Economic development through the exploitation of natural resources has led to biodiversity loss among other environmental issues around the world. The use of biodiversity offsets to balance economic development and biodiversity conservation goals has significantly increased during the last three decades. A recent report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released in December of 2016 identified at least 56 countries with laws or policies requiring the use of these types of instruments worldwide. There are over 100 biodiversity offset programs operating in countries such as United States of America, France, New Zealand, Mexico, Australia and others, which are injecting over 3 USD billion per year into the world’s economy. Experiences of different jurisdictions indicate that biodiversity offsets can become a promising tool in addressing the biodiversity loss issue in their territories. Canada and some of its provinces such as Alberta and British Columbia, which have important oil and gas sectors, and are home to important wildlife species, have been part of the biodiversity offsets debate, and have been exploring their use. This research derives from the observation that although some of the international biodiversity offset experiences have been vastly studied, there is little experience analyzing the legal challenges of implementing biodiversity offset systems, including biodiversity banks (a type of biodiversity offset that creates biodiversity markets) on public lands. The very nature of public land, where multiple users may simultaneously access the land and conduct a variety of potentially incompatible activities, can create extra legal challenges with respect to the implementation of biodiversity offsets. Through an Alberta-focused case study, the thesis explores the characteristics that a planning and legal framework of a province with a majority of public lands would need to have in order to support the use of biodiversity offsets and a biodiversity banking system. It also identifies and analyzes the legal issues and challenges of implementing long lasting biodiversity offsets in that context. Under the system studied by this dissertation, the main users of Alberta’s public forests (forest operators and oil and gas developers) become the biodiversity bankers or suppliers, and buyers of biodiversity credits, respectively. This thesis is therefore a contribution to knowledge about how biodiversity offsets, specifically biodiversity banks, can be applied on provincial public lands, used by multiple users. It focuses on the legal frameworks, property right issues, permanence, and additionality needed for a potential biodiversity banking system for a province such as Alberta.

This master thesis deals with the implementation of the control system for the forming machine used in producing of confectionery forms. The introductory part describes the forming machine from the point of important control elements. The second part is associated with the hardware design of the control automat and description of main functional units on the control PCB, as well as on other PCBs. The following text presents the communication protocol between the control automat and PC and after that there is a description of the CPU firmware. The final section brings the characteristics of the PC application for a connection with the automat.

Die Berechnung der Netzverluste in Niederspannungsnetzen kann nur über Umwege erfolgen, da viele Netzbetreiber keine digitalisierten Daten ihrer Netze besitzen. Hier wird ein Ansatz zur Ermittlung der technischen Verluste anhand vorhandener Netzdaten beschrieben. / The major part of network operator of low voltage nets do not have digitised data of their nets. That’s why net losses must be calculated indirectly. This article describes an approach for getting results in a direct way.

Au cours des dernières décennies, la massification de l’usage de l’informatique, notamment connectée, a eu de nombreuses et profondes conséquences sur l’ensemble de la société. Loin d’être le produit d’une histoire ou d’un « progrès » linéaire, les techniques s’inscrivent dans un rapport social matérialisé. Entre technicisation du politique et politisation de la technique, toute une dialectique ne cesse de se déployer. Les acteur·e·s engagé·e·s dans ces conflits se trouvent à différentes échelles : institutions supra-étatiques, inter-étatiques, États, entreprises, organisations diverses et militant·e·s individuel·le·s. Dans cette arène particulière de lutte se déploient épreuves et grammaires singulières. À partir d’entretiens réalisés auprès des différent·e·s acteur·e·s engagé·e·s dans des luttes pour la politisation de la technique, cette thèse de doctorat s’attache à étudier les différentes stratégies utilisées lors de trois conflits distincts, à la fois contemporains, et inscrits dans une histoire longue. Sont ainsi étudiées les luttes en faveur et en opposition à la neutralité du Net, menées de 2009 à 2014 ; celles pour la protection de la vie privée et des données personnelles menées entre 2012 et 2016 ; et enfin, celles réagissant à la mise en place de l’état d’urgence en France à partir de 2015. Cette recherche étudie les agirs des différents groupes impliqués dans ces conflictualités sociales, afin d’établir une cartographie de leurs stratégies. Ainsi, notre analyse mettra en lumière la manière dont les groupes engagés dans la lutte créent les conditions de victoires sociales au sein de ces espaces, ou au contraire échouent à atteindre leurs objectifs. / Over the past decades, the increased use of computers, particularly connected to the internet, has had numerous and deep impact on the whole society. Far from being the outcome of a linear "progress," its technologies are embedded in material social relationships. Between the technicization of the political, and the politicization of the technological, a deep dialectic keeps unfolding. The actors involved in these conflicts can be detected at different levels, supra national institutions, among the Nations, companies, diverse organizations and individual activists. In these specific arenas of fighting arenas, people rely on singular trials and repertoires. Based on interviews conducted with different actors involved in the struggle for the politicization of technology, this dissertation explores the various strategies used during three conflicts, both contemporary and with long-standing history. We thus study the fights among pro and con concerning internet neutrality, taking place between 2009 and 2014; the fights for the protection of private life and personal data between 2012 and 2016, and those organized in reaction to the emergency state in France, starting in 2015. This research studies the repertoire of action from the different groups involved in these social conflicts, in order to map out their strategy. Therefore, our analysis will shed a new light on how the groups involved in this struggle create the conditions for success within those spaces, or on the contrary fail to achieve their goals.

