The Kattegat sea region between Denmark and Sweden is identified as a region both economically and environmentally sensitive. Statistics indicate that over two thousand vessels per day navigate in the region. Navigation route optimization for the region is vital for efficient transportation. Optimized routes allow a vessel to carry the maximum amount of goods per course leading to efficient fuel consumption, which can greatly benefit in an economical and environmental aspect. Such optimization requires a highly accurate and reliable vertical reference surface for efficient transportation. In the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, a geoid is now used as such a surface. For geoid modelling, homogenous and reliable gravity measurements are required over a larger area surrounding the computation point. The Kattegat region consists of gravity data mainly from the Swedish Fyrbyggaren marine campaign 2019, Kattegat airborne campaign 2018 and several older datasets from the Nordic Geodetic Commission (NKG) database. These gravity data over Kattegat region have been measured using different instruments in various time epochs that inherit them with uncertainties depending on the platform type, instrument sensor type, filter type, corrections applied, processing software and many other parameters. In this study, the data uncertainty of gravity measurements from various sensors in the Kattegat region was studied through statistical and graphical evaluations. It was found out that the data from Kattegat airborne campaign 2018 deviate systematically with from the more reliable Fyrbyggaren marine campaign 2019 and other marine datasets. The airborne campaign was therefore tentatively corrected by the estimated shift +1.46 mGal before further analysis was made of the other datasets. It is found that NKG publication numbers 29, 42, 44, 610, 611 and 616 from the NKG gravity database have a standard uncertainty of around 2-3 mGal. Which is within the range of allowable uncertainty for future applications. These datasets may thus positively contribute to NKG database along with data from the Swedish Fyrbyggaren marine campaign 2019 and the shifted Kattegat airborne campaign 2018. These datasets should be used to model the geoid over the region in the future.

Large investments in sparsely populated areas have the reputation to increase the attractiveness of these areas. This is said to lead to more investments, followed by growths in population, unemployment rates and tax revenues. Usually, city officials in Sweden trust in this formula and have the tendency to provide financial and other incentives for companies to start large investment projects in their towns (Hrelja, Isaksson, and Richardson, 2012). This thesis investigates the actual impact of such projects by the example of the large retail chain IKEA in Sweden. The development of three medium-sized cities in sparsely populated areas in Sweden which recently opened IKEA stores are compared to close-by cities and benchmark cities of a comparable size with respect to their unemployment rates, income, population, retail sales and trade indexes. The results will be used to predict the impact of the new IKEA store planned in Umeå.

Advances in mobile communication, computing and positioning technologies allow the real-time acquisition of continuously changing locations of moving objects, e.g., users carrying location-aware mobile devices. The geocontextual analysis of these locations of users can reveal valuable mobile consumer patterns and enable a number of promising Business Intelligence (BI) services and desirable intelligent Location-Based Services (LBSes). However, as some exact user locations can be extremely sensitive while others can be used to link the users to his or her real-world identity, location traces of users must be anonymized.To facilitate these promising BI services and desirable intelligent LBS in a privacy preserving manner, the present paper proposes an Anonymous Mobile Consumer Analysis Platform (AMCAP) that based on the geocontextual analysis of anonymized location traces, in four phases, derives mobile consumer characteristics of its users in terms of Anomymous Mobile Consumer Profiles (AMCPs) and information about the dynamically changing spatio-temporal distribution of the users that is recorded in a spatio- temporal data warehouse of Anonymous Mobile Consumer Types (AMCTs). In the first phase, based on a number of spatio-temporal criteria the platform probabilistically associates a user’s generalized location, that is represented by an anonymization region with activity types that activity centers in the anonymization region can facilitate. In the second phase, based on the activity type inferred in phase one, the platform, in an online and incremental fashion, summarizes an Anonymous Mobile Consumer Profile (AMCP) for each of the users. In the third phase, the platform periodically groups the users based on their AMCPs into a number Anonymous Mobile Consumer Types (AMCTs). Finally, in the fourth phase, in order to capture the dynamically changing spatio-temporal distribution of the consumers and their characteristics, the platform, in an online and incremental fashion, records the frequency and duration of the visits of different AMCTs to different spatio-temporal regions.The AMCAP is empirically evaluated on the simulated movements of a subset of the population of Copenhagen, Denmark. Experiments regarding the accuracy of the AMCP construction reveal that the proposed activity type inference from anomymized regions is effective and can predict the actual activity of the users with an accuracy of 0.75 and a κ- value of 0.73. AMCPs are clustered into 7 AMCTs. The quality of AMCTs is evaluated by comparing it with Actual Consumer Types (ACTs) which are extracted from Actual Consumer Profiles (ACPs). In both the AMCPs and ACPs, the optimal number of clusters is 7. Meaning thereby that although AMCPs are blurred, they do not loose their inherent property of being clustered into the same of number of types as ACPs. The Adjusted Rand Index (ARI) (a measurement for similarity between two grouping of objects) between the AMCTs and ACTs is 0.3 which is significantly higher than the random assignment where ARI value is -0.0000247. Computational performance evaluations show that a relational DBMS-based prototype implementation of the AMCAP on a single machine can process 50,000 anonymization rectangles in 20 seconds. Based on the assumption that during any given 5-minute interval no more than 10% of the users submit an anonymization region, it is extrapolated that the prototype is capable to perform in real-time the geocontextual analysis (i.e., phases 1, 2, and 4) of anonymized location traces of 7 million users. Finally, to illustrate the utility of the information that is derived by the AMCAP a number of derived BI services are discussed.

