Digital Commons Network^™

2016 (Fall) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the fall of 2016.

Configuring The Urban Smart Grid: Transitions, Experimentation, And Governance, Anthony Michael Levenda

Dissertations and Theses

In the face of challenges of energy security, decarbonization, resilience, and the replacement of aging infrastructure systems, federal, state, and local actors are facilitating the development of smart electricity networks to transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. In the United States, development of "smart grids" is being pursued as a national policy mandate and goal, promising that the deployment of smart grid technologies -- referring in general to digital information and communication technologies that sense, monitor, control and manage the electric grid -- will make electricity systems more environmentally sustainable and reliable, and at the same time, provide opportunities …

Special Issue On Cyberharassment Investigation: Advances And Trends, Joanne Bryce, Virginia N. L. Franqueira, Andrew Marrington

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that cyberharassment is more prevalent as the use of social media becomes increasingly widespread, making geography and physical proximity irrelevant. Cyberharassment can take different forms (e.g., cyberbullying, cyberstalking, cybertrolling), and be motivated by the objectives of inflicting distress, exercising control, impersonation, and defamation. Little is currently known about the modus operandi of offenders and their psychological characteristics. Investigation of these behaviours is particularly challenging because it involves digital evidence distributed across the devices of both alleged offenders and victims, as well as online service providers, sometimes over an extended period of time. This special issue …

Cost Analysis Of Workplace Charging For Electric Vehicles, Florida Solar Energy Center, Richard Raustad

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report examines the life-cycle costs associated with the operation of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) and the impact that plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging may have on commercial building electricity cost. This study assumed that a utility electric meter was attached to each charging station and that 10 kWh of energy was required to replenish the energy consumed during a typical 35-mile daily work commute. Through a life-cycle assessment of typical EVSE equipment, including first cost and maintenance and operating costs, it was found that AC Level 1 or 2 workplace charging can be similar to or lower in …

Using Spatialisation To Support Exploratory Search Behaviour, Clement Roux

Dissertations

Information-seekers traditionally interact with digital content through keyword-based search interfaces displaying results in list views. Well-defined lookup search tasks are performed brilliantly with these interfaces, enabling users to find relevant information and develop a relative understanding of the underlying information space. However, it is feasible to suggest that ill-defined and abstract search tasks could be better supported with a different interface that could allow the user to explore a library’s content and develop an appropriate mental model of the information space. One such approach is based on the use of visualisation, an approach to data analysis that aims to reduce …

Improving Real-World Performance Of Vision Aided Navigation In A Flight Environment, Donald T. Venable

Theses and Dissertations

The motivation of this research is to fuse information from an airborne imaging sensor with information extracted from satellite imagery in order to provide accurate position when GPS is unavailable for an extended duration. A corpus of existing geo-referenced satellite imagery is used to create a key point database. A novel algorithm for recovering coarse pose using by comparing key points extracted from the airborne imagery to the reference database is developed. This coarse position is used to bootstrap a local-area geo-registration algorithm, which provides GPS-level position estimates. This research derives optimizations for existing local-area methods for operation in flight …

An Exploration Of Wind Stress Calculation Techniques In Hurricane Storm Surge Modeling, Kyra M. Bryant, Muhammad Akbar

Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Faculty Research

As hurricanes continue to threaten coastal communities, accurate storm surge forecasting remains a global priority. Achieving a reliable storm surge prediction necessitates accurate hurricane intensity and wind field information. The wind field must be converted to wind stress, which represents the air-sea momentum flux component required in storm surge and other oceanic models. This conversion requires a multiplicative drag coefficient for the air density and wind speed to represent the air-sea momentum exchange at a given location. Air density is a known parameter and wind speed is a forecasted variable, whereas the drag coefficient is calculated using an empirical correlation. …

15-04 Travel Behavior Of Blind Individuals Before And After Receiving Orientation And Mobility Training, Dae Shik Kim, C. Scott Smith, Elyse Connors

Transportation Research Center Reports

In this pilot study, we devised, tested, and refined a protocol for evaluating the travel behavior of blind individuals. Preliminary analyses of our pilot study data suggest that our new method involving Global Positioning Systems (GPS), accelerometers, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), will enable us to collect objective, quantitative, and valid measures of blind individuals’ travel behavior and Orientation and Mobility (O&M) training’s effectiveness. Preliminary analysis results from a small sample of blind travelers describe the individuals’ trip distances, trip frequencies, trip destinations, trip modes, travel times, whether assisted or not, and perceived ability to get around. With the completion …

