This dissertation is about influence which is defined as the ability to move ideas forward within, and in some cases across, organizations. More specifically it is about an extraordinary organization called the Club of Rome (COR), who became advocates of the idea of greater use of systems analysis in the development of policy. The systems approach to policy required rational, holistic and long-range thinking. It was an approach that attracted the attention of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Commonality of interests and concerns united the disparate members of the COR and allowed that organization to develop an influential presence within Canada during Trudeau's time in office from 1968 to 1984. <br /><br /> The story of the COR in Canada is extended beyond the end of the Trudeau era to explain how the key elements that had allowed the organization and its Canadian Association (CACOR) to develop an influential presence quickly dissipated in the post-1984 era. The key reasons for decline were time and circumstance as the COR/CACOR membership aged, contacts were lost, and there was a political paradigm shift that was antithetical to COR/CACOR ideas. The broader circumstances that led to the rise and fall of the COR/CACOR's influential presence in Canada from 1968 to circa 1988 also provides a fascinating opportunity to assess political and intellectual tumult and change. <br /><br /> Specific organizations where the COR/CACOR's influential presence was felt included: the Ministry of State for Science and Technology, the International Development Research Centre, the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the Foundation for International Training, and the University of Guelph

Eco-Lighthouse (Milj&#248;fyrt&#229;rn) is a Norwegian environmental certification scheme adminis-trated by the Eco-Lighthouse Foundation (Stiftelsen Milj&#248;fyrt&#229;rn). In connection with the release of ISO 26000 &#150; Guidance on social responsibility, the Eco-Lighthouse Foundation is considering the possibility of integrating more social responsibility into the certification scheme. The Eco-Lighthouse scheme consists of 72 sets of requirements, as per April 16, 2010. The first set of requirements &#150; Requirements for all branches (Krav til alle bransjer) &#150; applies to all organisations regardless of activity. The remaining 71 sets of requirements consist of branch specific requirements. For an organisation to get an Eco-Lighthouse certification it needs to fulfil Requirements for all branches as well as at least one set of branch specific requirements.The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent the content of ISO 26000 can be found in the branch requirements of the Eco-Lighthouse scheme. Due to the time limitation of the study only three sets of requirements are investigated; Requirement for all branches and branch specific requirements for Office activities and Main offices.The method chosen for investigation is a mixture of three different analysis methods. Docu-ment analysis to examine the content of ISO 26000 and identify criteria that can be compared with Eco-Lighthouse requirements, thematic analysis is used to link Eco-Lighthouse require-ments to ISO 26000 criteria, and gap analysis is used to highlight the differences between the two standards.ISO 26000 is organised in seven core subjects; Organisational governance, Human rights, Labour practices, The environment, Fair operating practices, Consumer issues, and Commu-nity involvement and development. The core subjects are subdivided into issues, except in the case of Organisational governance. The Eco-Lighthouse requirements investigated in this study can mainly be found in three core subjects; Organisational governance, The environ-ment, and Labour practices. Within the core subject The environment, Eco-Lighthouse score highest in the issues: Prevention of pollution and Sustainable resource use. Within Labour practices, an especially high score is found in Health and safety at work since many of the requirements are based on Norwegian laws and regulations.The main focus of the Eco-Lighthouse scheme is on environmental issues relating to internal processes of the organisation. That is management, working environment for the employees, purchasing and material use, energy consumption, transportation, and emission and waste management. There is also some focus on upstream suppliers in the value chain but nothing concerning the downstream end of the value chain. There are many environmental impacts connected with the use phase and end-of-life phase of a product. This corresponds to the ISO 26000 core subject of consumer issues.The result of the analysis was presented and discussed together with representatives of Fokus Bank, who were participating in the development of the branch requirements for main offices. In their opinion it is important to focus on the whole value chain and therefore they would like to see requirements which ensure that companies take responsibility for their products and services even after they have left the company, i.e. when used by costumers and finally dis-carded. However, it is also important that the implementation of those requirements focuses on essentials. If the cost of implementing actions to meet the requirements is too high in rela-tion to the environmental and societal benefits, companies might as well refrain from certify-ing themselves.As a provider of an environmental certification scheme, the Eco-Lighthouse Foundation is recommended to extend the scheme to include producer responsibility for products and ser-vices provided by the certified organisations. The Eco-Lighthouse Foundation is also recom-mended to clearly define how far social responsibility reaches for an environmental certifica-tion scheme. Today the Eco-Lighthouse scheme includes requirements concerning working conditions for employees, which are not considered an environmental issue in ISO 26000. A possible solution would be to develop a new scheme concerning social responsibility. This would be especially beneficial if the Eco-Lighthouse Foundation decides to extend their certi-fication service further into non-environmental issues.

