Submitted by Irene Nascimento (irene.kessia@ufpe.br) on 2016-09-19T19:33:20Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissetacao FERNANDO HENRIQUE CORREÇÕES-DEFESA - FINAL.pdf: 4579522 bytes, checksum: e73435d4ab5a91c6938070db7c3beef4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-19T19:33:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissetacao FERNANDO HENRIQUE CORREÇÕES-DEFESA - FINAL.pdf: 4579522 bytes, checksum: e73435d4ab5a91c6938070db7c3beef4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-15 / CAPES / O aumento na geração de resíduos resultantes do modo de vida fundamentado no consumo em massa e a aceleração do crescimento populacional têm causado diversos impactos negativos, degradando os bens e serviços ambientais. No Brasil, os problemas originados pela má gestão municipal dos resíduos sólidos urbanos qualificam os RSU como um dos mais difíceis e complexos problemas enfrentados pela sociedade moderna. Aliada a isso, a escassez de recursos de infraestrutura e de recursos de ordem técnico-cientifica, tornam os resíduos sólidos urbanos um desafio de alta magnitude, sobretudo para os municípios de pequeno porte. Buscando alternativas para a promoção correta da gestão dos resíduos, que caminhem sinergicamente com o ordenamento jurídico, prevendo o tratamento e destinação por parte do gerador em locais ambientalmente adequados. As tecnologias de tratamento e disposição final de resíduos, fundamentadas em modelos de gestão, que adotem tecnologias contemporâneas, difundidas em países desenvolvidos são imprescindíveis no enfrentamento do problema. Ferramentas de apoio à decisão são fundamentais para auxiliar a escolha de métodos alternativos de tratamento e disposição final ambientalmente corretos, socialmente justos e economicamente viáveis. Essa realidade motivou a pesquisa que visa a utilização e estudo de uma ferramenta de apoio à decisão desenvolvida como resultado do projeto “Análise das diversas tecnologias de tratamento e disposição final de resíduos sólidos no Brasil, Europa, Estados Unidos e Japão” para propor as melhores rotas tecnológicas de tratamento e disposição final nos municípios de Altinho, Agrestina, Belém de Maria, Bonito e Lagoa dos Gatos, que fazem parte do COMAGSUL - Consórcio dos Municípios do Agreste e Mata Sul. Nesse intuito, utilizou-se a ferramenta IST Versão 1.0 de 2014 para possibilitar a hierarquização de rotas tecnológicas de tratamento e destino final dos resíduos, além da análise comparativa com a gestão adotada no Brasil e para o estado de Pernambuco. A utilização da ferramenta produziu como resultado final a indicação de três rotas tecnológicas com elevado índice de sustentabilidade ambiental IST. Esses resultados apontam a adequação da ferramenta para proposição de rotas tecnológicas de tratamento e disposição final em consonância com a Política Nacional de Resíduos, podendo sua utilização ser altamente viável quanto a tomada de decisão em consórcios públicos. / The increase in the generation of waste resulting from the reasoned way of life in mass consumption and the acceleration of population growth have caused several negative impacts, degrading environmental goods and services. In Brazil, the problems caused by poor municipal management of solid urban waste qualifies the MSW as one of the most difficult and complex problems faced by modern society. Allied to this, the scarcity of infrastructure resources and resources of technical-scientific, order make solid urban waste a challenge of high magnitude, especially for small towns. Seeking alternatives to the correct promotion of waste management that they may walk synergistically with the legal system, providing for the treatment and disposal by the generator in environmentally suitable locations. The technologies of treatment and final disposal of waste, founded in management models, that adopt contemporary technology, disseminated in developed countries are essential in tackling the problem. Decision support tools are fundamental to assist the choice of alternative methods of treatment and final disposal environmentally correct, socially fair and economically viable. This reality motivated research that seeks to use a decision support tool developed and study as a result of the project "Analysis of various technologies for treatment and final disposal of solid waste in Brazil, Europe, United States and Japan" to propose the best technological routes of treatment and final disposal in the municipalities of Altinho, Agrestina, Belem de Maria, Bonito and Lagoa dos Gatos, which are part of the COMAGSUL - Consortium of Municipalities of the Agreste and South Wood. For this reason, it used the IST Tool Version 1.0 2014 to enable the hierarchy of technological routes of treatment and final destination of the waste, in addition to the comparative analysis with the management adopted in Brazil and for the state of Pernambuco. The use of the tool has produced as a final result the indication of three technological routes with a high index of environmental sustainability IST. These results indicate the suitability of the tool to the proposition of technological routes of treatment and final disposal in line with the National Policy of waste, its use may be highly viable as decision making in public consortia.

