Digital Commons Network^™

Church Attraction Through Uncertainty Reduction: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Local Church Content Communication On Facebook And Instagram, Kailey Spilger

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

For the first time since the founding of America, less than 50% of U.S. adults claim to attend church (Jones, 2021). With the transition from traditional marketing methods to digital marketing methods post-COVID-19, church leaders admit that using social media would help them reach new people, but less than 40% have a strategy (Hodøl, 2021). The purpose of this study is to understand current content themes of local churches on social media in order to inform future social media strategies. Guided by the uncertainty reduction theory, this study considers how social media content can reduce uncertainty and promote attraction and …

Curb Appeal, Eric Liu

Masters Theses

This thesis hopes to reimagine the suburbs and challenge the conventional role of architects and the homogeneity of suburban housing. Currently, architects are nearly excluded from the building of suburban homes altogether, resulting in cookie-cutter houses lacking resilience for evolving demographics. The suburban home, symbolizing consumerism, prioritizes affordability and return on investment over adaptability and community.

Homebuyers must also redefine homeownership, valuing diversity and community over financial investment. Rather than focusing on McMansions and superficial renovations, this proposal advocates for a more collective, interconnected approach to suburban design. It explores depictions of the nuclear family, reconfigures single-family homes, and utilizes …

Modeling Of Multi-Period Disaster Logistics Planning In The State Of South Carolina, Emma Simon

All Theses

South Carolina is one of the most vulnerable states in the United States to the impact of hurricanes. Currently, when threatened with a natural disaster such as a hurricane, the state government makes many vital decisions based on knowledge and experience. In this study, the distribution of disaster relief commodities to meet immediate needs is analyzed through two models for the case of South Carolina to generate an optimal logistics strategy that considers the social vulnerability of affected populations. The first model is a multi-objective pre-disaster logistics model that uses a four-index formulation for the multiple trip vehicle routing problem. …

Building A Roadmap For Web Archiving: Organizational Sustainability In An American Research University Library, Ruth E. Bryan, Emily B. Collier

Library Presentations

The presenters, archivists in an academic university Library, launched a web archiving program for a public university in the United States in 2018 with a three-year Archive-it contract. In the first six years of the web archiving program, we have laid the groundwork for an ongoing web archiving program through robust documentation built in anticipation of potential loss of resources, especially personnel. In this presentation, we report on a sustainability review of the program using a practical framework and a conceptual framework. The practical framework is the University of Pittsburg's Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (https://sites.haa.pitt.edu/sustainabilityroadmap/). The conceptual framework is Kristin R. …

Visualizing Routes With Ai-Discovered Street-View Patterns, Tsung Heng Wu, Md Amiruzzaman, Ye Zhao, Deepshikha Bhati, Jing Yang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Street-level visual appearances play an important role in studying social systems, such as understanding the built environment, driving routes, and associated social and economic factors. It has not been integrated into a typical geographical visualization interface (e.g., map services) for planning driving routes. In this article, we study this new visualization task with several new contributions. First, we experiment with a set of AI techniques and propose a solution of using semantic latent vectors for quantifying visual appearance features. Second, we calculate image similarities among a large set of street-view images and then discover spatial imagery patterns. Third, we integrate …

Core 100 And 399, Sarah Moss

The Voice

No abstract provided.

Urban Nature Indexes Tool Offers Comprehensive And Flexible Approach To Monitoring Urban Ecological Performance, Jennifer Rae Pierce, Laura Costadone, Lelani Mannetti, Joeri Morpurgo, Charlyn Elaine Green, Michael D. Halder, Pablo Arturo Lopez Guijosa, Abner L. Bogan, Russell Galt, Jonathan Hughes

ODU Articles

We present the Urban Nature Indexes (UNI), a comprehensive tool that measures urban ecological performance under one standard framework linked to global commitments. The UNI was developed by interdisciplinary experts and evaluated by practitioners from diverse cities to capture each city’s ecological footprint from local to global scale. The UNI comprises six themes (consumption drivers, human pressures, habitat status, species status, nature’s contributions to people, and governance responses) that encompass measurable impacts on climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem services, pollution, consumption, water management, and equity within one comprehensive system. Cities then adapt the UNI to their context and capacity by …

