Engineering Commons^™

Understanding Quadrature Modulation By Designing A 7mhz Iq Test Bench To Encode The Polybius Square, William Lee Bradley

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis outlines the design of an IQ Test Bench that allows for experimentation of quadrature modulation techniques. Quadrature modulation utilizes two signals I and Q, 90° out of phase from each other, to greatly increase communication data rates. Using Desmos, a thorough mathematical analysis of waveform mixing is presented, and constellation diagrams are plotted from the results. From this an ancient fire signaling technique known as the Polybius Square is encoded into the system. The IQ Test Bench is built from fundamental components that would be contained within an RFFE: a local oscillator and two frequency mixers. The LO …

Data From: Active Transportation Counts From Existing On-Street Signal And Detection Infrastructure, Sirisha Kothuri, Patrick Allen Singleton, Mahyar Vahedi Saheli, Elizabeth Yates, Joseph P. Broach

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Datasets

This study’s objective was to use data from existing traffic signal infrastructure to estimate pedestrian volumes. Pedestrian push-button actuations were collected from signal controller logs at 49 intersections in western Oregon and an additional 16 intersections in eastern Oregon. These actuations were then compared to observed pedestrian counts, totaling over 34,000 people, obtained from video recordings. After exploring various options, a simple quadratic relationship was modeled using a single measure of pedestrian signal activity: the number of push-button presses (filtered to remove multiple presses within 15 seconds). The model’s predictions showed a correlation of 0.86 with observed pedestrian volumes and …

An Overview Of Elements And Relations: Aspects Of A Scientific Metaphysics, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A talk on my book, Elements and Relations: Aspects of a Scientific Metaphysics. Book description:

This book develops the core proposition that systems theory is an attempt to construct an “exact and scientific metaphysics,” a system of general ideas central to science that can be expressed mathematically. Collectively, these ideas would constitute a non-reductionist “theory of everything” unlike what is being sought in physics. Inherently transdisciplinary, systems theory offers ideas and methods that are relevant to all of the sciences and also to professional fields such as systems engineering, public policy, business, and social work. To demonstrate the generality …

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Innovation Ecosystems In Facilitating The Adoption Of Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Dana Sami Bakry

Dissertations and Theses

Sustainable entrepreneurship has a substantial role of a steadily growing economy and advanced industrial economies. Several strategies have been formed and employed to support the adoption of innovation and technologies in the sustainable entrepreneurship sector. However, the successful outcome of these strategies in achieving their goals depends on how effective they are in satisfying their objectives and thus increasing innovation adoption. One measurement for effectiveness of ecosystem implements can be their support to the input of the process of innovation and technologies adoption and their impact on satisfying regional goals.

The objective of this research is evaluating the effectiveness of …

Warming Of The Willamette River, 1850–Present: The Effects Of Climate Change And Direct Human Interventions, Stefan Talke, David Jay, Heida Diefenderfer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using archival research methods, we found and combined data from multiple sources to produce a unique, 140 year record of daily water temperature (Tw) in the lower Willamette River, Oregon (1881–1890, 1941–present). Additional daily weather and river flow records from the 1850s onwards are used to develop and validate a statistical regression model of Tw for 1850–2020. The model simulates the time-lagged response of Tw to air temperature and river flow, and is calibrated for three distinct time periods: the late 19th, mid 20th, and early 21st centuries. Results show that Tw has trended upwards at ~1.1 °C …

Augmentative And Alternative Communication Use, Service Delivery Experiences, And Communicative Participation For People With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Betts Peters

Dissertations and Theses

People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) often experience changes to their speech, and may use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices and techniques to maintain the ability to communicate. The use of AAC may facilitate the participation of people with ALS in various life situations involving communication. There is limited data in the literature about the AAC approaches currently used by people with ALS, the professional services they receive to support communication, or the effects of AAC on their communicative participation. This dissertation involved a nationwide online survey of people with ALS, and comprises three papers intended to add to …

The Impact Of New Light Rail Service On Employment Growth In Portland, Oregon, Lahar Santra

