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Operational Research

2024

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Evaluating Climate Sentiment In Sec 10-K Filings: S&P 50 Companies, Ruby Chu Jun 2024

Evaluating Climate Sentiment In Sec 10-K Filings: S&P 50 Companies, Ruby Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Evaluating Climate Sentiment in SEC 10-K Filings: S&P 50 Companies investigates how climate sentiment is portrayed in corporate financial reporting, focusing on SEC 10-K filings from leading S&P 50 companies. These filings offer detailed insights into financial performance, risks, and management discussions, providing a rich dataset for analyzing corporate behaviors with sustainability and environmental concerns. This study aims to shed light on the extent to which companies address environmental issues and the implications for environmental stewardship by analyzing how these topics are portrayed in their SEC 10-K filings. Drawing inspiration from established greenwashing indicator frameworks, the study develops a climate …


Open-Source Optimization For Green Last Mile Delivery And Other Applications, John Sooter May 2024

Open-Source Optimization For Green Last Mile Delivery And Other Applications, John Sooter

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Solving combinatorial optimization problems at scale and of sufficiently interesting context has historically required commercial solvers and access to proprietary company data. The development of performant open-source mathematical programming software and crowdsourced datasets has created an opportunity for individuals and enterprises alike to consider alternative solutions to problems with social and personal implications. This honors thesis represents a summary of my undergraduate research work, an application of optimization to three distinct problems connected to these developments. First, we present an optimization study of a last mile delivery system that shows optimization for energy consumption can generate vehicleindependent fuel savings at …


Cost-Risk Analysis Of The Ercot Region Using Modern Portfolio Theory, Megan Sickinger May 2024

Cost-Risk Analysis Of The Ercot Region Using Modern Portfolio Theory, Megan Sickinger

Master's Theses

In this work, we study the use of modern portfolio theory in a cost-risk analysis of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Based upon the risk-return concepts of modern portfolio theory, we develop an n-asset minimization problem to create a risk-cost frontier of portfolios of technologies within the ERCOT electricity region. The levelized cost of electricity for each technology in the region is a step in evaluating the expected cost of the portfolio, and the historical data of cost factors estimate the variance of cost for each technology. In addition, there are several constraints in our minimization problem to …


Modeling Of Multi-Period Disaster Logistics Planning In The State Of South Carolina, Emma Simon May 2024

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. …


Analyzing The Impact Of Socioeconomic Factors On Cancer Clinical Trials Accessibility In The U.S. Using Machine Learning, Krysta L. Ray, Hiromi Honda Apr 2024

Analyzing The Impact Of Socioeconomic Factors On Cancer Clinical Trials Accessibility In The U.S. Using Machine Learning, Krysta L. Ray, Hiromi Honda

ATU Research Symposium

While cancer impacts all segments of the United States population, specific groups experience a disproportionate burden of the disease due to social, environmental, and economic disadvantages. This research examines the correlation between socioeconomic factors and the accessibility of cancer clinical trials across U.S. counties, employing a comprehensive dataset, County-Level Socioeconomic and Cancer Clinical Trial Data from Noah Ripper, and advanced machine-learning techniques. Our findings, derived from regression analysis and machine learning models like gradient boosting, highlight significant disparities in trial availability linked to socioeconomic indicators, including poverty rates, population estimates, median income, incidence rates, and mortality rates. Many regression models …


Optimization Of Human Interactions In The College Campus Model Via Simio Integration, Benjamin E. Chaback Apr 2024

Optimization Of Human Interactions In The College Campus Model Via Simio Integration, Benjamin E. Chaback

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

College campuses are a significant part of life in some cities. Many students each year attend university, pursuing additional knowledge from faculty members. Both staff and faculty members rely on these students to have successful jobs and to ensure the university functions. Yet recently, more and more students are attending, leading to overcrowding, lower admission rates, and difficulty getting into good programs. Previous work exists on qualitative student affairs and quantitative retention data, yet little on using simulations to model this problem. This work aimed to (a) Determine the ability to successfully model human interactions/people flow on a college campus, …


Understanding The Impact Of Emergent Conflict On Communication And Team Cognition: A Multilevel Study In Engineering Teams, Francisco Cima Apr 2024

Understanding The Impact Of Emergent Conflict On Communication And Team Cognition: A Multilevel Study In Engineering Teams, Francisco Cima

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The development of team cognition is crucial for fostering high-performing teams. In cognitive-intensive fields like engineering, effective communication serves as a primary precursor to team knowledge development, enabling group members to effectively retrieve and utilize each other's expertise. Despite the critical role of communication, there is a lack of empirical research examining how conflict situations, which are critical emerging factors inherent to teamwork, interact with communication processes to constrain team knowledge development and utilization. This study, rooted in information processing theory, investigates how emerging conflict shapes multilevel team knowledge structures by interacting with communication processes in engineering project teams. Prior …


