Digital Commons Network^™

Urban Governance And Electricity Losses: An Exploration Of Spatial Unevenness In Karachi, Pakistan, Ijlal Naqvi, Ate Poorthuis, Anirudh Govind

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The inadequate supply of electricity in Pakistan disrupts everyday life and hampers industry and business; in this it is an emblematic indicator of the poor quality of urban governance pervasive in much of the Global South. We focus on the governance of Karachi’s electricity distribution system, and its spatial unevenness across this sprawling metropolis of 15 million residents which encompasses huge informal settlements alongside upscale housing and commercial plazas. Using a dataset with granular, neighborhood-level electricity data, we apply spatial and statistical modeling techniques to understand how transmission and distribution losses, i.e., the utility’s ability to bill for the electricity …

Holistic Prediction For Public Transport Crowd Flows: A Spatio Dynamic Graph Network Approach, Bingjie He, Shukai Li, Chen Zhang, Baihua Zheng, Fugee Tsung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper targets at predicting public transport in-out crowd flows of different regions together with transit flows between them in a city. The main challenge is the complex dynamic spatial correlation of crowd flows of different regions and origin-destination (OD) paths. Different from road traffic flows whose spatial correlations mainly depend on geographical distance, public transport crowd flows significantly relate to the region’s functionality and connectivity in the public transport network. Furthermore, influenced by commuters’ time-varying travel patterns, the spatial correlations change over time. Though there exist many works focusing on either predicting in-out flows or OD transit flows of …

Redlining, Neighborhood Decline, And Violence: How Discriminatory Government Policies Created Violent American Inner Cities, Richard Powell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background – The practice of redlining involved the US government categorizing certain communities, often those inhabited by people of color, as too risky for private investment. Because of the resulting disinvestment, many of those neighborhoods deteriorated throughout the latter half of the 20^th Century. It also fostered conditions in redlined neighborhoods, such as high concentrations of poverty, joblessness, and racial segregation that the criminological theory of Social Disorganization identifies as correlates of violent crime.

Research Objectives – This study sought to determine whether redlining influenced levels of social disorganization operationalized as high levels of poverty, unemployment, family disruption, and …

The Efficacy Of Emergency Management Certification Training In Georgia Through The Lived Experiences Of Local Emergency Managers, Jack Robby Westbrook

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenology qualitative inquiry was to understand the efficacy of the Basic Georgia Certified Emergency Manager Program curriculum on preparing local emergency managers in each of Georgia’s eight geographical regions for their role. Emergency managers are professionals tasked with helping communities and organizations to anticipate all hazards and undertake measures to deal with disasters (McEntire 200 7). Demands placed on local emergency managers have increased significantly since the turn of the century. Between 2002 and 2020, the number and frequency of disasters have dramatically increased, and Georgia's social and economic demographics have undergone significant changes, presenting …

Cold Turkey: Will The Recent Freeze In Turkish Nato Relations Spiral Into A Bigger Problem?, Ashlyn Cowell, Reagan Nelson, Paul Prentice, Brent Schuliger, Nathan Waite

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Situated in a strategic location bridging the gap between Europe and Asia, Turkey has been a valuable member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for decades. However, recent events have inflamed underlying tensions between Turkey and other NATO member states. This research seeks to determine if the escalation will cause Turkey to withdraw from the alliance within the next five years. In order to accomplish this, our team conducted both quantitative and qualitative research on current and historical economic, political, and cultural conditions driving the conflict. Following this research, our team synthesized the data using structured analytic techniques (SATs) …

Homelessness Estimates In The Mountain West, 2020, Saha Salahi, Vanessa Booth, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet summarizes a recent report titled, “The 2020 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress,” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. By synthesizing homelessness vulnerability categories to the Mountain West states, this report offers data for Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

Nebraska State And Local Population Trends, David J. Drozd

CPAR Presents: A Data and Research Series for Community Impact

Explore population trends during the 2010s for Nebraska’s Congressional and Legislative Districts, including birth and death rates, aging of the population, rising diversity, brain drain, changes in housing and household composition.

Research On The Port Competitiveness Of Ports Participating In The Belt And Road Initiative, Yue Hu

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Research On The International Linkage Of Chinese Oil Tanker Transport Market Based On The Theory Of New Economic Geospatial, Cheng Miao

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Investment Value Analysis Of China's Participation In Port Projects Along The 21st Century Maritime, Xin Zhang

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Conditions For Competition: Assessing The Competitive Dynamics Of Us Counties, Josh Mitchell, Lashonda Stewart, John Hamman, Steve Modlin

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

Research in public policy examines specific theories that drive policy adoption among jurisdictions. One of these theories, referred to in the economics literature as economic competition (or strategic competition), posits that local governments may engage in competition with one another because of the potential interjurisdictional economic spillover effects of certain fiscal policies. In this article, sales tax rates, a common, yet overlooked, policy instrument in the policy literature is examined to determine if sales tax rates drive competition among counties. Testing several hypotheses, this study finds that sales tax rate increases can exacerbate competition among counties. However, this relationship is …

The Impact Of Climate Change On Security In The Middle East: A Review Of The Literature, Yara El-Khatib