Cette thèse par articles se compose de trois chapitres. Le premier chapitre traite principalement de l’urbanisation. Il apporte un éclairage sur l’histoire des villes ainsi que sur les évolutions futures attendues. Ainsi, cet aperçu permet de comprendre les grands enjeux pour les décideurs publics concernés par les problèmes de congestion, de pollution, d’étalement urbain, etc. Les phénomènes d’urbanisation comme l’étalement urbain accentuent les enjeux de financement des nouvelles infrastructures de réseaux de télécommunications dans les zones rurales impactées par la hausse du taux d’urbanisation. Les problématiques spécifiques au secteur des transports trouvent aussi leur transposition dans le domaine des réseaux de télécommunications. Un certain nombre d’enseignements issus des politiques de transport peuvent donc être tirés pour la régulation des télécommunications. Le deuxième chapitre vise à répondre à la problématique du financement de nouvelles infrastructures de réseaux. Pour cela, trois essais sont proposés. Dans le premier essai, il est démontré que la menace crédible par l’État du déploiement d’une nouvelle infrastructure de réseaux peut inciter les acteurs privés à investir dans de nouvelles technologies de réseaux. Cette politique incitative n’est pas suffisante. Elle doit s’accompagner d’une politique de régulation de l’accès. Dans le deuxième essai, il est notamment démontré que le prix de l’accès aux infrastructures de réseaux doit intégrer une prime de risque afin que les acteurs privés soient totalement rémunérés pour le risque d’investissement et qu’ils continuent d’être incités à investir dans le futur. Le cadre conceptuel appliqué au marché du Qatar permet d’estimer la prime de risque selon divers scénarii. Enfin, le troisième essai propose une nouvelle approche de régulation pour traiter de la Neutralité du Net. En particulier, il est démontré que des pauses réglementaires (regulatory holidays en anglais) des règles de la Neutralité du Net pourraient s’avérer utiles. En effet, une pause réglementaire de certains principes stricts de la Neutralité du Net permettrait à un opérateur de vendre, pour une période limitée, des capacités supplémentaires aux fournisseurs de contenus et services. A l’issu de cette période, la capacité supplémentaire du réseau pourrait être réallouée à l’ensemble des services Internet soumis au régime du Best-Effort. Ainsi, il est démontré que cette régulation permettrait à la fois d’inciter les fournisseurs d’accès à Internet à investir mais aussi d’assurer une qualité de service relative constante sur Internet. Le troisième chapitre traite de l’effet des bloqueurs de publicités sur le marché de l’Internet. Le modèle théorique met en évidence les effets opposés de la publicité sur les réseaux de télécommunications : la publicité congestionne les réseaux mais permet également de promouvoir la diversité des contenus proposés aux consommateurs. Ainsi, il est démontré que le fournisseur d’accès à Internet peut être incité à intégrer un bloqueur de publicités, ce qui est sous certaines conditions socialement souhaitable du point de vue du bien-être collectif. / This PhD thesis consists of three chapters.The first chapter deals with urbanization. A brief history and forecast of cities are highlighted. This overview explains current and upcoming issues in cities, such as congestion, air pollution, urban sprawl, etc. Urban sprawl, among other things, accentuates the question of how to finance network infrastructures such as telecommunications networks at the local loop level in sparsely populated areas. Specific urban policies can be transposed to telecommunications. Some lessons are valuable to regulate this sector.The second chapter is focuses on funding new telecommunications networks. Three articles are put forth. In the first one, it is shown that the credible threat of a State-owned network can be an incentive for private players to invest in a next-generation access. This incentive regulation, however, does not suffice. It should be accompanied by dedicated access regulation. In the second article, it is shown that the regulated access price must include a risk premium to compensate the incumbent for the investment risk of asymmetric regulation. The proposed theoretical framework applies to the Qatari fixed market. Finally, in the third article, a new regulatory approach is put forth to address the issue of Net Neutrality, in particular, regulatory holidays of Net Neutrality rules can be relevant. This innovative approach would allow an Internet Service Provider, to sell, for a given time period, additional bandwidth to content and service providers. At the end of the period, additional bandwidth could be re-allocated to the Open Internet that functions under the Best-Effort regime. Hence, it is shown that this regulatory approach could be an incentive for Internet service providers to invest in more bandwidth but it would also guarantee, in the long run, a given level of quality of service for Internet services.The third chapter deals with the effect of ad blocking on the Internet. The proposed theoretical model highlights the opposite effects of ad blocking on telecommunications networks: on the one hand, ad blocking reduces network congestion, on the other hand, ad blocking increases available content diversity over the Internet. In consequence, Internet service providers have an incentive to integrate an ad blocker, which can be welfare enhancing under certain specific conditions.

