Ramboll (Norway)

Since its inception in 2018, InSAR Norway has emerged as a pivotal tool in addressing geological hazards and advancing scientific research in Norway. Utilizing the C-band data from Sentinel-1, it provides annual comprehensive ground movement updates crucial for understanding and mitigating natural disasters and ensuring infrastructure stability across Norway's complex terrain. The service's impact is particularly pronounced in landslide mapping and permafrost studies, areas of critical importance given Norway's climatic and geological vulnerability.InSAR Norway has been instrumental in detecting and monitoring landslide-prone areas, providing data essential for early warning systems and risk assessment. Detailed morpho-kinematic inventories have been updated nationwide to include previously undetected movements. By classifying slope movements and providing velocity data, InSAR Norway has significantly contributed to understanding the kinematics of landslides, enabling more cost-effective monitoring solutions. A recent study leveraging InSAR Norway data has statistically explored the link between permafrost and displacement rates of large unstable rock slopes (LURSs), revealing that permafrost presence significantly influences these rates and that complete thawing of permafrost can reduce or halt displacement, indicating the nuanced role of permafrost in geological hazard scenarios.InSAR Norway's data has also shed light on the dynamics of rock glaciers and permafrost creep. Studies utilizing this data have revealed the impact of permafrost thawing on rock glacier velocities and the broader implications for landscape stability and hydrology. By providing detailed movement profiles of rock glaciers in transition from active to relict stages, InSAR Norway has offered insights into the effects of climate change on cold region dynamics.The service's free and open data policy has been central to its success, catalyzing a wide range of research and operational applications by providing unrestricted access to high-quality, high-resolution data. This policy has facilitated a collaborative environment where academics, government agencies, and industry can innovate and develop solutions to shared challenges.With the impending integration of L-band data from the NISAR satellite mission, InSAR Norway is poised for significant enhancements. NISAR data will augment the service's ability to monitor ground movements, particularly in vegetated areas and through seasonal changes. This integration reflects our commitment to adopting cutting-edge technology to improve the accuracy, timeliness, and applicability of geohazard monitoring and research. By fusing the strengths of C-band and L-band data, InSAR Norway will provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of ground deformation processes, supporting safer, more informed decision-making in the face of Norway's dynamic and often harsh environmental conditions. InSAR Norway will continue its legacy of pioneering satellite-based monitoring, safeguarding communities, and advancing scientific understanding of geohazards.

Highway investment appraisals usually do not account for land use changes triggered by the investment. However, previous studies argue that new highways promote sprawling land use development associated with greater car dependency and increased motorized transport demand. This paper aims to increase the knowledge of how land use changes resulting from new highways impact transport demand. We model induced transport demand from seven highway investments, assuming both fixed and dynamic land use between the build and the no build scenarios. When land use is allowed to change, relocation of population is estimated with a regression model building on existing dynamics between population density and job accessibility. Our results indicate that land use changes resulting from highway investments impact induced transport demand. Highways that provide substantial travel time savings near urban areas are found to generate most induced transport demand from land use changes. However, induced demand from land use changes constitute a modest proportion of total induced demand resulting from the highways.

This chapter explores management communication, which is an important corner of the strategic communication discipline. Management communication denote communication from managers to internal and external target groups where the goal typically is to create visions and establish trust in the management. Yet, how we understand and approach management communication depends on how we conceptualize what an organization is. We argue that the field of management communication rests on a positivistic theoretical foundation inspired by scientific management and system theory thinking. In these perspectives, managers can “stand outside” the systems they have designed themselves, and point to parts and pieces that should be changed or adjusted in a certain way. However, if we look at organizations from the perspective of complexity theory, organisations and managers’ communication are understood as ordinary everyday actions, interactions, and processes, and it is thus impossible to extract the manager from this interaction. We therefore propose an alternative approach to management communication that is based on complexity theory. By employing a complexity theory approach to management communication, management should be exercised to influence communication themes that nurture the experience of people’s belonging and identity for the organization. From a complexity approach, management communication is formulations of initiatives and emerging themes that are perceived as meaningful by the organization.

