Digital Commons Network^™

Brunswick Me: De-Militarizing The Bnas, Anne Holland, Brett Richardson, Richard Barringer

Planning

Closure of the Brunswick Naval Air Station in 2011 will have profound economic impacts on the entire mid-coast Maine region of Maine, with an estimated loss of 6,500 jobs and $330 million annual income. Throughout the Base Realignment and Closure process, Brunswick, the region, and the State of Maine followed federal rules and developed the federally-funded Brunswick Local Redevelopment Authority (BLRA) to plan for reuse of the 3300 acre base. In its planning process, the BLRA adhered to a number of well thought-out Guiding Principles, including the use of extensive public participation and the consideration of “smart growth” principles and …

Distributed Hydrologic Modeling For Streamflow Prediction At Ungauged Basins, Christina Bandaragoda

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Hydrologic modeling and streamflow prediction of ungauged basins is an unsolved scientific problem as well as a policy-relevant science theme emerging as a major challenge to the hydrologic community. One way to address this problem is to improve hydrologic modeling capability through the use of spatial data and spatially distributed physically based models. This dissertation is composed of three papers focused on 1) the use of spatially distributed hydrologic models with spatially distributed precipitation inputs, 2) advanced multi-objective calibration techniques that estimate parameter uncertainty and use stream gauge and temperature data from multiple locations, and 3) an examination of the …

2008 - The Thirteenth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Thirteenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 14, 2008. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 1, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

When the Sustainable Portland Task Force Report was released in November 2007, under the leadership of Mayor Jim Cohen, Portland Councilor Kevin Donoghue had the idea that students at the Muskie School of Public Service might be able to help implement recommendations from the report. It may have helped that Kevin was himself a graduate of the Community Planning and Development Master’s program at the Muskie School, but it was a good idea nevertheless. He approached Professor Sam Merrill in the CPD program, who spoke with the new Mayor Ed Suslovic about a possible partnership between the City and the …

Real-Time Telemetry Options For Ocean Observing Systems, Bridget Benson, G. Chang, F. Spada, D. Manov, R. Kastner

Electrical Engineering

Ocean observing systems provide a means to monitor oceanic variables on a variety of temporal and spatial scales. Data from ocean observing systems are most useful when they are collected in real-time; real-time data allow the detection of important events as they occur. Various real-time telemetry options exist for transferring data from sea to shore and from the subsurface to the surface. We survey these telemetry options to highlight the research problems associated with subsea to surface to shore networking and include a comparison of existing real-time technologies for three specific ocean observing system network topologies with respect to data …

Incorporation Of Space Syntax Theory In Determining Safe And Efficient Construction Site Layout, Minsuck Cho

Masters Theses

Facility layout is an important to determine a proper arrangement of temporary facilities in a construction site. It significantly impacts productivity and safety of construction. The objectives of layout planning are to minimize travel distance and time, to decrease the facility transportation and setup costs, and to improve site safety. Despite the importance of facility layout, it is often overlooked in the planning phase. Several models have been developed taking some of these factors into consideration; however, construction managers and site planners often regard cost as the most important factor in layout planning and pay less attention to safety and …

Poster Session, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

• Kentucky Water Awareness Month Packet, Ashley Osborne, UK Cooperative Extension Service, ENRI Task Force
• Recent Enhancements to the Kentucky Groundwater-Quality Data Search Engine, Bart Davidson and R. Stephen Fisher, KGS
• Diatom Colonization Patterns and Carbon Stable Isotopic Ratios in Developing Periphyton at Springs of Differing Geologic Origin in Land-Between-the-Lakes, Courtney Snapp and Susan Hendricks, Water Sciences Program, Murray State University
• Seasonal Changes in Stratification and Oxygen Content of a Eutrophic Lake, Wilgreen Lake, Madison County, Kentucky, Jill Hunter and Walter Borowski, Dept of Geography and Geology, EKU
• Water Pioneers Water Quality Program 2007, Stephanie Jenkins, …

Session 2c: Water Quality, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

• Determinations of Bioavailable Fractions in the Assessment of Metals in Big and Little Bayou Creeks……, McCracken County, Kentucky, David J. Price, Dept Biology, UK
• Creation of a Catalog of Environmental Mercury Databases in Kentucky, Caroline Chan and others, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, U of L
• Using Nitrogen Isotopes to Trace Nutrient Inputs to a Eutrophic Lake, Wilgreen Lake, Madison County, Kentucky, Walter Borowski and Theresa Aguiar, Dept of Geography and Geology, EKU
• Using Microbial Distribution and Abundance in a Eutrophic Lake as a Tracer for Nutrient Inputs, Wilgreen Lake, Madison County Kentucky, Theresa …

Proceedings Of 2008 Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

Kentucky Water Resources Annual Symposium

This conference was planned and conducted as part of the state water resources research annual program with the support and collaboration of the Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Kentucky Research Foundation, under Grant Agreement Number 06HQGR0087.

