Engineering Commons^™

Corps Efforts On Sea Level Rise In Hampton Roads, Greg Steele

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Panel Presentation: Regional Working Group, Regional Working Group

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Panel Presentation: Norfolk: Thriving With Water, Norfolk Working Group

October 30, 2015: Beyond Toolkits: Adaptation Strategies and Lessons

No abstract provided.

Techno-Economic Analysis Of Protein Concentrate Produced By Flash Hydrolysis Of Microalgae, Alexander Nana Yaw Asiedu

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Process simulation and techno-economic analysis of 95wt.% protein concentrate from microalgae has been performed using SuperPro Designer v. 9.0. This work, first of its kind, is focused on the economic analysis of protein concentrate that includes processes such as microalgae cultivation, harvesting, protein extraction and drying steps. A baseline capacity of 160 MT/day protein concentrate production on commercial basis has been analyzed. This throughput requires 336 MT/day dry algae (54 wt.% protein). The amount of carbon dioxide required to grow this quantum of algae is estimated to be 648 MT/day, which is produced from an in situ 21 MW power …

Examining The Relationship Between Leadership Decision Making Styles And Personality Type Within The Department Of Defense, Antoine Lamont Prince Sr.

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Leadership is perhaps the single most important function within the Department of Defense. While the old cliché “everyone is a leader regardless of position” may hold moral meaning, personnel in leadership positions are key. Under the umbrella of leadership is decision making. What leadership is to an organization, decision making is to leadership. Yet, despite this knowledge, unsound decisions are readily conducted. There are various theories as to why this holds true, one of which is personality type. Research however, shows that there is a limited amount of relevant knowledge to determine if there is in fact a …

Detecting, Modeling, And Predicting User Temporal Intention, Hany M. Salaheldeen

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The content of social media has grown exponentially in the recent years and its role has evolved from narrating life events to actually shaping them. Unfortunately, content posted and shared in social networks is vulnerable and prone to loss or change, rendering the context associated with it (a tweet, post, status, or others) meaningless. There is an inherent value in maintaining the consistency of such social records as in some cases they take over the task of being the first draft of history as collections of these social posts narrate the pulse of the street during historic events, protest, riots, …

A Framework To Simplify The Choice Of Alternative Analysis And Selection Methods, James Paul Lewis Holzgrefe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation contributes a framework for analysts and engineering managers to investigate and choose alternative analysis and selection methods based upon their problem and its context. It began as an investigation into the alternative analysis and selection methods used in military planning. The existing military methods were inconsistent, violated the decision science body of knowledge, and provided no guidance to the practitioner on matching methods to problems. These challenges made it necessary to conduct this investigation.

This research used a three-phase mixed methods approach. The first phase applied the general inductive method to the decision making body of knowledge to …

Reducing Coastal Risk – Structural Protection Around Greater New Orleans, Rick Luettich

May 22, 2015: Megaproject Protective Structures for Hampton Roads

No abstract provided.

Planning And Design For Hurricane Protection With Sea Level Rise, Bob Ivarson

May 22, 2015: Megaproject Protective Structures for Hampton Roads

No abstract provided.

You're Going To Need A Bigger Boat..., Michelle Hamor

May 22, 2015: Megaproject Protective Structures for Hampton Roads

No abstract provided.

Analyzing Driver Behavior And Traffic Flow Breakdowns At The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, Michelle L. Allen

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) is a major link for activity in Hampton Roads. The eastbound direction also suffers from congestion during both morning and peak hours. During these periods of congestion, the flow rate varies in regards to the location of the congestion. This study focuses on investigating driver behavior during these different conditions and briefly investigates the cost of delay due to the different capacities. To accomplish this, per vehicle record data (PVR) is used. This data, collected at the exit of the tunnel, provides information on arrival time, speed, lane location, vehicle class, and time headway. …

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Military Leaders' Operational Adaptability And Knowledge Transfer, Vahap Kavaker

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A variety of research underlines the increasing need for adaptable leaders in the military and enhancing operational adaptability is accepted as one of the crucial factors for achieving success in future military operations. In general terms, operational adaptability is the ability to successfully respond to unforeseen changing situations during military operations. However, this study reveals that operational adaptability is not clearly conceptualized and supporting factors are not investigated in detail in the literature. Among possible factors, knowledge transfer is claimed to be an important practice that increases personal performance and effectiveness.

This research conceptualized operational adaptability and investigated the relationship …

Management And Leadership Style: Is Style Influenced By Engineering Education?, Jesse Levi Calloway

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This paper addresses one aspect of the opportunity for corporations to reduce leadership development infrastructure by narrowing the participant pool to candidates that, intuitively, may be multi-skilled and capable of handling diverse roles and assignments within the corporate environment. In particular, the study seeks to determine the effect that engineering education has on leadership style by comparing the leadership style of certified project managers (CPMs), and non-CPM managers with engineering degrees, to the same for CPMs, and non-CPM managers, who do not possess engineering degrees. Engineering degrees may be further defined as mechanical, electrical, industrial and the like. Leadership styles …

Key Factors Driving Personnel Downsizing In Multinational Military Organizations, Ilksen Gorkem

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Although downsizing has long been a topic of research in traditional organizations, there are very few studies of this phenomenon in military contexts. As a result, we have little understanding of the key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military settings. This study contributes to our understanding of key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military organizations and whether those factors may differ across NATO nations' cultural clusters. The theoretical framework for this study was built from studies in non-military contexts and adapted to fit the military environment.