The Economic Boom, Bust And Transport Inequity In Suburban Dublin, Ireland, Sarah Rock, Aoife Ahern, Brian Caulfield

Articles

This paper examines the existence and extent of transport inequity and disadvantage in new suburbs in Dublin, built during the Celtic Tiger period and as experienced during the recession. Findings are presented from a household postal survey from three case study areas built between 2001 and 2008. The case study areas are typical 'middle class' suburbs, and were constructed at a time when Ireland was experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The subsequent recession left many of these areas in significant negative equity, and householders with very limited housing mobility. Results from the survey point to considerable problems that are impacting on …

Public Transport Accessibility Levels For Ahmedabad, India, Jay S. Shah, Bhargav Adhvaryu

Journal of Public Transportation

Public transport plays an important role in a city’s economy and its social equity. It is also instrumental in reducing automobile dependence and traffic congestion. Several factors must come together to achieve well-functioning public transport systems. One major factor is the level of accessibility offered by the public transport system. To better understand and consequentially enhance accessibility, we must be able to measure it and map it, which is the key aim of this paper.

The methodology in this study, which was originally developed by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and later adopted by Transport for London (TfL) …

Evaluation Of Horizontal Equity Under A Distance-Based Transit Fare Structure, Milad Bandegani, Meisam Akbarzadeh

Journal of Public Transportation

Horizontal equity requires equal distribution of investment/benefit/costs among equal members of society. In other words, a transit passenger should pay as much as he/she uses. This study evaluated the measure of fulfillment of this rule in a case study, developed a distance-based fare structure, and shows that justice is better served by switching to the proposed structure. Fare elasticity of demand and probability distribution of transit passenger trip lengths were investigated through a field survey. Although mainly used in the measurement of inequality in income or wealth, the Gini index and the recovery ratio (revenue to cost for each transit …

Transportation System Vulnerability And Resilience To Extreme Weather Events And Other Natural Hazards: Report For Pilot Project — Kytc District 1, Benjamin L. Blandford, Scott Schurman, Candice Y. Wallace, Sarah M. Mccormack

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This research’s objective is to assist the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) in its efforts to develop strategies to address natural hazard vulnerabilities and improve the resiliency of Kentucky’s transportation infrastructure. Recent federal legislation calls for state transportation agencies to develop a risk-based asset management plan for National Highway System (NHS) assets that includes consideration of natural hazards. Similarly, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) calls for state transportation agencies to identify potential vulnerabilities associated with extreme weather events and climate change, and to incorporate these findings into transportation planning, design, and maintenance practices.

Capacity Building For Sustainable Workforce In The Construction Industry, Edelmiro F. Escamilla, Mohammadreza Ostadalimakhmalbaf

The Professional Constructor

Research has shown that the construction industry will face workforce shortages that will increase delivery cost and completion time. The purpose of this paper is to first identify and synthesize the fundamental factors impacting recruitment and retention of the potential construction workforce. A qualitative approach was employed in order to collect and synthesize known factors related to workforce development and capacity building for the construction industry. The paper then presents a conceptual framework for conducting research on capacity generation of a sustainable construction workforce—by considering the impact of family unit and cultural values, career path perceptions, higher educational attainment, and …

Optimization Of Headway, Stops, And Time Points Considering Stochastic Bus Arrivals, Liuhui Zhao

Dissertations

With the capability to transport a large number of passengers, public transit acts as an important role in congestion reduction and energy conservation. However, the quality of transit service, in terms of accessibility and reliability, significantly affects model choices of transit users. Unreliable service will cause extra wait time to passengers because of headway irregularity at stops, as well as extra recovery time built into schedule and additional cost to operators because of ineffective utilization of allocated resources.

This study aims to optimize service planning and improve reliability for a fixed bus route, yielding maximum operator’s profit. Three models are …

Risk Assessment In Narrow Chanel, Xiaoyang Gao

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.

