Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Innovative Approaches And Challenges In Brunei's Agricultural Management, Nuramalina Manshor, Ulaganathan Subramanian

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

The management and development in agriculture attract agricultural economic science for the pricing, business, farm policy, and financial knowledge. It conjointly draws on plant and animal sciences for soil, seed and fertilizer information, weed control, insect management, and rationing and breeding; agricultural engineering knowledge for farmhouses, vehicles, irrigation, field drying, drainage, and management of erosions; and data on human behavior in Science and Social Science.

Improvement Of A Low-Cost Diy Wave Gauge, Matthew F. Virden, Nigel A. Temple, Bret M. Webb, Eric L. Sparks

The Journal of Extension

The impacts of waves on shorelines and nearshore ecosystems has highlighted the need for extension and other environmental professionals to have access to accurate and affordable wave measurements. The development of a low-cost DIY wave gauge improved the accessibility of these measurements; however, the original design was limited in battery life. Here, an improved version of the low-cost DIY wave gauge, the DIY Feather Wave Gauge, is presented with the same performance, longer battery life, smaller design, and cheaper cost along with tutorials, parts lists, and other resources. This new gauge has been used to improve shoreline management recommendations.

Construction Industry: Profitable Corporate Sustainability Strategies And Processes Achieve Competitive Advantage, Chad Justin Czelusniak-Serviss

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some construction industry managers lack strategies to integrate corporate sustainability strategies and processes for competitive advantage, which causes limited profitability. Grounded in the general systems theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore corporate sustainability strategies and processes senior and mid-level construction industry managers use to achieve competitive advantage in the United States. The participants were eight senior/mid-level construction industry managers from eight different construction industry organizations with at least five years of experience in the construction industry who utilized corporate sustainability strategies and processes. Data were collected using semistructured interviews. Three themes emerged using thematic analysis: …

Construction Industry: Profitable Corporate Sustainability Strategies And Processes Achieve Competitive Advantage, Chad Justin Czelusniak-Serviss

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some construction industry managers lack strategies to integrate corporate sustainability strategies and processes for competitive advantage, which causes limited profitability. Grounded in the general systems theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore corporate sustainability strategies and processes senior and mid-level construction industry managers use to achieve competitive advantage in the United States. The participants were eight senior/mid-level construction industry managers from eight different construction industry organizations with at least five years of experience in the construction industry who utilized corporate sustainability strategies and processes. Data were collected using semistructured interviews. Three themes emerged using thematic analysis: …

Factors Influencing The Effectiveness Of Managing Human–Robot Teams, Theodore B. Terry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Certain factors can influence the capabilities of a robot–human team by affecting their social and behavioral dynamics in a work environment. But these factors were not known due to the progressive nature of human–robot partnerships and a lack of peer-reviewed literature on the topic. This e-Delphi study aimed to identify and understand these unknown influential factors based on the participants’ insights. The overarching research question asked about the need to determine factors that might influence the effectiveness of managing human-robot teams. The basis for the conceptual framework for this study was the theory of communication used in organizational management. Twelve …

Socio-Ecological Analysis Of Artisanal Gold Mining In West Africa: A Case Study Of Ghana, Richard Takyi, Rasha Hassan, Badr El Mahrad, Richard Adade

Journal of Sustainable Mining

The surge in artisanal gold mining (AGM) activities and the associated environmental impact in Ghana have elicited several stakeholders' attempts to curb the problem. However, due to little understanding of the underlying issues, these efforts have been ineffective. This study aims to use a socio-ecological framework to analyze drivers of AGM activities, the environmental pressures, the state change, their impact on human welfare, and the management response as measures (DAPSI(W)R(M)) to the problem. Evaluate AGM's impact on Ghana's ability to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data were collected from relevant literature on the subject and analyzed with …

Social Media Analysis On Evaluating Organizational Performance: A Railway Service Management, Jie Yang, Ahm Mehbub Anwar

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

The last decade has witnessed the dramatic expansion of online social media at the global level. It is widely believed that the influence of social media is of particular importance for public and private organisations. Unfortunately, there is very limited and anecdotal evidence to show the durable influence of social media on various components and functions within organisations. To this end, this study examines the impact of social media, particularly taking the railway services in New South Wales (NSW), Australia and the Twitter platform as an illustrative example. Topic modelling and sentiment analysis techniques are employed to analyse collected tweets …

The Occurrence, Fate, Environmental Impact, And Management Implications Of Pharmaceutical And Personal Care Products In Wastewater And The Environment, Benjamin Donald Blair

