Digital Commons Network^™

Web-Based Archaeology And Collaborative Research, Fabrizio Galeazzi, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

While digital technologies have been part of archaeology for more than fifty years, archaeologists still look for more efficient methodologies to integrate digital practices of fieldwork recording with data management, analysis, and ultimately interpretation.This Special Issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology gathers international scholars affiliated with universities, organizations, and commercial enterprises working in the field of Digital Archaeology. Our goal is to offer a discussion to the international academic community and practitioners. While the approach is interdisciplinary, our primary audience remains readers interested in web technology and collaborative platforms in archaeology

Development, Training, Education, And Implementation Of Low-Cost Sensing Technologies For Bridge Structural Health Monitoring (Shm), Fernando Moreu, Chris Lippitt, Dilendra Maharjan, Marlon Aguero, Roya Nasimi

Publications

Transportation infrastructure needs continuous monitoring. However, traditional inspections cost money and are conducted visually. New technologies for bridge monitoring are expensive and complex. This project involved developing cost-effective sensor technologies that can be applied towards the maintenance of railroad bridges by recording reference-free transverse displacement. More specifically, this project developed new applications of new technologies (Arduino, wireless smart sensors, drones, Hololens) and promoted workforce development with an emphasis on outreach of high-school students. This project was carried out in three main phases: (1) development and validation of technologies, (2) education and outreach to students, and (3) outreach to industry consisting …

Is There Space For Violence?: A Data-Driven Approach To The Exploration Of Spatial-Temporal Dimensions Of Conflict, Tin Seong Kam, Vincent Zhi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With recent increases in incidences of political violence globally, the world has now become more uncertain and less predictable. Of particular concern is the case of violence against civilians, who are often caught in the crossfire between armed state or non-state actors. Classical methods of studying political violence and international relations need to be updated. Adopting the use of data analytic tools and techniques of studying big data would enable academics and policy makers to make sense of a rapidly changing world.

Assessing Ga Pilots' Preflight Weather Planning Mental Models, Yolanda Ortiz, Beth Blickensderfer, Thomas A. Guinn

General Aviation Weather Display Interpretation

Purpose, To assess GA Pilots' ability to:

• Obtain the Appropriate Weather Information
• Interpret the Data
• Apply the Information to a Given Flight Route

Monitoring And Evaluating The Influences Of Class V Injection Wells On Urban Karst Hydrology, James Adam Shelley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The response of a karst aquifer to storm events is often faster and more severe than that of a non-karst aquifer. This distinction is often problematic for planners and municipalities, because karst flooding does not typically occur along perennial water courses; thus, traditional flood management strategies are usually ineffective. The City of Bowling Green (CoBG), Kentucky is a representative example of an area plagued by karst flooding. The CoBG, is an urban karst area (UKA), that uses Class V Injection Wells to lessen the severity of flooding. The overall effectiveness, siting, and flooding impact of Injection Wells in UKA’s is …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 60 Number 1, Fall 2018, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

24 - FOUND IN TRANSLATION The Pulitzer for editorial cartooning recognizes the tale of two Syrian refugee families. Here’s who translated their story. By Tracy Seipel and Tina Vossugh.

26 - LEGENDS OF THE COURT A pair of Bronco hoops legends: Steve Nash ’96, welcome to the Basketball Hall of Fame! Kurt Rambis ’80, on big-time break-ins—and a fan club like no other. Words by Mark Purdy and Sam Farmer. Illustrations by Victor Juhasz.

34 - A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOLY LAND Israel, from a hazy gray sea to the House of Bread to the Hill of the Skull. Learning …

Delay Causality Network In Air Transport Systems, Wen-Bo Du, Ming-Yuan Zhang, Yu Zhang, Xian-Bin Cao, Jun Zhang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

To better understand the mechanism of flight delay propagation at the system-level, we built a delay causality network (DCN) based on the Granger causality test. Through topological analysis of DCNs, we found that only about a quarter of airports were involved in delay propagation during the peak travel period and large airports affected by many upstream airports impact fewer downstream airports. Furthermore, temporal analysis of DCNs indicates that the culprits of delay propagation in the air transport system are not a fixed set of airports; instead, they vary daily depending on the operational environment.

