Engineering Commons^™

Data And Analytics For Neighborhood Development: Smart Shrinkage Decision Modeling In Baltimore, Maryland, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Justin Hollander, Eliza D. Whiteman

Michael P. Johnson

Many older cities in the United States confront the problem of long-term declines in population and economic activity resulting in blighted conditions that make conventional revitalization initiatives unlikely to succeed. Smart shrinkage, a planning approach that emphasizes alternative land uses while preserving quality of life, offers a way for cities to remain desirable places to live and work. However, there is little research on empirical methods to support planning decisions consistent with smart shrinkage.

We present results from two studies with planners from the City of Baltimore that provide novel insights regarding ways in which planners can perform vacant property ...

Multi-Period Liner Ship Fleet Planning With Dependent Uncertain Container Shipment Demand, Qiang Meng, Tingsong Wang, Shuaian Wang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers

This paper deals with a realistic multi-period liner ship fleet planning problem by incorporating stochastic dependency of the random and period-dependent container shipment demand. This problem is formulated as a multi-period stochastic programming model with a sequence of interrelated two-stage stochastic programming (2SSP) problems characterized ship fleet planning in each single period. A solution method integrating dual decomposition and Lagrangian relaxation method is designed for solving the developed model. Numerical experiments are carried out to assess applicability and performance of the proposed model and solution algorithm. The results further demonstrate importance of stochastic dependence of the uncertain container shipment demand.

Decision Science For Housing And Community Development: Localized And Evidence‐Based Responses To Distressed Housing And Blighted Communities, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Jeffrey Keisler, Senay Solak, David Turcotte, Armagan Bayram, Rachel B. Drew

Michael P. Johnson

This book will present decision models and applications to an important contemporary issue in urban housing and community development: local responses to the foreclosure crisis. The roots of this book are a National Science Foundation-funded project as well as an antecedent pilot project that served as a response to a phenomenon with multiple causes and large-scale and wide-ranging impacts on people, communities and markets worldwide, including in urbanized areas of the United States. The book will demonstrate that a diverse set of decision models, developed to respond to the recent foreclosure crisis in the US, can contribute to emerging scholarship ...

Video Event Recognition And Prediction Based On Temporal Structure Analysis, Kang Li

Computer Engineering Dissertations

The increasing ubiquitousness of multimedia information in today's world has positioned video as a favored information vehicle, and given rise to an astonishing generation of social media and surveillance footage. Consumer-grade video is becoming abundant on the Internet, and it is now easier than ever to download multimedia material of any kind and quality. This raises a series of technological demands for automatic video understanding, which has motivated the research community to guide its steps towards a better attainment of such capabilities. As a result, current trends on cognitive vision promise to recognize complex events and self-adapt to different ...

Positive Control With Maximum Stability Radius For Continuous-Time Dynamic Systems, Amirreza Oghbaee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Master's Theses

Positive systems have attracted much attention nowadays due to their numerous applications in modeling and control of physical, biological and economical systems. The state trajectory of such system remains in the nonnegative quadrant of the state space for any given nonnegative initial condition. This class of systems have nice stability and robustness properties. One can take advantage of these interesting properties to robustly stabilize general dynamic systems such that the closed-loop system becomes positive. One of the most important measures in robust control analysis is stability radius. This measure provides the amount of uncertainty that system can cope with before ...

14 - ارزیابی تأثیرات نحوه چیدمان لایه های یک لباس متخلخل بر انتقال حرارت و جرم از بدن در شرایط سرما, Alireza Zolfaghari, Hasan Hasanzadeh, Hosein Shariati Eivari

Dr Alireza Zolfaghari

No abstract provided.

Burning Characteristics Of Pulverized Coal Within Blast Furnace Raceway At Various Injection Operations And Ways Of Enriched Oxygen., Wei-Hsin Chen

Wei-Hsin Chen

No abstract provided.