Theses and Dissertations

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are a critical part of modern life. However, there is growing evidence that the levels of PPCPs detected in wastewater effluent and in the environment have the potential to cause damage to aquatic organisms. These pollutants enter the aquatic environment primarily through human use, disposal in the drain or toilet, land application of biosolids, and veterinary sources. Numerous questions remain regarding the occurrence, fate, and impacts of PPCPs in wastewater, along with limited feasible management recommendations that would adequately mitigate the risk from these pollutants. This dissertation will present three advances in the field …

Infrastructure Planning Through Geosocial Intelligence: Using Twitter As A Platform For Rapid Assessment And Civic Co-Management During Flooding In Jakarta, Tomas Holderness, Katina Michael, Etienne Turpin

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

The ability to collect data using sensor-based technologies is increasing within a public technical means. As governments in rapidly-urbanising developing nations seek to address the climatic, social and economic challenges of the 21st century, there is a progressive requirement to map and articulate civil infrastructure. When a local government needs to proactively react to impending and disruptive phenomena they increasingly look to data and technology to help them manage and respond accordingly. Mobile social media, in a citizens-as-sensors paradigm, offers the potential to collect data with which to advance our capacity to understand and promote resilience of cities to both …

Eliciting Mental Models: A Comparison Of Interview Procedures In The Context Of Natural Resource Management, Natalie A. Jones, Helen Ross, Timothy Lynam, Pascal Perez

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

The sustainable management of natural resources largely depends on people's conceptions of environmental systems and how they function. The mental model construct provides an appropriate means to explore the cognitive dimension of people's interactions with such systems. Mental models are cognitive representations of external reality that people use as the basis for acting with and within the world around them. We aimed to improve the application of the mental model construct to the field of natural resource management, with an emphasis on creek, i.e., stream, systems, by exploring how certain elicitation procedures may affect the mental models expressed. One of …

A Distributed Consensus Algorithm For Decision Making In Service-Oriented Internet Of Things, Shancang Li, George Oikonomou, Theo Tryfonas, Thomas M. Chen, Li Da Xu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

In a service-oriented Internet of things (IoT) deployment, it is difficult to make consensus decisions for services at different IoT edge nodes where available information might be insufficient or overloaded. Existing statistical methods attempt to resolve the inconsistency, which requires adequate information to make decisions. Distributed consensus decision making (CDM) methods can provide an efficient and reliable means of synthesizing information by using a wider range of information than existing statistical methods. In this paper, we first discuss service composition for the IoT by minimizing the multi-parameter dependent matching value. Subsequently, a cluster-based distributed algorithm is proposed, whereby consensuses are …

Project Management For The Openorbiter Operating Software Team, Kelton Karboviak, Dayln Limesand, Michael Hlas, Eric Berg, Christoffer Korvald, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh, Scott Kerlin

Jeremy Straub

OpenOrbiter is producing a 1-U CubeSat spacecraft1 to facilitate the construction of low-cost2 spacecraft by others in the future. The Operating Software team is in charge of designing and creating the software that controls most of the CubeSat’s operations such as image capturing, storage management, and temperature sensing. The project management deliverables that we have worked on as a team are the Project Definition, Work Breakdown Structure, and the Project Schedule. The Project Definition defines exactly what our project team will be developing including, but not limited to, what the team is in charge of developing, what its not in …

Desktop Warfare: Robotic Collaboration For Persistent Surveillance, Situational Awareness And Combat Operations, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

Robotic sensing and weapons platforms can be controlled from a desktop workstation on the other side of the planet from where combat is occurring. This minimizes the potential for injury to soldiers and increases operational productivity. Significant work has been undertaken and is ongoing related to the autonomous control of battlefield sensing and warfighting systems. While many aspects of these operations can be performed autonomously, in some cases it is necessary (due to technical limitations) or desirable (due to legal or political implications) to involve humans in the low-level decision making. This paper reviews a number of specific applications where …

A Review Of Online Collaboration Tools Used By The Und Openorbiter Program, Jeremy Straub, Christoffer Korvald

Jeremy Straub

The OpenOrbiter program at the University of North Dakota is a student-initiated, student-run effort to design, develop, test, launch and operate a CubeSat-class spacecraft to validate the designs of the Open Prototype for Educational NanoSatellites (a framework that will be made publically-available to allow faster and lower-cost missions at other educational institutions worldwide). OpenOrbiter involves (at various participation levels) over 200 faculty and students spanning five colleges and ten departments. To coordinate this large group of participants who comprise over seventeen teams and work at disjoint hours in a plethora of locations, online project management, software source control and hardware …

The International Trafficking In Arms Regulations: Precluding Innovation In Academic Spacecraft Engineering — Or Are They?, Jeremy Straub, Joe Vacek