Drivers’ Hazard Avoidance During Vehicle Automation: Impact Of Mental Models And Implications For Training, Ganesh Pai Mangalore Mar 2024

Drivers’ Hazard Avoidance During Vehicle Automation: Impact Of Mental Models And Implications For Training, Ganesh Pai Mangalore

Doctoral Dissertations

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are vehicle automation systems that have become more accessible and prevalent in vehicles in recent years. But the introduction of such technologies introduces new human factors challenges. Past literature suggests that users of vehicle automation lack the necessary and appropriate knowledge about their automation system. This may play a negative role in their hazard avoidance abilities when driving with automation features. Improving mental models and knowledge could generally lead to safer interactions with vehicle automation systems, but any effort to develop hazard avoidance skills when driving with vehicle automation is impeded by the lack of …


Assessing Adoption Barriers Of Sustainable Packaging In Egypt, Carol Ramses Morgan Feb 2024

Assessing Adoption Barriers Of Sustainable Packaging In Egypt, Carol Ramses Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainable packaging has become an essential part of business decisions and corporate directions. With the rise of environmental damages due to improper waste management and unsustainable practices, businesses have a major responsibility to analyze their products’ life cycles and redesign them with sustainability in mind. Applying sustainable packaging could save companies large amounts of resources, therefore cutting costs, while also achieving the legal and social duty as a corporation towards society and the environment. Many developing countries, with specific focus on Egypt, have recently focused on legislative and corporate decisions in order to encourage more sustainable practices. Egypt’s new Waste …


Characterizing Linearizable Qaps By The Level-1 Reformulation-Linearization Technique, Lucas Waddell, Warren Adams Feb 2024

Characterizing Linearizable Qaps By The Level-1 Reformulation-Linearization Technique, Lucas Waddell, Warren Adams

Faculty Journal Articles

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is an extremely challenging NP-hard combinatorial optimization program. Due to its difficulty, a research emphasis has been to identify special cases that are polynomially solvable. Included within this emphasis are instances which are linearizable; that is, which can be rewritten as a linear assignment problem having the property that the objective function value is preserved at all feasible solutions. Various known sufficient conditions for identifying linearizable instances have been explained in terms of the continuous relaxation of a weakened version of the level-1 reformulation-linearization-technique (RLT) form that does not enforce nonnegativity on a subset …


Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu Feb 2024

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …


Operations Research In Civil And Environmental Engineering, Nicholas Lownes Jan 2024

Operations Research In Civil And Environmental Engineering, Nicholas Lownes

Open Educational Resource

The purpose of this text is introduce fundamental operations research techniques to the civil and/or environmental engineering student, providing a broad background in linear programming, integer programming and network optimization. The material is presented in such a manner so that the student does not need an extensive background in operations research or or linear algebra. Applications include transportation engineering, project management and general civil and environmental engineering applications.


The Impact Of Social Media On Charitable Giving For Nonprofit Organization, Namchul Shin Jan 2024

The Impact Of Social Media On Charitable Giving For Nonprofit Organization, Namchul Shin

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Research has extensively studied nonprofit organizations’ use of social media for communications and interactions with supporters. However, there has been limited research examining the impact of social media on charitable giving. This research attempts to address the gap by empirically examining the relationship between the use of social media and charitable giving for nonprofit organizations. We employ a data set of the Nonprofit Times’ top 100 nonprofits ranked by total revenue for the empirical analysis. As measures for social media traction, i.e., how extensively nonprofits draw supporters on their social media sites, we use Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, and Instagram …


An Algorithm Based On Priority Rules For Solving A Multi-Drone Routing Problem In Hazardous Waste Collection, Youssef Harrath Dr., Jihene Kaabi Dr. Jan 2024

An Algorithm Based On Priority Rules For Solving A Multi-Drone Routing Problem In Hazardous Waste Collection, Youssef Harrath Dr., Jihene Kaabi Dr.

Research & Publications

This research investigates the problem of assigning pre-scheduled trips to multiple drones to collect hazardous waste from different sites in the minimum time. Each drone is subject to essential restrictions: maximum flying capacity and recharge operation. The goal is to assign the trips to the drones so that the waste is collected in the minimum time. This is done if the total flying time is equally distributed among the drones. An algorithm was developed to solve the problem. The algorithm is based on two main ideas: sort the trips according to a given priority rule and assign the current trip …


Optimal Algorithm For Managing On-Campus Student Transportation, Youssef Harrath Dr. Jan 2024

Optimal Algorithm For Managing On-Campus Student Transportation, Youssef Harrath Dr.