การพัฒนาโปรแกรมคอมพิวเตอร์เพื่อช่วยในการวางแผนและบริหารจัดการความต้องการหลุมจอดอากาศยาน, ณัฐภรณ์ เจริญธรรม, อนุกัลย์ อิศรเสนา ณ อยุธยา

Journal of Transportation and Logistics (TRANSLOG)

การวิจัยนี้เป็นการศึกษาการวางแผนและบริหารจัดการหลุมจอดอากาศยาน โดยใช้ ท่าอากาศยานสากลกรุงเทพ (ดอนเมือง) เป็นสถานที่ตัวอย่างในการศึกษาและเก็บรวบรวมข้อมูล ลักษณะทางกายภาพ การให้บริการลานจอดอากาศยานและพฤติกรรมการเข้ามาใช้บริการหลุม จอดของอากาศยาน เพื่อหาปัจจัยที่เกี่ยวข้องกับการพัฒนาโปรแกรมคอมพิวเตอร์สำหรับเป็นเครื่อง มือช่วยในการวิเคราะห์หาความต้องการหลุมจอดและช่วยในการวางแผนและบริหารจัดการใช้หลุม จอดที่มีอยู่ตามข้อจำกัดให้เพียงพอกับความต้องการ โดยโปรแกรมแบ่งออกเป็น 2 ส่วน คือ โปรแกรมการหาความต้องการหลุมจอดซึ่งขึ้นกับตารางการบินและกลยุทธ์การใช้หลุมจอดของท่า อากาศยาน และโปรแกรมการกำหนดอากาศยานเข้าใช้หลุมจอดตามข้อจำกัดที่มีอยู่โดยจำกัดเวลา ในการใช้หลุมจอดที่มีสะพานเทียบในช่วงเวลาที่มีความต้องการหลุมจอดสูง ผลลัพธ์ของโปรแกรม ประกอบไปด้วย Gantt Chart ซึ่งแสดงการครอบครองหลุมจอดของอากาศยานในแต่ละวัน สัดส่วน เป็นร้อยละของเวลาที่หลุมจอดถูกครอบครองและจำนวนครั้งที่หลุมจอดถูกใช้ใน 1 วัน ซึ่งการหา ความต้องการหลุมจอดโดยใช้โปรแกรมแสดงให้เห็นว่ามีความต้องการจำนวนหลุมจอดประเภทที่มี สะพานเทียบมากกว่าที่มีอยู่จริงภายใต้สมมติฐานที่กำหนด และผลการตรวจสอบความสมเหตุสม ผลของโปรแกรมการกำหนดอากาศยานเข้าใช้หลุมจอดเมื่อเทียบกับการปฏิบัติงานจริงของเจ้าหน้า ผู้ปฏิบัติงาน พบว่าโปรแกรมให้ผลที่สอดคล้องกับการดำเนินงานจริงได้ในระตับหนึ่ง แต่ไม่สามารถ กำหนดอากาศยานเข้าใช้หลุมจอดให้เหมาะสมกับการปฏิบัติงานจริงได้ทุกกรณี

Taking Flight Or Taking A Pass? Exploring Factors Influencing Consumer Willingness To Pay For Evtol Travel, David C. Ison

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) industry is experiencing significant growth due to technological advancements and increasing demand for efficient travel experiences. The market is expected to reach $45 billion by 2030, with major players like Joby, Archer, Beta, and Wisk dominating. This study aimed to assess public willingness to pay for AAM services using eVTOLs, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. The survey yielded a response rate of 85.8%, with 1,622 completed surveys. The study found that younger urban consumers were more willing to pay higher prices for AAM electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft trips than older participants, possibly …

Health-Based Urban Design And Planning Interventions; Maximizing Harmony, Vitality, And Wellness In Hopewell, Virginia, Suzanne K. Yeats

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Urban planners as practitioners work to create a more progressive future while simultaneously redressing the past. This tension is found in many cities, including the City of Hopewell, Virginia where city planners, managers, economic developers work passionately for positive change. In Hopewell, there has been almost no population growth since 1970 and existing health outcomes are alarming. In every determinant of health category (medical, psychological, or social), this city falls below the state and national average. This health-based urban design and planning intervention capstone challenges the status quo by flipping the paradigm and placing the health of all residents first …