Dissertations and Theses

This study quantitatively examines the impact of the new Light Rail Transit (LRT) service on employment growth in retail, knowledge, and service sectors before and after opening the LRT. At the corridor level, this study conducts a case study of Greenline in Southeast Portland, Oregon. The results of the corridor level study suggest that the new LRT service increased employment along the Greenline corridor among all the three sectors of interest- retail, knowledge, service in the long-term (ten years) while having slightly different results for the short-term (five years), likely due to the slow growth of LRT benefits. This study …

Reconstructability Analysis: Discrete Multivariate Modeling, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

An introduction to Reconstructability Analysis for the Discrete Multivariate Modeling course and for other purposes.

Agent-Based Activity Generation Of Runners For City Infrastructure Planning, Quang Le

REU Final Reports

Since the pandemic started, many gyms and indoor classes have been shut down to mitigate the spread of Coronavirus. Many people have been forced to get onto pavement streets to get some fresh air while running around and coping with the new reality. There are over 60 million runners in the U.S., and that number is growing rapidly during this time without any sign of stopping once life gets back to normal. In this project, an agent-based model has been developed to generate a set of routes that runners would take in their daily run in a neighborhood of Portland …

Ronald E. Mcnair Scholars Program Profiles And Abstracts 2021, Mcnair Scholars Program

McNair Symposium

This is the complete event program and provides presentation abstracts and biographies of McNair scholars and their mentors.

Graphical Models In Reconstructability Analysis And Bayesian Networks, Marcus Harris, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reconstructability Analysis (RA) and Bayesian Networks (BN) are both probabilistic graphical modeling methodologies used in machine learning and artificial intelligence. There are RA models that are statistically equivalent to BN models and there are also models unique to RA and models unique to BN. The primary goal of this paper is to unify these two methodologies via a lattice of structures that offers an expanded set of models to represent complex systems more accurately or more simply. The conceptualization of this lattice also offers a framework for additional innovations beyond what is presented here. Specifically, this paper integrates RA and …

Sensitivity Analysis Of An Agent-Based Simulation Model Using Reconstructability Analysis, Andey M. Nunes, Martin Zwick, Wayne Wakeland

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reconstructability analysis, a methodology based on information theory and graph theory, was used to perform a sensitivity analysis of an agent-based model. The NetLogo BehaviorSpace tool was employed to do a full 2^k factorial parameter sweep on Uri Wilensky’s Wealth Distribution NetLogo model, to which a Gini-coefficient convergence condition was added. The analysis identified the most influential predictors (parameters and their interactions) of the Gini coefficient wealth inequality outcome. Implications of this type of analysis for building and testing agent-based simulation models are discussed.

Examining Bicycle And Motorized Vehicle Speeds And Their Relationships In The Context Of Urban Roadways, Jaclyn Sue Schaefer

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents a compilation of papers exploring passenger car and bicycle speeds through their interactions with each other and with urban roadway factors.

First, following a concern raised in part of the traffic literature that a large mode shift toward bicycling may cause travel time delays and potentially exacerbate congestion instead of alleviate it unless bicycle lanes are installed, an empirical study detailing how the presence of bicycles on urban roads without bicycle lanes may affect passenger car speeds is presented. Pneumatic tube data from six predominantly low speed, low volume roads in Portland, Oregon were utilized to identify …

Methodologies To Quantify Transit Performance Metrics At The System-Level Using High-Resolution Gps, Stop-Level, And Gtfs Archived Transit Data, Travis Bradley Glick

Dissertations and Theses

Performance metrics have typically focused at two main scales: a microscopic scale that focuses on specific locations, time-periods, and trips; and, a macroscopic scale that averages metrics over longer times, entire routes, and networks. When applied to entire transit systems, microscopic methodologies often have computational limitations while macroscopic methodologies ascribe artificial uniformity to non-uniform analysis areas. These limitations highlight the need for a middle approach.

