Egressibility : Applying the concept of accessibility to the self-evacuation of people with functional limitations

The population is getting increasingly older, and old age is correlated with decreased functional capacity. In society, continuous improvements in accessibility of public environments is apparent. Together, these two factors contribute to the trend that the people that are expected to perform self-evacuation today are more diverse in abilities than ever. Functional capacity refers to the abilities to perform fundamental everyday activities such as seeing, hearing, moving around, etc., while a decrease in functional capacity is referred to as a functional limitation. In the field of accessibility, definitions have been developed to reflect the person-environment interactions that determine whether an environment is accessible or not. That is, accessibility can be investigated by assessing the interaction between the environmental demands and a person’s functional capacity. The focus of this thesis has been the concept of egressibility, here defined as “accessibility to means of evacuation”. The purpose has been to explore ways of identifying issues related to self-evacuation possibilities for people with functional limitations based on the notion of accessibility. This was achieved through two research studies including conceptual and methodological exploration on the topic. The first study was a qualitative interview study to investigate the perspectives on egressibility from older people with functional limitations in Sweden. The second study focused on a methodology implemented into an instrument to measure egressibility by juxtaposing environmental demands and functional limitations. The results from the qualitative study showed that older people may tend to favour self-reliance in mitigating egressibility issues, instead of relying on the physical and social environment to be supportive. The instrument developed in the second study, called the Egress Enabler, displayed promising attributes of validity and reliability during initial testing. However, the Egress Enabler is affected by the current lack of scientific knowledge regarding several aspects on the interaction between environmental demands and functional capacity during egress. Some of these knowledge gaps have already been identified and should be further investigated. The Egress Enabler represents a necessary step towards a comprehensive performance-based evaluation of self-evacuation possibilities for people with functional limitations, highlighting the complex interaction between evacuation and accessibility

Building Egressibility in an Ageing Society

This is the final report of a three-year project called Building Egressibility in an Ageing Society, sponsored by the Swedish research council for sustainable development (FORMAS). While accessibility is an established and widely used concept in building design, the evacuation of people with functional limitations is still at a stage in which several research gaps exist. In this context, this work discusses the concept of Egressibility, intended as the accessibility to means of evacuation. A categorization of populations with functional limitations in light of their egress-related abilities was performed by reviewing egress and accessibility research. The role of functional limitations on evacuation performance was investigated using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). A qualitative interview study consisting of 28 semi-structured interviews with people with functional limitations was conducted to further scrutinize Egressibility issues of older people. An Egressibility assessment instrument, the Egress Enabler, has been developed based on the concept of person-environment fit. A Virtual Reality (VR) experiment involving 40 participants was also conducted to demonstrate the use of VR technology to study the impact of people with functional limitations on egress. It also allowed to explore how the presence of people with functional limitations affects exit choice. Overall, Egressibility was investigated with the aim to ensure that egress planning and procedures are designed to equally consider all members of an aging society

Linking landscape variables, hydrology and weathering regime in Taiga and Tundra ecoregions of Northern Sweden

High-latitude watersheds have been regarded as a carbon sink with soil carbon accumulating at low temperature. This sink is now believed to turn into a source, acting as positive feedback to climate warming. However, thawing permafrost soils would allow more water to percolate down to deeper soil layers where some of the carbon could be “consumed” in weathering and exported as bicarbonate to the sea. Using a hydrological mixing model showed that this could counterbalance the predicted positive feedback resulting from thawing soils. Vegetation-covered riparian zones in headwater areas appear to have a significant role for the dissolved constituent fluxes. Higher concentrations of weathering products are found in taiga and tundra rivers with larger areas of forest and peat cover in the watershed. These landscape elements can thus be regarded as “hot spots” of river loading with dissolved constituents. Comparing a regulated and an unregulated river tested the hypothesis that damming leads to a depletion of major elements also in oligotrophic river systems as a consequence of changes in landscape elements. A loss of upper soils and vegetation through inundation prevents the contact of surface waters with vegetated soil, and consequently reduces weathering fluxes. The hypothesis that the lower fluxes of dissolved silica (DSi) in the regulated river could also be explained by biological uptake was then tested using a model, and budget calculations indicate a significant reduction as a result of regulation. About 10% of this reduction can be attributed to the flooding of the fluvial corridor and the rest to diatom blooms in the reservoirs. A more detailed study of landscape elements for the headwaters of the river Luleälven showed that only 3% of the surface area has been inundated by reservoirs but ca. 37% of the deciduous forest. Such a significant loss of hot spots may indeed explain the observed lower DSi fluxes in the regulated watersheds of northern Sweden

