Measuring the risk-adjusted return of socially responsible investment portfolios built with stochastic dominance criteria

Socially responsible investing (SRI) has gained growing interest both in practice and academia during recent years. Many investors who implement responsibility themes in their investment strategy gain utility from following their values but also from financial returns. Hence, their goal is not to completely sacrifice the financial performance of the portfolio in order to follow responsibility themes. The risk-return performance of SRI has been studied in many contexts, but no consensus has been reached whether it offers suboptimal returns or possibly some long-lasting advantages. This thesis studies how portfolios with responsibility constraints have performed compared to an unconstrained benchmark portfolio in Helsinki stock market during 2009-2018. Responsibility constraints are applied by using company-specific ESG (environmental, social and governmental) scores. ESG scores have become a widely accepted method for applying responsibility into portfolio selection. In practice, investor risk preferences are often unknown when a portfolio is selected. This thesis applies the theoretically appealing method of stochastic dominance to optimize portfolio weights. Stochastic dominance requires only simple assumptions on investor risk preferences and assets’ underlying return distributions. Recent development in methods has enabled using stochastic dominance to efficiently diversify a portfolio across a wide set of possible assets. Methodology by Kuosmanen (2004) is applied to select portfolios that are efficient in the sense of second-degree stochastic dominance over OMXH25 index benchmark. The results imply that an investor is able to exclude up to 40% of companies based on ESG scores and still form a portfolio that dominates the OMXH25 index. If the ESG limit is increased more, the optimization method does not find portfolios that dominate the index by stochastic dominance criteria, implying that increasing the ESG limit higher prevents forming efficient portfolios in the sense of SSD

Sustainable Approaches for Highway Runoff Management During Construction and Operation

Paper V and paper VI have not been published yet.Environmentally friendly approaches for highway runoff management during construction and operation are considered in this project. First, the state of the art in runoff management in terms of characterization, treatment, and modeling approaches were surveyed, and knowledge gaps were identified. Then, the characterization and treatment of tunneling wastewater (by natural and chemical coagulants) was investigated. In the next stage, the vulnerability of water quality to road construction activities was investigated by analyzing field monitoring data. In addition, two different approaches, involving information theory and gamma test theory, were suggested to optimize the water quality monitoring network during road construction. Lastly, the application of satellite data (i.e., Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Imager satellite imagery products) for water quality monitoring was examined. Based on the results, it can be shown that site-specific parameters (e.g., climate, traffic load) cause spatiotemporal variation in the characterization of highway runoff and performance of best management practices (BMP) to protect water quality. There is a knowledge gap regarding the characterization of highway runoff under different climatic scenarios, as well as the continuous monitoring and assessment of roadside water bodies. Analysis of the field monitoring data indicates that blasting, area cleaning, and construction of water management measures have the highest impact on surface water quality during road construction. Additionally, the application of information theory and gamma test theory indicate that the primary monitoring network assessed here is not optimally designed. The number and spatial distribution of monitoring stations could be modified and reduced, as the construction activities vary over time. Additionally, the suggested remote sensing techniques applied in this project are able to estimate water quality parameters (i.e., turbidity and chlorophyll-a) in roadside water bodies with a reliability consistent with field observations, reflecting the spatiotemporal effects of road construction and operations on water quality. Finally, an efficient two-step treatment strategy (15 min sedimentation followed by chemical coagulation and 45 min sedimentation) is suggested for the treatment of tunneling wastewater. The optimum coagulant dosages in the jar test exhibit high treatment efficiency (92-99%) for both turbidity and suspended solids (SS), especially for particle removal in the range of 10-100 μm, which is hard to remove by sedimentation ponds and may pose serious threats to the aquatic ecosystem. It is hoped the knowledge generated by this project will help decision-makers with management strategies and support UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed approaches directly contribute to managing highway runoff and achieving SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and especially target 6.3 (water quality).publishedVersio

Sustainable Approaches for Highway Runoff Management During Construction and Operation

publishedVersio

SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION PATTERN DUE TO COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN KAMPONG HOUSE

ABSTRACT Kampung houses are houses in kampung area of the city. Kampung House oftenly transformed into others use as urban dynamics. One of the transfomation is related to the commercial activities addition by the house owner. It make house with full private space become into mixused house with more public spaces or completely changed into full public commercial building. This study investigate the spatial transformation pattern of the kampung houses due to their commercial activities addition. Site observations, interviews and questionnaires were performed to study the spatial transformation. This study found that in kampung houses, the spatial transformation pattern was depend on type of commercial activities and owner perceptions, and there are several steps of the spatial transformation related the commercial activity addition. Keywords: spatial transformation pattern; commercial activity; owner perception, kampung house; adaptabilit