Southwestern Gotland has a relatively diverse bedrock where both sandstone, limestone and marl areexposed. The purpose of the survey has been to investigate differences in coastal erosion regarding thecontent of the bedrock. This was done by taking samples from 9 different locations which were laterexamined in point load tests and a slake durability test. A GIS-analysis was also done where the coastalarea in old aerial images and modern orthophotos were compared. The results showed that the sandstoneand marl samples were approximately equally prone to break and that limestone was less prone. Theslake durability test showed that sandstone from one site had the least resistance to abrasion, sandstonefrom the marl areas had greater resistance and that the limestone area had marginally greater resistancethan the marl areas. The GIS analysis indicated that the sandstone and marl areas had a relatively highsensitivity to coastal erosion and that the limestone area was not particularly exposed to coastal erosion. / Sydvästra Gotland har en relativt mångfaldig berggrund där både sandsten, kalksten och märgelstenexponeras. Arbetets syfte har varit att undersöka skillnader i kusterosion med avseende på berggrundensinnehåll. Detta utfördes genom att ta prov från 9 olika lokaler som senare undersöktes i punktlasttestoch nötningstest. En GIS-analys utfördes även där kustområdet i äldre flygfoton och modernaortofotona jämfördes. Resultatet indikerade att sandstens- och märgelstensproverna hade ungefärligenlika stor benägenhet att brytas och att kalksten har mindre benägenhet. Nötningstester visade attsandsten från en lokal hade minst motståndskraft mot nötning, att sandsten från märgelstensområdenahade större motståndskraft och att kalkstensområdet hade marginellt större än märgelstensområdena.Enligt GIS-analysen hade sandstens- och märgelstensområdena en relativt stor känslighet förkusterosion och att kalkstensområdet inte var särskilt utsatt för kusterosion.

