| 1. |
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| 2. |
- Andersson, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Bullervärden för samhällsekonomisk analys : beräkningar för väg- och järnvägsbuller
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Noise is a significant social problem. For example, more than 20 per cent of the European Union's population is exposed to higher noise than what is considered acceptable. The transport sector is a major contributor to society's increasing noise problem, due to increased traffic volumes and urbanization exposing more people to noise. Road traffic is admittedly the largest individual noise source in the transport sector, but other transport modes such as aircraft and railways are also responsible for considerable noise emissions. Noise entails costs for the society. This fact, and that society has different needs, means that policies and projects to reduce noise levels need to be evaluated to secure an efficient resource allocation. Benefit cost analysis is a powerful tool to evaluate noise abatement, but it requires both benefits and costs to be measured in a common metric, i.e. in monetary values. Today's official monetary values for all modes are based on the impact of road-traffic noise on property prices. It is a well established fact that the disturbance which individuals experience differs between modes, and therefore there is a need to estimate monetary values based on the respective modes. This report focuses on road and rail noise, two noise sources with different characteristics. This study describes the need to revise the current official Swedish policy values for noise abatement. Current values for road-traffic noise show a progressive relationship between the social cost and the noise level that is too strong, and values for railway noise has been missing and instead based on results for road noise. Valuation of health effects should also be based on EKM since it is sanctioned within the EU, instead of the approach now proposed by ASEK based on estimated total social costs from noise exposure in relation to estimates from willingness to pay studies.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Property prices and exposure to multiple noise sources : hedonic regression with road and railway noise
- 2008
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines the effect of road and railway noise on property prices. It uses the hedonic regression technique on a Swedish data set that contains information about both road and railway noise for each property, and finds that road noise has a larger negative impact on the property prices than railway noise. This is in line with the evidence from the acoustical literature which has shown that individuals are more disturbed by road than railway noise, but contradicts recent results from a hedonic study on data of the United Kingdom.
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| 4. |
- Brundell-Freij, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Accepting charging : a matter of trusting the effects?
- 2009
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The public typically considers urban congestion to be a serious problem. In the scientific community it is considered basic knowledge that pricing is often the only effective way to mitigate such congestion. However, implementation of congestion charging continues to meet hard resistance from the public, and politicians continue to rule out that policy option referring to lack of public acceptance. Many authors have explained the paradox by the public?s (layman) suspicion that charging would not be effective and not reduce congestion. From a number of implemented schemes, we also know that once they have experience from (the effects of) charging, the public tend to change to more positive, which seems to support the hypothesis that lack of experience and erroneous subjective predictions of effects causes ?the problem?.To analyse the hypothesized causal link this study explores how the (i)attitudes towards congestion charging in Stockholm and (ii)the expectancy/understanding of the effects of charging (co-)varied over time and between individuals in the Stockholm public during different phases of the implementation process: before (autumn 2005) and during the Trial (spring 2006), and after permanent introduction of charging (autumn 2007).For the analyses, we have employed ordinal logit models. This allows us to draw conclusions on the simultaneous relation(s) between acceptance on one hand and individual background characteristics, personal experience and understanding of effects on the other. One of the many advantages with the analytical approach employed is that it allows us to control for, for example, car ownership in the analyses of gender differences in attitudes and predicted effects ? which has given new insights compared to the one-dimensional analyses presented earlier.A brief summary of results: The differences between men and women in attitudes and understanding of congestion charging are negligible when difference in car availability is taken into account. The frequently discussed difference between inner city inhabitants and people living in the regional periphery, too, turns out to be largely explained by differences in car ownership.When experience is gained, people do indeed trust that charging mitigates congestion to a higher extent than they did before: Those that agree that ?congestion charges will decrease [have decreased] the queues to and from the inner-city? is a significantly larger proportion of the population during the Trial, than they were before. Also in accordance with previous results, the attitudes towards the charges became more positive after introduction. This was a continuous process over time, so that attitudes were more positive during the Trial than before, and even more positive after permanent introduction than they were during the Trial. However, the results clearly show that the change in attitudes was much stronger, and continued over a longer period of time, than what could be explained by the learning effect leading to a better understanding of the effects on congestion.Thus, based on our results, our understanding of which the influential factors are behind the observed effect from experience on attitudes to charging, has to be modified. The mechanisms clearly go beyond ?demonstrating? that charging may effectively mitigate congestion, which is the reason most commonly given in the literature so far.Our results have important policy implications for which arguments that can be expected to be most effective in building public acceptance for charging, and which subpopulations that are most likely to be influenced by such argumentation.
