| 1. |
- Andersson, Dennis, 1980-
(författare)
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Mission Experience : How to Model and Capture it to Enable Vicarious Learning
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Organizations for humanitarian assistance, disaster response and military activities are characterized by their special role in society to resolve time-constrained and potentially life-threatening situations. The tactical missions that these organizations conduct regularly are significantly dynamic in character, and sometimes impossible to fully comprehend and predict. In these situations, when control becomes opportunistic, the organizations are forced to rely on the collective experience of their personnel to respond effectively to the unfolding threats. Generating such experience through traditional means of training, exercising and apprenticeship, is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to manage.This thesis explores how and why mission experience should be utilized in emergency management and military organizations to improve performance. A multimedia approach for capturing mission experience has further been tested in two case studies to determine how the commanders’ experiences can be externalized to enable vicarious learning. These studies propose a set of technical, methodological, and ethical issues that need to be considered when externalizing mission experience, based on two aforementioned case studies complemented by a literature review. The presented outcomes are (1) a model aligning abilities that tactical organizations need when responding to dynamic situations of different familiarity, (2) a review of the usefulness of several different data sources for externalization of commanders’ experiences from tactical operations, and (3) a review of methodological, technical, and ethical issues to consider when externalizing tactical military and emergency management operations. The results presented in this thesis indicate that multimedia approaches for capturing mission histories can indeed complement training and exercising as a method for generating valuable experience from tactical missions.
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| 2. |
- Aldenlöv, Jens
(författare)
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Exploring Public Procurement of Swedish Railway Infrastructure Maintenance
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2002, Sweden started to outsource its railway infrastructure maintenance. Through gradual exposure (i.e. outsourcing one contract area at a time), the Swedish Transport Administration has developed its competence of being a client towards its contractors. The last contract was outsourced in 2014. In the last decade, the development of governance techniques and maintenance cost has not matched the increase in traffic. Due to an increased awareness in environmentally friendlier transportation, traffic is only expected to increase further in the coming years. Governance techniques and maintenance cost ultimately depends on the client-contractor relationship through public procurement. Hence, there is a need to understand public procurement of railway infrastructure maintenance. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge of public procurement of railway infrastructure maintenance. Three separate studies were conducted. Study 1 was a literature review to explore and determine the state-of-the-art for the field of public procurement of railway maintenance. Study 2 was a linear regression analysis to examine the relationship between contract design and the output of maintenance in Sweden. Study 3 was an interview study in Sweden that explored what factors that supports or hinders collaboration in railway maintenance.The main results of these studies are that asset knowledge is important for both the client and the contractor. Through reliable asset knowledge, incentives and contracts can be designed to support governance and collaboration. Today, railway infrastructure maintenance is dominated by informal relationships that lack the support of formal partnering activities. When an informal relationship is supported by a formal structure it provides a basis for innovation. This formal structure should be centralized around gaining and sharing asset knowledge. By establishing such a system to increase the asset knowledge and supporting collaboration, public organizations of maintenance can provide a basis for the improvement of maintenance.
