Hur ett företag kan uppmärksammas genom en grafisk profil och en gerillamarknadsföring

The purpose of this thesis was to create a visual identity to the café Trädgårdscafét. This was to increase the awareness of the cafe among the population of Borlänge. To make the company's visual identity visible, we also organized a guerrilla marketing. The outcome of the guerrilla marketing were then measured by calculating the number of guests during a certain period of time and also through a survey conducted in Borlänge.Graphic material, such as a graphic identity, business cards, feel good-cards, store signs, standing information folders to place on the tables and pavement board was created. Flyers and posters were also created for the guerrilla marketing. The basis for this was established in the study of literature, focus groups and surveys. We also kept a regular and open contact with the café owners throughout the project.In a similar procedure a broad knowledge about guerrilla marketing was gathered in order to be able to arrange one our selves.The guerrilla marketing was held for one day in the city of Borlänge. To attract attention, groups of outdoor furniture, decorated with green plants, were placed at different locations, while six marketers handed out flyers and spread information about the café. The guerrilla marketing resulted in that the café's customers grew by nearly twice as many on the day of the guerrilla. Surveys made before and after the guerrilla showed that the awareness of the café grew.

Estimated lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden using time-to-event analysis

Maintenance planning of road pavement requires reliable estimates of roads’ lifetimes. In determining the lifetime of a road, this study combines maintenance activities and road condition measurements. The scope of the paper is to estimate lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden with time to event analysis. The model used includes effects of pavement type, road type, bearing capacity, road width, speed limit, stone size and climate zone, where the model is stratified according to traffic load. Among the nine analyzed pavement types, stone mastic had the longest expected lifetime, 32 percent longer than asphalt concrete. Among road types, ordinary roads with cable barriers had 30 percent shorter lifetime than ordinary roads. Increased speed lowered the lifetime, while increased stone size (up to 20 mm) and increased road width lengthened the lifetime. The results are of importance for life cycle cost analysis and road management.

A Microdata Analysis Approach to Transport Infrastructure Maintenance

Maintenance of transport infrastructure assets is widely advocated as the key in minimizing current and future costs of the transportation network. While effective maintenance decisions are often a result of engineering skills and practical knowledge, efficient decisions must also account for the net result over an asset's life-cycle. One essential aspect in the long term perspective of transport infrastructure maintenance is to proactively estimate maintenance needs. In dealing with immediate maintenance actions, support tools that can prioritize potential maintenance candidates are important to obtain an efficient maintenance strategy. This dissertation consists of five individual research papers presenting a microdata analysis approach to transport infrastructure maintenance. Microdata analysis is a multidisciplinary field in which large quantities of data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted to improve decision-making. Increased access to transport infrastructure data enables a deeper understanding of causal effects and a possibility to make predictions of future outcomes. The microdata analysis approach covers the complete process from data collection to actual decisions and is therefore well suited for the task of improving efficiency in transport infrastructure maintenance. Statistical modeling was the selected analysis method in this dissertation and provided solutions to the different problems presented in each of the five papers. In Paper I, a time-to-event model was used to estimate remaining road pavement lifetimes in Sweden. In Paper II, an extension of the model in Paper I assessed the impact of latent variables on road lifetimes; displaying the sections in a road network that are weaker due to e.g. subsoil conditions or undetected heavy traffic. The study in Paper III incorporated a probabilistic parametric distribution as a representation of road lifetimes into an equation for the marginal cost of road wear. Differentiated road wear marginal costs for heavy and light vehicles are an important information basis for decisions regarding vehicle miles traveled (VMT) taxation policies. In Paper IV, a distribution based clustering method was used to distinguish between road segments that are deteriorating and road segments that have a stationary road condition. Within railway networks, temporary speed restrictions are often imposed because of maintenance and must be addressed in order to keep punctuality. The study in Paper V evaluated the empirical effect on running time of speed restrictions on a Norwegian railway line using a generalized linear mixed model.