Stratigraphy And Sedimentology Of The Black Lion Conglomerate, Eastern Pioneer Mountains, Beaverhead County, Southwestern Montana, Vincent Spinazola

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the age and depositional setting of the Black Lion Conglomerate in the Eastern Pioneer Mountains of southwest Montana. Located at Section 5, T3S, R11W, Beaverhead County, Montana, the Grace Lake field site is the primary focus of this study. Other field sites include Hecla, Black Lion Lake, Black Lion Creek, and Sheep Mountain. Previous studies suggested the Black Lion Conglomerate is either Cambrian or Proterozoic in age. The base of the Black Lion Conglomerate is not exposed at any location. The Black Lion Conglomerate is at least 120m (394ft) thick.

In this …

Single-Use And Sustainability: Continued Studies Using Lca Tools, William Whitford

Single-Use Technologies III: Scientific and Technological Advancements

The issue of plastic materials in our environment has been of recent interest. The biotechnology community has responded by examining the effects of single-use systems employed in biomanufacturing. It is natural to emphasize a particular set of environmental concerns over others, and especially the more visible ones. But, in supporting truly sustainable manufacturing systems, it is important to consider all relevant types of pollution or environmental stress. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a science-based approach for evaluating the environmental impacts, benefits, trade-offs, and burden shifts of a process in an objective format. It considers production process’ materials, equipment and …

Map Based Discovery Of Hydrologic Data In The Hydroshare Collaboration Environment, Zhaokun Xue, Alva Couch, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Data discovery refers to the process of locating pre-existing data for use in new research. In the HydroShare collaboration environment for water science, there are more than twenty kinds of data that can be discovered, including data from specific sites on the globe, data corresponding to regions on the globe, and data with no geospatial meaning, such as laboratory experiment results. This paper discusses lessons learned in building a data discovery system for HydroShare. This was a surprisingly difficult problem; default behaviors of software components were unacceptable, use cases suggested conflicting approaches, and crafting a geographic view of a large …

Generating Strong Diversity Of Opinions: Agent Models Of Continuous Opinion Dynamics, Christopher W. Weimer

Theses and Dissertations

Opinion dynamics is the study of how opinions in a group of individuals change over time. A goal of opinion dynamics modelers has long been to find a social science-based model that generates strong diversity -- smooth, stable, possibly multi-modal distributions of opinions. This research lays the foundations for and develops such a model. First, a taxonomy is developed to precisely describe agent schedules in an opinion dynamics model. The importance of scheduling is shown with applications to generalized forms of two models. Next, the meta-contrast influence field (MIF) model is defined. It is rooted in self-categorization theory and improves …

Suitability Of Active And Intelligent Packaging For Local And Organic Food – A Case Study In Southern Finland, Sara Paunonen, Marja Pitkänen, Mika Vähä-Nissi, Ville Leminen, Mika Kainusalmi

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

This study explores the suitability of innovative packaging for local and organic food. Attitudes and opinions in local and organic food chains in Southern Finland were collected via eighteen semi-structural interviews. The respondents were small-scale producers and processors of fish, meat, berries, and mushrooms, wholesalers, retailers, and institutional kitchens. The aim of this study was to understand factors promoting and preventing the penetration of innovative packaging solutions into the organic and local food market. A clear majority (89%) of respondents considered active and intelligent solutions to be equally suitable for local and organic food as for conventional food. However, less …

