Digital Commons Network^™

Robust And Uncertainty-Aware Software Vulnerability Detection Using Bayesian Recurrent Neural Networks, Orune Aminul

Theses and Dissertations

Software systems are prone to code defects or vulnerabilities, resulting in several cyberattacks such as hacking, identity breach and information leakage leading to system failure. Vulnerabilities in software systems have severe societal implications, including threats to public safety, financial damage, and even risks to national security. Identifying and mitigating software vulnerabilities is critical to protect organizations and societies from potential threats. Machine learning algorithms have been employed to detect and classify potential vulnerabilities in software source code automatically. However, these algorithms are not robust to noise or malicious attacks and cannot quantify uncertainty in the model’s output. Quantifying uncertainty in …

Fiber-Based Seismic Damage And Collapse Assessment Of Reinforced Concrete Single-Column Pier-Supported Bridges Using Damage Indices, Yu-Fu Ko, Jessica Gonzalez

Mineta Transportation Institute

Near-fault earthquakes can have major effects on transportation systems due to the structural damage they impose on bridges. Therefore, it is imperative to assess the seismic damage of bridges appropriately, and this research focuses on reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. This research advances the seismic performance assessment of RC single-column pier-supported bridges with flexural failure under near-fault ground motion by use of ductility coefficients and damage indices. The methodology included modeling fiber-based nonlinear beam-column elements to simulate the damage development process of RC bridge piers under earthquake loadings, considering the global buckling of longitudinal steel bars, examining the cracking and spalling …

Adaptive Gps Antenna Array Beam Nulling Effectiveness Under Varying Antenna Element Positioning, Aadesh Neel

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Global Positioning System (GPS) is an essential part of modern life but is susceptible to same frequency jamming. GPS jamming can add excessive noise to a received low power signal and have the capability to change or completely distort information being sent through the GPS signal. Adaptive antenna arrays have long since been a solution to mitigating GPS jamming via beamnulling algorithms. However, there is little research on the effectiveness of these beamnulling algorithms under varying element positioning. In this work, an adaptive antenna array, consisting of Right-Hand Circularly Polarized (RHCP) nearly square GPS antenna elements, was constructed and tested …

Northrop Grumman Collaboration Project, Nikkia Psomas-Sheridan, Santiago Robles, Ben Elkayam, Benjamin Ulfhake

Mechanical Engineering

The Northrop Grumman Collaboration Project (NGCP) is a collaborative club project sponsored by Northrop Grumman for the students of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (CPSLO) and Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) to create a fleet of vehicles to aid in the simulated rescue of stranded hiker. The CPSLO club is responsible for delivering an autonomous flight vehicle that can suppress a fire and retrieve a payload. Mechanical Design Team of the CPSLO team was responsible for the design of the frame, electronics housing, and payload and fire suppression systems.

Transportation Infrastructure Needs In The Central Appalachian Basin To Support Core-Cm, Bryan Gibson, Robin Baskette, Doug Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

With demand for coal from the Central Appalachian Basin waning, coalitions and organizations throughout the region have sought to diversify the region’s economy. However, the potential exists to use coal and coal-based resources to produce new and innovative products and kick start economic growth in the basin. This includes carbon ore, rare earth and critical minerals (CORE-CM), other minerals, and waste streams. If the region is to take advantage of these economic growth opportunities, transportation infrastructure must be developed and maintained in a sound condition. Reliable roads, highways, and bridges provide rural areas with access to capital, labor, and markets …

Resilience Model For Teams Of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uav) Executing Surveillance Missions, Robert Koeneke

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Teams of low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained acceptance as an alternative for cooperatively searching and surveilling terrains. These UAVs are assembled with low-reliability components, so unit failures are possible. Losing UAVs to failures decreases the team's coverage efficiency and impacts communication, given that UAVs are also communication nodes. Such is the case of a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET), where the failure of a communication node may isolate segments of the network covering several nodes. The main goal of this study is to develop a resilience model that would allow us to analyze the effects of individual UAV …

Cost-Effective Strengthening And Automated Inspection Of One-Way Precast Reinforced Concrete Flat Slab Bridges In South Carolina, Laxman Kc

Theses and Dissertations

In South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) manages 90% of the state's inventory of 9,400 bridges built in the 1950s. With more than 30% of its bridges having been under-designed and experiencing decades of service deterioration, the implications for public safety, the economy, and the transportation system are significant. To prioritize safety and address these concerns, SCDOT is in the process of conducting thorough inspections of bridges, load ratings, and exploring cost-effective and practical methods to strengthen the bridges and reduce load postings. This study is a part of the multi-year research investigation supported by the SCDOT. …

Developing Sustainable Smart Cities To Improve Citizen's Quality Of Life And Well-Being, Mohammed Ali Berawi, Mustika Sari, Perdana Miraj

CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development

In the wake of urbanization and environmental challenges, cities nowadays face multiple issues related to uncontrolled urban growth, insufficient public infrastructure, and inadequate citizen participation in the management of public affairs. Sustainable urban development cannot be achieved without addressing these challenges, necessitating a paradigm shift in urban space management. Therefore, urban development needs to shift traditional concepts and focus on incorporating smart and environmentally friendly practices that allow cities to adapt and implement intelligent solutions to meet the needs of their citizens while continuing to protect the environment.

To achieve sustainability, cities should prioritize a balance between economic activity, population …

Recent Developments In Timber Design & Its Impact On Carbon Emissions, Raquel Jackson

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores recent developments in timber building designs and its potential towards reducing carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions are a growing issue worldwide as urbanization and industrialization continues to increase. The rising concentration of carbon dioxide emissions pose significant concerns towards public welfare and environmental health. Despite current methods to reduce greenhouse gasses, carbon emissions remain difficult to reduce from steel and concrete industries. Increasing timber use in building design is a possible solution. Increasing more timber in building design can help reduce carbon emissions due to the carbon-absorbing properties of the construction material. Timber as a construction material …

The Use Of Point Cloud Data To Support Concrete Bridge Deck Condition Assessment, Issa Nidal Al Shaini

Theses and Dissertations

Bridge deck condition assessments are typically conducted through visual physical inspections, utilizing traditional contact sensors for Non-Destructive Evaluation techniques such as hammer Sounding and chain dragging which require the expertise of trained inspectors. However, the accuracy of these inspections is limited by the level of deterioration of the bridge deck, as the ability of the inspectors is proportional to the apparent level of damage. This study aims to improve the accuracy of bridge deck inspection processes by utilizing non-destructive evaluation techniques, including the analysis of point cloud data gathered via Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as a geometry-capturing tool. The …

Drop Test Release Mechanism, Sophie M. Getty, Matthew A. Tichenor, Nash W. Levy, Connor D. Dilloughery

Mechanical Engineering

Many boxes for shipping undergo drop tests by the manufacturer to ensure their durability. Certain constraints are necessary to successfully carry out these tests such as not damaging the box prior to the drop and maintaining consistency throughout every drop.

Our team has designed a Drop Test Release Mechanism that addresses these constraints. It provides repetitive drops for different objects that vary in shape and size such as small electronics or parts. This device utilizes a soft-clamping mechanism that can release an object with minimal force applied onto it prior to drop. A frame made of 80/20 was designed to …

Pavement Condition Survey Using Drone Technology, Lerose Lane, Dingxin Cheng

Mineta Transportation Institute

Timely repairs of pavement defects are essential in protecting both public road and highway systems. Identification of pavement distresses is necessary for planning pavement repairs. This has previously been performed by engineers surveying the roadways visually in the field. As drone usage has progressed, it has become clear that drones are a valuable tool to enhance visual documentation, improve project communication, and provide various data for processing. The use of drone technology has improved both the speed and accuracy of capturing data. Available software has allowed the data to be processed and analyzed in an office environment. This report summarizes …

Exploring Senior Chemical Engineering Students’ Approach To Process Safety Decision Making, Jeffrey Saunders Stransky

Theses and Dissertations

Despite investments in chemical process safety education, evidence suggests that engineers’ decision making may contribute to process safety incidents. Currently, limited educational endeavors in process safety decision making exist, raising the need for a better understanding of how to prepare chemical engineering students for industry decisions. This dissertation fortifies current process safety education through three studies involving senior chemical engineering students. Study One developed the Engineering Process Safety Research Instrument (EPSRI) through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Educators may use the EPSRI to evaluate their students’ moral development. Study Two evaluated a digital process safety game, Contents Under Pressure, on …

Reinforcement Learning-Based Resilience And Decision Making In Cyber-Physical Systems, Fisayo Sangoleye

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) transform how humans interact with technology by integrating sensing, computation, networking, and control with physical processes to facilitate smart services and innovative applications in our environments. Recent advances in CPS have led to rapid growth in the amount of information constantly generated by people, systems, and processes. Most of this information, however, is underutilized due to the lack of efficient information utilization and decision-making techniques. Also, the increasing interconnectivity of CPSs presents security risks that, if left unaddressed, could be highly disruptive to systems, processes, and economies. In this dissertation, we present a study and proposal of …