University Evaluation Toolkit: Navigating Evaluative Practices Across All Levels With Rufdatae, Elizabeth J. Cook, Kena Cabral Morales

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

University stakeholders have mixed feelings about evaluation, and mixed understandings, skills and knowledge about how to effectively evaluate. How much do you know about evaluation? Could you plan an evaluation if asked? This poster provides a toolkit of strategies for enhancing evaluation in universities, based on Cook’s (2021) “Evaluation of work-integrated learning: A realist synthesis and toolkit to enhance university evaluative practices”. RUFDATAE is a modified version of Saunders’ (2000) approach.

The poster: defines evaluation; clarifies the difference between evaluation and research; summarises the four domains of evaluation in higher education; and outlines RUFDATAE, an evaluation planning framework, for prompting …

Lora Gateway Coverage And Capacity Analysis For Supporting Monitoring Passive Infrastructure Fiber Optic In Urban Area, I Ketut Agung Enriko, Fikri Nizar Gustiyana, Gede Chandrayana Giri

Elinvo (Electronics, Informatics, and Vocational Education)

In the era of digital transformation, telecommunications infrastructure has become the backbone of global connectivity. Optical Distribution Cabinet (ODC) is a crucial part of an optical network that distributes signals to various points in the network. Maintenance and monitoring of ODCs have become essential to ensure optimal availability and performance. However, conventional approaches are often expensive and difficult to implement. The objective of this study is to develop a LoRaWAN network with the purpose of determining the required number of gateways. Additionally, the research aims to devise an IoT-basedODC device monitoring system within the FTTH network, utilizing data from PT. …

The Impact Of Prior Pandemic Planning On Health Outcomes During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study Of Local Government Pandemic Planning In The United States, Karissa D. Bergene

Theses and Dissertations

In late 2019, scientists discovered a novel strain of coronavirus originating out of Wuhan, China. By January 2020, the United States (U.S.) saw its first positive case of coronavirus and the public was still unsure how serious of an epidemic this would be. By the time the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic a “global pandemic” on March 11, 2020, world leaders, public health experts, scientists, and public administrators kicked into high gear to start serious pandemic response efforts. The public sector is typically the responsible authority for the preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery of such …

The Use Of The South Carolina School Improvement Model - Quick Cycles In Sixth-Grade Science Classrooms, Jennifer Gnann

All Dissertations

Using data to make informed decisions about instruction strengthens a teacher’s delivery of content within the classroom. However, many teachers have not been taught how to properly use a model of rapid improvement cycles to analyze data and apply it to their classroom instruction. I modified the South Carolina School Improvement Model so that it could be used in short cycles to see how teachers used it to plan for, monitor, and adjust instruction in their classrooms.

I conducted a single case study over a six-week period in which I instructed two sixth-grade science teachers on how to use the …

How Did School Administrators Manage The Crises During The Covid-19 Outbreak?, Sadegul Akbaba Altun, Mustafa Bulut

Journal of Global Education and Research

The focus of this research was to investigate how school administrators in Turkey managed the crises caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, which was a deadly threat for humanity worldwide. The research questions guiding this study are: 1) Did schools have a crisis plan? 2) If yes, how was the plan implemented in a crisis situation?; 3) What kind of changes were made in the plans?; 4) What should administrators do in such crisis situations?; and 5) What was done in the COVID-19 outbreak? The research was conducted as a qualitative case study which involved 105 school administrators. Due to the …

Unseen Vulnerabilities: Emergency Planning For Carless And Vulnerable Populations In Ontario, James Hugh Hamilton Lee

Major Papers

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina made impact on southern Louisiana, devastating the city of New Orleans and surrounding communities. The high death toll of the hurricane revealed problems with public emergency planning, as many carless and vulnerable people were unable to evacuate New Orleans before the arrival of the hurricane, contributing to the high death toll. In recent years, scholarship has developed around emergency planning for carless and vulnerable populations in order to determine the most effective policy recommendations to improve evacuations plans for these populations. As climate change continues to occur around the world, the frequency and severity of severe …

A Globalized Optimization Schema For Automated Fiber Placement Processing Parameters, Matthew John Godbold

