I dagens samhälle sporras konsumenter till att konsumera mer och mer. En anledning till att konsumenter idag konsumerar mer än tidigare är att pengar idag är mer lättillgängliga än de tidigare varit. Det har lett till att fler tar konsumtionslån, vilket är en riskfylld affär för de banker som bistår konsumenter med lån. Bankerna utsätts för en kreditrisk i samband med att de beviljat ett lån utan säkerhet. Författarna till den här studien har ett stort intresse inom ekonomi och konsumtion och således upptäcktes även intresset för riskerna som bankerna står inför i de här sammanhangen. Studiens författare uppmärksammade att det fanns en ytterst begränsad mängd tidigare forskning inom ämnet och önskade därmed att fylla den identifierade kunskapsluckan. Studien syftade att besvara vilka faktorer svenska banker beaktar vid en kreditbedömning och hur en sådan utförs för konsumtionslån. Utöver det syftade studien även att besvara hur bankerna bedömt de risker de utsätts för i samband med konsumtionslån, hur riskerna påverkade bankernas riskstrategier samt hur bankerna beaktade konsumenternas beteende i riskbedömningarna. Studien utfördes med en kvalitativ metod. Teori samlades in och bearbetades från 18 vetenskapligt granskade artiklar. Sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med sju olika svenska banker utfördes. Intervjupersonerna valdes ut baserat på den kunskap och erfarenhet de besatt inom kredit och riskbedömning. Således hade de intervjuade roller i form av kreditchefer, kontorschefer, kreditspecialister och senior credit riskmanager. De intervjuade bankerna valdes ut i vetskap om att de representerar olika delar av marknaden, vilket skapade en större variation och bredd i det insamlade datamaterialet. Således intervjuades storbanker, medelstora banker och nischbanker. Av studien har det framkommit att de främsta faktorerna bankerna tog hänsyn till vid en kreditbedömning, var kundens inkomst och återbetalningsförmåga. I studien visade det sig även att bankerna identifierade kundens vilja och förmåga att återbetala ett lån, som de största riskerna som bankerna möts av. Bankerna tog även hänsyn till kunders beteende, dock i olika utsträckning, vid riskbedömningarna. Bankerna tillämpade olika typer av riskklassificeringsmodeller som riskbedömningen och räntenivån baserades på. Det skilde sig mellan bankerna i huruvida de såg konsumtionslån som lönsamma. Dock ansåg de flesta bankerna att konsumtionslån inte var den mest lönsamma låneprodukten. / In today's society consumers are regularly encouraged to consume more and more. One reason that people today consume more than people used to are that money nowadays are more easily accessible than they were before. This has led to more people applying for unsecured smaller loans, which is a risky business for banks that grants these kinds of loans. The banks put themselves in risk of consumers not being able to pay them back when they grant unsecured loans. This papers authors have an interest in both economy and consumption and therefor also discovered an interest in the risks that banks put themselves in when granting unsecured loans. The authors discovered that there was a limited amount of earlier research available on the subject. An aim for this paper therefore was to identify which factors the banks consider when assessing a credit loan application and how the bank make the assessments. Furthermore, this paper aims to identify the risks that the banks put themselves in when granting this kind of loan, how the risks affect the banks risk strategies and how the banks take in consideration consumers behaviour when the banks make their risk assessments. This paper was conducted by a qualitative method. Theory was assembled from 18 peer reviewed articles. Seven semi structured interviews where held with representatives from seven different Swedish banks. The persons being interviewed where chosen based on the knowledge and experience they possessed in credit and risk assessment. Therefore, the people that were asked to take part in the interviews worked as credit managers, office managers and credit risk managers. The banks that contributed with an interview where chosen with knowledge that they would represent different parts of the market, wishing to create a bigger variation and a depth in the data material. The interviewed persons represented bigger banks, medium sized banks and nichebanks. In the empiricism the study shows that the main factors that banks consider when they assess these kinds of loans are the customers income and assessed ability to repay the loans. The banks identified both the customers' ability and their will to repay the loan, as the biggest risk they faced. They also considered how customers behave. The study shows that banks applied different kinds of risk scoring models that they based the risk assessment and interest rate on. From the study it shows that banks differ in their view on whether these types of loans are profitable, although most of the banks did not consider them to be profitable

This study examined relationships among ethnic identity, gay identity, sexual sensation seeking, and HIV risk-taking behaviors among 302 men of color recruited from gay bars, bathhouses, community agencies, and the 1998 United States Conference on AIDS. The sample included 24% African American, 28% Latino, 25% Asian/ Pacific Islander, 19% Caucasian, 1% American Indian, and 3% other ethnicity. Logistic regression analysis identified sexual sensation seeking, having an undefined gay identity, being in a sexually exclusive relationship, not being HIV seronegative, and length of stay in the country (for those born overseas) as significant predictors of unprotected anal intercourse (insertive and penetrative) among men of color who have sex with men.