Sociodemographics And Access To Organic And Local Food: A Case Study Of New Orleans, Louisiana, Chuo Li, Amir Ghiasi, Xiaopeng Li, Guangqing Chi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This study examined the association between physical accessibility to organic and local food, and sociodemographic factors in New Orleans, Louisiana. Spatial regression models were used to investigate how sociodemographic variables such as income, race/ethnicity, education, and age correlate with driving, bicycling, and walking distances to stores that sell organic or local food. The distances were calculated from GIS and real-time speed information from Google Maps. The results indicated that physical access to such stores is positively associated with population density, median housing value, education, non-Hispanic Blacks, and Hispanics, and is negatively associated with median housing age. We found no disparities …

Executive Summary_Governance For A Changing Climate: Adapting Boston’S Built Environment For Increased Flooding, Stephanie Kruel, Rebecca Herst, David Cash

Sustainable Solutions Lab

As the impacts of climate change intensify, coastal cities like Boston face increasing threats from sea level rise, extreme precipitation, and storm surges. This report, produced by the Sustainable Solutions Lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston, examines the role of governance in preparing Boston’s built environment for these evolving risks. Building upon the foundational work of the Climate Ready Boston initiative, the report outlines critical governance functions necessary for climate adaptation, including institutional coordination, regulatory reform, community engagement, and data-driven decision-making. Emphasizing a multiscalar governance approach, it analyzes the tools available at local, regional, state, and federal levels and …

Development Of A Crash Risk-Scoring Tool For Pedestrian And Bicycle Projects In Oregon, Yi Wang, Christopher M. Monsere, Chen Chen, Haizhong Wang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Methods for identifying and prioritizing high-crash locations for safety improvements are generally crash-based. There are fewer reported crashes involving non-motorized users and, in most states, reported crashes must involve a motor vehicle. This means that minor, non-injury events are not reported and those crashes that are reported tend to be more severe. Selecting projects based only on crash performance is sometimes limiting for these crash types and predicting where these crashes will occur next is also a challenging task. An alternative to crash-based selection is to develop risk-based criteria and methods. This paper presents the results of a research effort …

Computational Thinking And Literacy, Sharin Rawhiya Jacob, Mark Warschauer

Journal of Computer Science Integration

Today’s students will enter a workforce that is powerfully shaped by computing. To be successful in a changing economy, students must learn to think algorithmically and computationally, to solve problems with varying levels of abstraction. These computational thinking skills have become so integrated into social function as to represent fundamental literacies. However, computer science has not been widely taught in K-12 schools. Efforts to create computer science standards and frameworks have yet to make their way into mandated course requirements. Despite a plethora of research on digital literacies, research on the role of computational thinking in the literature is sparse. …

A Framework For Integrated Ship Structure Lifecycle Management, Kai Li, Zheng-Yao Yi, Yan-Yun Yu, Ming Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

As the concept of ship structure lifecycle management has emerged, lots of endeavors have been made to apply computeraided (CAX) technologies to various business activities in the whole lifecycle of ship structure. However, information integration or data exchange were barely considered in most of CAX systems development. Hence the systems produce masses of data in their own formats, generate many information islands, and reduce the overall efficiency. It often needs much work of data preparation when downstream systems start working. Information integration can reduce data redundancy, form unified data platform and provide data resource for marine structure lifecycle management. This …

Groundwater Flow And Exchange Across The Land Surface Explain Carbon Export Patterns In Continuous Permafrost Watersheds, Bethany T. Neilson, M. Bayani Cardenas, Michael T. O'Connor, Mitchell T. Rasmussen, Tyler V. King, George W. Kling

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Groundwater flow regimes in the seasonally thawed soils in areas of continuous permafrost are relatively unknown despite their potential role in delivering water, carbon, and nutrients to streams. Using numerical groundwater flow models informed by observations from a headwater catchment in arctic Alaska, United States, we identify several mechanisms that result in substantial surface‐subsurface water exchanges across the land surface during downslope transport and create a primary control on dissolved organic carbon loading to streams and rivers. The models indicate that surface water flowing downslope has a substantial groundwater component due to rapid surface‐subsurface exchanges across a range of hydrologic …

