisdictions, providing a transferable methodology that improves the hazard identification and risk assessment process and provides an approach for meeting EMAP accreditation standards.

Today, a lot of resources are put into researching technological solutions concerning “carbon neutral” displacement materials and products, with the common goal of mitigating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The aim of this study was to find out whether a displacement of concrete to glulam beams, in the construction industry, could create substitution effects that reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To go about this, interviews were conducted with one producer of glulam beams, four construction companies and a non-profit foundation that funds research in fire prevention. Furthermore, sustainability declarations of glulam beams from three glulam beam producers, were analyzed. To compare carbon dioxide emissions in different scenarios, the interview results, as well as the sustainability declarations of the glulam beam producers, were compared and examined. Calculations of carbon dioxide sequestered in glulam beams and emitted from the concrete industry in Sweden were also regarded. The results showed that the possible substitution effects derived from a displacement of concrete to glulam beams, would have a small mitigating impact on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, recent findings point out that the pay back period for harvested trees, is longer than assumed. Moreover, the concrete production is not decreasing, but increasing. In respect of Jevons’ paradox (which concludes that higher efficiency in production leads to more consumption, not less), the conclusion of this study, was that no substitution will mitigate enough CO2 in the atmosphere. Our approach to consumption is what must change.

Anthropogenic eutrophication has become an issue of foremost importance in water bodies all around the globe. Nutrients coming from agricultural activities have been identified as one main contributor to this problem. Technologies and inovations (Best Management Practices, BMPs) have been designed for mitigating agricultural impact on water bodies. However, the problem still persists, partly due to a lack of adoption of these practices by targeted farmers. The Santa Lucía River (SLR) in Uruguay has undergone a process of eutrophication during the last decades, resultingin the implementation of a mitigation plan by the Uruguayan government. The need of collaboration by local farmersin the implementation of BMPs calls for the need of better understanding their perspectives on the process, as well as farmers’ motivations for actively participating in it. To address this knowledge gap, eleven farmers residing in the Santa Lucía River basin (SLRB) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview approach. The farmers were asked about their experiences and opinions on the implementation of BMPs in the SLRB. The obtained data was transcribed and coded using a template analysis approach. This study identified three overarching categories: personal factors influencing motivation, perception of the government, and improvement factors. Within these, eleven factors were identified to depict farmers’ perspectives and/or be influential for their motivations. Results indicate that farmers are motivated and willing to collaborate in the preservation of the SLR’s water, but that there are still many factors that influence their capacity to do so, and must be taken in account in order for this objective to be viable.

Logistics managers work to create practices that reduce technostress, which is associated with diminished productivity in supply chain management. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the mitigation strategies that logistics managers at distribution centers used to reduce technostress with their employees in the Los Angeles County, California area. The conceptual framework included in this study was the sociotechnical systems theory. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 6 logistics managers from large distribution centers who implemented mitigation strategies that demonstrably reduced technostress with their employees. Public documents and physical artifacts reviewed in this study included productivity assessment tools, information and communication technology system training materials, technostress mitigation instruments, and information from technological devices. Data were analyzed through a process of pattern matching, cross-case synthesis, and systematic text condensation. The findings included 6 themes: reliance on internal information technology experts; hiring temporary experts; maintaining communication and training; using time management skills and organizing priorities; identification and understanding of employee differences; and implementing well-being, fitness, and health programs. These findings could contribute to positive social change by providing logistics managers with strategies to reduce technostress, which could lead to improved employee well-being, better work conditions, and increased productivity for greater company profitability that could produce a more thriving and prosperous community.

Failure to receive critical and timely information from emergency management professionals (EMPs) may lead to the loss of life during disasters and emergencies. Recent research and government reports have indicated that there may be communication failures between EMPs and minority community members, though little is known about how minority communities perceive EMP communication efforts. The central research questions and purpose of this study were designed to explore the experiences of minority community members in receiving and interpreting disaster-related communications from EMPs. Data for this phenomenological study were acquired through-in-depth interviews with 13 African Americans (7 males and 6 females) located in a southern state. The data were transcribed; inductively coded; and analyzed for trends, themes, and patterns. This study yielded 2 key findings. First, these 13 participants perceived a lack of dialogue and interaction from local EMPs; however, they were more open to communication through their church rather than through other official communication venues. Second, Kim's theory of interethnic communication offers relevant explanatory value for these participants because it discusses the attributes of the single communicator (emergency manager) engaging with another individual (citizen). These findings offer opportunities for positive social change and enhanced communication between EMPs and their minority constituents. Effective communication methods that EMPs might implement include creating strategic alliances with community cultural centers such as churches, civic organizations, and other places at which members of minority communities interact.