In order to reach sustainability, all parts of the system “individuals within organisations within society within the biosphere” must change. Individuals are major leverage points, and being more efficient in engaging them to act strategically towards sustainability is and will be of critical importance. To explore how to help the engager improve this engagement process, [...]
Informing Individual’s Actions through Strategic Planning for Sustainability
This thesis focuses on the effects of a strategic planning process for sustainability (SPPS) on individuals. Very little research has connected strategic planning and sustainability for individuals, while related research has focused on strategic planning in organizational contexts and psychological determinants of individual change related to the environment (e.g., environmental attitude and perceived personal threat). [...]
Urban Sprawl – origins and environmental consequences
The purpose of the present work is to provide a brief survey of the process of urban sprawl. What are its origins, how did it develop and why? Moreover, focus will be on environmental concerns in the framework of urban sprawl. The thesis concentrates on developments in Europe and North America, where cities can look [...]
Effective Communication for Strategic Sustainable Development Education: The Hook and Ladder Technique
In order to reach sustainability, a greater capacity to facilitate the implementation of the principles on which sustainability is founded is required. Effective methods of communicating sustainability will be necessary. Although there is a notable range of successful methods, opportunities to expand that range always remain and are worthy of exploration. This study pursues capacity [...]
The Campus Sustainability Movement: A Strategic Perspective
Society is facing a crisis of un-sustainability. The sector of higher education is well poised to support transition to a sustainable society. This thesis assesses the efforts of the Campus Sustainability Movement (CSM) in the US and Canada relative to a Strategic Sustainable Development Framework. Key findings indicate that the CSM is utilizing tools and [...]
Blind acoustic dereverberation
Title: A survey on methods for blind acoustic dereverberation. Reverberation is a phenomenon in auditoriums such as concert halls and churches. Reverberation consists of a combination of multiple echoes, and its intensity and duration depend on factors such as the dimensions of the enclosure, materials used in construction and shape. Reverberation is desirable in music [...]
Availability and Mobile Phone Interruptions
Mobile phones have become ubiquitous in many countries today. As the number of subscribers and geographical coverage continues to increase worldwide, mobile users can now be reached at nearly any place and at any time. Though the technology supports near perpetual connectivity, users are not available for mobile phone communication in such a straightforward way. [...]
Sustainability Opportunities and Challenges of Bioplastics
Bioplastics (BPs) can be defined as plastics made of biomass such as corn and sugarcane. These substances have been increasingly spotlighted as means to saving fossil fuels, reducing CO2 emission and plastic wastes. Biodegradability of BPs has been widely publicized in society and the demand for packaging is rapidly increasing among retailers and the food [...]
Speech Recognition using Hidden Markov Model
The purpose with this final master degree project was to develop a speech recognition tool, to make the technology accessible. The development includes an extensive study of hidden Markov model, which is currently the state of the art in the field of speech recognition. A speech recognizer is a complex machine developed with the purpose [...]