Engineering Commons^™

Stochastic Modeling Of Decarbonizing Strategy, Policy, And Market-Induced Incentives For The Us Electricity Sector, Jessica W.A. Azure, Samuel Frimpong, Mahelet G. Fikru

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In line with the global pursuit of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, integrating carbon capture and storage (CCS) and renewable energy (RE) technologies is important in power production. This study evaluates the profitability of CCS and RE technologies as alternative ways of achieving climate change goals. While past research focused on costs, technological advancements, and capture methods, there is a need for more studies on assessing the financial feasibility of these climate change solutions under uncertain conditions, alongside specific performance goals and strategies to entice power producers. Using a comprehensive framework featuring deterministic and stochastic modeling approaches, this research explores the …

Water-Energy-Food Linkages In Community Smallholder Irrigation Schemes: Center Pivot Irrigation In Rwanda, Ankit Chandra, Derek M. Heeren, Lameck O. Odhiambo, N. Brozovic

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Water, energy, and food are linked in intricate ways in irrigated agriculture and understanding the interplay of these components is crucial for sustainable and profitable crop production, particularly in smallholder setting such as in sub-Saharan Africa. This study evaluates water-energy-food linkages, engineering and economic performance, irrigation decision making, and challenges faced around water management in a community-based mechanized irrigation scheme in Rwanda. The research is the first to analyze such as scheme, which uses technology typically used by large farmers in a smallholder setting. The study investigates the variation in water requirements and the relationship and impacts of this variability …

Children First: Women’S Perspectives On Evacuation At Fuego Volcano And Implications For Disaster Risk Reduction, Beth A. Bartel, Ailsa K. Naismith

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 2

As major drivers of behavior during crisis, cultural norms influence how disasters differentially affect people of different genders. Cultural gender norms also impact how authorities and at-risk populations approach disaster risk reduction strategies. At Fuego volcano, Guatemala, we applied qualitative methods to investigate women’s experiences of the evacuation process after a paroxysmal eruption on 7–8 March 2022. While participants’ experiences and decisions varied, we identified how gender influences evacuation dynamics within communities at Fuego volcano, including who evacuates and who decides at the community and household levels. We find that communities prioritized women for evacuation with the children and elderly …

The Effectiveness Of Visualization Techniques For Supporting Decision-Making, Cansu Yalim, Holly A. H. Handley

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Although visualization is beneficial for evaluating and communicating data, the efficiency of various visualization approaches for different data types is not always evident. This research aims to address this issue by investigating the usefulness of several visualization techniques for various data kinds, including continuous, categorical, and time-series data. The qualitative appraisal of each technique's strengths, weaknesses, and interpretation of the dataset is investigated. The research questions include: which visualization approaches perform best for different data types, and what factors impact their usefulness? The absence of clear directions for both researchers and practitioners on how to identify the most effective visualization …

Promoting Enhanced Decision-Making And Proactive Management For Modularization In The Construction Industry Using Risk-Based Approach, Analytical Hierarchy Process, And Graph Theory, Mohamad Abdul Nabi

Doctoral Dissertations

"Modularization is an approach that can potentially mitigate many of the current construction industry’s challenges. Despite the documented advantages of modularization, the industry is still not able to capitalize on its full potential and benefits. The latter is due to the outdated decision-making models that may not reflect the multiple factors involved in modular construction, the unique source of risks associated with modular construction methods, need for continuous improvement, and complex contractual requirements and disputes. As such, the goal is to promote the use of modularization in the construction industry by enhancing decision-making and proactive risk management. The associated objectives …

Chemical Disease Relation Extraction Through The Combination Of Multiple Mention Levels: Relscan+, Stanley Chika Onye, Nazi̇fe Di̇mi̇li̇ler, Ari̇f Akkeleş