Incentives To Learn: A Location-Based Federated Learning Model, Ryan Kilpatrick-Morrison Brown

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Federated Learning (FL) effectiveness depends, among others, on the quality and quantity of the training data and process realized at the end computing nodes. In this paper, we introduce a novel location-based federated learning model, enabled by a low-cost and fast deployable Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) - based approach that allows to accurately determine the distributed computing nodes’ positions. Furthermore, in order to train a global model to support different types of smart city applications, while considering two types of servers, offering a prime and common service, respectively, under different costs, the proposed location-based FL model is complemented by an …

Advancements In Geospatial Monitoring Of Structures, Jordan Keith Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

The need for advancements in geospatial monitoring of structures has evolved naturally as structures have become larger, more complex, and technology has continued to rapidly develop. Greater building heights generally lead to greater challenges for surveyors, limiting the practical use of traditional measurement methods. For this reason, a new complimentary method was developed and implemented to support elevation monitoring activities during construction of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, California. While some studies have explored the use of strain gauges to monitor strain development within individual members, the primary contribution of this work is that it presents a practical and …

Three-Dimensional Structural Analysis Of Temple 16 And Rosalila At Copan Ruinas, Luis Tuarez

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Temple 16 is an ancient Maya structure located at the heart of the Copán Ruinas Acropolis in Western Honduras. Temple 16 contains several earlier structures within it that were built on top of each other throughout Copán’s history. One of these earlier structures, Rosalila, is one of the most culturally significant structures within the Acropolis due to its preservation. An intricate series of archeological tunnels have been excavated throughout Temple 16 to allow for its study. However, significant cracking has been observed within Rosalila and several tunnels have experienced partial collapse. This not only poses a life safety issue for …

Enabling Joint Sensing And Communication For Vehicle-To-Everything Networks, Mohammad Alaneed

ETD Archive

This thesis investigates the challenges and opportunities in designing and implementing joint sensing and communication (JSC) systems in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) environments. This emerging concept in vehicular communication connects vehicles to other vehicles, infrastructure, networks, and pedestrians in a smart transportation environment. To address these challenges and seize these opportunities, a new development model is proposed. The primary objective of this work is to enhance the overall performance of the system while leveraging synergies between sensing and communication tasks. To achieve this, advanced methodologies such as the smooth-MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classifcation) algorithm for Angle of Arrival (AoA) estimation, robust beamforming techniques …

Dynamic Scene Understanding: Pedestrian Tracking From Aerial Devices., Abdelhamid Bouzid

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) is the problem that involves following the trajectory of multiple objects in a sequence, generally a video. Pedestrians are among the most interesting subjects to track and recognize for many purposes such as surveillance, and safety. In the recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) have been viewed as a viable option for monitoring public areas, as they provide a low-cost method of data collection while covering large and difficult-to-reach areas. In this thesis, we present an online pedestrian tracking and re-identification from aerial devices framework. This framework is based on learning a compact directional statistic distribution …

Fiscal Year 2021 Fhwa-536 Report For The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Doug Kreis, Candice Wallace, Bryan Gibson, Sarah Mccormack

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

No abstract provided.

Student Barriers To Taking The Fundamentals Of Engineering Exam, Cornelius Walker

All Theses

The primary goal of the thesis was to identify barriers that hinder students from taking the Fundamental of Engineering (FE) exam. The secondary goals were to determine the most prevalent barriers and compare the difference in knowledge about the FE between senior and sophomore students. The FE exam is a computer-based exam with questions based on undergraduate-level courses and is an early step in the process of becoming a professional engineer. Data for the thesis came from interviews and surveys. Interviews were done by twenty seniors, while surveys were given to forty-one senior and eighty-six sophomore civil engineering students. Interviews …

High-Level Requirements For Conceptual Design Of Bridge Deflection Measurement System Using Model-Based Systems Engineering, Mariana Villalabeitia Arenas

Theses and Dissertations

Bridges are essential in the infrastructure transportation system. Repairs and maintenance are the key activities to keep them safe for use. Over the years, the evolution of technology has been applied to improve the way bridges are designed, built, monitored, inspected, and repaired. Nevertheless, there is still a gap between the research efforts and the application of this knowledge in the practical field of bridge inspections. Model-based Systems Engineering is a formalized methodology in the system design that is centered around the model throughout all the life cycle stages of a system, supporting the requirements, design, analysis, verification, and validation …