This dissertation describes the development of CAMBIUM, an agent-based forest sector model for large-scale strategic analysis. This model is designed as a decision support tool for assessing the effect that changes in forest product demand and resource inventories can have on the structure and economic viability of the forest sector. CAMBIUM complements existing forest sector models by modeling aggregate product supply as an emergent property of individual companies’ production decisions and stand-level ecological processes. Modeling the forest products sector as a group of interacting autonomous agents makes it possible to introduce production capacity dynamics and the potential for mill insolvencies as factors in modeling the effects of market and forest inventory based disturbances. This thesis contains four main manuscripts. In the first manuscript I develop and test a dispersal algorithm that projects aggregated forest inventory information onto a lattice grid. This method can be used to generate ecologically and statistically consistent datasets where high-quality spatial inventory data is otherwise unavailable. The second manuscript utilizes this dataset in developing a provincial-level resource dynamics model for assessing the timber supply effects of introducing weevil-resistant spruce. This model employs a stand-level approach to simulating weevil infestation and associated merchantable volume losses. Provincial-level impacts are determined by simulating harvest activities over a 350 year time horizon. In the third manuscript I shift the focus to interactions between forest companies. I analyze the effects of strategic decisions on sector structure by developing CAMBIUM as an agent-based model of competition and industry structure evolution. The forest sector is modeled as a group of autonomous, interacting agents that evolve and compete within the limitations posed by resource inventories and product demand. In the final manuscript I calibrate CAMBIUM to current conditions in the British Columbia forest sector. Industry agents compete for roundwood inputs, as well as for profits in finished product markets for pulp, panel products, and lumber. To test the relevance and utility of this model, CAMBIUM is used to quantify the cumulative impacts of a market downturn for forest products and mountain pine beetle induced timber supply fluctuations on the structure of the forest sector. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate

The planning and implementation of effective water resources management strategies need an assessment of multiple (physical, environmental, and socio-economic) issues, and often requires new research in which knowledge of diverse disciplines are combined in a unified methodological and operational framework. Such integrative research to link different knowledge domains faces several practical challenges. The complexities are further compounded by multiple actors frequently with conflicting interests and multiple uncertainties about the consequences of potential management decisions. This thesis aims to overcome some of these challenges, and to demonstrate how new modeling approaches can provide successful integrative water resources research. It focuses on the development of new integrated modeling approaches which allow integration of not only physical processes but also socio-economic and environmental issues and uncertainties inherent in water resources systems. To achieve this goal, two new approaches are developed in this thesis. At first, a Bayesian network (BN)-based decision support tool is developed to conceptualize hydrological and socio-economic interaction for supporting management decisions of coupled groundwater-agricultural systems. The method demonstrates the value of combining different commonly used integrated modeling approaches. Coupled component models are applied to simulate the nonlinearity and feedbacks of strongly interacting groundwater-agricultural hydrosystems. Afterwards, a BN is used to integrate the coupled component model results with empirical knowledge and stakeholder inputs. In the second part of this thesis, a fuzzy-stochastic multiple criteria decision analysis tool is developed to systematically quantify both probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainties associated with complex hydrosystems management. It integrates physical process-based models, fuzzy logic, expert involvement and stochastic simulation within a general framework. Subsequently, the proposed new approaches are applied to a water-scarce coastal arid region water management problem in northern Oman, where saltwater intrusion into a coastal aquifer due to excessive groundwater extraction for irrigated agriculture has affected the aquifer sustainability, endangering associated socio-economic conditions as well as traditional social structures. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The first method can aid in the impact assessment of alternative management interventions on sustainability of aquifer systems while accounting for economic (agriculture) and societal interests (employment in agricultural sector) in the study area. Results from the second method have provided key decision alternatives which can serve as a platform for negotiation and further exploration. In addition, this approach suits to systematically quantify both probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainties associated with the decision problem. The new approaches can be applied to address the complexities and uncertainties inherent in water resource systems to support management decisions, while serving as a platform for stakeholder participation.