Unsafe sanitation systems poses a risk for pathogen transmission, wherefore it is important to both inactivate pathogens present in human excreta and conduct safe sanitation systems from use to end-use. The Peepoo toilet, using ammonia sanitisation, have been suggested as a low-cost sanitation solution and is implemented in schools in Kibera, an urban slum in Kenya. This master thesis aim to study the inactivation efficiency of ammonia sanitisation when treating human excreta with urea, and to quantify the risks of exposure to microbial hazards from the Peepoo sanitation system using faecal indicator bacteria. Excreta was collected from four schools in Kibera. After adding urea to mimic the inactivation of the Peepoo in the laboratory, the inactivation rate was correlated to temperature and free ammonia concentration for Campylobacter spp., Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp.. Campylobacter spp. and E. coli both had a high inactivation rate even at low temperature and low addition of urea. Inactivation rate of Enterococcus spp. was lower and close to zero when 1.87 % urea was added for 15 °C. For Enterococcus spp. a lag-phase was observed, which was not affected by temperature but by concentration of free ammonia. For investigated bacteria, inactivation rate increased with increased temperature and free ammonia concentration. Along the Peepoo management chain, several hazardous events were identified such ascontamination during usage, handling and transportation. Sampling showed a higher contamination of Enterococcus spp. than of E. coli. Enterococcus spp. was used as a faecal indicator for Ascaris and E. coli was used as an indicator of E. coli O157:H7 in a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). Through the QMRA, the risk of infection of Ascaris and E. coli O157:H7 for one exposure event was simulated based on a Exponential and a Beta-Poisson dose-response model respectively. The risk of infection of Ascaris was around 12 % regardless of where exposure occurs, if Ascaris eggs were present. For risk for infection with E. coli O157, the simulated risks were below 10 % at almost all exposure points, with most of the high risk exposure points located in the schools. There are risks of pathogen transmission in the Peepoo management chain that should be further investigated. Ammonia sanitisation permits a high degree of microbial inactivation but to secure a safe end-product it is recommended to be kept in room temperature (24.05±0.62 °C) or higher.

This dissertation is an empirical investigation into the roles that different quantifiable and measurable perceptions play in defining individual behavior across a variety of decision-making contexts. In particular, the focus lies on smokers and the choices they make with regard to smoking and beyond. Chapter 1 analyzes a nationally representative sample of adults (23 years and older) in the United States, pertaining to the Annenberg Perception of Tobacco Risk Survey II (1999-2000). It is observed that three dimensions to smoking behavior viz., risk, temporality and addiction, interact to determine the smoking status of an individual. Although previous studies mostly looked into each of these dimensions in isolation, in this chapter, we empirically illustrate how perceptions on risk, time dimensions and addiction, jointly influence the smoking behavior of adults. Chapter 2 casts the smoker in the role of a parent and explores parental behavior towards the general health-risks facing their children. Using the dataset from a survey (2009), conducted in Orlando, Florida, on parents, having at least one child aged between 1 and 16 years, the chapter arrives at two findings relevant for policy: i) In each of the ‗smoker‘ and ‗non-smoker‘ parent categories, parents exhibit equal concern for themselves and their children, and ii) the level of concern shown by smoker-parents, towards health-risks faced by their children, is the same as that shown by their non-smoking counterparts. The analysis in this chapter also affirms the need to incorporate subjective risk assessment in willingness-to-pay (WTP) exercises to facilitate a deeper behavioral analysis of health risk valuation. Lastly, in Chapter 3, we focus on the issue of quantitative assessment of the perception of health risks from smoking. Particular interest lies in understanding how variants of a metric - namely, a survey question - have been employed in academic studies and industry-surveys, in order to measure smoking-related risk-perceptions. In the process of reviewing select tobacco-industry survey iv records, we analyze the implications of different features of this metric, (e.g., use of a ‗probe‘, the ‗Don‘t Know‘ option), and various interview modes (e.g. telephonic, face-to-face), for the estimates of perceived risk arrived at in these studies. The review makes clear that two aspects of health risks from smoking – the risk of contracting a smoking-related disease, as against the risk of prematurely dying from it conditional upon getting affected – have not been jointly explored so far. The dataset obtained from the Family Heart Disease and Prevention Survey (November 2010-March 2011), provides a unique opportunity to explore these two kinds of probabilities, particularly with regard to the risks of lung-cancer from smoking. Chapter 3 concludes by illustrating how individuals evaluate both these aspects of health-risks. While the probability of getting lung-cancer is found to be overestimated in conjunction with previous studies, the conditional probability of premature death is severely underestimated. Additionally, it is found that individuals‘ subjective assessments of either of these risk aspects predict smoking behavior in an identical manner. This calls into question the so-called ‗rationality‘ of smoking decisions with implications for policies designed for the control of tobacco consumption.