The field of biochemical systems modeling and analysis is faced with an unprecedented flood of data from experimental methodologies of molecular biology. While these techniques continue to leapfrog ahead in the speed, volume and finesse with which they generate data, the methods of data analysis and interpretation, however, are still playing the catch-up game. The notions of systems analysis have found a new foothold, under the banner of Systems Biology, with the promise of uncovering the rationale for the designs of biological systems from their parts lists, as they are generated by experimentation and sorted and managed by bioinformatics tools. With an aim to complement hypothesis-driven and reductionistic biological research, and not replace it, a systems biologist relies on the tools of mathematical and computational modeling to be able to contribute meaningfully to any ongoing bio-molecular systems research. These systems analysis tools, however, should not only have their roots steeped well in the theoretical foundations of biochemistry, mathematics and numerical computation, but they should be married to a framework that facilitates the required systems way of thought for all its users computational scientists, experimentalists and molecular biologists alike. Hopefully, such framework-based tools would go beyond just providing fancy GUIs, numerical packages for integrating ODEs and/or optimization libraries. The intent of this thesis is to present a framework and toolbox for biochemical systems modeling, with an application in metabolic pathway analysis and/or metabolic engineering. The research presented here builds upon the tenets of a very well established and generic approach to biological systems modeling and analysis, called Biochemical Systems Theory (BST), which is almost forty years old. The nuances of modeling and practical hurdles to analysis are presented in the context of a real-time case study of analyzing the glucolytic pathway in the bacterium Lactococcus lactis. Alongside, the thesis presents the features of a MATLAB-based software application that has been built upon the framework of BST and is aptly named as Biochemical Systems Toolbox (BSTBox). The thesis presents novel contributions, made by the author during the course of his research, to state-of-the-art techniques in parameter estimation, and robustness and sensitivity analysis topics that, as this thesis will show, remain to be the most restrictive bottlenecks in the world of biological systems modeling and analysis.

<p>Waste management is something that affects most people. Thewaste amounts are still increasing, but the waste treatment ischanging towards recycling and integrated solutions. In Swedenproducers’responsibility for different products, a taxand bans on deposition of waste at landfills implicates areorganisation of the municipal solid waste management. Plansare made for new incineration plants, which leads to that wastecombustion comes to play a role in the reorganisation of theSwedish energy system as well. The energy system is supposed toadapt to governmental decisions on decommission of nuclearplants and decreased use of fossil fuels.</p><p>Waste from private households consists of hazardous waste,scrap waste, waste electronics and wastes that to a largeextent are generated in the kitchen. The latter type has beenstudied in this thesis, except for newsprint, glass- and metalpackages that by source separation haven’t ended up in thewaste bin. Besides the remaining amount of the above mentionedfractions, the waste consists of food waste, paper, cardboard-and plastic packages and inert material. About 80-90 % of thismixed household waste is combustible, and the major part ofthat is also possible to recycle.</p><p>Several systems analyses of municipalsolid waste managementhave been performed. Deposition at landfill has been comparedto energy recovery, recycling of material (plastic andcardboard) and recycling of nutrients (in food waste).Environmental impact, fuel consumption and costs are calculatedfor the entire lifecycle from the households, until the wasteis treated and the by-products have been taken care of.</p><p>To stop deposition at landfills is the most importantmeasure to take as to decrease the environmental impact fromlandfills, and instead use the waste as a resource, therebysubstituting production from virgin resources (avoidingresource extraction and emissions). The best alternative tolandfilling is incineration, but also material recycling andbiological treatment are possible.</p><p>Recycling of plastic has slightly less environmental impactand energy consumption than incineration. The difference issmall due to that plastic is such a small part of the totalwaste amount, and that just a small part of the collectedamount is recycled. Cardboard recycling is comparable toincineration; there are both advantages and disadvantages.Source separation of food waste may lead to higher transportemissions due to intensified collection, but severalenvironmental advantages are observed if the waste is digestedand the produced biogas substitutes diesel in busses.Composting has no environmental advantages compared toincineration, mainly due to lack of energy recovery. Therecycling options are more expensive than incineration. Theincreased cost must be seen in relation to the environmentalbenefits and decreased energy use. If the work with sourceseparation made by the households is included in the analysis,the welfare costs for source separation and recycling becomesnon-profitable. It is however doubted how much time is consumedand how it should be valuated in monetary terms.</p><p>In systems analyses, several impacts are not measured.Environmental impact has been studied, but not allenvironmental impact. As the parts of the system are underconstant change, the results are not true forever. Recyclingmay not be unambiguously advantageous today, but it can be inthe future.</p><p>Despite the fact that systems analysis has been developedduring 10 years in Sweden, there are still many decisions takenregarding waste management without support from systemsanalysis and use of computer models. The minority of users ispleased with the results achieved, but the systems analysis isfar from easy to use. The adaptation of tools and models to thedemands from the potential users should consider thatorganisations of different sizes have shifting demands andneeds.</p><p>The application areas for systems analysis and models arestrategic planning, decisions about larger investments andeducation in universities and within organisations. Systemsanalysis and models may be used in pre-planning procedures. Apotential is a more general application (Technology Assessment)in predominantly waste- and biofuel based energy processes, butalso for assessment of new technical components in a systemsperspective. The methodology and systems approach developedwithin the systems analysis has here been transformed to anassessment of environmental, economic and technical prestandaof technical systems in a broad sense.</p>

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The purpose of this research is to inform planning, engineering, and management decisions concerning transportation systems that serve the petroleum exploration and production industry in North America. The research applies the transportation systems analysis approach to characterize the petroleum activity system and transportation system in southwest Manitoba and to develop freight flows. The research develops a framework to estimate and assign petroleum-related truck traffic to the regional highway network taking into account the variability of the industry. This is done by integrating components of freight demand modeling and truck traffic monitoring processes to improve understanding of truck traffic flow characteristics related to the industry. The results of the research are presented in an interactive mapping data dissemination tool. The approach and methodologies of this research are transferable to other jurisdictions and can be used to address the needs of other industry-specific developments.

Much of the current research into the sustainability of the fisheries and aquaculture industry has focused on achieving continued growth. The report &#147;Value creation from productive oceans,&#148; makes annual growth predictions of 4% for aquaculture and 7% for the marine ingredients sector from 2010 to 2050. The Norwegian government incorporated these growth rates into a political vision presented to parliament as Meld.St.22 &#147;the world&#146;s foremost seafood nation.&#148; Among many ambitions presented in Meld.St.22, three were chosen as being particularly relevant to industry ecology: import reliance, utilization of by-products and sustainable growth. These ambitions were tested along with the 4 and 7% growth rates from the &#147;Value creation from productive oceans,&#148; report using the industrial ecology methodology of material / substance flow analysis. The MFA/SFA model of the fisheries and aquaculture system used a multi-layered approach with a product weight layer as the base and EPA + DHA as the substance layer. Results for import reliance suggest that Norway is 88% reliant on imports (product weight) for aquaculture and 55% for marine ingredients (EPA + DHA). The model estimated that imported Peruvian Anchoveta represented approximately 50% of the EPA + DHA in Norwegian aquaculture feed and 55% for marine ingredients in 2012. By-product utilization was found to be nearly 100% for the aquaculture and pelagic sectors, 34% for whitefish species and nearly zero for macroalgae and marine mammals. The overall by-product utilization rate for Norway, including all Norwegian landed marine fish, zooplankton, macroalgae and marine mammals was 62% for product weight. Sustainability was assessed from an industry, consumer and general environmental perspective. Sustainability from an industry perspective was evaluated using a demand and supply forecast for EPA + DHA. Growth rates of 4% for aquaculture and 7% for marine ingredients were used to model the future supply and demand relative to the system calculated values in the base year (2012). Results suggest a shortage of EPA + DHA within two years and a 45% deficit in demand by 2020. The future EPA + DHA shortage was independently confirmed by a study performed by EWOS using similar parameters and assumptions. The whole fish FIFO for fish oil was calculated to be 1,3 kg of whole forage fish required for 1 kg of whole salmon. The efficiency of seafood deliverables indicator (ESD) was created to add an element of efficiency to the sustainability of seafood from a consumer perspective. The aquaculture industry was found to require 3,22 kg of EPA + DHA per kg of EPA + DHA delivered to consumers as seafood, while the wild fishery sector required 1,76 / kg. The overall findings suggest that EPA &amp; DHA are critical nutrients for: Fish health, human health, industry growth and consumer preferences. The challenge posed by the worsening shortage of EPA &amp; DHA will affect the sustainability of the industry and dialogue concerning realistic growth prospects is suggested.

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