Scale is an essential notion in geography and geographic information science (GIScience). However, the complex concepts of scale and traditional Euclidean geometric thinking have created tremendous confusion and uncertainty. Traditional Euclidean geometry uses absolute size, regular shape and direction to describe our surrounding geographic features. In this context, different measuring scales will affect the results of geospatial analysis. For example, if we want to measure the length of a coastline, its length will be different using different measuring scales. Fractal geometry indicates that most geographic features are not measurable because of their fractal nature. In order to deal with such scale issues, the topological and scaling analyses are introduced. They focus on the relationships between geographic features instead of geometric measurements such as length, area and slope. The scale change will affect the geometric measurements such as length and area but will not affect the topological measurements such as connectivity.   This study uses three case studies to demonstrate the scale issues of geographic features though fractal analyses. The first case illustrates that the length of the British coastline is fractal and scale-dependent. The length of the British coastline increases with the decreased measuring scale. The yardstick fractal dimension of the British coastline was also calculated. The second case demonstrates that the areal geographic features such as British island are also scale-dependent in terms of area. The box-counting fractal dimension, as an important parameter in fractal analysis, was also calculated. The third case focuses on the scale effects on elevation and the slope of the terrain surface. The relationship between slope value and resolution in this case is not as simple as in the other two cases. The flat and fluctuated areas generate different results. These three cases all show the fractal nature of the geographic features and indicate the fallacies of scale existing in geography. Accordingly, the fourth case tries to exemplify how topological and scaling analyses can be used to deal with such unsolvable scale issues. The fourth case analyzes the London OpenStreetMap (OSM) streets in a topological approach to reveal the scaling or fractal property of street networks. The fourth case further investigates the ability of the topological metric to predict Twitter user’s presence. The correlation between number of tweets and connectivity of London named natural streets is relatively high and the coefficient of determination r2 is 0.5083.   Regarding scale issues in geography, the specific technology or method to handle the scale issues arising from the fractal essence of the geographic features does not matter. Instead, the mindset of shifting from traditional Euclidean thinking to novel fractal thinking in the field of GIScience is more important. The first three cases revealed the scale issues of geographic features under the Euclidean thinking. The fourth case proved that topological analysis can deal with such scale issues under fractal way of thinking. With development of data acquisition technologies, the data itself becomes more complex than ever before. Fractal thinking effectively describes the characteristics of geographic big data across all scales. It also overcomes the drawbacks of traditional Euclidean thinking and provides deeper insights for GIScience research in the big data era.

Visualization of digital geographic data is often accomplished through custom symbology that is saved in a proprietary format called a layer file (.lyr). The sharing of free geographical information system (GIS) data can be limited as the symbology data is bound inthe .lyr file format. This makes it harder and more tedious to work with open software tools since it is not possible to convert or open the .lyr file in free and open GIS software and thus limits the distribution of free GIS data. The aim of this thesis is to increase the interoperability of .lyr data between proprietary and free and open GIS software. This was done by revers eengineering the .lyr file format to document the file structure and to distribute the knowledge and metadata gained from this project to the open source community. Reverse engineering the.lyr format provided a well needed metadata and documentation about the format which increases the interoperability and enable future work to continue to lessen the gap between open source and commercial software. This groundwork can therefore, enable a continued development of data interoperability between proprietary and free and open GIS software.

Previous studies have suggested that Davis tube (DT) experiment can used to study wet low intensitymagnetic separation (WLIMS) for magnetic iron ores. But DT process has never been used to mapWLIMS process, specifically in a geometallurgical framework. This thesis work is a step towardsfulfilling this gap by studying the Davis tube experiment performed on 13 different samples fromLeveäniemi iron ore deposit. The methodology adapted to map WLIMS concentrate quality includesstudy and analysis of feed, DT and WLIMS. Analyses were made using experimental data, processingdata using some analytical tools, some data-processing tools and post processing tools. For coveringthe geometallurgical aspect the analysis was done for both elements and minerals. The results fromthis study has reviled that DT can be used to predict WLIMS concentrate quality to an acceptablelevel of confidence. Furthermore, results show that a combination of DT and WLIMS informationproduce very accurate and highly reliable models for predicting and mapping WLIMS concentratequality. This work serves as the first step towards studying an unexplored field pertaining to magneticiron ore concentrate and has opened door to possible future work that could take this work a stepfurther. Supplementing this study with more data from different sample is required not only tovalidate the model but also to make it better. A better modal mineralogy of the samples is needed tounlock the full potentials of mineralogical modelling approach used in this work. / <p>I am a graduate from the of Erasmus Mundus masters in Georesource Engineering, 2017.</p> / Primary Resource Efficiency by Enhanced Prediction (PREP)