The views and conclusions contained in this document and presented at the symposium are those of the abstract authors and presenters and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government or other symposium organizers and sponsors.

Extending Cfd Modeling To Near-Continuum Flows Using Enhanced Thermophysical Modeling, Abram E. Claycomb

Theses and Dissertations

The constitutive relations found in traditional Navier-Stokes-based computational fluid dynamics solvers are known to be limited in altitude. The presence of nonequilibrium phenomena beyond what these methods are able to predict becomes more prevalent at higher altitudes, or increasing Knudsen number. The bulk viscosity, normally assumed to be zero in most computational fluid dynamics applications, is examined as a means of increasing the range of applicability of computational fluid dynamics. The bulk viscosity model used was from recent calculations available in the literature, from a new anisotropic potential energy surface, and is restricted to temperatures below 2000 K. The normal …

2008 (Spring) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the spring of 2008.

Determining The Surface-To-Air Missile Requirement For Western And Southern Part Of The Turkish Air Defense System, Omer Alkanat

Theses and Dissertations

An air defense system is vital for countries to protect their homelands. Today, air defense systems consist of integrated systems such as early warning radars, fighter aircraft, airborne early warning aircraft and surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. The Turkish air defense system does not have long range SAM systems. Turkey plans to procure SAM systems to protect her borders. This research develops two location optimization models to optimally locate SAM sites to defend specified areas of the nation. One of the models finds the minimum number of SAM sites to cover the specified area; the other finds the maximum coverage for …

Effects Of Climate Change On Energy Production And Use In The United States, Thomas Wilbanks, Vatsal Bhatt, Daniel Bilello, Stanley Bull, James Ekmann, William Horak, Y. Joe Huang, Mark D. Levine, Michael J. Sale, David Schmalzer, Michael J. Scott

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Climate change is expected to have noticeable effects in the United States: a rise in average temperatures in most regions, changes in precipitation amounts and seasonal patterns in many regions, changes in the intensity and pattern of extreme weather events, and sea level rise. Some of these effects have clear implications for energy production and use. For instance, average warming can be expected to increase energy requirements for cooling and reduce energy requirements for warming. Changes in precipitation could affect prospects for hydropower, positively or negatively. Increases in storm intensity could threaten further disruptions of the sorts experienced in 2005 …

Extracting, Representing And Mining Semantic Metadata From Text: Facilitating Knowledge Discovery In Biomedicine, Cartic Ramakrishnan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The information access paradigm offered by most contemporary text information systems is a search-and-sift paradigm where users have to manually glean and aggregate relevant information from the large number of documents that are typically returned in response to keyword queries. Expecting the users to glean and aggregate information has lead to several inadequacies in these information systems. Owing to the size of many text databases, search-and-sift is a very tedious often requiring repeated keyword searches refining or generalizing queries terms. A more serious limitation arises from the lack of automated mechanisms to aggregate content across different documents to discover new …

A Stochastic Simulation Procedure For Selecting Herbicides With Minimum Environmental Impact, Ben D. Giudice, Arash Massoudieh, Xinjiang Huang, Thomas M. Young

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

A mathematical environmental transport model of roadside applied herbicides at the site scale (∼100 m) was stochastically applied using a Monte-Carlo technique to simulate the concentrations of 33 herbicides in stormwater runoff. Field surveys, laboratory sorption data, and literature data were used to generate probability distribution functions for model input parameters to allow extrapolation of the model to the regional scale. Predicted concentrations were compared to EPA acute toxicity end points for aquatic organisms to determine the frequency of potentially toxic outcomes. Results are presented for three geographical regions in California and two highway geometries. For a given herbicide, frequencies …

Technology-Aided Participative Methods In Environmental Assessment: An International Perspective, Ainhoa Gonzalez, Alan Gilmer, Ronan Foley, John Sweeney, John Fry