This thesis analyses how public decision-makers can rapidly and sustainably decarbonise their regions, considering the challenge that promoting timely decarbonisation represents. The research was divided into three phases and developed using desk studies and interviews with Project Drawdown (PD) experts, Swedish public officials and researchers. In phase one, PD solutions showed a shortcoming in sustainable operationalisation of global decarbonisation solutions. It was found that they alone could not account for sustainability, and that there is dependency on the context of application and on decision-making processes. In phase two, it was found that sustainability could be embedded in decision-making for decarbonisation through decision support. In the Blekinge example case, several challenges were found, for which sustainable decision support was needed. To respond to this challenge, a Decision Support tool (DST) was created, based on multi-criteria decision analysis. This three-step generic tool provides a relevance assessment to prove the suitability of decarbonisation solutions in the given context, a sustainability assessment to address sustainability challenges, and a prioritisation step for strategic decision-making. The tool was validated to be useful by Swedish policymakers and by international experts. This DST has the potential to support policy-making around the world to decarbonise regions rapidly and sustainably.

BACKGROUND: Contraception is an effective, preference-sensitive intervention that supports quality of life, management of health, and self-determination. Contraception is used by 99% of people assigned female at birth with an average of 3.4 methods used across their lifespan. Providers counsel patients on contraception and patients want to be counselled. Shared decision-making frameworks promote using decision aids (DA) during counseling as best practice. Existing DAs lack transparency in their development methodologies and evaluation results and may not facilitate patient-centered care. AIM: Create a contraception DA and accompanying contraception method information sheets (MIS) that are informed by patients’ values, align with international standards, meet health literacy and accessibility guidelines, and are evaluated by patients and providers to be acceptable, quality, and feasible to use during contraceptive counseling. METHODOLOGY: To create the DA/MIS, (1) literature was reviewed on contraceptive counseling frameworks, DAs, patients’ contraceptive preferences, health literacy, accessibility, user-centered design, and validated patient education material quality measures, (2) results were reviewed from a patient focus group and provider meeting where they defined user requirements, and (3) evidence-based contraceptive information was synthesized. Once created, an exploratory sequential mixed-methods study iteratively refined the DA/MIS after each data collection phase: (1) provider focus groups and survey, (2) patient focus groups and survey, (3) observed patient testing during counseling followed by an interview and survey, (4) expert patient and provider review, and (5) provider field testing in clinic followed by an interview and survey. DA/MIS readability levels were assessed. RESULTS: Quantitatively, the DA/MIS were acceptable, quality, and feasible to use during counseling. Qualitatively, the DA/MIS were preferred to verbal-only counseling and other DA/MIS, centered patients’ preferences, increased knowledge, focused on patient autonomy, challenged bias/coercion, improved counseling satisfaction and quality, offered a novel design, and were appealing, inclusive, and accessible. CONCLUSION: This DA/MIS had positive quantitative and qualitative results, offered a novel design aligned with international standards, and had a transparent, rigorous development process aligned with frameworks and validated tools. Initial results show this DA/MIS can support and improve patient-centered contraceptive counseling. / 2024-08-30T00:00:00Z

Skogen brukas allt intensivare och större och tyngre maskiner vid skogliga operationer innebär förhöjd risk för körskador. En körskada kan innebära stora ekonomiska förluster likväl som allvarlig påverkan på miljö och sociala värden. Den skogliga branschen jobbar kontinuerligt för att utveckla nya mer hållbara metoder. Ett sätt är att använda sig av digitala beslutsstöd vid planeringstillfället. Timbertrail är ett sådant som tar hänsyn till en trakts beskaffenhet för att hitta bästa avlägg och basväg. Studien visade på att beslutsstödet i teorin hänvisar till bättre bärighet och minskad risk för körskador. Den kan vara ett bra hjälpmedel vid planering men att den skogliga operationen till sist är beroende av att alla inblandade också tar ett personligt ansvar för att minimera risken för körskador.