Climate-Informed Environmental Inflows To Revive A Drying Lake Facing Meteorological And Anthropogenic Droughts, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia’s contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well …

Characterizing Contamination To Expand Ashrae Envelope In Airside Economization And Thermal And Reliability In Immersion Cooling Of Data Centers, Jimil Manojbhai Shah

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The Datacom facility which comprises rooms or closets used for communication, computers/servers or electronic equipment requires cooling unit which consumes 31% (23% HVAC cooling + 8% HVAC fans) of overall energy. The ASHRAE TC9.9 subcommittee, on Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces, and Electronic Equipment, has suited the data center’s executives by permitting brief period outings of the environmental conditions outside the prescribed temperature-humidity range, into passable extents A1-A3. To comprehend the expanding server densities and the required cooling vitality costs, data center operators are falling back on cost cutting measures. For instance, they are not firmly controlling the …

Diverse Lignocellulosic Feedstocks Can Achieve High Field‐Scale Ethanol Yields While Providing Flexibility For The Biorefinery And Landscape‐Level Environmental Benefits, Yaoping Zhang, Lawrence G. Oates, Jose Serate, Dan Xie, Edward Pohlman, Yury Bukhman, Rebecca Garlock Ong, Et Al.

Department of Chemical Engineering Publications

Increasing the diversity of lignocellulosic feedstocks accepted by a regional biorefinery has the potential to improve the environmental footprint of the facility; harvest,storage, and transportation logistics; and biorefinery economics. However, feedstocks can vary widely in terms of their biomass yields and quality characteristics (chemical composition, moisture content, etc.). To investigate how the diversity of potential biofuel cropping systems and feedstock supply might affect process and field‐scale ethanol yields, we processed and experimentally quantified ethanol production from five different herbaceous feedstocks: two annuals (corn stover and energy sorghum) and three perennials (switchgrass, miscanthus, and mixed prairie). The feedstocks werepretreated using ammonia …

Data-Driven Development Of A Roadside Safety Marketing Campaign For Tree Removal – Phase I, Cody S. Stolle, Thomas Ammon, Chris M. Vargas, Ronald K. Faller, Karla A. Lechtenberg, Erin L. Urbank

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Since the 1970s, tree crashes have been one of the most common and deadly fixed-object fatal crash types, resulting in more than 3,000 fatal crashes and 3,500 fatalities each year. While fatal tree crashes could be prevented by removing trees adjacent to the roadway, an extensive national tree removal project would be unnecessary, cost-prohibitive, and would experience significant political resistance.

The Midwest Pooled Fund Program jointly funded a research study to develop marketing methods and approaches which would focus on tree removal, replacement, or relocation in the most critical areas. Researchers conducted an extensive background investigation into tree crashes, other …

Huron-To-Erie Water Quality Data Platform, Lanyu Xu, Carol J. Miller, James Olson, Michael Beaulac

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

To address the challenges of environmental degradation, creation of a sustainable urban environment, and increased public engagement and awareness, a mass-oriented, user-friendly and cloud-based data platform has been developed and deployed to provide integrative water quality data in one of the most critical urban corridors of the Laurentian Great Lakes system. In this paper, we describe the data platform developed for the watershed and connecting channels between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, including the St. Clair River, Lake St. Chair, and the Detroit River. This data platform greatly facilitates the access of data across data providers and agencies. Several example …

Validating The Accuracy Of Neatwork, A Rural Gravity Fed Water Distribution System Design Program, Using Field Data In The Comarca Ngöbe-Bugle, Panama, Maria Briones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the sustainable development goals to increase access to improved water there are still 884 million people in the world without access to an improved water source (WHO, 2017). One method to improve access to water in rural, mountainous areas, is through construction of gravity fed water distribution systems. These systems should be designed based upon fundamental principles of hydraulics. One method of doing so in a time efficient manner with minimal engineering knowledge is to utilize a downloadable computer program such as Neatwork, which aids in design of rural, gravity fed water distribution systems and has been used by …