On Quality-Of-Service Provisioning In Ieee 802.11ax Wlans, Der-Jiunn Deng, Shao-Yu Lien, Jordan Lee, Kwang-Cheng Chen

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

A revolutionary effort to seek fundamental improvement of 802.11, known as IEEE 802.11ax, has been approved to deliver the next-generation wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies. In WLANs, medium access control protocol is the key component that enables efficient sharing the common radio channel while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements for multimedia applications. With the new physical layer design and subsequent new medium access control functions under more demands on QoS and user experience, in this paper, we first survey the QoS support in legacy 802.11. Then, we summarize the IEEE 802.11ax standardization activities in progress and present …

Gpu-Arraysort: A Parallel, In-Place Algorithm For Sorting Large Number Of Arrays, Muaaz Awan, Fahad Saeed

Parallel Computing and Data Science Lab Technical Reports

Modern day analytics deals with big datasets from diverse fields. For many application the data is in the form of an array which consists of large number of smaller arrays. Existing techniques focus on sorting a single large array and cannot be used for sorting large number of smaller arrays in an efficient manner. Currently no such algorithm is available which can sort such large number of arrays utilizing the massively parallel architecture of GPU devices. In this paper we present a highly scalable parallel algorithm, called GPU-ArraySort, for sorting large number of arrays using a GPU. Our algorithm performs …

The Lagging State Of Renewable Energy In Kentucky, John Evans

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

It is evident that Kentucky's energy landscape is characterized primarily by coal and, to a lesser degree, natural gas and oil. It seems there's almost no room for renewable energy sources in Kentucky’s energy sector despite plentiful evidence of global climate change caused largely by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Other states are paving the way in the renewable energy industry by investing in solar, wind and geothermal energy among other forms while Kentucky continues to sit back seemingly content with utilizing energy practices that are several decades old. In this project, I will be addressing reasons for the …

The Knowledge-Based Analysis On Medium Resolution Images Of Remote Sensing To Extraction Information Land Use Type Scs-Cn, The Case Study On Grompol Watershed, Puguh Dwi Raharjo, Totok Gunawan, Mohammad Pramono Hadi

Makara Journal of Technology

Remote sensing imagery Landsat-8 is one image that has a good temporal resolution; in addition to the availability of data, this image can be obtained free of charge. Land cover type SCS-CN is part of a unit of land that affects runoff. The use of medium resolution imagery in reducing the SCS-CN land use type is considered relatively difficult, and it yields less good accuracy. Limitations on multispectral classification only rely on facts derived from spectral reflection, so that the two data are the same since different characteristic results are not so good. This study aims to determine the accuracy …

The Effects Of Temperature And Relative Humidity On Exposure Of Legacy And Future Technology Hardware, Under Real Data Center Conditions In An Ansi/Isa Classified G2 Environment, Oluwaseun Michael Awe

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

It is well established that it is safe to operate information technology (IT) equipment in a G1 classified contaminant severity level when operating within specified ASHRAE recommended and allowable limits in an air-side economizer data center. This is basis for which electronic equipment manufacturers provide warranty for their products. IT equipment manufacturers in the US now requires data centers operators to demonstrate that they meet all the specified conditions consistently before fulfilling warranty equipment failure. This places limitation to where data center utilizing air-side economizer can be located. In order to determine the reliability of electronic hardware in higher severity …

A Decision Support System For Traffic Diversion Around Construction Closures, Arezoo Memarian

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

As highway infrastructure ages and road congestion increases, roads need to be expanded and reconstructed. It results in creating many construction sites and work zones on highways, which leads to an unavoidable interruption in normal traffic flows and have resulted in traffic congestion, more vehicle emissions, and traffic safety problems. During roadway construction, when lanes or entire highway sections must be temporarily closed, traffic managers would like to inform motorists of alternative routes around the construction site well in advance of the project location. This would help reduce traffic demand through the construction site, enhance the safety of the workers …

A Holistic Approach To Lowering Latency In Geo-Distributed Web Applications, Shankaranarayanan Puzhavakath Narayanan

Open Access Dissertations

User perceived end-to-end latency of web applications have a huge impact on the revenue for many businesses. The end-to-end latency of web applications is impacted by: (i) User to Application server (front-end) latency which includes downloading and parsing web pages, retrieving further objects requested by javascript executions; and (ii) Application and storage server(back-end) latency which includes retrieving meta-data required for an initial rendering, and subsequent content based on user actions.