Jeremy Straub

Government regulations and uncertainty about their enforcement can be a significant barrier to innovation. In business, it is undesirable to consume time and other resources developing a product that cannot be sold or which requires navigating significant bureaucracy for each sale. In academ-ia, where limited funding is available prior to the submission of a grant pro-posal and receipt of an award, proposal-stage compliance costs can derail a project long before it begins. This paper reviews the International Traffick-ing in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and their impact on spacecraft research in academia, private research labs and industry. It reviews the exemptions available, …

Virtual Interactions With Real-Agents For Sustainable Natural Resource Management, Tyler Pierce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Common pool resource management systems are complex to manage due to the absence of a clear understanding of the effects of users’ behavioral characteristics. Non-cooperative decision making based on individual rationality (as opposed to group rationality) and a tendency to free ride due to lack of trust and information about other users’ behavior creates externalities and can lead to tragedy of the commons without intervention by a regulator. Nevertheless, even regulatory institutions often fail to sustain natural common pool resources in the absence of clear understanding of the responses of multiple heterogeneous decision makers to different regulation schemes. While modeling …

Simreef And Reefgame: Gaming For Integrated Reef Research And Management, Deborah Cleland, Anne Dray, Pascal Perez, Rollan Geronimo

Professor Pascal Perez

As threats to coastal and ocean systems grow in scale and complexity, the calls for new approaches to research and management grow in volume. The Modeling and Decision Support Working Group (MDSWG) of the CRTR Program has developed two participatory gaming tools that address the need for integrative approaches to coral reef management. SimReef is a regional model and role-play game aimed at policy makers and industry representatives. It simulates coastal development trajectories and trade-offs between environmental, social and economic concerns. ReefGame is a local-level model and board game that helps local people and reef managers explore interactions between livelihoods, …

Providing Social Science Objectives And Indicators To Compare Management Options In The Queensland Trawl Planning Process, Cathy Dichmont, S Pascoe, E Jebreen, R Pears, Kate Brooks, Pascal Perez

Professor Pascal Perez

No abstract provided.

Towards An Art And Science Of Decision Aiding For Water Management And Planning: A Participatory Modelling Process, Katherine A. Daniell, Ian White, Nils Ferrand, Alexis Tsoukias, Stewart Burn, Pascal Perez

Professor Pascal Perez

Planning and management of water resources are faced with increasingly high levels of complexity, uncertainty and conflict. Traditional technical and top-down management strategies have proved inadequate, forcing a move to more "integrated" forms of management, planning and decision making that can include stakeholders and communities, as well as technical experts and policy makers. These integrated forms of management require not only good technical or scientific ability, but a range of "art-like" skills including communication, creativity and the capacity to acknowledge and integrate diverse points of view. However, processes designed to aid such inter-organisational or multi-stakeholder decisionmaking are rare and in …

Simreef: An Agent-Based Model To Address Coastal Management Issues In The Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Pascal Perez, A Dray, Deborah Cleland, Jesus Ernesto Arias-Gonzalez

Professor Pascal Perez

The northernmost part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (MBR) runs along the eastern Yucatan peninsula (Mexico). Over two decades, sprawling coastal tourism development and over-exploitation of marine resources have considerably reduced fringing reef’s ecological functions. SimReef is an interactive model designed to better understand the interactions between regional and local drivers strongly influencing the health of coral reefs. SimReef’s development follows a collective design approach and an inductive process whereby dynamics are represented by data-driven relationships. Experts and stakeholders participate to the designing phase in order to help calibrating the model and to support a consensual validation of the results.

Sustainable Water Management In The University Of Texas At El Paso, Cora Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis showed how to improve water and financial savings for UTEP and El Paso by improving water conservation and sustainability of the UTEP campus. The goals of this research were successfully accomplished by focusing in three principal objectives.

1. Analyze historical data of water consumption of the UTEP campus for the past decade.

2. Evaluate water consumption to quantify water consumption by buildings and type of use, as well as provide recommendations for water and cost savings.

3. Synthesize a water management framework within the UTEP Facilities' Geographic Information System (GIS) for long-term monitoring and evaluation

Recommendations For Australia’S Implementation Of The National Emergency Warning System Using Location-Based Services, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas

Professor Katina Michael

Mobile alerts, notifications and location-based emergency warning systems are now an established part of mobile government strategies in an increasing number of countries worldwide. In Australia the national emergency warning system (NEWS) was instituted after the tragic Black Saturday Victorian Bushfires of February 2009. In the first phase, NEWS has enabled the provision of public information from the government to the citizen during emergencies anywhere and any time. Moving on from traditional short message service (SMS) notifications and cell broadcasting to more advanced location-based services, this paper provides executive-level recommendations about the viability of location-based mobile phone services in NEWS …

Adaptive Decision Support For Structured Organizations: A Case For Orgpomdps, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Nathan Schurr, Alan Carlin, Christopher Amato