This master's thesis analyzes and designs implementation of the system for handheld devices like Motorola MC1000. These devices will be used for retrieving information from remote workplace. Data is transformed through SQL database and XML interface by using other parts of the system into economical software, where invoices are created, items are accounted or other operations could be done. This economical software provides some tables like products, warehouses and other information needed for the operation. Best use of the system is in warehouses of companies where products are identified by barcodes, which can be read by handheld device. One can create various documents using this system like conveyances, issue cards, receive cards etc. The next level, which is economical software, is responsible for processing of documents. The whole system is made-to-measure for software Pohoda from Stormware s.r.o. Nevertheless it can be used with another economical, accounting or similar software without any problem.

In this thesis I capture the effect of oil prices on the economic growth of net oil exporters and net oil importers of the world. The existing literature on this topic only covers some parts of the world, major oil exporters and oil importers and some covers only a single country. So, in this work I take a larger set of countries and enlarge the time period. This work covers the time period 1972-2021. The effect is examined by using the pooled OLS and two way fixed effect. I get significant results for both the net oil exporters and net oil importers. The results of both net oil exporters and net oil importers are significantly different from zero. But these results are opposite from the existing literature. I found that an increase in oil price has a negative impact on the economic growth of net oil exporters, but it has a positive effect on the economic growth of net oil importers. So, these results also do not support the theoretical and empirical literature.

Atherosclerotic plaque is currently the leading cause of coronary artery disease (CAD). With the help of CT images, we can identify the size and type of plaque, which can help doctors make a correct diagnosis. To do this, we need to segment coronary plaques from CT images. However, plaque segmentation is still challenging because it takes a lot of energy and time of the radiologists. With the development of technology, some segmentation algorithms based on deep learning are applied in this field. These deep learning algorithms tend to be fully automated and have high segmentation accuracy, showing great potential. In this paper, we try to use deep learning method to segment plaques from 3D cardiac CT images. This work is implemented in two steps. The first part is to extract coronary artery from the CT image with the help of UNet. In the second part, a fully convolutional network is used to segment the plaques from the artery. In each part, the algorithm undergoes 5-fold cross validation. In the first part, we achieve a dice coefficient of 0.8954. In the second part, we achieve the AUC score of 0.9202 which is higher than auto-encoder method and is very close to state-of-the-art method. / Aterosklerotisk plack är för närvarande den främsta orsaken till kranskärlssjukdom (CAD). Med hjälp av CT-bilder kan vi identifiera storlek och typ av plack, vilket kan hjälpa läkare att ställa en korrekt diagnos. För att göra detta måste vi segmentera koronarplack från CT-bilder. Emellertid är placksegmentering fortfarande utmanande eftersom det tar mycket energi och tid av radiologerna. Med utvecklingen av teknik tillämpas vissa segmenteringsalgoritmer baserade på djupinlärning inom detta område. Dessa djupinlärningsalgoritmer tenderar att vara helt automatiserade och har hög segmenteringsnoggrannhet, vilket visar stor potential. I detta dokument försöker vi använda djupinlärningsmetoden för att segmentera plack från 3D-hjärt-CT-bilder. Detta arbete genomförs i två steg. Den första delen är att extrahera kranskärlen från CT-bilden med hjälp av UNet. I den andra delen används ett helt konvolutionerande nätverk för att segmentera placken från artären. I varje del genomgår algoritmen 5-faldig korsvalidering. I den första delen uppnår vi en tärningskoefficient på 0,8954. I den andra delen uppnår vi AUC-poängen 0,9202, vilket är högre än den automatiska kodarmetoden och är mycket nära den senaste metoden.