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Chemical-induced disease (CID) relation extraction has been pivotal in the understanding of biological processes. A CID relation between a chemical and disease entity may be extracted either from a single sentence or from two or more adjacent sentences. We use `intrasentence level' to refer to the mention of the desired entities in the same sentence and `intersentence level? to refer to the mention of these entities in two or more adjacent sentences. This study proposes a three-phase architecture for extracting CID relations from biomedical literature by considering both sentence levels and additionally the combination of these two sentence levels which …

Mapping Of Electroencephalogram (Eeg) Responses To Newsvendor Decision Model And Cerebral Hemodynamic Responses To Transcranial Photobiomodulation (Tpbm) In Humans, Cong Dung Nghi Truong

Bioengineering Dissertations

Decision-making is one of the most critical activities of human beings. Various studies have investigated the brain responses to a variety of decision tasks by deploying the EEG data. The first aim of my dissertation was to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms and correlations across multiple subjects when people make risky economic decisions. A decision-making task was designed based on the newsvendor problem (NP) with two scenarios: low-profit margins (LM) as the more challenging scenario and high-profit margins (HM) as the less difficult one. The EEG signals were acquired from healthy humans while subjects were performing the task. The Correlated Component …

Pedestrian Evacuation: Vulnerable Group Member Influence On The Group Leaders’ Decision-Making And The Impact On Evacuation Time, Terra Lynne Elzie

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

As pedestrian evacuations of buildings, outdoor venues, and special events occur, dynamic interactions between pedestrians and vehicles during egress are possible. To model pedestrian and vehicle evacuations, simulation models have evolved to incorporate more realistic crowd characteristics and behaviors to provide improved results. Past studies using modeling and simulation, specifically agent-based modeling, have explored pedestrian behaviors such as decision-making, navigation within a virtual environment, group formations, intra-group interactions, inter-group dynamics, crowd behaviors such as queuing and herding, and pedestrianvehicle interactions. These studies have led to relevant insights helpful to improving the accuracy of evacuation times for normal and emergency egress …

Application Of Entropy Method For Estimating Factor Weights In Mining-Method Selection For Development Of Novel Mining-Method Selection System, Elsa Pansilvania Andre Manjate, Mahdi Saadat, Hisatoshi Toriya, Fumiaki Inagaki, Youhei Kawamura

Journal of Sustainable Mining

Mining-method selection (MMS) is one of the most critical and complex decisionmaking processes in mine planning. Therefore, it has been a subject of several studies for many years culminating with the development of different systems. However, there is still more to be done to improve and/or create more efficient systems and deal with the complexity caused by many influencing factors. This study introduces the application of the entropy method for feature selection, i.e., select the most critical factors in MMS. The entropy method is applied to assess the relative importance of the factors influencing MMS by estimating their objective weights …

Quantitative Methods For Total Lifecycle Risk Likelihood And Impact Assessment In Sustainable Product Design Decision Making, Christian Enyoghasi

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Sustainable products promise significant economic, environmental, and societal benefits. Numerous methods are available for use during the new product development process to identify alternate product designs that optimize sustainability performance. Once any such design is selected and the product is launched, many uncertainties are likely to affect its performance over the total lifecycle. Such uncertainties give rise to risks that can influence the overall product sustainability performance. However, comprehensive quantitative methods to evaluate the likelihood or the impact of different risks to enable sustainable product design decision making are lacking.

This research aims to address this gap by developing a …

What Makes An Expert? Characterizing Perceptions Of Expertise And Intuition Among Early-Career Engineers, Caroline Bolton

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to characterize if and how practicing engineers’ perceptions of expertise development, decision-making processes, and engineering intuition vary by aspects of identity, specifically gender and career stage. This thesis is built from ongoing work of the Miskioğlu group on the relationship between expertise and intuition in engineering. Intuition is a characteristic of experts used in decision-making, and the importance of experience in the development of expertise is well documented in literature. There is a gap around how intuition relates to experience, prompting the need to compare the perceptions of early career engineers and mid-to-late career engineers. This thesis …

Computational Modeling For Decision-Making Under Climate Change Uncertainty: Reservoir Simulation Game, Julianne Quinn

All ECSTATIC Materials

Almost every decision you make is under uncertainty. Will I need a rain jacket in the afternoon? Will they say yes if I ask them out? Is 1 hour enough time to finish this assignment? Oftentimes, we can use computational modeling to simulate different scenarios of what might happen in the future to inform what decisions are best on average, or what decisions minimize the worst case outcome. For example, you could decide what player to draft for your Fantasy Football team by simulating player performance. In this activity, we will simulate how much water to release from a dam …

Adversarial Learning On Incomplete And Imbalanced Medical Data For Robust Survival Prediction Of Liver Transplant Patients, Ehsan Hallaji, Roozbeh Razavi-Far, Vasile Palade, Mehrdad Saif

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The scarcity of liver transplants necessitates prioritizing patients based on their health condition to minimize deaths on the waiting list. Recently, machine learning methods have gained popularity for automatizing liver transplant allocation systems, which enables prompt and suitable selection of recipients. Nevertheless, raw medical data often contain complexities such as missing values and class imbalance that reduce the reliability of the constructed model. This paper aims at eliminating the respective challenges to ensure the reliability of the decision-making process. To this aim, we first propose a novel deep learning method to simultaneously eliminate these challenges and predict the patients' survival …

Agent-Based Model Of Broadband Adoption In Unserved And Underserved Areas, Ankit Agarwal

Masters Theses

"In the last two decades, demand for broadband internet has far outpaced its availability. The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 Broadband Deployment report suggests that at least 22 million Americans living in rural areas lack access to broadband internet. With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting normal life, there is an overwhelming need to enable unserved and underserved communities to adapt to the “new normal”. To address this challenge, federal and state agencies are funding internet service providers (ISPs) to deploy infrastructure in rural communities. However, policymakers and ISPs need open-source tools to predict take-rates of broadband service and formulate effective strategies …

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated state were …

Model And Simulation Of Traffic Flow Evolutionary Based On Individual Travel Decision Analysis, Zhuojun Li, Xingguang Chen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Travel choice behavior decision-making mechanism was analyzed at first. On this basis, a traffic evolutionary model was present and the relations between the evolutionary process of traffic flow under the route choice behavior, user individual travels decision-making characteristic parameters and external traffic information were investigated by employing simulation platform. Some significant inspiration and meaningful implications are concluded, i.e., the influential effects of individual travel decision-making parameters for flow evolution are quite complicated. The travel service information should be released and used combined with appropriate travelers to maximize the effect of traffic information. These conclusions will help to deepen understanding …

Wiftcpn Formalized Decision-Making For Auv Formation System Under Uncertainty, Lili Hao, Gu Hao, Fengju Kang, Huizhen Yang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Usually the acquired target information is not sufficient and certain enough due to inaccurate measurements, inconsistent granularity and noise, which results in the AUV formation decision-making system having some characteristics, such as discrete, time delay, hierarchical, fuzzy, inconsistencies. Therefore, an integrated formal approach of modeling, simulation and verification based on weighted intuitionistic fuzzy timed colored petri net (WIFTCPN) was proposed. The mapping relationship between WIFTCPN and fuzzy time, time delay and intuition fuzzy inference rules were established. Furthermore, corresponding reasoning decision simulation model under uncertain information was built by using CPN Tools. The properties including liveness, home and fairness …

Under Pressure: Decision Making In Aircraft Maintenance And The Role Of Gender, Stephanie Douglas Ph.D., Bettina M. Mrusek Ph.D.

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

In aircraft maintenance, leaders are under near-constant pressure to maintain airworthiness. Every minute an aircraft cannot fly due to maintenance represents financial waste. Decisions are therefore made in a relatively quick fashion. A leader evaluates the situation, identifies a course of action and then communicates this message to a team of technicians. However, gender influences regarding leaders’ decisions can influence team members’ perceptions of those decisions.