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In today's world, organizations are faced with increasingly large and complex problems that require decision-making under uncertainty. Current methods for optimizing such decisions fall short of handling the problem scale and time constraints. We argue that this is due to existing methods not exploiting the inherent structure of the organizations which solve these problems. We propose a new model called the OrgPOMDP (Organizational POMDP), which is based on the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). This new model combines two powerful representations for modeling large scale problems: hierarchical modeling and factored representations. In this paper we make three key contributions: …

Simreef And Reefgame: Gaming For Integrated Reef Research And Management, Deborah Cleland, Anne Dray, Pascal Perez, Rollan Geronimo

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

As threats to coastal and ocean systems grow in scale and complexity, the calls for new approaches to research and management grow in volume. The Modeling and Decision Support Working Group (MDSWG) of the CRTR Program has developed two participatory gaming tools that address the need for integrative approaches to coral reef management. SimReef is a regional model and role-play game aimed at policy makers and industry representatives. It simulates coastal development trajectories and trade-offs between environmental, social and economic concerns. ReefGame is a local-level model and board game that helps local people and reef managers explore interactions between livelihoods, …

Slides: Climate Change And The Death Of Stationarity: A New Era For Western Water?, Stephen T. Gray

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Steven T. Gray, Wyoming State Climatologist, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY

48 slides

Private Queries And Trajectory Anonymization: A Dual Perspective On Location Privacy, Gabriel Ghinita

Cyber Center Publications

The emergence of mobile devices with Internet connectivity (e.g., Wi-Fi) and global positioning capabilities (e.g., GPS) have triggered the widespread development of location-based applications. For instance, users are able to ask queries about points of interest in their proximity. Furthermore, users can act as mobile sensors to monitor traffic flow, or levels of air pollution. However, such applications require users to disclose their locations, which raises serious privacy concerns. With knowledge of user locations, a malicious attacker can infer sensitive information, such as alternative lifestyles or political affiliations. Preserving location privacy is an essential requirement towards the successful deployment of …

Embracing Knowledge And Behaviour Management To Improve Performance Of Software Intensive Projects, Ricardo Peculis, Derek Rogers, Peter Campbell

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Many reasons have been offered to explain why software projects fail. Still, software intensive projects often present schedule delays, cost overruns and delivering products with reduced functionality. This paper argues that lack of knowledge is yet another factor that causes projects to under perform, which in turn drives undesirable social behaviour that worsens the situation. Software intensive projects develop solutions highly dependent on software that should satisfy a need. The engineering process to develop such complex solutions comprises of a series of transformations that transform products from one domain into products in another domain, requiring knowledge pertinent to both input …

Towards An Art And Science Of Decision Aiding For Water Management And Planning: A Participatory Modelling Process, Katherine A. Daniell, Ian White, Nils Ferrand, Alexis Tsoukias, Stewart Burn, Pascal Perez

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Planning and management of water resources are faced with increasingly high levels of complexity, uncertainty and conflict. Traditional technical and top-down management strategies have proved inadequate, forcing a move to more "integrated" forms of management, planning and decision making that can include stakeholders and communities, as well as technical experts and policy makers. These integrated forms of management require not only good technical or scientific ability, but a range of "art-like" skills including communication, creativity and the capacity to acknowledge and integrate diverse points of view. However, processes designed to aid such inter-organisational or multi-stakeholder decisionmaking are rare and in …

A Methodology For Identifying And Formalizing Farmers’ Representations Of Watershed Management: A Case Study From Northern Thailand, N Becu, O Barreteau, Pascal Perez, J Saising, S Sungted

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Linking modeling tools and the participatory approach for development is not a common combination. Participatory multi-agent system modeling (PMASM) is a tool for sharing viewpoints among stakeholders and facilitating the negotiation process. A key question of this approach is the acquisition and the modeling of the various stakeholders’ representations. Our research team, whose Asian branch is represented in this book, tries to formalize the passage from fieldwork to the model by defining a methodology that can be implemented in the field. This methodology adapts knowledge engineering acquisition techniques to in-field stakeholders’ representations for PMASM. In a northern Thailand watershed, we …

Analysis Of Intangible Factors In Waste Minimization Projects, Halvard E. Nystrom, William Ralph Kehr

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Continual population growth and rising standards of living that accelerate the consumption of limited resources, are forcing society to encourage conservation of these resources. These resources not only include raw material, but also the areas to dispose of the wastes. As a result, communities are driving industries towards waste minimization by limiting waste generation and landfill availability. Firms'' environmentally friendly strategies can gain competitive advantage by leading in environmental practices. This advantage emanates from the reduction of risk of environmental regulatory overreaction, as well as improved asset utilization and landfill utilization. However, these intangible benefits are difficult to identify and …