Improving the user-perceived performance of web applications is challenging, given their complex operating environments involving user-facing web servers, content distribution network (CDN) servers, multi-tiered application servers, and storage servers. Further, …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

Complex Traffic Network Modeling & Area-Wide Hierarchical Control, Saumya Gupta

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents a novel methodology to divide a traffic region into subregions such that in each subregion a Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) can be used to determine the state of that subregion. The region division is based on the theory of complex networks. We exploit the inherent network characteristics through PageRank centrality algorithm to identify the most significant nodes in the traffic network. We use these significant nodes as the seeds for a Voronoi diagram based partitioning mechanism of the network. A network wide hierarchical control framework is then presented which controls these sub regions individually and the network …

Transportation System And Its Association With Human Health – A Review And Modeling Approach, Fnu Zahed

Masters Theses

Transportation systems constitute of infrastructure, commute modes, land use and other policies. The purpose of transportation is to provide easy access to goods and services. While attaining this purpose, impacts of transportation on human health and well-being have been ignored to some extent. Recently, studies have begun analyzing the impact of transportation systems on quality of life and health disparities. While many studies have discussed the impact of the transportation system on individual factors from health, a very limited number of studies have focused on the impact of multiple factors associated with multiple morbidity and mortality forms. The focus of …

Incorporating A New Class Of Uncertainty In Disaster Relief Logistics Planning, Emre Kirac

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among emergency managers in using Social data in disaster response planning. However, the trustworthiness and reliability of posted information are two of the most significant concerns, because much of the user-generated data is initially not verified. Therefore, a key tradeoff exists for emergency managers when considering whether to incorporate Social data in disaster planning efforts. By considering Social data, a larger number of needs can be identified in a shorter amount of time, potentially enabling a faster response and satisfying a class of demand that might not otherwise be discovered. However, …

Profit Based Simulation Model For The Rail Transportation Industry, Mark Patrick Doran

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Schedules often conflict in the rail transportation industry. Operations managers assign resources and make scheduling decisions with no visibility of the revenue, cost, and profitability characteristics of the route they are manipulating. Transit speed decisions focus on ensuring trains safely reach their destination on time with little regard given to the actual service needs of the customer. Although all customers want on-time deliveries, few actually pay a premium to garner this level of preferential treatment. Operating in this type of environment results in decisions that severely erode profits.

In this dissertation, a simulation model referred to as the Rail Profit …

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For High-Throughput Phenotyping And Agronomic Research, Yeyin Shi, J. Alex Thomasson, Seth C. Murray, N. Ace Pugh, William L. Rooney, Sanaz Shafian, Nithya Rajan, Gregory Rouze, Cristine L. S. Morgan, Haly L. Neely, Aman Rana, Muthu V. Bagavathiannan, James Henrickson, Ezekiel Bowden, John Valasek, Jeff Olsenholler, Michael P. Bishop, Ryan Sheridan, Eric B. Putman, Sorin Popescu, Travis Burks, Dale Cope, Amir Ibrahim, Billy F. Mccutchen, David D. Baltensperger, Robert V. Avant, Jr., Misty Vidrine, Chenghai Yang

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Advances in automation and data science have led agriculturists to seek real-time, high quality, high-volume crop data to accelerate crop improvement through breeding and to optimize agronomic practices. Breeders have recently gained massive data-collection capability in genome sequencing of plants. Faster phenotypic trait data collection and analysis relative to genetic data leads to faster and better selections in crop improvement. Furthermore, faster and higher-resolution crop data collection leads to greater capability for scientists and growers to improve precision-agriculture practices on increasingly larger farms; e.g., site-specific application of water and nutrients. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently gained traction as agricultural …

Development And Assessment Of A Groundwater Sustainability Index In Climatically Diverse Groundwater Irrigated Regions In Nebraska, Maria A. Mulet Jalil

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The aim of this research was to evaluate the impact of regional change in ET on groundwater level changes and the assessment and development of a groundwater sustainability index for climatically diverse regions across Nebraska during 2000-2014. Irrigation in the selected regions is predominantly supplied by groundwater. The hypothesis is that groundwater use can become sustainable if the regional evapotranspiration (ET) is managed so that it equals the ET of vegetation that is native to the region. Site locations were Box Butte, Chase, Dundy, Holt LNNRD and York Counties and 3 ecosystems were evaluated: native vegetation, dryland and irrigated cropping …

Understanding The Relationships Between Sanitation And Health In Nicaragua And Honduras, Through Data Mining Tools, Ginevra Marina Lazerini, Josep Nualart, Sergio Ruiz-Cayuela, Maialen Urbina, Miquel Sànchez Marrè, Karina Gibert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The aim of this work is to analyze water and sanitation supply data from Nicaragua and Honduras by using different data mining tools. The data has been provided by SIASAR (Rural Water and Sanitation Information System), which is a water and sanitation management and information platform created through the joint effort of different Central American Governments and the World Bank. In the study data from a survey performed in all the rural communities in Nicaragua and in a sample of the rural communities in Honduras from 2012 to 2015 is analyzed. Database contains 10206 communities described by 23 numerical variables …