The study will measure decision making methods of leaders in aircraft maintenance and the perceptions of the technicians. It informs how gender influences decision making from both the leader and follower perspective. The expected …

Integrated Simulation Test Platform For Environment Perception And Planning Decision Of Intelligent Vehicle, Sun Jian, Runhan Huang, Li Lin, Qiyuan Liu, Yudi Li

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The simplicity of testing modules and the lack of high-fidelity and high-density traffic scenes are the primary issues in the intelligent vehicle' simulation test. To solve these problems, a "software in the loop" integration test platform is built. The environmental perception module is integrated on the basis of the PreScan, the planning decision-making module designed by MATLAB/Simulink and the virtual traffic flow environment from Vissim. Based on this platform, high-fidelity traffic flow scenes can be generated rapidly to support the test of environment perception and decision-making integratedly and effectively. Moreover, the intelligent vehicle's influence on the traffic flow …

Decision-Making In Reuse Of Highway Bridge Foundations, Ehssan Hoomaan

Dissertations and Theses

According to the 2019 National Bridge Inventory data from Federal Highway Administration, the average age of highway bridges in the U.S.A. is 45 years, with almost 43% of existing highway bridges being older than 50 years, and eight percent of all U.S. national highway bridges being in poor condition. Foundation and substructure of existing highway bridges (over land and water) may have significant functional values even after being under service for decades. Reusing an existing bridge foundation during the reconstruction of a bridge (e.g., major rehabilitation, retrofitting, replacement of superstructure and substructure, and addition/removal of a span) has the potential …

Data‐Enabled Cognitive Modeling: Validating Student Engineers’ Fuzzy Design‐Based Decision‐Making In A Virtual Design Problem, Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, Naomi C. Chesler, Jeffrey Linderoth, David Williamson Shaffer

Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens

The ability of future engineering professionals to solve complex real‐world problems depends on their design education and training. Because engineers engage with open‐ended problems in which there are unknown parameters and multiple competing objectives, they engage in fuzzy decision‐making, a method of making decisions that takes into account inherent imprecisions and uncertainties in the real world. In the design‐based decision‐making field, few studies have applied fuzzy decision‐making models to actual decision‐making process data. Thus, in this study, we use datasets on student decision‐making processes to validate approximate fuzzy models of student decision‐making, which we call data‐enabled cognitive modeling. The results …

Enabling Stakeholder Decision-Making With Earth Observation And Modeling Data Using Tethys Platform, E. James Nelson, Sarva T. Pulla, Mir A. Matin, Kiran Shakya, Norm Jones, Daniel P. Ames, W. Lee Ellenburg, Kel N. Markert, Cédric H. David, Benjamin F. Zaitchik, Patrick Gatlin, Riley Hales

Faculty Publications

Tethys Platform is an open source framework for developing web-based applications for Earth Observation data. Our experience shows that Tethys significantly lowers the barrier for cloud-based app development, simplifies the process of accessing scalable distributed cloud computing resources and leverages additional software for data and computationally intensive modeling. The Tethys software development kit allows users to create web apps for visualizing, analyzing, and modeling Earth Observation data. Tethys platform provides a collaborative environment for scientists to develop and deploy several Earth Observation web applications across multiple Tethys portals. We work in partnership with leading regional organizations world-wide to help developing …

A Decision-Making Tool For Incorporating Cradle-To-Gate Sustainability Into Pavement Design, Sujata Subedi

LSU Master's Theses

The need to continually maintain an aged and crumbling national roadway network, together with a growing demand for upgrading has resulted in major environmental and economic impacts around the nation. This has led to an interest in developing a structured framework to quantify the sustainability performance of pavements by balancing economic and environmental performance against engineering criteria. This study developed an Environment Product Declaration (EPD) based, decision-making framework to quantify the sustainability of pavement design alternatives. In this study, the sustainability of pavement is described in tandem with Environmental and Economic performance criteria. First, the Environmental analysis was inclusive of …

Development And Initial Evaluation Of A Reinforced Cue Detection Model To Assess Situation Awareness In Commercial Aircraft Cockpits, Aysen K. Taylor

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Commercial transport aircraft of today vary greatly from early aircraft with regards to how the aircraft are controlled and the feedback provided from the machine to the human operator. Over time, as avionics systems became more automated, pilots had less direct control over their aircraft. Much research exists in the literature about automation issues, and several major accidents over the last twenty years spurred interest about how to maintain the benefits of automation while improving the overall human-machine interaction as the pilot is considered the last line of defense.

An important reason for maintaining or even improving overall pilot situation …

Evaluation Method Of Imminent Battle Situation In Air Combat, Huimin Cao, Anxiang Huang, Lei Xiang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In the state of air combat, the situation change rapidly. Quick and accurate assessment of the current situation and making decisions is the key to the victory of air combat and the preservation of own strength. Based on the specialty of the modern air battle and pelagic operation, this article adds the political factor, the pilot individual actual combat ability, and the formation cooperative tactical task to fight against the single constraint into the evaluation index system. This makes the evaluation more reasonable and comprehensive and closer to the actual combat, so as to provide more accurate basis for …

Decision-Making For Small Industrial Internet Of Things Using Decision Fusion, Tuğrul Çavdar, Nader Ebrahimpour

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a new field of Internet of Things (IoT) that has gained more popularity recently in industrial units and makes it possible to access information anywhere and anytime. In other words, geographic coordinates cannot prevent obtaining equipment and its data. Today, it is possible to manage and control equipment simply without spending time in an operational area and just by using the IIoT. This system collects data from manufacturing and production units by using wireless sensor networks or other networks for classification of fault detection. These data are then used after analysis to allow …

The Effect Of Experiential Education On Pilots' Vfr Into Imc Decision-Making, Geoffrey R. Whitehurst, Lori Brown, William G. Rantz, Dominic Nicolai, Jessica M. Bradley

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

In aviation, safety is always a primary consideration, and this is especially true during a pilot’s flight training to instill that safety mentality. However, this means that pilots are restricted by safety policies from encountering difficult weather situations during their training, which could, potentially, improve their weather decision-making skills for avoiding future hazardous weather encounters. Thirty-six general aviation pilots of varying instrument flight experience (IF) were allocated, using stratified random sampling based on their IF, to one of three groups, a control group and two educational treatment intervention groups. The educational treatment interventions were designed to improve the participant’s ability …

Ethical Decision-Making In Construction Engineering Projects, Monique Sidaross

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Problems exist with ethical decision-making in U.S. construction engineering projects.

The purpose of this study was to explore factors that affect ethical decision-making in engineering construction in the United States. The general concepts of marketing ethics, Kohlberg's discussion of ethical and moral reasoning development, and Gillian's discussion of ethical care served as the basis of the conceptual framework. Factors that inhibit ethical decision making were addressed in the research questions. The resulting narrative framework included implementable initiatives based on these factors that could improve the quality of ethical decision-making and the impact of these initiatives on the cost and quality …

Augmenting Incident Command System For Improved Emergency Response, Meenakshi Nagarajan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Incident Command System provides a framework for commanders to manage an incident. However, maintaining good situation awareness in an emergency situation is often challenging to the Incident Commander. Stress may result in task fixation which may cause the commander to miss critical information and can eventually lead to poor decisions. The proposed augmented decision support system, with an integrated knowledge base, enhances the commander's decision making and situation awareness by presenting the information that may have been missed. The system has been evaluated to investigate its utility in chemical hazard scenarios. The system was used by experienced Incident Commanders to …

Modelo De Recomendación Basado En Conocimiento Y Números Svn, Maykel Leyva-Vazquez, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Recommendation models are useful in the decision-making process that allow the user a set of options that are expected to meet their expectations. Recommendation models are useful in the decision-making process that offer the user a set of options that are expected to meet their SVN expectations to express linguistic terms.