[pt] O presente trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar e contextualizar o atual cenário do mercado voluntário de carbono no Brasil, para que possa servir como um guia para as empresas brasileiras entenderem sobre esse mercado. Para isso foi feita uma revisão bibliográfica com diversos estudos e publicações de entidades do terceiro setor, bem como relatórios e artigos publicados no Brasil e no mundo, mostrando o surgimento, o contexto e os atuais desafios e pontos de atenção que esse mercado exige. O trabalho mostra que esse é um mercado relativamente novo, mas que já passou por momentos de crise e expansão, e que nos últimos anos, impulsionado por empresas e pessoas físicas querendo compensar suas emissões, movimento que ficou mais conhecido como Net Zero, e em alguns casos carbono neutro, vem apresentando forte crescimento. Por outro lado, ainda pelo pequeno tamanho do mercado, quando comprado com as emissões globais e pela sua natureza de ser voluntário e com relativa facilidade de entrada, tanto no fornecimento do crédito quanto nos compromissos assumidos, diversos desafios se apresentam para esse mercado, que por um lado é facilmente adaptável a diversas realidades, mas que por outro precisa ser crível e mostrar resultados para quem vende, compra e quem consome. As principais conclusões são, que esse mercado tem grande potencial de promover inovações tecnológicas e engajar empresas e pessoas na direção de uma economia de baixo carbono, e que funciona como uma importante ferramenta de transição, e que ele sozinho não consegue fazer com que o mundo caminhe para a neutralidade nas emissões de carbono. / [en] The present work aims to present and contextualize the current scenario of the voluntary carbon market in Brazil, so that it can serve as a guide for Brazilian companies to understand this market. To achieve this, a bibliographic review was conducted using various studies and publications from third-sector entities, as well as reports and articles published in Brazil and in other contries, showing the emergence, context, and current challenges and points of attention that this market demands. The work shows that this is a relatively new market, but it has already gone through periods of crisis and expansion. In recent years, driven by companies and individuals seeking to offset their emissions, a movement known as Net Zero, and in some cases carbon neutral, it has been experiencing strong growth. However, due to the small size of the market compared to global emissions and its voluntary nature with relative ease of entry, both in the supply of credits and in the commitments made, various challenges are presented for this market. On one hand, it is easily adaptable to various realities, but on the other hand, it needs to be credible and show results for those who sell, buy, and consume. The main conclusions are that this market has great potential to promote technological innovations and engage companies and individuals towards a low-carbon economy. It serves as an important transition tool, but alone, it cannot lead the world towards carbon emissions neutrality.

Configurable process models are integrated representations of multiple variants of a process model in a given domain, e.g. multiple variants of a shipment-to-delivery process in the logistics domain. Configurable process models provide a basis for managing variability and for enabling reuse of process models in Process-Aware Information Systems. Rather than designing process models from scratch, analysts can derive process models by configuring existing ones, thereby reusing proven practices. This thesis starts with the observation that existing approaches for capturing and managing configurable process models suffer from three shortcomings that affect their usability in practice. Firstly, configuration in existing approaches is performed manually and as such it is error-prone. In particular, analysts are left with the burden of ensuring the correctness of the individualized models. Secondly, existing approaches suffer from a lack of decision support for the selection of configuration alternatives. Consequently, stakeholders involved in the configuration of process models need to possess expertise both in the application domain and in the modeling language employed. This assumption represents an adoption obstacle in domains where users are unfamiliar with modeling notations. Finally, existing approaches for configurable process modeling are limited in scope to control-flow aspects, ignoring other equally important aspects of process models such as object flow and resource management. Following a design science research method, this thesis addresses the above shortcomings by proposing an integrated framework to manage the configuration of process models. The framework is grounded on three original and interrelated contributions: (i) a conceptual foundation for correctness-preserving configuration of process models; (ii) a questionnaire-driven approach for process model configuration, providing decision support and abstraction from modeling notations; (iii) a meta-model for configurable process models covering control-flow, data objects and resources. While the framework is language-independent, an embodiment of the framework in the context of a process modeling language used in practice is also developed in this thesis. The framework was formally defined and validated using four scenarios taken from different domains. Moreover, a comprehensive toolset was implemented to support the validation of the framework.