This dissertation presents a mesoscopic analysis based around timepoint-segments, which are a novel application of an existing system for many transit agencies. For this research, routes are divided into a consecutive group of bus stops …

An Equity Focused Study On The Trip Temporal Distributions Of Vulnerable Road Users, Santiago Espinosa Wild

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

The United States is a megadiverse nation with a transportation system that, for decades, was designed to serve primarily able-bodied, white, male motorists. This legacy creates a situation in which varying socio-demographic groups experience the transportation system differently with contrasting safety, accessibility, and convenience outcomes. This project introduces descriptive statistics and binary logistic models that provide transportation professionals and policy makers with a quantitative understanding on how, why, and when certain socio-demographic groups are more likely to engage in a trip. This project provides tools to measure and understand the equity implications of a wide array of transportation policy decisions. …

Ronald E. Mcnair Scholars Program Profiles And Abstracts 2020, Mcnair Scholars Program

McNair Symposium

This is the complete event program and provides presentation abstracts and biographies of McNair scholars and their mentors.

How Av Could Shape Our Cities - Research From The Netherlands, Gonçalo H. A. Correia

PSU Transportation Seminars

Automated driving has become a hot topic of research in different fields of science. Despite the great advancements in the vehicle technology itself, researchers are now concerned in figuring out what will be the impacts of these vehicles in life as we know it. These impacts can be rather broad from traffic safety to the economy. In this lecture, Goncalo will focus on the research that is being done at TU Delft, a leading university in automated vehicles’ (AVs) impacts research, focusing on urban areas and how mobility, and even the city itself, can change with fully-automated vehicles. Goncalo Correia …

That Bike Is Too Heavy: Merging Bicycling Physics, Human Physiology And Travel Behavior, Alexander Y. Bigazzi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Are the Biketown bikes too heavy? Does better gear motivate people to cycle more? How much faster will someone go on an e-bike?

Although urban cycling is widely known as physically active transportation, the actual physics of cycling have been given little attention in transportation engineering and planning. In contrast, the field of sports science has developed detailed data and models of road bicycle performance, but only for sport and racing cyclists.

What can we learn about utilitarian cycling by integrating knowledge of the physical attributes of bicycles and cyclists?

This seminar examines the ways in which bicycle physics, and …

An Agent-Based Evacuation Model To Improve Safety In The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Haizhong Wang

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar will present ongoing research into how integrated social, natural, and engineered systems can improve life safety under threat of multi-hazards. The targeted scenario is a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, threatening communities along 1,000 miles of the US Pacific Northwest coastline.

Since the mid-1980’s scientific evidence has underscored the possibility of such an extreme event, and it has taken at least another decade or more before public attitudes and policy have begun to adapt to this new hazard. Life safety is a pressing issue for the near-field CSZ tsunami hazard for several reasons. …

Webinar: Rethinking Streets For Bikes: An Evidence Based Guide Of Bike-Friendly Street Retrofits, Marc Schlossberg, Roger Lindgren

TREC Webinar Series

There is a growing demand for better infrastructure and fewer barriers to biking and other forms of space-efficient micromobility. Tackling daily trips by bike is easier on the environment, healthier for users and non-users alike, uses precious urbanized public and private land more efficiently, costs taxpayers less to build and maintain infrastructure, and when routes are safe and comfortable, moving by bike is also fun! Complete Streets policies are being adopted across the country, and there is an active conversation around the safety imperative of a Complete Streets approach. Yet, local officials often need both design guidance and the …

Webinar: Modeling Freeway Traffic In A Mixed Environment: Connected And Human-Driven Vehicles, Xianfeng Terry Yang

TREC Webinar Series

Although connected vehicles (CVs) will soon go beyond testbeds, CVs and human-driven vehicles (HVs) will co-exist over a long period. Hence, it is critical to consider the interactions between these two types of vehicles in traffic flow modeling. In this study, we aim to develop a macroscopic model to understand how CVs would impact HVs in the traffic stream. Grounded on the second-order traffic flow model, we study the relationships among flow, density, and speed by two sets of formulations for the groups of CVs and HVs, respectively. A set of friction factors, which indicate CVs' impact to HVs, are …

Modeling Changes In Public Transit And Private-For-Hire Usage When Implementing A Spatial Tax, Ty Lazarchik