Le développement des aires urbaines induit une amplification des enjeux environnementaux (e.g. qualité de l’air, îlot de chaleur urbain, inondation). Pour apporter une réponse à ces défis, la fabrique urbaine intègre progressivement les fonctions assurées par les écosystèmes urbains. Cependant, cette considération semble négliger les services écosystémiques rendus par la composante « sol » des aires urbaines. À ce titre, l’objectif du doctorat est d’appréhender les apports d’une prise en compte avancée des potentialités des sols urbains dans la planification territoriale et l’urbanisme opérationnel. Une enquête nationale auprès d’acteurs de la planification territoriale et des entretiens individuels avec des professionnels de l’urbanisme opérationnel ont été menés. Il en ressort que ces acteurs ont commencé à développer une considération systémique des sols urbains, dépassant leur vision initiale du sol comme simple surface foncière. Afin de formaliser la manière de prendre en compte les potentialités des sols urbains, des campagnes d’échantillonnage de sols ont été réalisées sur 10 sites de projets localisés au sein de trois aires urbaines aux contextes pédoclimatiques différents (Métropole du Grand Nancy, Métropole d’Aix-Marseille Provence, Nantes Métropole). Une description de profils de sols et leur caractérisation physico-chimique ont permis d’appréhender leur état et de mener une étude comparative de leur qualité. Il s’avère que près de la moitié des sols urbains étudiés n’étaient pas des sols fortement anthropisés (e.g. Anthrosols, Technosols) et étaient analogues à des sols agricoles voisins. Ils présentaient une très grande hétérogénéité de leurs propriétés, rendant complexe leur appréhension par les acteurs de la fabrique urbaine. Les données pédologiques ont alors été intégrées dans un outil d’aide à la décision, afin de les traduire en capacité des sols à assurer des fonctions et rendre des services écosystémiques. Il s’est avéré que les sols fortement anthropisés pouvaient présenter des niveaux de services écosystémiques équivalents, voire supérieurs, à ceux fournis par certains sols agricoles, pouvant répondre aux enjeux environnementaux, sociaux voire économiques des aires urbaines. L’intégration de ces informations lors de différentes étapes de mise en œuvre d’un projet urbain peut contribuer à améliorer la durabilité des aires urbaines, en optimisant l’usage des sols urbains et en préservant les plus multifonctionnels d’entre eux / Urban areas, in addition to global environmental issues, concentrate major local environmental concerns such as air quality, urban heat island and flood mitigation. To tackle those issues, every land surface should be considered as a potential supplier of ecosystem services. However, the urban soils contribution remains poorly assessed up to now. As a result, there is a strong lack of consideration by urban planning of the services that urban soils could provide. So, the main goal of this PhD is to propose a methodology that facilitates an advanced integration of urban soils potentials in urban planning. A national survey and some individual interviews with actors of urban planning were conducted. These actors have progressively developed a systemic consideration of urban soils, and do not yet consider them only as land surfaces. Then, soil sampling campaigns were carried out on 10 urban projects, located in three urban areas with contrasted pedoclimatic contexts (Métropole du Grand Nancy, Métropole Aix-Marseille Provence, Nantes Métropole). The description of the pedological pits and the physico-chemical characterization of soil samples led us to conduct a comparative study of their quality. It appears that 49% of the studied soils were not highly anthropized soils (e.g. Anthrosols, Technosols) and presented bio-physico-chemical properties which were similar to surrounding agricultural soils. The results also showed that the highly anthropized soils presented a high variation of their properties. The results of the physico-chemical characterization had been feed into a decision support tool. This DSS could evaluate the capacity of an urban soil to provide some fonctions and ecosystem services. It appears that the highly anthropized soils were able to provide levels of ecosystem services that were equivalent to, or even higher, than those provided by agricultural soils. In result, it has been demonstrated that urban soils could provide some ecosystem services in order to answer to environmental, social and economic challenges. So, the consideration of the potential of soils in an urban project could contribute to improve sustainability of cities, by optimizing the uses of urban soils and preserving the most multifunctional

<p>The decision process of which technique to choose for remediation of contaminated sites has traditionally focused on the clean up level, the time required and the economical resources. The environmental costs of the remediation are seldom taken into consideration. With a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) it is possible to receive an overall picture of the environmental impacts caused by a remediation technique. In this thesis a comparison of two LCA methods has been made. The methods are named REC and Uva and are used in the Netherlands and Germany. Two remediation techniques, the adsorption technique and the bioremediation technique, were compared and data from a discontinued petrol station were used. The output from the REC method indicated that the adsorption technique causes more environmental costs then the bioremediation technique. The main reason is because the adsorption technique consumes more groundwater and energy. The UvA method presented a different result. According to this method the bioremediation technique causes more environmental costs. This is because the bioremediation technique consumes more energy and causes more emissions. The main reasons of the difference between the REC and the UvA methods are that they use diverse ways to calculate the consumption of energy, have different system boundaries and consider different impact categories. A conclusion of the present study is that a decision process of which remediation technique to use at a contaminated site could be dependent on which method is used as a decision support tool.</p>