High plant species diversity depends on a landscape that provides enough habitual space, functional connectivity and heterogeneity. Habitat destruction and land use change is recognized as the biggest threat to biodiversity of today. The Swedish landscape has not only undergone dramatic changes in land-use the last 60 years, it also contains some of the last fragments in Europe of the highly valuable hay-meadows. Many of the Swedish hay-meadows are considered to hold high ecological values and are protected by Natura 2000 regulations. Yet there are no systematic conservation strategies for the hay-meadows and most of the work is done by volunteers. This study aims to further investigate how the surrounding landscape affects the total plant species richness on Swedish hay-meadows. A local scale GIS-analysis on landscapes surrounding 21 hay-meadows across two time steps was carried out. The historical land-use was compared with the present landscapes and with species data from the same areas. Results show that the forest cover has grown almost 12% in 60 years. There is a negative correlation between forest and the plant species richness of both time steps. The total area of arable fields has dropped 19%, although no statistical correlation with the plant species richness of either time step was found. The ex-arable fields of 1950 however, did show a negative impact, both alone and together with open pasture. Open pasture has decreased 17%, although no statistical correlation was found between this land-cover category and plant species richness. The overall results indicate that the historical land-use on the local scale is of greater importance on the current plant species richness than present land-use. This should be considered within landscape planning and when designing conservation strategies. / En hög plantdiversitet är beroende av ett landskap som erbjuder tillräckligt stora habitat, funktionell konnektivitet och heterogenitet. Habitatförlust och förändrad markanvändning utgör det största hotet mot biodiversitet idag. Det svenska landskapet har inte bara förändrats dramatiskt de senaste 60 åren, det innehåller också några av Europas sista fragment av de mycket värdefulla slåtterängarna. Många av de svenska slåtterängarna är upptagna i Natura 2000-områden. Trots detta finns inga systematiska bevarandestrategier för dessa slåtterängar och arbetet hänger mestadels på volontärer. Den här studien ämnar bidra till en ökad förståelse för hur omgivande landskap påverkar plantdiversiteten på svenska slåtterängar. GIS-analyser av lokala landskap som omger 21 svenska slåtterängar har utförts. Nedslag vid två tidpunkter har gjorts; år 1950 och 2015. Genom digitalisering av kartor från 1950-talet har arean av marktyper kunnat beräknas och sedan jämföras med dagens markanvändning och artdata i samma områden. Resultaten visar att den totala skogsarealen har ökat med 12% sedan 1950-talet och det finns negativa samband mellan både den historiska och den nutida skogsarealen och artrikedomen på ängarna. Arean av åkermark har minskat med 19% i de undersökta områdena, men inga samband med artrikedomen kunde finnas. Däremot visade det sig att den före detta åkermark som fanns på 1950-talet påverkar dagens artrikedomen negativ, både som ensam oberoende variabel och tillsammans med öppen mark. Öppen mark har minskat med mellan 17% och 24%, men inga samband mellan denna landskapskategori och plantdiversiteten fanns. De sammanställda resultaten indikerar att den historiska markanvändningen på lokal skala har större påverkan på dagens plantdiversitet än den nutida markanvändningen. Detta bör tas i beaktande vid utformande av bevarandestrategier och vid fysisk planering.