REU Final Reports

Private-for-Hire (PfH) transportation options, such as Uber, Lyft, and taxicabs, are consistently growing in popularity. With this expanded utilization, cities are struggling to maintain usage of their public transit systems. While PfH transportation has been heavily researched, there is a need to further study how its effects on transit usage may be minimized. In this paper, previous work in traffic modeling and analysis of transit and PfH differences are expanded to develop an agent-based decision model in order to simulate and analyze the effectiveness of implementing a location-based tax in and around the city center of Portland, Oregon. The results …

The Influence Of Shared Mobility And Transportation Policies On Vehicle Ownership, Edgar Bertini Ruas

PSU Transportation Seminars

With the emergence of several new providers of shared mobility services, such as Uber, Biketown and Car2go, there has been the promise of changes to the traditional way of owning and using a vehicle. One potential consequence of the new mobility services is the reduction in vehicle ownership. At the same time, cities are trying to anticipate these changes by reducing the amount of space dedicated to parking. This thesis aims to asses the extent to which new shared mobility and transportation policy strategies (especially parking requirements and transit pass availability) relate to vehicle ownership among residents of multifamily dwellings. …

Webinar: Segmenting The Market For Transportation Demand Management Campaigns, Philip L. Winters, Amy Lester

TREC Webinar Series

Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. It is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel behavior change. The purpose of this study was to explore a consumer market segmentation technique successfully used in Europe for its applicability to marketing efforts in the United States. Attitudinal and demographic data were collected from 1900 individuals in Florida, Oregon, and Virginia modeled after the European approach. Clustering analysis was applied to divide the sample into segments so that members of …

Scenarios For Adoption Of Autonomous Vehicle Technologies In Freight, Sabya Mishra

PSU Transportation Seminars

Innovation adoption research has largely ignored organizational adoption, and little work has been done to understand or predict the adoption of innovations by freight organizations. Among the existing innovation adoption theoretical and methodological approaches this seminar will explore which are most appropriate methods for freight organizational adoption. The seminar will present a disaggregate market penetration model for freight transportation organizations adopting connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) technology and demonstrate an application using a case study area in Memphis, TN. The seminar will highlight ongoing and future organizational adoption research for CAVs, and other innovations.

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts With Alternate Signal Control Strategies, Sirisha Kothuri

TREC Webinar Series

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies …

Data From: Market Segment Prediction Tool, Philip L. Winters, Amy Lester

TREC Datasets and Databases

Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. Social marketing is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel-behavior change, and combines at least seven distinguishing features that sets it apart from other popular, behavior-change planning approaches, such as education and mass media campaigns. These seven features include a focus on socially beneficial behavior change; a strong consumer orientation; the use of audience segmentation techniques and the selection of target audiences; the use of marketing’s conceptual framework (marketing mix and …

Webinar: Meeting & Exceeding Mobility User Expectations With Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau, Derek Fretheim

TREC Webinar Series

Every day transit riders ask the same question: when’s the next one coming? To answer this question, transit agencies are transitioning to providing real-time transit information through smartphones or displayed at transit stops.

The proliferation of transit planning and real time arrival tools that have hit the market over the past decade is staggering. Yet with transit ridership on the decline, agencies can’t afford to ignore the importance of providing accurate, real time information to their customers. Real-time transit information improves the reliability and efficiency of passenger travel, but barriers have prevented some transit agencies from adopting the GTFSrealtime v1.0 …

A Survey Of Ride-Hailing Passengers, Steven Gehrke

PSU Transportation Seminars

In less than a decade, the ride-hailing industry, led by Uber and Lyft, has dramatically transformed the way we travel in our metro regions. Rider adoption of these on-demand mobility services has proceeded much quicker than our understanding of their impacts to our urban transportation systems. Planning for this transformation in personal mobility, which will have unintended consequences, has been made more difficult by the scarcity in meaningful data made available by these ride-hailing companies. Public agencies responsible for managing congestion and transit services are hindered in their ability to successfully plan for the integration of this emergent travel mode …

Analysis Of The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability, Rebecca Lewis

PSU Transportation Seminars

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of the project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …