Once considered a 'green' industry, tourism and its associated ecological impacts are now widely acknowledged. Focus within tourism planning has aimed to reduce the ecological burden placed on a destination area, and move towards a more sustainable tourism industry. This research proposes the use of the Ecological Footprint (EF) as a tool to compare the ecological costs of different types of tourism. The EF shows the relative amount of productive land appropriated by the activities and choices of an individual tourist. The main goal of this study was to analyse and compare the ecological resource use of tourism in Ontario. Surveys were conducted with tourists staying at 9 different types of accommodations throughout Ontario. Additional data were collected from personal interviews with accommodation managers at each location and incorporated into the EF calculation. Four areas of tourism ecological impact were identified; tourists' personal consumption, transportation, activity, and accommodation costs. These four components contributed in varying degrees to each tourist Ecological Footprint, and this variation became the main area of analysis. The findings of this research demonstrated that air travel contributes significantly to the total ecological cost of a particular tourism experience. Comparably, travel by personal car made a much smaller contribution to the tourist EF. Thus, local area tourists who could drive to a destination had a smaller EF than those long-distance domestic and international tourists who flew. Accommodation ecological costs were primarily a factor of the amount of built space available, and total energy usage per guest. Accommodations that had a large number of occupants for a given area and level of energy consumption achieved a scale of efficiency. In this manner, larger, more efficiently constructed accommodations often made smaller contributions to the tourist EF than small-scale, but inefficient accommodations. The main conclusion was that the ecological impacts of tourism can be quantitatively recorded, and that a complete trip view of tourism ecological resource use is necessary. When considering practical applications in the tourism industry, an Ecological Footprint analysis could be used by tourism managers as an evaluative tool to compare the ecological outcome of various construction, programming, and operational changes. For the tourist, the EF can serve as an 'eco-label', to distinguish one type of 'green' tourism from another, creating a more informed consumer. Ultimately, the Ecological Footprint serves one purpose- to demonstrate that less ecologically consumptive tourism choices are possible for both tourists and tourism managers.

Klimatförändring är en fråga som under senare år har fått mer och mer medial uppmärksamhet och svenskarnas individuella miljömedvetenhet uppskattas vara högre än någonsin. Individen pekas ut som att ha ett stort ansvar, men trots klimatkampanjer så fortsätter svenskarnas kollektiva klimatpåverkan ändå att öka. Denna uppsats syftar till att genom diskursanalys undersöka hur klimatansvar, i termer av ansvar för klimatpåverkan och klimatanpassning framställs i två Svenska dagstidningar, Dagens Nyheter och Uppsala Nya Tidning. Svenskt klimatansvar visade sig vara konstruerat på ett tvetydigt sätt där samhällets gemensamma påverkan verkar vara förenad med brist på enskilt ansvar. Individen är den aktör som oftast utpekas som förväntad att ta ansvar för klimatanpassning samtidigt som detta inte på något sätt krävs. De synsätt som präglade klimatdiskursen var de för ekologisk modernisering där fortsatt konsumtionsökning, tillväxt och grön teknikutveckling förväntas ta Sverige ur klimatkrisen utan att större livsstil- eller strukturella förändringar behöver göras. Klimatanpassning framställs gärna som något ”roligt” och enkelt och många alternativa perspektiv på klimatfrågan hamnar i debattens skymundan. / The topic of climate change has received an increasing amount of media attention during recent years and the Swedish people’s individual awareness of environmental issues seems to be higher than ever. The individual is pointed out as having a big responsibility, but despite climate campaigns, the Swedes’ collective carbon footprint continues to increase. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis; examine how responsibility for lowering the carbon footprint and adapting to climate change is construed in two Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Uppsala Nya Tidning.Swedish climate responsibility turned out to be diffuse, the individual was encouraged to take responsibility to change but not fully expected to. The perspective that was strongest in this discourse analysis was that of ecological modernization where continued consumption, growth and development of ”green technologies" is expected to bring Sweden out of its climate crisis without noticeable changes in lifestiles or structures. Climate adaptation is portrayed as something ”fun” and easy and many alternative perspectives are kept in periphery of the current debate.

This thesis has established models of water footprint in the Eco-industrial Park. The model was presented in three different levels, namely the level of Eco-industrial Park, the level of enterprises and the level of products. There are two parts of each model. The first part is the schema tization of different components of the water footprint. The second part is the mathematical model of water footprint counting.   After the models, we made several case studies using these m odels established in this thesis. The first case is the water footprint assessment of the Yixing Economic Development Zone (YEDZ). There are water footprints of the YEDZ in the year of 2009, 2012 and 2015 separately, which are 6787613.6 10 × m3,  61110018 10 × m3 and 62413749 10 ×  m3. Considering the different scales of the YE DZ, for example, the increasing industrial production and economic development, we also make the water footprints per capital of the YEDZ in the year of 2009, 2012 and 2015. The results are 19690.34 ×103m3/capita, 24667.07 ×103m3/capita and 48274.98 ×103m3/capita.  In the level of Eco-industrial Park,  we take several enterprises as case studies. The enterprises are within different types of industries including Chemical industry, Textile and dye ing industry, Optoelectronic industry, and Mechanical, Photovoltaic industry and machinery manufacture industry, etc. These enterprises are investigated by surveys and statistical documents. From  the results, we can see that the enterprises with big footprint are mostly in Chemical industry, Textile and  dyeing industry and Photovoltaic industry.  In order to make the data more reasonable, we also calculated the water footprint per unit out-put value. What’s interesting, the enterprises in Chemical industry, Textile and dyeing industry and Photovoltaic industry also have big water footprint per unit out-put value.  In the level of product, we take the surfactants produced by Jiangsu Guanyang Fine Chemical Co., Ltd. This enterprise has moved to a new place and made some improvement in the production. On one hand, they have increased the scale of production for three times than before; on the other hand they have adopted a lot of water saving facilities and measures, such as the use of rain wa ter, the increase of water recycling and the involvement of water cascade utilization. So in this thesis, we comp ared the water footprint of surfactants before and after moving. The Water Footprint of surfactants per year before moving is 22914.8(m3), after moving is 56804.4 (m3). However, the Water Footprint of surfactants before moving  is  2.52 (m3/t), while after moving is 2.08 (m3/t).  Finally, we gave some response options after the analysis and discussion of the results. The suggestions are given in three levels as well. The first one is to the gov ernment or so-called policy makers; the second one is to the enterprises; the third one is to the staff members in the Yixing Economic Development Zone.

The number of applications and the significance of ultrapure water are increasing over time in both traditional and high-tech industries. For ultrapure water treatment and production, two important types of equipments are the green technology with Electrodeionization modules (EDI), and the traditional ion exchange resins with Mixed Beds (MB). Unfortunately, it is a concern that the highly polluting MB technology produces a large volume of waste-water during the regeneration process, but still owns around 90% market share of all ultrapure water systems. By contrast, although EDI, a high-tech green product of the latest generation, has excellent market advantages and a promising future of totally replacing MB, it grabs only around 10% market share as of 2010. Perhaps, the technology and timing for EDI to be widely applied are still premature. It is also likely that most industrial consumers do not fully understand the real value and deep impact of EDI, and cling to MB under the conventional cost-price consideration. However, it is a global trend to be environmentally friendly. For example, in recent years the world¡¦s major automobile companies have invested in developing and manufacturing hybrid/electric vehicles that are equally functional yet more costly than traditional cars. Moreover, governments counteract general consumers¡¦ preference for low-price products by imposing more stringent standards for cars¡¦ emissions and energy consumptions with the aid of new laws and subsidies. If there is a lesson to be learned here, isn¡¦t EDI to the ultrapure water industry what hybrid/electric cars are to the automobile industry in terms of their developing trends and values? This thesis will examine a specific case, S company, which manufactures EDI. Through the analysis of the company, advantages of its products, and potential opportunities in its business environment, empirically it can be shown that EDI will inevitably become the mainstream in the future market by gradually replacing all traditional MB. Hopefully such an empirical conclusion would inspire and educate industrial manufacturers to make their future choices between EDI and traditional MB based not only on the operating efficiency, but also on which technology contributes more to environmental protection and earth sustainability during the development of an enterprise. It is also of hope that the perspective on system designs and usages could be more objective and unbiased. For instance, instead of always chasing low costs as the first priority in the pursuit of profits and development, enterprises could take into account social responsibilities, such as environment protection, energy conservation, and carbon reduction, and become pioneers in carbon footprint reduction.

Global trade and increasing food demand are important drivers of impacts in the water system across scales. This study coupled a spatially-explicit physical account of trade between Brazilian municipalities with a water footprint accounting model, in order to analyse water footprints of Brazilian soy produced for domestic and international consumption, and assess their relevance in the context of water scarcity and competing demands for water resources. The water footprints of Brazilian soy production were assessed for different levels of spatial-explicitness for comparison. The Swedish water footprints were analysed within this framework to illustrate the use of the methodology. As a result, temporal and geographical patterns of variability of water the footprints related to Brazilian soy production, attributed to different consumers in the global market, were identified. The study found the methodology to unveil important processes connected to economic and trade drivers, as well as to variability in climate and production yields. It was found that important regional variability was not considered or fully understood when accounting for water footprints as a national aggregate. Opportunities for improvement and further research were also discussed.

The fishery for Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) has received considerable attention in recent years, owing largely to the possibility of its significant expansion and the ecological implications of increased extraction of a keystone species. This thesis employed Ecological Footprint (EF) analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) to measure the resource use, energy use, and emissions associated with three krill-derived products: meal and oil for aquaculture feeds, and omega-3 krill oil capsules for the nutraceutical market. The product supply chains of one krill fishing and processing company, Aker BioMarine, were used as a case study to examine Antarctic krill-derived products. Antarctic krill products were compared to products from similar fisheries targeting other species for reduction into meal and oil, including Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens), Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) and Gulf menhaden (Brevoortia patronus), on the basis of marine footprint, carbon footprint, and fuel use intensity.

Planners and designers of sustainable communities claim they design them according to sustainability principles, but residents must also embrace those principles in their private lives in order to reduce the community's ecological footprint. One such sustainable community is the "UniverCity" on Burnaby Mountain next to the Simon Fraser University. This research investigated the influence of the residents' individual behaviour on the total ecological footprint of this sustainable community and how planners can influence their residents' behaviour. Using the UniverCity as a case study, this research demonstrates that not all sustainable community planners attempt to influence the residents' behaviour to be more sustainable and that the planners do not always measure the ecological footprint of a community. The study recommends that community planners should attempt to measure this or similar indicators and use direct and indirect influencing methods to build an active and engaged community and foster sustainable behaviour.

This thesis handles the need for Volvo Logistics (VLC) to calculate their total carbon footprint of purchased transportations, i.e. the total carbon dioxide emissions by all vehicles employed by VLC to transport the goods of their customers. The purpose of the thesis is therefore to determine a method with which VLC can calculate the total carbon footprint. To be able to decide upon one method that can fulfil the purpose, the authors searched for various methods, both in the academia and within the transportation sector, with which the emissions can be determined. Simultaneously the available input at VLC was studied to determine what type of method would be best suited to the current state of the company. After gathering several methods and determine what input was available and what was not available at VLC, an analysis of the found methods was done. First matching them with the available input to see which were usable as is, and then a more thorough Analytical Hierarchical Process analysis using three main-criterions; credibility, comparability, and simplicity, each with several sub-criterions. The weighting of these criterions was done in a workshop together with VLC employees, particularly the Environmental Manager and an Environmental Analyst, but also with two employees at the Global Logistics Development department at VLC. Using the weighting and the author’s comparisons of the methods within each of the criterions it was possible to obtain the methods with which further analysis should be done. After further analysis was conducted, considering VLC’s situation and possible development, the final methods was decided upon, one for each mode of transport; air, rail, road, and sea. These had to be adapted to better suit VLC and the input that was available; the distances, the weight, and the transport mode, factors which are incorporated in the methods recommended by the authors. The adaptation was then done using expertise at VLC to be able to determine what input VLC could affect as to be able to work towards lowering the total carbon footprint once it was calculated the first time. This also led to a revaluation of the method for sea transportation, forcing a change from the previously chosen one to a more suited method. This meant that three of the four modes; air, road, and sea, was covered by the NTM method, while rail used the Green Cargo method. While adapting the methods; to make them ready to use for VLC, certain changes required to obtain all the input needed was encountered and forwarded to the environmental department, letting them include it in the annual supplier survey. The thesis was concluded by four sets of instructions to be used to calculate the carbon footprint, one two tiered set for each mode of transportation. The instructions are presented in a step by step fashion of how to perform the calculations. The first part; First time usage, depicts those changes needed before the calculations can be attempted, the second part; Annual usage, cover those steps which has to be gone through every time the total carbon footprint for a period is to be calculated.

This thesis uses statistical modelling to better understand the relationship between insured losses and hazard footprint characteristics for European windstorms (extra- tropical cyclones). The footprint of a windstorm is defined as the maximum wind gust speed to occur at a set of spatial locations over the duration of the storm. A better understanding of this relationship is required because the most damaging historical windstorms have had footprints with differing characteristics. Some have a large area of relatively low wind gust speeds, while others have a smaller area of higher wind gust speeds. In addition, this insight will help to explain the surprising, sharp decline in European wind related losses in the mid 1990’s. This novel exploration is based on 5730 high resolution model generated historical footprints (1979-2012) representing the whole European domain. Functions of extreme footprint wind gust speeds, known as storm severity measures, are developed to represent footprint characteristics. Exploratory data analysis is used to compare which storm severity measures are most successful at classifying 23 extreme windstorms, known to have caused large insured losses. Summarising the footprint using these scalar severity measures, however, fails to capture different combinations of spatial scale and local intensity characteristics. To overcome this, a novel statistical model for windstorm footprints is developed, initially for pairs of locations using a bivariate Gaussian copula model; subsequently extended to represent the whole European domain using a geostatistical spatial model. Throughout, the distribution of wind gust speeds at each location is modelled using a left-truncated Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. Synthetic footprints, simulated from the geostatistical model, are then used in a sensitivity study to explore whether the local intensity or spatial dependence structure of a footprint has the most influence on insured loss. This contributes a novel example of sensitivity analysis applied to a stochastic natural hazards model. The area of the footprint exceeding 25ms−1 over land is the most successful storm severity measure at classifying extreme loss windstorms, ranking all 23 within the top 18% of events. Marginally transformed wind gust speeds are identified as being asymptotically independent and second-order stationary, allowing for the spatial dependence to be represented by a geostatistical covariance function. The geostatistical windstorm footprint model is able to quickly (∼3 seconds) simulate synthetic footprints which realistically represent joint losses throughout Europe. The sensitivity study identifies that the left-truncated GEV parameters have a greater influence on insured loss than the geostatistical spatial dependence parameters. The observed decline in wind related losses in the 1990’s can therefore be attributed to a change in the local intensity rather than the spatial structure of footprint wind gust speeds.

abstract: Local municipalities in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area have voiced an interest in purchasing alternate source water with lower DBP precursors. Along the primary source is a hydroelectric dam in which water will be diverted from. This project is an assessment of optimizing the potential blends of source water to a water treatment plant in an effort to enable them to more readily meet DBP regulations. To perform this analysis existing water treatment models were used in conjunction with historic water quality sampling data to predict chemical usage necessary to meet DBP regulations. A retrospective analysis was performed for the summer months of 2007 regarding potential for the WTP to reduce cost through optimizing the source water by an average of 30% over the four-month period, accumulating to overall treatment savings of $154 per MG ($82 per AF). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering 2011