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| 3. |
- Holmgren, Jessica, associate professor, senior lecturer
(författare)
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Conditions for relatives' involvement in nursing homes
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis was to describe and analyse how the involvement of relatives is conditioned in nursing homes from different critical perspectives. Gender perspectives, discourse analysis and intersectional theory are applied, based on social constructionist ontology. The thesis comprises three qualitative papers and data are based on ethnographically-focused fieldwork in three municipal nursing homes in the form of formal/informal interviews, participating observations and the analysis of documents.Based on gender perspectives, the routines and reasonings among nursing staff were studied and thematically analysed in relation to how these conditioned the involvement of relatives in the daily caring activities (I). In the second study (II), the nursing staff were interviewed in groups to describe, discursively analyse and identify the biopolitical meaning in the "involvement discourse" that was collectively constructed in the speech of the nursing staff concerning the involvement of relatives. In the last study (III), interviews with relatives were thematically analysed in the context of intersectional theory about their involvement in the nursing homes.The findings show that the conditions for relatives’ involvement were dynamic and constantly in re-negotiation, but also conservative and inflexible. This placed relatives in both privileged and unprivileged social positions in the nursing homes, which were relevant for their involvement. The relatives were considered to be "visitors", which conditioned the characteristics and levels of involvement in the care of the residents and was linked to gendered notions of the division of labor, both within the groups of relatives and between nursing staff and relatives (I). The involvement of relatives was conditioned by the biopolitics of an "involvement discourse" that prevailed in the nursing homes. This built upon family-oriented rhetorics and metaphors that upheld and legitimised notions about relatives. The relatives were considered to be members of the "old" family in relation to the "new" family represented by the nursing staff (II). The relatives described how they were positioned in a betweenship, squeezed between different competing social musts from the older family members, the nursing homes as institutions and the nursing staff (III).Inverting the prevailing picture of the involvement of relatives would make it possible to consider the nursing staff as pedagogical, professional and caring "visitors" in the nursing homes for the benefit of the residents and their relatives. This could be achieved through a constructive change management which emphasises the learning of nursing staff, their responsibility and the emotions of relatives, along with a focus on alternative notions of involvement, where relatives are included in the development of quality of care in Swedish nursing homes.
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| 4. |
- Lindgren, Jessica, 1971-
(författare)
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Small remnant habitats : Important structures in fragmented landscapes
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The world-wide intensification of agriculture has led to a decline in species richness due to land use change, isolation, and fragmentation of natural and semi-natural habitats in agricultural and forestry landscapes. As a consequence, there is a current landscape management focus on the importance of green infrastructure to mitigate biodiversity decline and preserve ecosystem functions e.g. pollination services and pest control. Even though intensification in agriculture has been ongoing for several hundreds of years, remnant habitats from earlier management practices may still be remaining with a surprisingly high plant richness. Preserving these habitats could help conserving plant species richness in agricultural landscapes, as well as other organisms that are dependent on plants for food and shelter.In this thesis I focus on two small remnant habitats; midfield islets and borders between managed forest and crop field in southeastern Sweden. In the past, both habitats were included in the grazing system and therefore often still have remnant population of grassland specialist species left today. I have used these two remnant habitats as model habitats to investigate the effect of landscape factors and local factors on species richness of plants, flower morphologies and plants with fleshy fruits. Additively, I analysed the effect of surrounding landscape and local openness on the functions; pollination success, biological pest control of aphids and seed predation on midfield islets.One of my studies showed that spatial distribution and size of the habitat affected plant species richness. Larger habitat size and higher connectivity between habitats increased species richness of plants in the habitats. Openness of the habitats was shown to be an important factor to increase species richness and richness of flower morphologies, both on midfield islets and in forest borders. Even though midfield islets had the highest species and morphology richness, both habitat types are needed for habitat complementary as forest borders have more plants with fleshy fruits and a higher richness of plant species that flowers in spring/early summer. It was also shown that a more complex forest border, not just with gaps in the canopy, but also with high variation in tree stem sizes increases plant species richness in the field layer. The conclusion is that by managing small remnant habitats to remain or become more semi-open and complex in their structure, would increase species richness of plants, grassland specialist species, and flower morphologies. It would also increase some ecosystem functions as seed predation and biologic pest control of aphids are more effective close to trees. If both midfield islets and forest borders would be managed to be semi-open, the area and connectivity of semi-open habitat would increase in the agricultural landscape, which may also improve pollination success as the connectivity between populations has a possibility to increase. Grassland specialist species are clearly abundant in the small remnant habitats. As the decline of semi-natural grasslands is causing a decline in grassland specialists’ species, not only plants, I recommend that small remnant habitats are included in conservation and management plans and strategies to improve habitat availability and connectivity for grassland species in agricultural landscapes.