This research relies on historical data from one of the largest multinational …

Agenda, Hr Adaptation Forum

January 23, 2015: Storm Surge Modeling Tools for Planning and Response

No abstract provided.

Merging Two Worlds: Agent-Based Simulation Methods For Autonomous Systems, Andreas Tolk

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

This chapter recommends the increased use of agent-based simulation methods to support the design, development, testing, and operational use of autonomous systems. This recommendation is motivated by deriving taxonomies for intelligent software agents and autonomous robotic systems from the public literature, which shows their similarity: intelligent software agents can be interpreted as the virtual counterparts of autonomous robotic systems. This leads to examples of how simulation can be used to significantly improve autonomous system research and development in selected use cases. The chapter closes with observations on the operational effects of possible emergent behaviour and the need to align the …

Semantic Shift To Pragmatic Meaning In Shared Decision Making: Situation Theory Perspective, M. Canan, A. Sousa-Poza, S. F. Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The way humans establish communication depends on the generation and conveyance of meaning. Linguistically, meaning in information is dependent on the meaning that is ascribed to signifiers in the context of the communication. These signifiers can include items such as words, phrases, signs, and symbols. Conveyance of meaning may, however, imprecise and prone to error. The meaning of information in communication may arise from a change in the context in which a signifier is placed (intrinsic), or a change in the paradigm with which the signifier and context are perceived (extrinsic). In simple situations, where paradigms are reconcilable, semantic shift …

Potential Of Cognitive Computing And Cognitive Systems, Ahmed K. Noor

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

Cognitive computing and cognitive technologies are game changers for future engineering systems, as well as for engineering practice and training. They are major drivers for knowledge automation work, and the creation of cognitive products with higher levels of intelligence than current smart products. This paper gives a brief review of cognitive computing and some of the cognitive engineering systems activities. The potential of cognitive technologies is outlined, along with a brief description of future cognitive environments, incorporating cognitive assistants - specialized proactive intelligent software agents designed to follow and interact with humans and other cognitive assistants across the environments. The …

Sparse Coding Based Dense Feature Representation Model For Hyperspectral Image Classification, Ender Oguslu, Guoqing Zhou, Zezhong Zheng, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a sparse coding based dense feature representation model (a preliminary version of the paper was presented at the SPIE Remote Sensing Conference, Dresden, Germany, 2013) for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. The proposed method learns a new representation for each pixel in HSI through the following four steps: sub-band construction, dictionary learning, encoding, and feature selection. The new representation usually has a very high dimensionality requiring a large amount of computational resources. We applied the l₁/l_q regularized multiclass logistic regression technique to reduce the size of the new representation. We integrated the method with a linear …

Learning By Doing - Energy Systems Management, Nima Shahriari, Adrian V. Gheorghe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Climate change concerns have confronted energy policy makers by unprecedented challenges in the 21st century. Revolution of renewable energy technologies, as well as more efficient energy systems, has been promising in the context of global warming. However, these technologies are not maturing and chaning. Consequently planning for development of these resources requires dealing with various multidisciplinary research questions such as financial feasibility of renewable energy projects. Nevertheless, there is considerable lack of education programs offering multidisciplinary approach for addressing the current energy challenges. Based on the 21st evolving energy landscape, an interdisciplinary graduate certificate course work was designed at Old …

Reducing Uncertainty In Technology Selection For Long Life Cycle Engineering Designs, Halil I. Ozdemir, C. Ariel Pinto, Resit Unal, Charles B. Keating, Colin Britcher, Sila Çetinkaya (Ed.), J. K. Ryan (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The best capabilities are usually achieved by having the latest technologies in defense systems. However, including the new, usually immature, technologies in a system design does not always easily result in achieving the capabilities at the right level, at an affordable cost, and in a timely manner. Many programs have suffered from immature technologies as cost overruns, late or no deliveries, and poor performance levels. Another impact of technology selection appears as obsolescence after the deployment of systems, or even before the deployment of the system. As the technologies of a system become obsolete, the cost of maintaining the system …

Exploring A Toll Auction Mechanism Enabled By Vehicle-To-Infrastructure Technology, Andrew J. Collins, Erika Frydenlund, R. Michael Robinson, Mecit Cetin

VMASC Publications

High-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes—an increasingly popular solution for congested roadway networks—give drivers the option to access express lanes. The cost of entry often varies with demand, although no standard method of optimizing these price points exists. Using the principles of a Vickrey auction that incentivizes true-value bids, this paper proposes a tolling system that uses vehicle-to-infrastructure technology to optimize toll operator revenue with HOT lane usage. In the scenario, a roadway network consists of a HOT lane and a general-purpose lane, each with identical physical properties. Drivers can access the HOT lane at the start of the facility or at …