Automatic Registration Of Fused Lidar/Digital Imagery (Texel Images) For Three-Dimensional Image Creation, Scott E. Budge, Neeraj S. Badamikar, Xuan Xie

ECE Faculty Publications

Several photogrammetry-based methods have been proposed that the derive three-dimensional (3-D) information from digital images from different perspectives, and lidar-based methods have been proposed that merge lidar point clouds and texture the merged point clouds with digital imagery. Image registration alone has difficulty with smooth regions with low contrast, whereas point cloud merging alone has difficulty with outliers and a lack of proper convergence in the merging process. This paper presents a method to create 3-D images that uses the unique properties of texel images (pixel-fused lidar and digital imagery) to improve the quality and robustness of fused 3-D images ...

42 - تحليل تأثيرات استفاده از بام سبز به عنوان راهکاري بر نگهداشت انرژي در اقليم هاي مختلف ايران با استفاده از نرم افزار ديزاين بيلدر, Alireza Zolfaghari, Mehran Sa'adati Nasab, Elaheh Norouzi Jajarm, Hamed Moslehi

Dr Alireza Zolfaghari

No abstract provided.

Towards Sustainability In The Oil And Gas Sector: Benchmarking Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Efforts, Jennifer Schneider, Salim Ghettas, Nacer Merdaci, Mervin Brown, Joseph Martyniuk, Waleed Alshehri, Anthony Trojan

Journal of Environmental Sustainability

The environmental, social and climate change issues that face the world today have all industries considering how they will address sustainability in the future. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the maturity of environmental, health and safety (EHS) efforts and progress toward sustainability in the oil and gas sector. Ten major oil companies have been analyzed based on public information including their published annual reports. Companies refer to voluntary initiatives when reporting their performance yet the assessment suggests that the sector overall continues to make progress and is maturing in its sustainability efforts. Many management system gaps were ...

Assessing The Economic Benefits Of Compressed Air Energy Storage For Mitigating Wind Curtailment, Brendan Cleary, Aidan Duffy, Alan O'Connor, Michael Conlon, Vasilis Fthenakis

Other resources

Renewable energy generation in the All-Island of Ireland (AII) is set to increase by 2020 due to binding renewable energy targets. To achieve these targets, there will be periods of time when 75% of electricity will be generated mainly from onshore wind. Currently, the AII system can accommodate a 50% maximum permissible instantaneous level of wind generation. The system operators must make system wide wind curtailment decisions to ensure this level is not breached. Subsequently, the ability to limit wind curtailment using large scale energy storage such as pumped hydroelectric energy storage and compressed air energy storage (CAES) is increasingly ...

Grafalgo - A Library Of Graph Algorithms And Supporting Data Structures, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This report provides an overview of Grafalgo, an open-source library of graph algorithms and the data structures used to implement them. The programs in this library were originally written to support a graduate class in advanced data structures and algorithms at Washington University. Because the code's primary purpose was pedagogical, it was written to be as straightforward as possible, while still being highly efficient. Grafalgo is implemented in C++ and incorporates some features of C++11.

The library is available on an open-source basis and may be downloaded from https://code.google.com/p/grafalgo/. Source code documentation is ...

Evaluation Of Vibration Profiles For Uld Dollies At Air-Cargo Sorting Hubs, Jay Singh, Paul Singh, Koushik Saha

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

This study measured and analyzed the vibration characteristics of an important component of the air package shipping environment which has not been previously studied or included in the pre-shipment testing of packages. This is the movement of packages between aircraft after they are flown in to an airport-hub and being taken into a facility to conduct a sort, or after being sorted as they are transferred back on to aircraft. These transfers at airport-hubs between trucks, building sortation facilities and aircraft are done using material handling equipment called “dollies” or carts. These carts often are connected with each other into ...

Ceas E-News 01.16.2015, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Newsletter

• Chemical and Paper Engineering chair steps down
• Engineers week

Kanada'da Madencilik Ve Metal Kazanımı (Mining And Metal Extraction In Canada), Ahmet Deniz Bas

Ahmet Deniz Bas

No abstract provided.