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| 5. |
- Broms, Loove
(författare)
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Sustainable Interactions : Studies in the Design of Energy Awareness Artefacts
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis presents a collection of experimental designs that approach the problem of growing electricity consumption in homes. From the perspective of design, the intention has been to critically explore the design space of energy awareness artefacts to reinstate awareness of energy use in everyday practice. The design experiments were used as vehicles for thinking about the relationship between physical form, interaction, and social practice. The rationale behind the concepts was based on a small-scale ethnography, situated interviews, and design experience. Moreover, the thesis compares designer intention and actual user experiences of a prototype that was installed in nine homes in a residential area in Stockholm for three months. This was done in order to elicit tacit knowledge about how the concept was used in real-world domestic settings, to challenge everyday routines, and to enable both users and designers to critically reflect on artefacts and practices.From a design perspective, contributions include design approaches to communicating energy use: visualizations for showing relationships between behaviour and electricity consumption, shapes and forms to direct action, means for turning restrictions caused by energy conservation into central parts of the product experience, and ways to promote sustainable behaviour with positive driving forces based on user lifestyles.The general results indicate that inclusion is of great importance when designing energy awareness artefacts; all members of the household should be able to access, interact with, and reflect on their energy use. Therefore, design-related aspects such as placement and visibility, as well as how the artefact might affect the social interactions in the home, become central. Additionally, the thesis argues that these types of artefacts can potentially create awareness accompanied by negative results such as stress. A challenge for the designer is to create artefacts that communicate and direct energy use in ways that are attractive and can be accepted by all household members as a possible way of life.
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| 6. |
- Hanpatchaiyakul, Kulnaree, 1961-
(författare)
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Barriers to alcohol addiction treatment in women and men experiencing alcohol addiction in a Thai context : Exploring lived experiences and healthcare providers’ perspectives
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Risky drinking behaviour can strongly influence the lives of individuals and families, including having negative effects on social welfare and health. The low rate of healthcare service use among people experiencing alcohol addiction is an important problem in Thai society.The overall aim of the study was to explore the barriers to alcohol treatments for people experiencing alcohol addiction. This thesis includes four qualitative studies that employed three different data collection methods. Individual interviews were used in studies I and II and were analysed with descriptive phenomenology. Focus group interviews were conducted in study III, and the Delphi method was applied in study IV. Both of the latter studies employed content analysis. Purposive sampling was applied to identify participants for the four studies, which included 13 men (study I) and 12 women (study II) experiencing alcohol addiction, 32 healthcare providers (study III) and 32 experts in the alcohol treatment field (study IV); the providers and experts were primarily nurses (study III and IV).The identified barriers at the individual level included the unawareness of alcohol addiction, gender differences in treatment and in society, the experienced stigma related to alcohol addiction and the lack of engagement in alcohol treatment. Barriers at the organizational level were related to healthcare providers’ agencies and engagement, vertical and horizontal collaborative practices within the hospital wards, and the collaboration with patients and their next of kin. Additionally, the struggle of handling the different sexes during treatment and the difficulties of using the required standard methods were described by the healthcare providers. At the structural level, the barriers were related to the patriarchal society, gender equity and the resources and funding from the Ministry of Public Health for improving the well-being and equal healthcare rights of people experiencing alcohol addiction in Thailand.In order to improve equal rights to health for people experiencing alcohol addiction in Thailand, knowledge of alcohol addiction, stigma and domestic violence related issues needs to be improved in the healthcare service system. Formal training and nurse educational programmes are needed to reach the theoretical and practical potential of nurses and of other healthcare providers working in alcohol addiction.Key words: alcohol addiction, gender perspective, lived experiences, alcohol dependency, focus- group interviews, Delphi study
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| 7. |
- Keskisärkkä, Robin, 1987-
(författare)
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Complex Event Processing under Uncertainty in RDF Stream Processing