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| 5. |
- Haraldsson, Mattias, et al.
(författare)
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Marginalkostnadsskattningar för buss och lätt lastbil : buller, trafiksäkerhet och vägslitage
- 2012
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Syftet med denna rapport är att beräkna marginalkostnader för buller, trafiksäkerhet och vägslitage för bussar och lätta lastbilar. Bullerkostnaderna beräknas med modellen Nord 2000 tillsammans med kalkylvärden från ASEK 5. Marginalkostnaden för trafiksäkerhet beräknas utifrån olycksstatistik i STRADA, en fördelning av trafikarbete mellan landsbygd och tätort samt kalkylvärden från ASEK 5. Marginalkostnaden för vägslitage beräknas genom att justera de värden för genomsnittliga tunga fordon som finns i ASEK 5. Justeringen görs utifrån antalet standardaxlar. För bussar beräknas antalet standardaxlar med hjälp av statistik från fordonsregistret, medan antalet standardaxlar hos lätta lastbilar beräknas utifrån fordonstypens maximala totalvikt. Marginalkostnaden för buller har differentierats på vägar med olika ÅDT och omgivning med olika tät befolkning.
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| 6. |
- Haraldsson, Mattias, et al.
(författare)
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Samhällsekonomisk analys av rundvirkestransporter med 90-tonslastbilar : delprojekt inom Sammodalitetsprojektet
- 2012
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Syftet med denna rapport är att göra en samhällsekonomisk analys som visar hur de kostnader som rundvirkestransporter med lastbil ger upphov till, skulle påverkas om fordonens totalvikt tilläts öka från 60 till 90 ton och samtidigt få en tillåten maxlängd på 30 meter. Analysen görs på två sätt. Först redovisas genomsnittliga kostnader per fordonskilometer för olika fordonsstorlekar. Dessutom görs en kalkyl, som utgår från scenarier om hur mycket trafikarbetet skulle påverkas om större fordon tilläts. För att analysera hur transporterna av rundvirke genomförs i olika scenarier används den svenska godstransportmodellen Samgods. Flödesberäkningar från denna används därefter tillsammans med uppgifter från Nationella vägdatabasen (NVDB) för att beräkna samhällsekonomiska kostnader. Dessa beräkningar tar hänsyn till vägtyp och andra lokala förutsättningar och fångar därmed upp den variation i samhällsekonomiska kostnader som finns. Beräkningarna sammanfattas med den totala kostnaden för att transportera rundvirke med lastbil i Sverige under ett år. Enligt simuleringarna minskar trafikarbetet med 21 procent om 60-tonsfordon ersätts med 90-tonsfordon, om man inte tar hänsyn till brorestriktionerna. Detta ger en total samhällsekonomisk kostnadssänkning med 4 procent eller 163 miljoner kronor årligen. Då ska man dock komma ihåg att kostnaden för bärighetsåtgärder på broar, vilket är en förutsättning för att scenariot ska kunna realiseras, inte är inkluderade i analysen. Om vissa broar är spärrade för trafik med 90-tonsfordon är det inte generellt lönsamt att ersätta 60-tonsfordon, eftersom den samhällsekonomiska kostnaden då ökar med 15 procent. Redan idag är det dock möjligt att använda 90-tonsfordon på ett antal stråk som är viktiga för rundvirkestransporter.
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| 7. |
- Jonsson, Anna C., 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Stratified Climate Vulnerability Analysis for HEat Waves in a Swedish City : Who is vulnerable and why?
