Digital Commons Network^™

Asymmetric Information Sharing In Dialysis Paratransit Using An Agency Approach, Mary Lind, Rhonda Hensley

Center for Advanced Transportation Mobility

Dialysis patient transit services presents an agency problem (Eisenhardt, 1989) where the county paratransit operator is the agent that provides the principal, the dialysis center, transport of dialysis patients to their centers under conditions of incomplete and asymmetric information. The agent (paratransit) collects riders in need of paratransit services for doctor appointments (Social Service and Elder Services), dialysis appointments (principal), and other transit needs under conditions of incomplete and asymmetric information where the pickups are scheduled with a limited number of vehicles. Asymmetric scheduling information between the dialysis centers (principal) in a county, the para-transit authority (agent), and the patient’s …

Multi-Robot Coordination And Scheduling For Deactivation & Decommissioning, Sebastian A. Zanlongo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large quantities of high-level radioactive waste were generated during WWII. This waste is being stored in facilities such as double-shell tanks in Washington, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Due to the dangerous nature of radioactive waste, these facilities must undergo periodic inspections to ensure that leaks are detected quickly. In this work, we provide a set of methodologies to aid in the monitoring and inspection of these hazardous facilities. This allows inspection of dangerous regions without a human operator, and for the inspection of locations where a person would not be physically able to enter.

First, …

Optimization Methods For Predictive Maintenance Scheduling Of Building Heating/Cooling Equipment With Performance Decay, Yaqing Wu, Christos T. Maravelias, Yuqiu Jiang, Jingduo Fan, Michael J. Wenzel, Elbsat N. Mohammad, Robert D. Turney

International High Performance Buildings Conference

While various models and methods have been proposed for operating and controlling building heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, equipment decay (e.g., chiller tube fouling or boiler scaling), which results in lower energy efficiency and higher cost, has received limited attention. Accordingly, in this paper, we present an optimization model (mixed-integer linear programming, MILP) for predictive maintenance of HVAC systems with sufficient thermal energy storage (TES). We simultaneously consider the operation and maintenance schedule because of their close mutual interdependence. In addition, a method to accurately approximate equipment operation is provided for long-term scheduling. The proposed model offers decisions …

Integrated Scheduling And Control In Discrete-Time With Dynamic Parameters And Constraints, Logan Beal, Damon Petersen, David R. Grimsman, Sean Warnick, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Integrated scheduling and control (SC) seeks to unify the objectives of the various layers of optimization in manufacturing. This work investigates combining scheduling and control using a nonlinear discrete-time formulation, utilizing the full nonlinear process model throughout the entire horizon. This discrete-time form lends itself to optimization with time-dependent constraints and costs. An approach to combined SC is presented, along with sample pseudo-binary variable functions to ease the computational burden of this approach. An initialization strategy using feedback linearization, nonlinear model predictive control, and continuous-time scheduling optimization is presented. The formulation is applied with a generic continuous stirred tank reactor …

Savecase, Matthew Napoli

Program of Industrial Design Capstones

Concept for Reducing Harmful Smartphone Use & Enhancing Productivity

Scheduling In Mapreduce Clusters, Chen He

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

MapReduce is a framework proposed by Google for processing huge amounts of data in a distributed environment. The simplicity of the programming model and the fault-tolerance feature of the framework make it very popular in Big Data processing.

As MapReduce clusters get popular, their scheduling becomes increasingly important. On one hand, many MapReduce applications have high performance requirements, for example, on response time and/or throughput. On the other hand, with the increasing size of MapReduce clusters, the energy-efficient scheduling of MapReduce clusters becomes inevitable. These scheduling challenges, however, have not been systematically studied.

The objective of this dissertation is to …

Training Student Workers For Cross-Departmental Success In An Academic Library: A New Model, Kindra Becker-Redd, Kirsten Lee, Caroline Skelton

Library Staff Publications

Many academic libraries rely on a student workforce for everyday operations, interacting with patrons, and assistance with larger projects. Training these students for such multifaceted and customer-service-focused positions can be a challenge. This article traces an overhaul of training procedures made during the transition to a centralized, services desk workflow. All aspects of training a large student workforce, from planning and presentation to assessment, are outlined. Interactive group sessions and peer-to-peer reinforcement of procedures have proven to be most effective in training student workers for varied roles in an academic library.

A Multi-Method Scheduling Framework For Medical Staff, Wael Rashwan, John Fowler, Amr Arisha

Conference Papers

Hospital planning teams are always concerned with optimizing staffing and scheduling decisions in order to improve hospital performance, patient experience, and staff satisfaction. A multi-method approach including data analytics, modeling and simulation, machine learning, and optimization is proposed to provide a framework for smart and applicable solutions for staffing and shift scheduling. Factors regarding patients, staff, and hospitals are considered in the decision. This framework is piloted using the Emergency Department(ED) of a leading university hospital in Dublin. The optimized base staffing patterns and shift schedules actively contributed to solving ED overcrowding problem and reduced the average waiting time for …

Device-To-Device Communication In 5g: Towards Efficient Scheduling, Jana Fayek, Mohamad Aoude, Mohamad Raad, Raad Raad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

5G wireless networks are expected to carry large traffic volumes due to the growth of mobile devices and the increasing demand for high data rates from applications. Device to device communication is one of the suggested technologies to support this increasing load and enhance the capacity of networks. However, the implementation of D2D communication reveals many barriers that include communication scheduling, for which the architecture remains complex and obscure. In this paper, an overview of the available literature on the implementation of networks supporting D2D communication is presented, emphasizing the complexity of the offered solutions. This paper also offers a …

Channel Autocorrelation-Based Dynamic Slot Scheduling For Body Area Networks, Hongyun Zhang, Farzad Safaei, Le Chung Tran

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

As a promising technology in the context of m-health and e-medical, wireless body area networks (WBANs) have a stringent requirement in terms of transmission reliability. Meanwhile, the wireless channel in WBANs is prone to deep fading due to multiple reasons, such as shadowing by the body, reflection, diffraction, and interference. To meet the challenge in transmission reliability, the dynamic slot scheduling (DSS) methods have attracted considerable interest in recent years. DSS method does not require extra hardware or software overhead on the sensor side. Instead, the hub optimizes the time-division multiple access slots by selecting the best permutation at the …