From 2010 to 2030, the number of instrument flight rules aircraft operations handled by Federal Aviation Administration en route traffic centers is predicted to increase from approximately 39 million flights to 64 million flights. The projected growth in air transportation demand is likely to result in traffic levels that exceed the abilities of the unaided air traffic controller in managing, separating, and providing services to aircraft. Consequently, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other air navigation service providers around the world, are making several efforts to improve the capacity and throughput of existing airspaces. Ultimately, the stated goal of the Federal Aviation Administration is to triple the available capacity of the National Airspace System by 2025. In an effort to satisfy air traffic demand through the increase of airspace capacity, air navigation service providers are considering the inclusion of advisory conflict-detection and resolution systems. In a human-in-the-loop framework, advisory conflict-detection and resolution decision-support tools identify potential conflicts and propose resolution commands for the air traffic controller to verify and issue to aircraft. A number of researchers and air navigation service providers hypothesize that the inclusion of combined conflict-detection and resolution tools into air traffic control systems will reduce or transform controller workload and enable the required increases in airspace capacity. In an effort to understand the potential workload implications of introducing advisory conflict-detection and resolution tools, this thesis provides a detailed study of the conflict event process and the implementation of conflict-detection and resolution algorithms. Specifically, the research presented here examines a metric of controller taskload: how many resolution commands an air traffic controller issues under the guidance of a conflict-detection and resolution decision-support tool. The goal of the research is to understand how the formulation, capabilities, and implementation of conflict-detection and resolution tools affect the controller taskload (system demands) associated with the conflict-resolution process, and implicitly the controller workload (physical and psychological demands). Furthermore this thesis seeks to establish best practices for the design of future conflict-detection and resolution systems. To generalize conclusions on the conflict-resolution taskload and best design practices of conflict-detection and resolution systems, this thesis focuses on abstracting and parameterizing the behaviors and capabilities of the advisory tools. Ideally, this abstraction of advisory decision-support tools serves as an alternative to exhaustively designing tools, implementing them in high-fidelity simulations, and analyzing their conflict-resolution taskload. Such an approach of simulating specific conflict-detection and resolution systems limits the type of conclusions that can be drawn concerning the design of more generic algorithms. In the process of understanding conflict-detection and resolution systems, evidence in the thesis reveals that the most effective approach to reducing conflict-resolution taskload is to improve conflict-detection systems. Furthermore, studies in the this thesis indicate that there is significant flexibility in the design of conflict-resolution algorithms.

Increasing demand for energy and transportation fuel has motivated researchers all around the world to explore alternatives for a long-term sustainable source of energy. Biomass is one such renewable resource that can be converted into various marketable products by the process of biorefining. Currently, research is taking strides in developing conversion techniques for producing biofuels from multiple bio-based feedstocks. However, the greatest concern with emerging processes is the long-term viability as a sustainable source of energy. Hence, a framework is required that can incorporate novel and existing processes to validate their economic, environmental and social potential in satisfying present energy demands, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own energy needs. This research focuses on developing a framework that can incorporate fundamental research to determine its long-term viability, simultaneously providing critical techno-economic and decision support information to various stakeholders. This contribution links various simulation and optimization models to create a decision support tool, to estimate the viability of biorefining options in any given region. Multiple disciplines from the Process Systems Engineering and Supply Chain Management are integrated to develop the comprehensive framework. Process simulation models for thermochemical and biochemical processes are developed and optimized using Aspen Engineering Suite. Finally, for validation, the framework is analyzed by combining the outcomes of the process simulation with the supply chain models. The developed techno-economic model takes into account detailed variable costs and capital investments for various conversion processes. Subsequently, case studies are performed to demonstrate the applicability of the decision support tool for the Jackson Purchase region of Western Kentucky. The multidisciplinary framework is a unique contribution in the field of Process Systems Engineering as it demonstrates simulation of process optimization models and illustrates its iterative linking with the supply chain optimization models to estimate the economics of biorefinery from multi-stakeholder perspective. This informative tool not only assists in comparing modes of operation but also forecasts the effect of future scenarios, such as, utilization of marginal land for planting dedicated energy crops and incorporation of emerging enzymatic processes. The resulting framework is novel and informative in assisting investors, policy makers and other stakeholders for evaluating the impacts of biorefining. The results obtained supports the generalizability of this tool to be applied in any given region and guide stakeholders in making financial and strategic decisions.