The Norwegian Public Relations Club was established as a kind of independent think tank for the Norwegian state in order to control, discuss and define public relations in Norway after the Second World War. Many of the central actors in the organization had backgrounds from Norwegian propaganda work during World War II, and the PR Club’s early work can be linked to the international situation after World War II, with the start of the Cold War. This significantly influenced their views on PR, which they wanted to distinguish from what was perceived as propaganda and false (fake) information. PR was supposed to be a tool for the free world – against authoritarian communism. The establishment of the Norwegian Public Relations Club was strongly inspired by a corresponding British association, but from the start, the Norwegian association was more directly geared towards the international situation and Cold War propaganda.

Rockfall simulations are often performed at various levels of detail depending on the required safety margins of rockfall-hazard-related assessments. As a pseudo benchmark, the simulation results from different models can be put side-by-side and compared with reconstructed rockfall trajectories, and mapped deposited block fragments from real events. This allows for assessing the objectivity, predictability, and sensitivity of the models. For this exercise, mapped data of past events from the Mel de la Niva site are used in this paper for a qualitative comparison with simulation results obtained from early calibration stages of the Flow-R 2.0.9, Rockyfor3D 5.2.15 and RAMMS::ROCKFALL 1.6.70 software. The large block fragments, reaching hundreds of megajoules during their fall, greatly exceed the rockfall energies of the empirical databases used for the development of most rockfall models. The comparison for this challenging site shows that the models could be improved and that combining the use of software programs with different behaviors could be a workaround in the interim. The findings also highlight the inconvenient importance of calibrating the simulations on a per-site basis from onsite observations. To complement this process, a back calculation tool is briefly described and provided. This work also emphasizes the need to better understand rockfall dynamics to help improve rebound models.

Abstract The objective of this review paper is to survey the state of the art on nature-based solutions (NBS) in the built environment, which can contribute to a circular economy (CE) and counter the negative impacts of urbanization through the provision of ecosystem services. NBS are discussed here at three different levels: (i) green building materials, including biocomposites with plant-based aggregates; (ii) green building systems, employed for the greening of buildings by incorporating vegetation in their envelope; and (iii) green building sites, emphasizing the value of vegetated open spaces and water-sensitive urban design. After introducing the central concepts of NBS and CE as they are manifested in the built environment, we examine the impacts of urban development and the historical use of materials, systems and sites which can offer solutions to these problems. In the central section of the paper we present a series of case studies illustrating the development and implementation of such solutions in recent years. Finally, in a brief critical analysis we look at the ecosystem services and disservices provided by NBS in the built environment, and examine the policy instruments which can be leveraged to promote them in the most effective manner – facilitating the future transition to fully circular cities.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether children’s bioeffluent generation rate is proportional to their carbon dioxide (CO2) generation rate. Consequently, to assess if there is a need to differentiate the CO2- setpoint for different user groups, focusing on children. Perceived air quality (PAQ) and odour intensity (OI) were assessed in three classrooms in Oslo, Norway. Two second-grade classes (7-8 years old) were compared with one eighth-grade class (13-14 years old). An untrained test panel consisting of 16 people visited each classroom twice and were asked to evaluate PAQ and OI upon entering the classrooms. The CO2 levels in the classrooms were kept constant at either 600 ppm or 1100 ppm during each visitation. The results showed that average PAQ-score was significantly worse in the second-grade classrooms compared to the eighth-grade classroom. For perceived odour intensity, the average score indicated that the odour was stronger in the second-grade classrooms compared to the eighth-grade classroom, however, this difference in score was not significant. Our results indicate a need for differentiation of setpoints for CO2-DCV based on user groups, especially for children.

Debris-flows are forms of landslides in mountainous regions that can potentially cause significant damage. Structural countermeasures to mitigate an entire debris-flow may become unrealistically ma...