- 2012
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Climate change is causing an increasing number of extreme climate events, such as floods, landslides and heat waves. Although all will be affected, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity vary among different population segments and the effects will be disproportionally distributed in a society. The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how factors related to the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity shape the vulnerability of different populations segments. It qualitatively explores how key stakeholders in municipalities perceive and construct social vulnerability in relation to climate change with a specific focus on thermal comfort (i.e. heat waves). Earlier literature on natural hazard vulnerability and social vulnerability has identified a number of factors that explains variance between different populations segments and differences in morbidity. We seek to understand how the planning and operational staff in municipalities, and the vulnerable themselves, understand social vulnerability and which adaptation responses at different levels they identify. Thus, the top-down approach from earlier literature is triangulated with a bottom-up approach.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Jonsson, Lina, et al.
(författare)
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Accident externality and vehicle size
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Vehicle mass is a crucial factor for the distribution of injuries between occupants in involved vehicles in a two-vehicle crash. A larger vehicle mass protects the occupants in the vehicle while on the same time inflicts a higher injury risk on the occupants in the collision partner. This mass externality can be internalized to reach a situation where the drivers choose vehicle mass based on the social optimum instead of a private optimum that ignores the negative effects that a large vehicle mass has on the injury risk in presumptive collision partners. Using a database including collision accidents in Sweden involving two passenger cars during five years, the influence of vehicle mass on the injuries and thereby the accident cost in both vehicles is explored. The database contains information on road infrastructure, vehicle characteristics including vehicle mass and characteristics of the occupants in the vehicles including their injuries. To get a measure of the accident cost the Swedish official economic valuation of slight injuries, severe injuries and fatalities are applied. In each accident the two involved vehicles are divided into the lighter vehicle and the heavier vehicle and the effect of weight is examined separately for the two groups. The accident cost that falls on the lighter vehicle increases with the mass of the heavier vehicle and decreases with own mass. Given that a vehicle is the heavier one in the crash, neither the own mass nor the mass of the lighter vehicle significantly affect the accident cost. The expected external accident cost is calculated and it is shown to increase rapidly with vehicle mass. The paper discusses different solutions to internalize this external accident cost and calculates a mass dependent multiplicative tax on the insurance premium in a no-fault insurance system.
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| 10. |
- Jonsson, Lina, 1982
(författare)
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Genetic studies of autism and autistic-like traits
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairment in social interaction, language impairment and repetitive behavior with varying degrees of severity. ASD represents the lower end on a continuously distributed measure of autistic-like traits (ALTs). Although a strong genetic component has repeatedly been identified in ASD, the genetic cause of ASD is still unknown for the majority of ASD cases. One of the main interests in this thesis is the neurobiology of melatonin, this interest is based on findings indicating lower levels of melatonin in children with ASD. In our investigations of rare mutations in melatonin related genes in subjects with ASD, we identified a previously reported mutation that has been shown to decrease the activity of one of the enzymes involved in the melatonin synthesis: the acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase (ASMT) (paper I). In the analysis of five common variations in the ASMT gene in relation to ALTs in the general population we found association between a single nucleotide polymorphism and social interaction impairment in girls (paper II). To broaden the analysis of genetic influences on ALTs, we have performed association analyses between ALTs in the general population and common variation in genes previously found to be associated with ASD (RELN, CNTNAP2, SHANK3 and CDH9/10 region) (paper III). Although these regions have previously been suggested to be strong ASD candidate regions, our results do not suggest a major influence of the investigated common variations on ALTs. In the final paper, rare inherited genetic variations were investigated in a large family with autism and language disorders. In this study, we used several techniques, including whole exome sequencing and copy number variation analysis (paper IV). In the family, several rare genetic variations which may partly explain the genetic etiology for autism in this family were identified. We performed functional analyses for a mutation identified in the CYP11A1 gene, indicating a gain of function mutation. The CYP11A1 gene encodes the first enzyme in the steroid hormone biosynthesis, thus our results may be in line with previous findings that have shown an elevated prenatal steroidogenic activity in ASD. In conclusion, we have identified both common and rare genetic variation that may increase the genetic susceptibility for ASD. Our analyses have highlighted the importance of taking both rare and common genetic susceptibility factors, as well as different symptoms of the disorders, into account when elucidating the complex inheritance of ASDs.
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