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Semantic Web provides a framework for representing, sharing, and integrating data on the Web using a set of specifications promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These specifications include RDF as the model for data inter-change on the Web and languages (e.g., RDFS and OWL) for defining schemas and ontologies. While the Semantic Web has traditionally focused on static or slowly changing data, information on the Web is becoming increasingly dynamic, with sources such as Internet-of-Things devices, sensor networks, smart cities, social me-dia, and more. RDF Stream Processing (RSP) extends Semantic Web technologies to support streaming data and continuous queries and has been suggested as a candidate for bridging the gap between Complex Event Processing (CEP), which focuses on identifying meaningful events and event patterns from streaming data, and the Semantic Web standards. Systems that operate on real-world data must often deal with uncertainty, which can arise from, for example, missing information, incomplete domain knowledge, sensor noise, or linguistic vagueness. Uncertainty has received attention in both Semantic Web and CEP research, but little is known about how it can be managed in RSP and how it might impact performance. The contributions of this thesis are threefold. First, the issue of supporting a general model of CEP in RSP is addressed. A set of requirements for CEP is identified and used to define an event ontology for use in RSP. An approach is then proposed for creating a CEP framework that can scale processing beyond the limitations of a single RSP instance. Second, an extension of the RSP-QL data model is defined for representation of statement-level annotations. The data model is then used as a basis for capturing different types of uncertainty in a use case inspired by a research project in electronic healthcare. Finally, the performance impact of explicitly managing different types of uncertainty is evaluated in a prototype implementation and a set of optimization strategies is introduced with a goal of reducing the impact of uncertainty on query execution performance. The results show that the proposed approach to representing statement-level metadata reduces required data transfer bandwidth and that it can improve query execution performance com-pared with using RDF reification. The optimization strategies produce improved query execution performance overall, but the impact of the heuristic depends on multiple factors, including the selectivity of filters, join cardinalities, and the cost of evaluating uncertainty functions.
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| 8. |
- Leifler, Ola
(författare)
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Affordances and Constraints of Intelligent Decision Support for Military Command and Control : Three Case Studies of Support Systems
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Researchers in military command and control (C2) have for several decades sought to help commanders by introducing automated, intelligent decision support systems. These systems are still not widely used, however, and some researchers argue that this may be due to those problems that are inherent in the relationship between the affordances of technology and the requirements by the specific contexts of work in military C2. In this thesis, we study some specific properties of three support techniques for analyzing and automating aspects of C2 scenarios that are relevant for the contexts of work in which they can be used.The research questions we address concern (1) which affordances and constraints of these technologies are of most relevance to C2, and (2) how these affordances and limitations can be managed to improve the utility of intelligent decision support systems in C2. The thesis comprises three case studies of C2 scenarios where intelligent support systems have been devised for each scenario.The first study considered two military planning scenarios: planning for medical evacuations and similar tactical operations. In the study, we argue that the plan production capabilities of automated planners may be of less use than their constraint management facilities. ComPlan, which was the main technical system studied in the first case study, consisted of a highly configurable, collaborative, constraint-management framework for planning in which constraints could be used either to enforce relationships or notify users of their validity during planning. As a partial result of the first study, we proposed three tentative design criteria for intelligent decision support: transparency, graceful regulation and event-based feedback.The second study was of information management during planning at the operational level, where we used a C2 training scenario from the Swedish Armed Forces and the documents produced during the scenario as a basis for studying properties of Semantic Desktops as intelligent decision support. In the study, we argue that (1) due to the simultaneous use of both documents and specialized systems, it is imperative that commanders can manage information from heterogeneous sources consistently, and (2) in the context of a structurally rich domain such as C2, documents can contain enough information about domain-specific concepts that occur in several applications to allow them to be automatically extracted from documents and managed in a unified manner. As a result of our second study, we present a model for extending a general semantic desktop ontology with domain-specific concepts and mechanisms for extracting and managing semantic objects from plan documents. Our model adheres to the design criteria from the first case study.The third study investigated machine learning techniques in general and text clustering in particular, to support researchers who study team behavior and performance in C2. In this study, we used material from several C2 scenarios which had been studied previously. We interviewed the participating researchers about their work profiles, evaluated machine learning approaches for the purpose of supporting their work and devised a support system based on the results of our evaluations. In the study, we report on empirical results regarding the precision possible to achieve when automatically classifying messages in C2 workflows and present some ramifications of these results on the design of support tools for communication analysis. Finally, we report how the prototype support system for clustering messages in C2 communications was conceived by the users, the utility of the design criteria from case study 1 when applied to communication analysis, and the possibilities for using text clustering as a concrete support tool in communication analysis.In conclusion, we discuss how the affordances and constraints of intelligent decision support systems for C2 relate to our design criteria, and how the characteristics of each work situation demand new adaptations of the way in which intelligent support systems are used.
