Wooden multi-storey construction market development - systematic literature review within a global scope with insights on the Nordic region

Climate change sets high pressures on the construction industry to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the carbon storage properties and potential to use renewable resources efficiently, wooden multi-storey construction (WMC) is an interesting alternative for the construction industry to enhance sustainable development combined with the aesthetic and well-being benefits of wood perceived among many consumers. For forest industry firms, industrial wood construction is a possibility to seek for business opportunities and bring socio-economic benefits for local economies. Despite positive drivers, WMC still remains a niche even in the forest-rich countries.The purpose of our study is to add understanding on the WMC market development by conducting a systematic literature analysis on international peer-reviewed studies from the past 20 years. Our special focus is on the role of WMC in the housing markets studied from the perspectives of the demand, supply and local governance factors. As specific aims, we 1) synthesize the key barriers and enabling factors for the WMC market growth; 2) identify the actors addressed in the existing studies connected to the WMC market development, and 3) summarize research methods and analytical approaches used in the previous studies. As a systematic method to make literature searches in Web of Science and Scopus for years 2000-2020, we employed PRISMA guidelines. By using pre-determined keywords, our searches resulted in a sample of 696 articles, of which 42 full articles were after selection procedure included in-depth content analysis. Our results showed cost-efficiency gains from industrialized prefabrication and perceived sustainability benefits by consumers and architects enabled a WMC market diffusion. The lack of experiences on the WMC, and path dependencies to use concrete and steel continue to be key barriers for increased WMC. Although our research scope was the global WMC market development, most of the literature concerned the Nordic region. The key actors covered in the literature were businesses (e.g., contractors, manufacturers and architects) involved in the wood construction value-chains, while residents and actors in the local governance were seldomly addressed. Currently, case studies, the use of qualitative data sets and focus on the Nordic region dominate the literature. This hinders the generalizability of findings in different regional contexts. In the future, more research is needed on how sustainability-driven wood construction value-chains are successfully shaping up in different geographical regions, and how they could challenge the dominant concrete-based construction regime.Peer reviewe

Katsaus tekoälyyn : tekoäly ja sen sovellutukset

Postgraduate seminar series with a title artificial intelligence and logic held at the Department of Military Technology of the National Defence University in 2020 and 2021. This book is a collection of some of talks that were presented in the seminar. The papers address ethics in autonomous military technology, algorithmic thinking, application of fuzzy logic in the Armed Forces, logic and skill, use of artificial intelligence technologies in information and psychological warfare, cyber security risks of artificial intelligence applications and algorithms, information acquisition strategies and artificial intelligence to support learning. This set of papers tries to give some insight to current issues of the artificial intelligence and logic. Seminars at the Department of Military Technology have a tradition to make publication based on the presentations, but only as an internal publication of the Finnish Defence Forces and in such a way has not hindered publication of the papers e.g. in international conferences. Publication of these papers in peer reviewed conferences has indeed been always the goal of the seminar, since it teaches writing conference level papers. We still hope that an internal publication in the department series is useful to the Finnish Defence Forces by offering an easy access to these papers

Asiakastyytyväisyyden merkitys ja mittaaminen : asiakastyytyväisyystutkimus Kotkan Gigantille

Tämän opinnäytetyön tähtäimessä on kertoa asiakastyytyväisyyden merkityksestä, sen ulottuvuuksista ja siitä, miten mitata niitä. Tähtäimenä oli myös löytää yksi tai useampi mittaustapa, jota käyttää tutkimusongelmaan. Tutkimus rajattiin koskemaan vain Kotkan Giganttia ja sen asiakkaita. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on selvittää Kotkan Gigantin asiakastyytyväisyyden ja palvelun laadun tasoa. Tutkimus toteutettiin Kotkan Gigantissa, mutta Gigantti ei kuitenkaan toiminut työn toimeksiantajana. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin kyselyllä, joka kohdistettiin Kotkan Gigantissa vieraileville asiakkaille. Kyselyalustana käytettiin Google Forms -ohjelmaa ja analysoinnin työvälineenä käytettiin ohjelman piiras- ja pylväsdiagrammeja. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys koostuu asiakastyytyväisyydestä, asiakastyytyväisyyden mittaamisen eri työkaluista, palvelun laadusta, palvelun laadun mittaamisen eri työkaluista sekä asiakasuskollisuudesta. Teoriaosuudessa käydään myös läpi asiakkaan odotetun ja koetun palvelun laadun eroa. Teorian tarkoituksena oli alustaa tutkimuksen empiiristä osaa lukijalle. Työn tutkimusosuudessa luodaan taustaa Kotkan Gigantille sekä kerrottiin, miten tutkimus on toteutettu ja esitettiin tutkimuksen tulokset. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että Kotkan Gigantin asiakastyytyväisyys on kiitettävällä tasolla. Tämän voi päätellä siitä, että kyselyn jokaisen kysymyksen keskiarvo oli yli neljä (asteikko 1–5). Kyselyyn vastasi yhteensä 51 asiakasta. Kysely suoritettiin kaikille vastaajille henkilökohtaisesti Gigantin myyjän toimesta. Kehitysehdotuksena kyselyn voisi automatisoida telineessä olevalle tabletille liikkeen sisä- ja uloskäynneille. Tämä voisi johtaa suurempaan vastausmäärään sekä helpottaisi kyselyn suorittamista

Wooden multi-story construction : market development with consumer knowledge, municipal goals and industrial strategies

This Forest Fact sheet will present the state of the art of wooden multi-storey construction market development in Finland and Sweden. From a consumer perspective, housing requirements were captured in three factors: environmental and social sustainability, quality, and design. A literature review points to the importance of cost efficiency gains from prefabrication. Municipal perspectives clearly illustrate how political goals may influence the governance and perception of public procurement processes. A transition to sustainable construction practises is supported by legislation that requires sustainability declarations

Beliefs on environmental impact of wood construction

People have different beliefs about the environmental impact of forest products. This quantitative web-survey study investigated public beliefs in Finland and Sweden about the environmental and climate impacts of using wood as a construction material for multi-story buildings. It was conducted with consumer panels reflecting the average populations of the two countries. The study analyzed factors affecting beliefs that multi-story Wood Buildings: (1) contribute to mitigating global warming, and (2) adversely impact biodiversity and the climate. It used consumer panel and multivariate statistics. Favorable climate-related beliefs were associated with Finnish nationality, male gender, age, children in household, university degree, and beliefs that climate change is induced by humans and causes weather disasters. Beliefs that wood buildings drive global warming and harm biodiversity were associated with non-rural residence, female gender, young age, children in household, low income, and beliefs that climate change causes weather disasters. No associations were recorded for current residence types. These findings highlight the importance of the wood construction industry to improve, document, and communicate to the public its impact on climate and biodiversity. They also indicate how market information can be formulated and targeted to communicate an accurate environmental image of wood construction.</p

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field