Evaluation Of Human Mobility From Crowd-Sourced Cellular Data, Sasa Knezevic

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding patterns of human mobility plays a vital role in urban planning, traffic management, disease control, environmental impact evaluation, provisioning of services by both public and private enterprise and other areas of human activity. In this thesis, the human mobility patterns are studied using crowd sourced cellular data. The study characterizes human mobility through a meaningful set of mobility parameters. Each parameter is clearly defined, extracted from the available data, and described using statistical modeling tools. The parameters are evaluated at different time scales. It has been determined that despite its apparent randomness on the individual level, human mobility on …

Bridging The Gap Between Public Organizaions And Cybersecurity, Christopher Boutros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Cyberattacks are a major problem for public organizations across the nation, and unfortunately for them, the frequency of these attacks is constantly growing. This project used a case study approach to explore the types of cybersecurity public organization agencies face and how those crimes can be mitigated. The goal of this paper is to understand how public organization agencies have prepared for cyberattacks and discuss additional suggestions to improve their current systems with the current research available This research provides an analysis of current cyber security systems, new technologies that can be implemented, roadblocks public agencies face before and during …

Human Suspicious Activity Detection, Nilamben Bhuva

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The detection of suspicious human activity is a crucial aspect of ensuring public safety and security. The aim is to identify suspicious behavior. To accomplish this, we employ the LRCN, a long-term recurrent convolutional network, to detect anomalous activity. It is important to consider the temporal data of the video when classifying suspicious behavior, and the framework uses a combination of CNNs and RNNs to analyze video frames and extract relevant features. The key milestones of this project include conducting research, collecting and pre-processing data, designing and training the model, and evaluating its performance. The resulting detection system can accurately …

Vanet Applications Under Loss Scenarios & Evolving Wireless Technology, Adil Alsuhaim

All Dissertations

In this work we study the impact of wireless network impairment on the performance of VANET applications such as Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), and other VANET applications that periodically broadcast messages. We also study the future of VANET application in light of the evolution of radio access technologies (RAT) that are used to exchange messages. Previous work in the literature proposed fallback strategies that utilizes on-board sensors to recover in case of wireless network impairment, those methods assume a fixed time headway value, and do not achieve string stability. In this work, we study the string stability of a …

Locating Low Head Dams Using A Deep Learning Model In Arcgis Pro With Aerial Imagery, Caitlin R. Arnold

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Low Head Dams are man-made structures that span the width of a river and allow water to flow over them. Although these structures vary in age and original purpose, some pose a life-threatening danger when recreationalists are entrapped in the reverse current at the toe. Despite these dangerous structures causing many drowning deaths in the USA each year, most low head dams do not have safety regulations and remain unknown to those charged with dam and public safety. Thus, to improve public safety at these structures, the first step is to fully inventory low head dams, so that subsequent efforts …

Overview Of The Application Of Remote Sensing In Effective Monitoring Of Water Quality Parameters, Godson Ebenezer Adjovu, Haroon Stephen, David James, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

This study provides an overview of the techniques, shortcomings, and strengths of remote sensing (RS) applications in the effective retrieval and monitoring of water quality parameters (WQPs) such as chlorophyll-a concentration, turbidity, total suspended solids, colored dissolved organic matter, total dissolved solids among others. To be effectively retrieved by RS, these WQPs are categorized as optically active or inactive based on their influence on the optical characteristics measured by RS sensors. RS applications offer the opportunity for decisionmakers to quantify and monitor WQPs on a spatiotemporal scale effectively. The use of RS for water quality monitoring has been explored in …

Planning And Evaluation For Floyd County Veterans Treatment Court, Johnathon Carmack, Lisa Shannon, Shira Birdwhistell

2023 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The Floyd County Veterans Treatment Court Evaluation began with a comprehensive literature review of recent peer reviewed articles using the Morehead State University Camden Carroll Library online database Fourteen peer reviewed articles were selected based on their relevance to Veterans Treatment Court.

Pedestrian Bridge For Discovery & Innovation, Matthew Hale, Dylan Stegman, Jake Porter

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

A new pedestrian bridge was designed adjacent to the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose spanning across the Guadalupe River in the Downtown San Jose area. This design includes structural, geotechnical, and construction components. The architectural aspects of the bridge include two intertwined mass timber arches, galvanized steel cables, and a deck consisting of wide flange I-beams and a proprietary structural glass deck system. These features allow the bridge to seamlessly integrate into the surrounding environment as well as expose structural components of a pedestrian bridge that would otherwise be covered by a traditional bridge deck. All disciplinary components of …