The Analysis of Results of Stochastic Evacuation Models

All humans are unique, we have different characteristics and we make different decision. This is a challenge when it comes to modelling human behaviour. The models we design are based on mathematics where there is no room for inconsistencies such that are present in human behaviour. So how do we account for this when we try to model human behaviour in evacuation modelling? Most models provide the possibility to include mathematical distributions and algorithms that are supposed to represent this uncertainty that we refer to as behavioural uncertainty. This thesis aims at providing a method based on functional analysis and statistics that can be used to study the effects of behavioural uncertainty on evacuation simulation results and in particular to study convergence in results for important output parameters. Previous work has been done for the most important evacuation model output, namely the evacuation time. The work in this thesis contributes by including other output parameters which are of importance both for the evacuation time and other aspects of evacuation safety. The method is accompanied by a tool that helps the user in this kind of quantitative assessment. A demonstration of the method and the tool has been provided through the use of a case study. The results showed that the analysis is efficient in analysing convergence in results for a variety of output parameters, even for output parameters with varying number of data points. This enables a more comprehensive and detailed analysis than what has previously been shown, ensuring that the behaviours that govern evacuation time also have converged in results

Sonografers förmåga att göra en korrekt bedömning efter utförd ultraljudsundersökning

Detta arbete handlar om en relativt ny profession på den svenska arbetsmarknaden, men desto större utomlands, nämligen sonografer. För att som röntgensjuksköterska kunna arbeta som sonograf i Sverige krävs vidareutbildning inom medicinskt ultraljud. Efter avklarad utbildning får sonografen utföra ultraljudsundersökningar på egen hand och dessutom genomföra den preliminära granskningen av undersökningen. Med ökad läkarbrist och ökade krav på mer radiografisk utredning är sonografen en resurs som kan avlasta radiologen och dom radiologiska klinikerna. Arbetet har utformats som en systematisk litteraturstudie med syftet att jämföra sonografers förmåga gällande bedömning och utlåtande gentemot radiologer och andra specialistläkare inom ultraljudsundersökningar. Författarna har sökt artiklar och studier om ämnet i flertalet databaser med hjälp av olika sökord som kan relateras till syftet. Studier och artiklar har sedan valts ut och kvalitetsgranskats för att värdesätta dess trovärdighet.  Resultatet presenteras i två olika tabeller utefter två olika metoder. Sammanlagt inkluderades 13 stycken artiklar i resultatet, dessa var utförda utanför Sveriges gränser, i länder där sonografen är ett vanligt inslag i vården. Resultatet visar att sonografer håller en hög kvalité gällande bedömning och utlåtande efter utförd ultraljudsundersökning. Med hänsyn till ökad läkarbrist motiverar resultatet ökad diskussion om sonografers användningsområden och yrkesroll inom svensk sjukvård

The turnover rate in the Swedish school : A qualitative studie

The Swedish school has been faced with a bad reputation the last decades. There are growing concerns regarding that the quality of the education has gone downhill, and reports are frequently made, stating a strain work environment for the school personnel, specifically the teachers. In combination with debates and reports, concerning the relatively low teacher wages and the notion that the status for the teacher profession, is lower today than before; have ultimately created a notion that teachers leave their occupation on these factors. The teacher turnover in Sweden is higher than their Nordic neighbours, but there are signs that the reasons regarding the turnover rate, are not fully understood. This study will try to give an insight on the factors behind the relatively high turnover rate in the teacher occupation. This study is based on a deductive approach where we have gathered empirical evidence, using semi-structured interviews. The candidates for the interviews were selected through a stratified sample, to examine why the turnover rate of the teacher occupation is high through motivational and institutional theories. The results of this paper contribute to a broader knowledge on the factors regarding the teacher turnover rate. Our theories about motivation- and institutional theory, have proven relevant to map the factors behind the turnover rate. Although our factors are significant for the subject, further extensive research will be needed on the matter, to give a more complete picture of the issue. This paper is written in Swedish.Den svenska skolan har fått ett dåligt anseende de sista decennierna. Det finns en växande oro angående att kvaliteten på undervisningen har varit fallande, och frekventa rapporter görs, som påstår att skolmiljön är ansträngd för skolans personal, specifikt lärare. I kombination med debatter och rapporter, beträffande de relativt låga lärarlönerna och uppfattningen om att statusen på läraryrket skulle vara lägre idag än förut; har skapat uppfattningen att lärare lämnar yrket av dessa faktorer. Läraromsättningen i Sverige är högre än våra nordiska grannländer, men det finns tecken på att anledningarna bakom den höga personalomsättningen, är inte fullt förstådda. Denna studie kommer försöka ge en insikt av de faktorer som ligger till grund för den relativt höga personalomsättningen bland lärare. Studien är baserad på en deduktiv ansats där vi har samlat empiriskt material, genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Intervjukandidaterna valdes genom ett stratifierat urval, för att undersöka varför personalomsättningen bland lärare är hög, genom motivationsteorier och institutionella teorier. Undersökningens resultat bidrar till en bredare kunskap angående faktorerna bakom den höga läraromsättningen. Våra använda teorier om motivation-och institutionsteori, har visat sig relevant för att kartlägga väsentliga faktorer bakom personalomsättningen. Trots att våra faktorer är signifikanta för ämnet, kommer det krävas ytterligare betydande forskning på området för att ge en mer komplett bild om ämnet