The traditional construction practice used in masonry buildings throughout the world is limited to walls with rectangular cross sections that, when reinforced with steel bars, typically accommodate only single-leg horizontal ties and a single layer of vertical reinforcement. This arrangement provides no confinement at the wall toes, and it may lead to instability in critical wall zones and significant structural damage during seismic events. Conversely, the development of a new building system, constructed with reinforced masonry (RM) walls with boundary elements, allows closed ties to be used as confinement reinforcement, thus minimizing such instability and its negative consequences. Relative to traditional walls, walls with boundary elements have enhanced performance because they enable the compression reinforcement to remain effective up to much larger displacement demands, resulting in a damage tolerant system and eventually, more resilient buildings under extreme events. Research on the system-level (complete building) performance of RM walls with boundary elements is, at the time of publication of this dissertation, nonexistent in open literature. What little research has been published on this innovative building system has focused only on investigating the component-level performance of RM walls with boundary elements under lateral loads. To address this knowledge gap, the dissertation presents a comprehensive research program that covered: component-level performance simulation; system-level (complete building) experimental testing; seismic risk assessment tools; and simplified analytical models to facilitate adoption of the developed new building system. In addition, and in order to effectively mobilize the knowledge generated through the research program to stakeholders, the work has been directly related to building codes in Canada and the USA (NBCC and ASCE-7) as well as other standards including FEMA P695 (FEMA 2009) (Chapter 2), TMS 402 and CSA S304 (Chapter 3), FEMA P58 (FEMA 2012) (Chapter 4), and ASCE-41 (Chapter 5). Chapter 1 of the dissertation highlights its objectives, focus, scope and general organization. The simulation in Chapter 2 is focused on evaluating the component-level overstrength, period-based ductility, and seismic collapse margin ratios under the maximum considered earthquakes. Whereas previous studies have shown that traditional RM walls might not meet the collapse risk criteria established by FEMA P695, the analysis presented in this chapter clearly shows that RM shear walls with boundary elements not only meet the collapse risk criteria, but also exceed it with a significant margin. Following the component-level simulation presented in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 focused on presenting the results of a complete two-story asymmetrical RM shear wall building with boundary elements, experimentally tested under simulated seismic loading. This effort was aimed at demonstrating the discrepancies between the way engineers design buildings (as individual components) and the way these buildings actually behave as an integrated system, comprised of these components. In addition, to evaluate the enhanced resilience of the new building system, the tested building was designed to have the same lateral resistance as previously tested building with traditional RM shear walls, thus facilitating direct comparison. The experimental results yielded two valuable findings: 1) it clearly demonstrated the overall performance enhancements of the new building system in addition to its reduced reinforcement cost; and 2) it highlighted the drawbacks of the building acting as a system compared to a simple summation of its individual components. In this respect, although the slab diaphragm-wall coupling enhanced the building lateral capacity, this enhancement also meant that other unpredictable and undesirable failure modes could become the weaker links, and therefore dominate the performance of the building system. Presentation of these findings has attracted much attention of codes and standards committees (CSA S304 and TMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5) in Canada and the USA, as it resulted in a paradigm shift on how the next-generation of building codes (NBCC and ASCE-7) should be developed to address system-levels performance aspects. Chapter 4 introduced an innovative system-level risk assessment methodology by integrating the simulation and experimental test results of Chapters 2 and 3. In this respect, the experimentally validated simulations were used to generate new system-level fragility curves that provide a realistic assessment of the overall building risk under different levels of seismic hazard. Although, within the scope of this dissertation, the methodology has been applied only on buildings constructed with RM walls with boundary elements, the developed new methodology is expected to be adopted by stakeholders of other new and existing building systems and to be further implemented in standards based on the current FEMA P58 risk quantification approaches. Finally, and in order to translate the dissertation findings into tools that can be readily used by stakeholders to design more resilient buildings in the face of extreme events, simplified backbone and hysteretic models were developed in Chapter 5 to simulate the nonlinear response of RM shear wall buildings with different configurations. These models can be adapted to perform the nonlinear static and dynamic procedures that are specified in the ASCE-41 standards for both existing and new building systems. The research in this chapter is expected to have a major positive impact, not only in terms of providing more realistic model parameters for exiting building systems, but also through the introduction of analytical models for new more resilient building systems to be directly implemented in future editions of the ASCE-41. This dissertation presents a cohesive body of work that is expected to influence a real change in terms of how we think about, design, and construct buildings as complex systems comprised of individual components. The dissertation’s overarching hypothesis is that previous disasters have not only exposed the vulnerability of traditional building systems, but have also demonstrated the failure of the current component-by-component design approaches to produce resilient building systems and safer communities under extreme events. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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The discharge of waste into a water resource and its disposal on land can easily cause pollution, especially of the water resource. However, it has long been accepted that these activities also form an integral part of a holistic waste management strategy aimed at achieving sustainability. The South African Constitution ensures a basic right to an environment that is not harmful to human health and wellbeing, and states that pollution must be prevented, the environment must be protected, and sustainable use of resources must be promoted, through "reasonable legislative and other measures" .. The other measures that are currently used by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry to determine whether a waste disposal or discharge action is allowable, are contained in the documents "Procedures to Assess Effluent Discharge Impacts" and "Minimum Requirements for the Handling, Classification, and Disposal of Hazardous Waste". These measures are evaluated to determine whether they are reasonable and effective in distinguishing between sustainable use and pollution in terms of newly promulgated legislation aimed at managing the environment and the water resource. The criteria used for this evaluation are based on the principles of sustainability, the components of risk analysis, and the scientific concepts and principles of waste discharge and disposal management. Based on this evaluation, the shortcomings of current mechanisms are highlighted, and their advantages are incorporated into a proposed integrated regulatory framework for an assessment and decision-making approach based on risk harmonisation, which has various advantageous applications, including: • The identification of cleaner production alternatives; • The identification of an appropriate medium of disposal or discharge (water or land); • The selection of the Best Practical Environmental Option (BPEO) for treatment, disposal or discharge methods; • The licensing of sustainable waste disposal or discharge actions; • The setting of charges for waste discharge activities; • The prioritisation of regulatory intervention; and • The rehabilitation of contaminated areas. The findings of this investigation comprise the first step taken in South Africa towards the harmonisation of assessment and decision-making approaches, which could have important implications for integrated waste and environmental management in the future. / Thesis (M.Sc.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000

The discharge of waste into a water resource and its disposal on land can easily cause pollution, especially of the water resource. However, it has long been accepted that these activities also form an integral part of a holistic waste management strategy aimed at achieving sustainability. The South African Constitution ensures a basic right to an environment that is not harmful to human health and wellbeing, and states that pollution must be prevented, the environment must be protected, and sustainable use of resources must be promoted, through "reasonable legislative and other measures" .. The other measures that are currently used by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry to determine whether a waste disposal or discharge action is allowable, are contained in the documents "Procedures to Assess Effluent Discharge Impacts" and "Minimum Requirements for the Handling, Classification, and Disposal of Hazardous Waste". These measures are evaluated to determine whether they are reasonable and effective in distinguishing between sustainable use and pollution in terms of newly promulgated legislation aimed at managing the environment and the water resource. The criteria used for this evaluation are based on the principles of sustainability, the components of risk analysis, and the scientific concepts and principles of waste discharge and disposal management. Based on this evaluation, the shortcomings of current mechanisms are highlighted, and their advantages are incorporated into a proposed integrated regulatory framework for an assessment and decision-making approach based on risk harmonisation, which has various advantageous applications, including: • The identification of cleaner production alternatives; • The identification of an appropriate medium of disposal or discharge (water or land); • The selection of the Best Practical Environmental Option (BPEO) for treatment, disposal or discharge methods; • The licensing of sustainable waste disposal or discharge actions; • The setting of charges for waste discharge activities; • The prioritisation of regulatory intervention; and • The rehabilitation of contaminated areas. The findings of this investigation comprise the first step taken in South Africa towards the harmonisation of assessment and decision-making approaches, which could have important implications for integrated waste and environmental management in the future. / Thesis (M.Sc.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000

Published Article / Air pollution, just like any other type of pollution, produces harmful effects to man and his environment. In spite of knowing this, many less industrialised countries of the world have no air quality monitoring strategies in place. Consequently, documented evidence of air pollution studies in such countries is scarce. This is the case in Tanzania. This scenario is made worse by lack of scientific tools which could aid in identifying air pollution-prone areas with a view to aiding town planners in locating safe sites for schools, hospitals and residential areas as well as parks. In this paper, we present results of a study carried out in the city of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania on air pollution in residential areas. Results show significant air pollution in the studied areas. Moreover, both adults and children are at risk due to lead pollution in the air.