Online Resource Platform For Mathematics Education, Marisa Llorens, Edmund Nevin, Eileen Mageean

Other resources

No abstract provided.

Separation Of The Petroleum System, Ali Ibrahim Neamah

The Hilltop Review

This study discusses the overall process of crude oil separation as well as the necessary equipment used in the process. Also discussed and analyzed are potential issues seen in the crude oil extraction process. Reasons why these operation problems may occur are analyzed as well as treatment options for such occurring issues are discussed for employees and students alike. This research is based off of personal involvement at the Nasiriyah Degassing Station located in Dhi Qar, Iraq.

Advantages Of A Finite Extensible Nonlinear Elastic Potential In Lattice Boltzmann Simulations, Tai-Hsien Wu, Dewei Qi

The Hilltop Review

A new structure, generalized lattice nonlinear spring model (GLNSM), which adopts non-linear FENE-LJ potential instead of harmonic potential, has been coupled with lattice Boltzmann simulation for solving fluid-solid interaction problem. In this article, a significant work is the relationship between the GLNSM (FENE-LJ potential) and Young’s modulus has been described in detail. A validation has also been presented to prove that GLNSM is reliable.

Novel Informatic Platform For The Standard Unification Of Donors, Offspring And Patients Records: Institutional Registry Requirements In The Reproductive Biomedicine Regulations Compliance., Salvo Reina, Mauro Costa, Mauro Giacomini

Salvo Reina

The Donor ART (DART), recently promulgated by italian institution, has posed several incumbent questions to the Artificial Reproductive Techniques (ART) world. Besides the critical social and ethical aspects, a crucial issue is the engagement of a centralised “Donors-offspring Registry” which introduces new stringent criteria up on the treatments of the sensitive data of donors, newborns and patients. Such registry will have to comply with applicable italian laws (Legge 40/04, Dlg.191/07 and Dlg.16/10, the so called “Patto per la Salute 2014-2016) and the european Tissue Directive (2006/17/CE, Ed. 2004). Moreover, recent Guide Lines were ...

Designing Electronics For An Artificial Leg, Taylor Barto

The Downtown Review

A regenerative prosthesis is modeled and simulated. The simulation is optimized with the biogeography-based optimization algorithm to obtain desired knee angle tracking with a reference knee trajectory and to regenerate energy. The prosthesis is able to track a reference knee angle with a 5.1 degree error averaged over an entire stride and regenerate some energy throughout the stride.

Analytical Report On Consumer Gasoline Choices, Michael Stanley

The Downtown Review

Most gas in the United States comes from the same few refineries, where different brands of gasoline are created as they are pumped into the fuel tankers, as opposed to individual retail facilities. Dr. Edward Murphy of the American Petroleum Institute explains that “base gas is a freely traded commodity that must meet certain government specifications. It flows through common pipelines into commingled storage tanks” (Blumberg). Although brands of gasoline have major differences, those differences are not due to origin or refining process, since they are processed from crude oil into gasoline together. The difference in the brands comes late ...

Risk Perception In Aviation Students: Weather Matters, Ric Ferraro Phd, Darci Vandyke, Mary Zander, Krista Anderson, Bethany Kuehlen

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Sixty-three aviation major students and 71 non-aviation major students participated in an experiment concerning aviation experience and risk perception (Risk Perception Scale, RPS; Hunter, 2002). Non-aviation students rated three of the RPS risk scenarios (P2Fly, P2Life, P2 Base) as having higher perceived risk than aviation students with the exception of the weather risk scenarios (P2WX). Aviation students perceived the P2WX scenarios to be significantly more risky. These results have implications for how future pilots perceive risk.