Articles

Provisions for citizen involvement in the assessment of potential environmental effects of certain plans, programmes and projects are present in current legislation. An international survey revealed that public participation is common practice in European and some other countries worldwide. However, a number of issues are observed to affect public involvement in EIA/SEA processes and expert opinion differs when evaluating the effectiveness of existing participative methods. Results suggest that technology-aided methods can improve traditional participation processes. In particular, GIS has the potential to increase community knowledge and enhance involvement by communicating information more effectively. Variable accessibility to technology and data quality …

Transportation Security Framework For A Medium-Sized City, Ryan Fries, Mashrur Chowdhury, Anne Dunning

Publications

Terrorist attacks have made security preparedness unquestionably necessary in all cities. While major metropolitan areas have long recognized that their global visibility has required strong security operations, many medium-sized cities, specifically those of the U.S. and European Union, now face the need to establish transportation security frameworks for the first time. This paper assesses the resources available to help medium-sized cities begin the task of creating such systems. This assessment presents infrastructure risk assessment tools, identifies infrastructure and funding resources, and creates a process for developing a security framework to connect agencies responsible for transportation security in these metropolitan areas. …

The History Of The Unl Water Center From 1964, Water Center, School Of Natural Resources

Nebraska Water Center: Administrative Materials

Water is an integral part of Nebraska’s economy and well being in a state that depends on an adequate supply for all uses, including agricultural, municipal, industrial, recreational and wildlife habitat.

Nebraska is fortunate with regard to its water supply, having tremendous groundwater reserves which are estimated to be in excess of two billion acrefeet (an acre-foot being enough water to cover one acre of land with a foot of water, or approximately 325,000 gallons), combined with an estimated annual precipitation of 86 million acre-feet and annual average surface water inflows of 1.7 million acre-feet, give the state adequate supplies …

Performance Based Decision System In Determining Post Closure Care (Pcc) Duration In Florida Landfills, Asawari Kulkarni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is an evaluation of Post Closure Care (PCC) duration of landfills using performance based methodology. The post closure care phase begins once the landfill is closed. As required by the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle D, PCC duration for municipal solid waste landfills is 30 years. During the PCC period, the landfill operator/owner is required to conduct monitoring for leachate, landfill gas, and ground-water and maintain the integrity of the cap so that the landfill does not impose a threat to surrounding human health and environment (HH&E). The duration of PCC can be reduced by the director …

Information Systems And Business Education, University Of North Dakota

UND Departmental Histories

This departmental history was written on the occasion of the UND Quasquicentennial in 2008.

Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute Annual Technical Report Fy 2007, Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, University Of Kentucky

KWRRI Annual Technical Reports (USGS’s 104b Grant Program)

The 2007 Annual Technical Report for Kentucky consolidates reporting requirements of the Section 104(b) base grant award into a single document that includes: 1) a synopsis of each student research enhancement project conducted during the period, 2) citations for related publications, reports, and presentations, 3) a description of information transfer activities, 4) a summary of student support during the reporting period, and 5) notable awards and achievements during the year.

Volcanic Activity: Processing Of Observation And Remote Sensing Data (Vapor), Mark Wylie

Reports

The World Bank makes a very clear distinction between disasters and natural phenomena. Natural phenomena are events like volcanic eruptions. A disaster only occurs when the ability of the community to cope with natural phenomenon has been surpassed, causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses. By these definitions, volcanic eruptions do not have to lead to disasters. On November 13, 1985, the second most deadly eruption of the twentieth century occurred in Colombia. Within a few hours of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, 23,000 people were dead because no infrastructure existed to respond to such an …

A Comparative Analysis Of Green Roof Designs Including Depth Of Media, Drainage Layer Materials, And Pollution Control Media, Matt Kelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Population growth has lead to an increase in development and impervious areas in urban settings. Post-development conditions cause several problems for stormwater management such as limited space for stormwater storage systems and the conveyance of pollution picked up by runoff to near by water bodies. Green Roofs with cisterns have been shown to attenuate the peak flow of storm events and reduce the pollution load leaving a site and entering nearby water bodies. The purpose of this research is to expand the available research data on green roofs with cisterns by investigating the water quality and hydrology effects of different …