Theses and Dissertations

Automated Fiber Placement is an advanced manufacturing technique for industrial-scale composite structures. Advanced robotics coupled with composite manufacturing results in faster and more consistent results than previously obtained through hand layup. The complexity and interconnectedness of the automated fiber placement process provides a difficult challenge for traditional modeling techniques. Modeling within automated fiber placement currently utilizes physics-based modeling to inform the translation of a design to a manufacturing plan. The intricacy of the automated fiber placement process dictates that attempts at modeling or optimizing these processes are often limited in their scope. Physics-based modeling for manufacturing typically involves numerous interacting …

A New Adventure: Time Blocking & Time Tracking, Olivia R. Smith Schlink

Library Staff Online Publications

New school year, new organizational strategy!—that’s how the saying goes, right?

I’m one of those people who finds unending joy in starting a new organizational scheme. Particularly if there’s a pretty, flowery, probably too-expensive paper planner involved. And at the beginning of the school year? *chef’s kiss*

Hypergraph-Based Multi-Robot Task And Motion Planning, James Motes, Tan Chen, Timothy Bretl, Marco Morales Aguirre, Nancy M. Amato

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 2

In this article, we present a multi-robot task and motion planning method that, when applied to the rearrangement of objects by manipulators, results in solution times up to three orders of magnitude faster than the existing methods and successfully plans for problems with up to 20 objects, more than three times as many objects as comparable methods. We achieve this improvement by decomposing the planning space to consider manipulators alone, objects, and manipulators holding objects. We represent this decomposition with a hypergraph where vertices are decomposed elements of the planning spaces and hyperarcs are transitions between elements. The existing methods …

What Is The Role Of Public Participation In Planning Development Applications For Infill And Intensification: Evidence From Cambridge, Kitchener And Waterloo, Ontario, Deanne Friess

MPA Major Research Papers

The Ontario Planning Act makes public participation a requirement for most municipal planning decision. The intent of the legislated public process is to create a transparent public participatory process. However, the potential impact of the public participation is limited for certain types of applications as approvals are dependent on existing municipal planning policy and provincial direction. The province directs a large portion of new growth be accommodated through infill and intensification. Local municipalities apply the provincial direction in policies, plans, guidelines and regulations which encourage infill and intensification through land use permissions. Planning documents recognize that infill development protects agricultural …

Quality Strategic Planning – Are We There? A Comparative Evaluation Of The Current State Of Strategic Planning With Ontario’S Smaller Municipalities, Mike Macauley

MPA Major Research Papers

Strategic planning for municipalities is a common undertaking to identify goals and objectives to improve the quality of life of their residents. Research has shown that strategic planning offers many benefits to organizations, and allows them to strategically identify, implement and achieve top priorities. The strategic plan itself is the product of the strategic planning process, though evaluating the final published plan often does not occur and a lack of academic research exists to understand if strategic planning is producing quality strategic plans.By evaluating strategic plans in Ontario using a plan quality framework designed from a newly published study (Evaluating …

Harmonizing Agricultural Growth And Nighttime Sky: Municipal Strategies For Mitigating Commercial Greenhouse-Related Light Pollution In Ontario, Canada, Adam Betteridge

MPA Major Research Papers

This comprehensive research investigates the intricate interplay between the thriving commercial greenhouse industry and the pressing concern of nocturnal light pollution in a focussed area of Ontario, Canada, and the Netherlands. The study addresses the multifaceted challenge of managing greenhouse-related light pollution, which emerges as an unintended consequence of employing supplementary lighting to extend growing seasons and enhance crop yields. The analysis of jurisdictional approaches reveals the complexities and the varied success achieved in addressing this issue.In Ontario, particularly in and near the County of Essex, the response to greenhouse-related light pollution has primarily been reactive, with municipalities passing light …

Pomdp Library Optimizing Over Exploration And Exploitation In Robotic Localization, Mapping, And Planning, Joyce Anderson Annan, Akram Alghanmi, Marius Silaghi

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Localization, mapping, and planning are critical in autonomous robots operating in uncertain environments and in continuous and discrete domains. High-quality probabilistic models for a complex robot depend heavily on details from its environment, involving multiple parameters. However, there is a lack of accurate probabilistic models for existing robots that can handle reasonably the challenges posed by real applications. For most robots, actions are highly non-deterministic. Furthermore, there is a lack of general software packages applicable to new scenarios. Specifically, we propose a POMDP library for optimal planning and localization given new available models, and dedicated to optimize over exploration and …