Understanding The Methods Behind Cyber Terrorism, Maurice E. Dawson Jr., Marwan Omar, Jonathan Abramson

Maurice Dawson

Cyber security has become a matter of national, international, economic, and societal importance that affects multiple nations (Walker, 2012). Since the 1990s users have exploited vulnerabilities to gain access to networks for malicious purposes. In recent years the number of attacks on U.S. networks has continued to grow at an exponential rate. This includes malicious embedded code, exploitation of backdoors, and more. These attacks can be initiated from anywhere in the world from behind a computer with a masked Internet Protocol (IP) address. This type of warfare, cyber warfare, changes the landscape of war itself (Beidleman, 2009). This type ...

Sonocatalytic Removal Of An Organic Dye Using Tio2/Montmorillonite Nanocomposite, A.R. Khataee, M. Sheydaei, A. Hassani, M. Taseidifar, S. Karaca

Aydin Hassani

No abstract provided.

Automated Detection Of Puffing And Smoking With Wrist Accelerometers, Qu Tang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Master's Theses

Real-time, automatic detection of smoking behavior could lead to novel measurement tools for smoking research and "just-in-time" interventions that may help people quit, reducing preventable deaths. This paper discusses the use of machine learning with wrist accelerometer data for automatic puffing and smoking detection. A two-layer smoking detection model is proposed that incorporates both low-level time domain features and high-level smoking topography such as inter-puff intervals and puff frequency to detect puffing then smoking. On a pilot dataset of 6 individuals observed for 11.8 total hours in real-life settings performing complex tasks while smoking, the model obtains a cross ...

Resource Management In Enterprise Cluster And Storage Systems, Jianzhe Tai

Computer Engineering Dissertations

In this thesis, we present our works on resource management in large scale systems, especially for enterprise cluster and storage systems. Large-scale cluster systems become quite popular among a community of users by offering a variety of resources. Such systems require complex resource management schemes for multi-objective optimizations and should be specific to different system requirements. In addition, burstiness has often been found in enterprise workloads, being a key factor in performance degradation. Therefore, it is an extremely challenging problem of managing heterogeneous resources (e.g., computing, networking and storage) for such a large scale system under bursty conditions while ...

Detecting Body Cavity Bombs With Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance, Michael Collins

Electrical and Computer Engineering Master's Theses

Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) is a technology with great potential for detecting hidden explosives. Past NQR research has studied the detection of land mines and bombs concealed within luggage and packages. This thesis focuses on an NQR application that has received less attention and little or no publicly available research: detecting body cavity bombs (BCBs). BCBs include explosives that have been ingested, inserted into orifices, or surgically implanted. BCBs present a threat to aviation and secure facilities. They are extremely difficult to detect with the technology currently employed at security checkpoints.

To evaluate whether or not NQR can be used ...

The Development Of A Solar System Capable Of Producing 10% And 50% Of Bowling Greeen State University’S Total Electrical Requirements, Scott Subler

Scott Subler

No abstract provided.

Project Management Decisions With Uncertain Targets, Jeffrey Keisler, Robert Bordley

Jeffrey Keisler

Project management decision rules presume that fixed and inflexible targets have been defined for the project. If a project's slack is defined as the difference between actual project performance and these targets, then these decision rules can be characterized as maximizing the probability that slack is non-negative (i.e., maximizing the probability of meeting the targets). These rules rely on z-scores to compare uncertain performance to target levels. Following these decision rules will not always suffice for the project manager to act consistently with customer preferences. In particular, actual requirements may be uncertain or subject to change, and customers ...

High-Performance Power-Efficient Solutions For Embedded Vision Computing, Hamed Tabkhivayghan

Computer Engineering Dissertations

Embedded vision is a top tier, rapidly growing market with a host of challenges and conflicting requirements. Complex algorithms can pose immense computation ( > 50GOPs) and communication ( > 8GB/s) demands, especially considering adaptive vision algorithms (which employ machine learning techniques and concurrently update a scene model). Yet at the same time, their embedded deployment demands low power operation consuming only a few Watts. Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs) have emerged as one main architecture approach to improve power efficiency while increasing computational performance. Still, current vision MPSoCs either shy away from supporting adaptive vision algorithms or operate at very limited resolutions due to ...