Vegetation Identification Based On Satellite Imagery, Vamsi K.R. Mantena, Ramu Pedada, Srinivas Jakkula, Yuzhong Shen, Jiang Li, Hamid R. Arabnia (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Automatic vegetation identification plays an important role in many applications including remote sensing and high performance flight simulations. This paper presents a method to automatically identify vegetation based upon satellite imagery. First, we utilize the ISODATA algorithm to cluster pixels in the images where the number of clusters is determined by the algorithm. We then apply morphological operations to the clustered images to smooth the boundaries between clusters and to fill holes inside clusters. After that, we compute six features for each cluster. These six features then go through a feature selection algorithm and three of them are determined to …

Seasonal Adaptation Of Vegetation Color In Satellite Images, Srinivas Jakkula, Vamsi K.R. Mantena, Ramu Pedada, Yuzhong Shen, Jiang Li, Hamid R. Arabnia (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Remote sensing techniques like NDVI (Normal Difference vegetative Index) when applied to phenological variations in aerial images, ascertained the seasonal rise and decline of photosynthetic activity in different seasons, resulting in different color tones of vegetation. The rise and fall of NDVI values decide the biological response, either the green up or brown down [1]. Vegetation in green up period appears with more vegetative vigor and during brown down period it has a dry appearance. This paper proposes a novel method that identifies vegetative patterns in satellite images and then alters vegetation color to simulate seasonal changes based on training …

A Framework To Support Spatial, Temporal And Thematic Analytics Over Semantic Web Data, Matthew Steven Perry

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Spatial and temporal data are critical components in many applications. This is especially true in analytical applications ranging from scientific discovery to national security and criminal investigation. The analytical process often requires uncovering and analyzing complex thematic relationships between disparate people, places and events. Fundamentally new query operators based on the graph structure of Semantic Web data models, such as semantic associations, are proving useful for this purpose. However, these analysis mechanisms are primarily intended for thematic relationships. This dissertation proposes a framework built around the RDF data model for analysis of thematic, spatial and temporal relationships between named entities. …

Energy Efficient Image Video Sensor Networks, Paul Anthony Bender

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Image Video Sensor Networks are emerging applications for sensor network technologies. The relatively large size of the data collected by image video sensors presents new challenges for the sensor network in terms of energy consumption and channel capacity. We address each of these issues through the use of a high density network deployment utilizing some nodes as dedicated relay nodes.

A high density network allows network nodes to reduce their transmission power. This reduction in transmission power allows each node to conserve power and simultaneously increases the potential for spatially concurrent transmissions within the network, resulting in improved network throughputs. …

Reliability-Based Stand-Alone Photovoltaic System Sizing Design- A Case Study, Haifeng Ge, Liqin Ni, Sohrab Asgarpoor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a method for designing a standalone photovoltaic system to improve the load point reliability, extend the operation life, and minimize the design cost. This approach examines the impacts of solar panel sizes, tilt angles and battery volumes toward load point reliability, as well as the expected system life, by using real insolation data in a given location and random load burdens. The reliability evaluation incorporating solar insolation variations and load point uncertainty is performed. Life evaluation of battery is included in this paper with consideration of the battery State of Charge (SoC) history. The Economical analysis to …

Optimal Bus Stop Spacing For Minimizing Transit Operation Cost, Huan Li, Robert L. Bertini

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

With the increasing attention to finance issues relative to transit operation, a bus stop spacing model is generated with the aim at minimizing the operation cost without impact on transit accessibility. Two cost functions are considered in the model including passenger access cost and in-vehicle passenger stopping cost aiming at minimizing total cost. A bus route in Portland, Oregon, USA is examined as an example using Archived Bus Dispatch System (BDS) data provided by TriMet, the regional transit provider for the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. Based on the optimization model, the theoretical optimized bus stop spacing is 930 feet comparing …

A Process Plan For Consensus Building In The Evaluation Of Nsgc & Epscor Native American Outreach Program, Jocelyn S. Nickerson, Brent D. Bowen, Henry R. Lehrer

Publications

The NASA Nebraska Space Grant (NSGC) & EPSCoR Programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha have embarked on a unique educational journey known as the Nebraska Native American Outreach program (NNAOP). The NNAOP’s main objective is to encourage and motivate Native American students to be more competitive in mathematics and science. This program has allowed for a variety of educational and public outreach activities to take place. However, in order to continually provide effective support to Nebraska’s Native American community, NSGC & EPSCoR sought an evaluation technique for the NNAOP. To execute such an evaluation, NSGC organized the first …