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| 9. |
- Rankin, Amy, 1982-
(författare)
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Making Sense of Adaptations: Resilience in High-Risk Work
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- To cope with variations, disturbances, and unexpected events in complex socio-technical systems people are required to continuously adapt to the changing environment, sometimes in novel and innovative ways. This thesis investigates adaptive performance in complex work settings across domains, with a focus on examining what enables and disables successful adaptations, and how contextual factors shape performance. Examples of adaptive performance studies include a crisis command team dealing with the loss of key personnel, a crew coping with unreliable system feedback in the cockpit, and a nursing team managing an overload of patients. The two main contributions of this thesis is the analysis of cases of people coping with variations and disturbances, and the development of conceptual models to report findings, structure cases, and make sense of sharp-end adaptations in complex work settings. The findings emphasise that adaptive performance outside procedures and textbook scenarios at the sharp end is a critical ability to cope with variation and unexpected events. However, the results also show that adaptations may come at the cost of new vulnerabilities and system brittleness. Analysing adaptive performance in everyday events informs safety management by making visible limitations and possibilities of system design, organisational structures, procedures, and training.
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| 10. |
- Arwidson, Charlotta, et al.
(författare)
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(Over)crowded house : exploring asylum seekers' experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic while living at accommodation centers in Sweden
- 2024
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Ingår i: BMC Public Health. - : BioMed Central (BMC). - 1471-2458. ; 24:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has made visible the scale of health disparities in society, highlighting how the distribution of infection and deaths differs between population subgroups within countries. Asylum seekers represent a potentially vulnerable group; early in the pandemic, concerns were raised about their housing situation, usually involving overcrowded, camp-like accommodations, and the effects of COVID-19 in relation to this. Hence, this study aimed to explore asylum seekers' experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic while living at accommodation centers.MethodsIn this qualitative study, 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with asylum seekers at two accommodation centers in Sweden. Participants represented a diverse group of asylum seekers in regard to age, educational background, and gender. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.ResultsExperiences related to COVID-19 were highly dependent on the living situation at the accommodation centers and the experience of feeling unsafe in shared spaces. This was enhanced by the experiences of a challenging mix of COVID-19 messages where different understandings of COVID-19 and related measures existed, together with a feeling of loss of control and safety in shared rooms. Additionally, participants felt more isolated from the outside society and missed prior social activities. Adding to this experience of isolation was an increasing mistrust regarding the authorities' pandemic response.ConclusionThis study highlights the importance of understanding the specific challenges and vulnerabilities of asylum seekers at accommodation centers during the pandemic, shaped by their housing situation and legal status. The findings underscore the need for context-specific support, holistic disease prevention approaches, and tailored health communication strategies using diverse formats. Additionally, the findings emphasize the crucial need to identify and mobilize existing community resources in planning and implementing pandemic control measures. Furthermore, the study emphasizes governmental responsibility in providing secure housing, and to address long-term vulnerabilities beyond pandemics.
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