Inlandsvatten, exempelvis sjöar och floder, har en betydande roll för den globala kolcykeln. Förutom att dessa vatten transporterar kol mellan kontinenterna och havet så förekommer en mängd processer som påverkar kolomsättningen i dessa system. Inlandsvatten kan fånga in (fixera) koldioxid från atmosfären via fotosyntes, men en stor del av kolet i inlandsvatten transporteras från land. Detta kol kan antingen emitteras till atmosfären som koldioxid eller metan, lagras på botten av sjöar och reservoarer eller transporteras (exporteras) till havet genom floder och grundvatten. Genom att sammanställa litteratur som i huvudsak publicerats mellan 2007 och 2017 konkluderas att 3,6 Pg C y-1 transporteras till inlandsvatten från världens kontinenter. Av detta emitteras 2,3 Pg C y-1 till atmosfären innan det når havet, 0,15 Pg C y-1 sedimenteras i sjöar och dammar medan 1,1 Pg C-1 exporteras till havet. För att förstå hur människan påverkar kolomsättningen globalt krävs en korrekt beskrivning av de naturliga flödena av kol mellan hav, land och atmosfär. Förbättringspotential och osäkerheter gällande den kvantitativa uppskattningen om inlandsvatten som en del i den terrestra kolcykeln finns bland annat kopplat till små vattenansamlingar, då dessa inte är fullständigt kartlagda. En bättre geografisk spridning för den data som ligger till grund för globala uppskattningar krävs också för att förbättra förståelsen för inlandsvattens roll i den terrestra kolcykeln. / Inland waters, for example lakes and rivers, play a considerable role in the global carbon cycle. In addition to transport carbon between the continents and the oceans, a number of processes occur during the transport along the hydrological chain. Inland water could directly take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere though photosynthesis, but a vast amount of the carbon origins from land. The carbon could either be emitted to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane, stored at the bottom of lakes or reservoirs and/or transported (exported) to the ocean through rivers or groundwater. In this study, publications from 2007 to 2017 were reviewed, and the conclusion is drawn that 3,6 Pg C y-1 are exported to inland waters from land. 2,3 Pg C y-1 are emitted to the atmosphere, 0,15 Pg C y-1 is buried in the sediments of lakes and reservoirs and 1,1 Pg C y-1 is exported to the ocean. To understand how human affects the global carbon budget, a correct description of the natural migration of carbon between the ocean, the continents and the atmosphere is needed. Potential of improvement and uncertainties related to the quantitative estimates of emission, sedimentation and export are to a large extent connected to the poor surveys of small lakes and ponds. A more representative global distribution of the data is also needed for a better understanding of the role of inland waters in the terrestrial carbon cycle.

For a better understanding of how to search for an extraterrestrial life, scientists study hidden biospheres on Earth. The subseafloor crust is recognized as a vast microbial habitat and it is hypothesized that extremophilic microorganisms, occurring there, can be the first living organisms on Earth. Those extremophiles does not require oxygen due their ability to derive bioavailable energy from fluid-rock interactions, resembling conditions on Mars. Hence, in this study, geological samples from such environments are analysed. Overall, this report examines a concept of biogenicity and evaluates a set of methods used for the determination of biologic origin. Fossilized microbial remains were discovered in unconsolidated sediments from the volcaniclastic apron of Gran Canaria and in aragonite veins in ultramafic rocks from the North Pond at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Mentioned sediments and rocks were collected during Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 157 and 209. The fossil record from Gran Canaria is consistent with Foraminifera. The microbial remains from North Pond are consistent with Frutexites microstromatolites. Both fossilized communities have characteristic compositions associated with carbonaceous matter (CM) and different configurations of trace elements such as Si, Al, Mg, Mn, Ni, Fe, and Co. This study confirms the biologic origin of the fossilized remains and shows that the applied methods are suitable for astrobiological application. / För en bättre förståelse på hur man söker efter utomjordiskt liv, studerar forskare dem dolda biosfärer på jorden. Djuphavsbotten är uppskattad att vara ett stort mikrobiellt habitat och det antas att extremofila mikroorganismer, som förekommer där, kan vara de första levande organismerna på jorden. Dessa extremofiler kräver inte syre på grund av deras förmåga att härleda biologiskt tillgänglig energi från vätske-bergartsinteraktioner, vilket liknar förhållandena på Mars. I denna studie analyseras därför geologiska prover från sådana miljöer. Övergripande, granskar denna rapport begreppet biogenecitet och utvärderar en uppsättning av metoder, som används för bestämning av biologiskt ursprung. Fossiliserade mikrobiella lämningar återfanns i okonsoliderat sediment från Gran Canarias vulkaniklastiska förkläde och i aragonitåror i ultramafiska bergarter från North Pond vid Mittatlantiska ryggen. Nämnda sediment och bergarter samlades in under Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 157 och 209. Det fossila arkivet från Gran Canaria överensstämmer med Foraminifera. Dem mikrobiella resterna från North Pond är förenliga med Frutexites mikrostromatoliter. Båda dem fossiliserade samhällena har karakteristiska kompositioner associerade med kolhaltiga ämnen (CM) och olika konfigurationer av spårämnen, såsom Si, Al, Mg, Mn, Ni, Fe och Co. Denna studie bekräftar biologiska ursprungen hos dem fossila lämningarna och visar att applicerade metoder är lämpliga för astrobiologisk tillämpning.