Non-Gnss Smartphone Pedestrian Navigation Using Barometric Elevation And Digital Map-Matching, Daniel J. Broyles, Kyle J. Kauffman, John F. Raquet, Piotr Smagowski

Faculty Publications

Pedestrian navigation in outdoor environments where global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are unavailable is a challenging problem. Existing technologies that have attempted to address this problemoften require external reference signals or specialized hardware, the extra size,weight, power, and cost of which are unsuitable for many applications. This article presents a real-time, self-contained outdoor navigation application that uses only the existing sensors on a smartphone in conjunction with a preloaded digital elevation map. The core algorithm implements a particle filter, which fuses sensor data with a stochastic pedestrian motion model to predict the user’s position. The smartphone’s barometric elevation is then …

Forewarned Is Forearmed: Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World By Timothy H. Dixon (2017), Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

Curbing Catastrophe for the most part lives up to what is claimed in the foreword: “…a compelling account of recent and historical disasters, both natural and human-caused, drawing on common themes and providing a holistic understanding of hazards, disasters, and mitigation for anyone interested in this important and topical subject.” This is a pretty thorough treatment of an extraordinarily complex subject, and the gaps identified in this review should be considered explications more than …

Understanding Transit System Performance Using Avl-Apc Data: An Analytics Platform With Case Studies For The Pittsburgh Region, Xidong Pi, Mark Egge, Jackson Whitmore, Amy Silbermann, Zhen Sean Qian

Journal of Public Transportation

This paper introduces a novel transit data analytics platform for public transit planning, assessing service quality and revealing service problems in high spatiotemporal resolution for public transit systems based on Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) and Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technologies. The platform offers a systematic way for users and decision makers to understand system performance from many aspects of service quality, including passenger waiting time, stop-skipping frequency, bus bunching level, bus travel time, on-time performance, and bus fullness. The AVL-APC data from September 2012 to March 2016 were archived in a database to support the development of a user-friendly web …

Methods For Estimating Vehicle Fuel Consumption In Urban Road Networks Using Geographical Attributes, Ryan G. Conrad

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

This paper presents statistical techniques for estimating vehicle fuel consumption in urban road networks based on vehicle and geographical factors. A routing algorithm utilizing mapping data from OpenStreetMap and elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission is presented and used to generate paths that minimize vehicle fuel consumption. The concept of a fuel consumption estimating function is proposed as an extension of the well-known distance-estimating functions that are widely used in logistics planning and research.

Statistical models are developed that estimate fuel consumption in three tested urban areas with vehicle weight, elevation and regional travel speed characteristics being the …

Exploring The Relationship Of Bikeshare And Transit In The United States Of America, David Rafael Soto Padín

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Bicycling and bike-share have been growing in US cities as transportation alternatives. Despite impressions that bikeshare systems exist solely for tourism, recreation or privileged users, research has shown that bike-share is becoming a transportation mode used by a diverse set of users for various transportation needs. Additionally, a positive relationship has been established between bike-share and transit although most studies on this matter have focused on systems outside the United States. Bike share and transit benefit each other by: (1) contributing to sustainable transportation goals by improving mobility and greenhouse gas reductions, (2) solving the "last mile" problem, (3) reduce …

Human-Centered Design Of A 3d-Augmented Strategic Weather Management System For The Aviation Community, Sébastien Léonce Paul Boulnois

Theses and Dissertations

Convective weather is one of the main causes of accidents in the National Airspace System according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The purpose of this research, aligned with current NextGen research efforts, was to determine how weather information, presented in 2D and/or 3D, and associated with interaction features, could impact airline pilots’ weather-related situation awareness and decision-making capabilities. Human-Centered Design principles, along with Design Thinking, were used and led to the design of a 3D-Augmented Strategic Weather Management System aiming to satisfy this research question. The system is called “Onboard Weather Situation Awareness System” (OWSAS) in the scope of this …