Research & Publications

This study analyzed the transportation issues at the University of Bahrain Sakhir campus, where a bus system with an unorganized and fixed number of buses allocated each semester was in place. Data was collected through a survey, on-site observations, and student schedules to estimate the number of buses needed. The study was limited to students who require to move between buildings for academic purposes and not those who choose to ride buses for other reasons. An algorithm was designed to calculate the optimal number of buses for each time slot, and for each day. This solution could improve transportation efficiency, …


How Does Digitalisation Transform Business Models In Ropax Ports? A Multi-Site Study Of Port Authorities, Yiran Chen, Anastasia Tsvetkova, Kristel Edelman, Irina Wahlström, Marikka Heikkila, Magnus Hellström Jan 2024

How Does Digitalisation Transform Business Models In Ropax Ports? A Multi-Site Study Of Port Authorities, Yiran Chen, Anastasia Tsvetkova, Kristel Edelman, Irina Wahlström, Marikka Heikkila, Magnus Hellström

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This article investigates the relationship between digitalisation and business model changes in RoPax ports. The study is based on six RoPax ports in Northern Europe, examining their digitalisation efforts and the resulting changes in their business models, leading to further digital transformation. The paper offers insights by reviewing relevant literature on digitalisation’s role in business model innovation and its application in ports. The findings reveal that digitalisation supports relevant business model changes concerning port operation integration within logistics chains, communication, documentation flow, and cargo flow optimisation. However, exploring digitalisation’s potential for diversifying value propositions is still limited. Most digitalisation efforts …


Key Issues Of Predictive Analytics Implementation: A Sociotechnical Perspective, Leida Chen, Ravi Nath, Nevina Rocco Jan 2024

Key Issues Of Predictive Analytics Implementation: A Sociotechnical Perspective, Leida Chen, Ravi Nath, Nevina Rocco

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Developing an effective business analytics function within a company has become a crucial component to an organization’s competitive advantage today. Predictive analytics enables an organization to make proactive, data-driven decisions. While companies are increasing their investments in data and analytics technologies, little research effort has been devoted to understanding how to best convert analytics assets into positive business performance. This issue can be best studied from the socio-technical perspective to gain a holistic understanding of the key factors relevant to implementing predictive analytics. Based upon information from structured interviews with information technology and analytics executives of 11 organizations across the …


Efficient Connectivity Management And Path Planning For Iot And Uav Networks, Amirahmad Chapnevis Jan 2024

Efficient Connectivity Management And Path Planning For Iot And Uav Networks, Amirahmad Chapnevis

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how to better manage resources in mobile networks, especially for enhancing the performance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-supported IoT networks. We explored ways to set up a flexible communication architecture that can handle large IoT deployments by making good use of mobile core network resources like bearers and data paths. We developed strategies that meet the needs of IoT networks and enhance network performance. We also developed and tested a system that combines traffic from several mobile devices that use the same user identity and network resources within the core mobile network. We used everyday smartphones, SIM …


Milk Collection Problem: Integrating The Traveling Salesman And Set Covering Problem - A Case Study In West Virginia, Usa, Md Rabiul Hasan Jan 2024

Milk Collection Problem: Integrating The Traveling Salesman And Set Covering Problem - A Case Study In West Virginia, Usa, Md Rabiul Hasan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Route determination for perishable products is complex due to its unique characteristics, such as limited shelf-life regulatory requirements, or possibility of getting damaged. This research investigates a novel problem of collecting raw milk from a rural network of dairy farms. The research problem is grounded in a real scenario of milk collection in West Virginia, USA. The milk in this scenario is produced by small farms incapable of realizing transportation economies of density out in mostly rural areas throughout the state. Maximum coverage area and milk processing overhead costs are used to identify suitable locations for intermediate milk collection centers …


The Precedence-Constrained Quadratic Knapsack Problem, Changkun Guan Jan 2024

The Precedence-Constrained Quadratic Knapsack Problem, Changkun Guan

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the previously unstudied Precedence-Constrained Quadratic Knapsack Problem (PC-QKP), an NP-hard nonlinear combinatorial optimization problem. The PC-QKP is a variation of the traditional Knapsack Problem (KP) that introduces several additional complexities. By developing custom exact and approximate solution methods, and testing these on a wide range of carefully structured PC-QKP problem instances, we seek to identify and understand patterns that make some cases easier or harder to solve than others. The findings aim to help develop better strategies for solving this and similar problems in the future.