Prioritizing Climate Equity: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Massachusetts Mvp Program, Noah H. Gordon

Masters Theses

The Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program (MVP Program) has funded Community Resilience Building workshops in hundreds of communities over the past 6 years. The Planning Reports produced by these workshops offer valuable insight into the climate adaptation and climate justice priorities of Massachusetts municipalities. Climate justice literature holds that the impacts of climate change will be disproportionately felt by marginalized communities, and those addressing climate change should address the risks faced by those communities, referred to as Environmental Justice (EJ) Communities in Massachusetts. Using an inductive qualitative coding approach, this study analyzes 30 Planning Reports from towns with High, Medium …

Feed Planning - Methods Used By “Expert” Farmers, D. I. Gray, W. J. Parker, E. A. Kemp, P. D. Kemp, I. M. Brookes, D. J. Horne, Paul R. Kenyon, C. Matthew, S. T. Morris, J. I. Reid, I. Valentine

IGC Proceedings (1997-2023)

Although formal feed planning has been heavily promoted in New Zealand, relatively few farmers have adopted this approach (Nuthall & Bishop-Hurley, 1999). Reasons for non-adoption have been identified, but little is known about how farmers manage their pastoral farms in the absence of formal feed planning. To this end, the feed management processes used by three successful (expert) farmers were investigated.

Management Of Pasture Quality For Sheep On New Zealand Hill Country, D. I. Gray, J. I. Reid, P. D. Kemp, I. M. Brookes, D. Horne, Paul R. Kenyon, C. Matthew, S. T. Morris, I. Valentine

IGC Proceedings (1997-2023)

The control of pasture quality over spring is central to the achievement of high levels of sheep performance on hill country. Despite this, with the exception of the work of Lambert et al. (2000), little is known about how farmers actually manage pasture quality. The purpose of this research was to describe how a high performing hill country farmer manages pasture quality on their sheep area over spring and from this develop a framework that will assist other farmers improve their pasture management.

Innovative Methods To Strengthen Internal Kytc Communications, P. Gayle Marks, Jeff Jasper

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Communication is the linchpin of every organization. Poor communication leads to inefficiencies, frustration among staff, and employee disaffection and disengagement. Although some state transportation agencies have adopted comprehensive strategic plans for internal communications, many have taken a more piecemeal approach, with some Offices and units (e.g., incident management) developing their own plans that apply only to their operations. The latter approach is less than ideal because establishing a comprehensive communications plan provides an organizing framework for all communications within an organization and is critical for uniting staff around a shared sense of purpose and equipping them with the tools they …

We Need Faithful Farmers, Dale E. Vos

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"A faithful farmer who cares is performing worshipful work."

Posting about the calling of agriculture from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/we-need-faithful-farmers/

The Flow Of Power: Addressing Asymmetric Flood Risk In The Upper Valley, Eric Vr Hryniewicz

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

Floods are the most damaging natural disasters in America. Land use change in upland watersheds can increase the probability and severity of floods (Bronstert, Niehoff, & Burger, 2002). When watersheds are divided by political and private property boundaries it leads to a misalignment of incentives in which downstream users lack recourse for upstream land use decisions contributing to flood risk. In this thesis, researchers interrogate the attributes of town officials and towns that determine what motivates town governments to act on flooding and what motivates and enables town officials to collaborate on planning and how do they collaborate in practice. …

Polyflowbuilder: An Intuitive Tool For Academic Planning At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Duncan Thomas Applegarth

Computer Engineering

PolyFlowBuilder is a web application that lets users create visually intuitive flowcharts to aid in academic planning at Cal Poly. These flowcharts can be customized in a variety of ways to accurately represent complex academic plans, such as double majors, minors, taking courses out- of-order, etc. The original version of PolyFlowBuilder, released Summer 2020, was not written for continued expansion and growth. Therefore, a complete rewrite was determined to be necessary to enable the project to grow in the future. This report details the process to completely rewrite the existing version of PolyFlowBuilder over the course of six months, using …