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The Middle East, which is already plagued by a series of security threats–such as terrorism, religious conflict, political instability, and more–is also an increasingly water-scarce and climate-vulnerable region. In this review, I examine the most recent and relevant literature on the debate of: how will, and how has climate change affected security in the Middle East? I examine five articles and one book that tackle this question, and I organize these sources based on the extent to which they argue that climate change is a determinant of insecurity in the region. While a few authors argue that climate change has …

Evaluating Sustainable Frameworks And The Interrelationality Of The Sustainable Development Goals, Lawrence Stephen Early Iv

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Sustainable development in the 21st century has utilized an array of metrics to evaluate the success of cities and nations in three conventionally defined pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. Inspired by Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line, the success of nations dedicated to sustainable development has been characterized by targets achieved within these pillars, as most recently and cohesively defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper argues that these pillars (a) fail to successfully bridge the gap between sustainable targets and the principles guiding sustainability; (b) engenders the consequence of preferential “weight” being attributed unevenly between …

Adoption And Use Of E-Grocery Shopping In The Context Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Implications For Transport Systems And Beyond, Gabriella Abou-Zeid

Dissertations and Theses

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted travel for in-person shopping, commute trips, global supply chains, and food business operations. Previously mundane tasks, like shopping for food and household items, became markedly different as new social distancing and mask guidelines were put in place to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Concurrently, e-commerce sales in the U.S. skyrocketed. E-grocery pickup and delivery services saw unprecedented expansions. The adoption and use of e-grocery services have implications for equity and mobility, although the nature of the relationship of e-grocery to the latter is still unclear. Enhancing our understanding of the drivers of (and …

How Did Homelessness Change During The Great Recession And Recovery?, Jenny Schuetz, Matthew Ring

Policy Briefs and Reports

Job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated housing insecurity among low-income renters over the past year. Federal, state, and local policymakers have created temporary measures to help reduce displacement among people who have lost their jobs, but there is considerable uncertainty about what will happen when these temporary measures end. To gain insight into how homelessness changes over macroeconomic cycles, we examine changes in homelessness rates from 2007 to 2020. Our analysis focuses on four metro areas that were particularly hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Riverside. Overall homelessness rates declined in all metros …

Review Of Comparing Cultures And Religions In A Postmodern World, Januarius J. Asongu

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Central Plaza Recommendations, Jim Speer

2021 Spring Reports (Sullivan)

The City of Sullivan intends to leverage the new Central Plaza and Civic Center as key to the city. The Quality of Life plan indicates a desire to construct appealing aspects to Central Plaza. ENVI460 students were tasked with providing recommendations for a water feature and other sustainable features like a green roofing. This report reflects students’ recommendations for a sustainable water feature at Central Plaza.

Findings Report: Virtual Workshop On ‘Resilient Supply Of Critical Minerals’, Marek Locmelis, Angela D. Lueking, Michael S. Moats, Kwame Awuah-Offei, Lana Z. Alagha, Mark W. Fitch, Alanna Krolikowski, Shelby Clark

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Executive Summary
On August 2-3, 2021, the Thomas J. O’Keefe Institute for Sustainable Supply of Strategic Minerals at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) hosted the NSF-funded virtual workshop ‘Resilient Supply of Critical Minerals’. The workshop was convened via Zoom and attracted 158 registrants, including 108 registrants from academia (61 students), 30 registrants from government agencies, and 20 registrants from the private sector. Four topical sessions were covered:

A. Mineral Exploration and Source Diversification.
B. Supply Chain and Policy Issues.
C. Improving Mineral Recycling and Reprocessing Technologies.
D. Technological Alternatives to Critical Minerals.

Each topical session was composed …

2021 Census Results | Local Population Counts And Redistricting Data, David J. Drozd

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of The Potential Of Self-Incorporation As A Solution To Roadway Maintenance In Texas Colonias, Moise Dzogolo

Public Affairs Theses - Archive

Colonias are communities that lack basic infrastructures such as water, sewer, and paved roads and that are located within 100 miles of the US-Mexico border. They are generally found in unincorporated areas, and the literature, as well as policy makers, have extensively called for their annexation as a solution to solve the infrastructure issues. This paper examines selfincorporation as an alternative to annexations as cities have consistently avoided colonias when they expand through annexation. The paper has two focuses. The first one consists of analyzing the economic and social aspects of a colonia to determine whether they resemble the ones …

The Economic And Fiscal Impacts Of Immigrant Populations On Nebraska And Omaha: Evidence From The 2015-2019 American Community Survey, Christopher S. Decker Ph.D.

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

Few public policy topics generate as much impassioned debate as immigration. While arguments abound regarding the motivations for and efficacy of these policies, there are nonetheless many possible consequences of their implementation. This study focuses on only one specific question: What is the economic impact of immigrants on job creation and economic growth and development in Nebraska and the Omaha Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). To that end, using the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) data for the sample periods 2015 to 2019, this report quantitatively assesses this economic impact. While much of the focus in this study is …

A Deep Ensemble Method For Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: A Case Study On Air Traffic Control, Supriyo Ghosh, Sean Laguna, Laura Wynter, Laura Wynter, Hasan Poonawala

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Reinforcement learning (RL), a promising framework for data-driven decision making in an uncertain environment, has successfully been applied in many real-world operation and control problems. However, the application of RL in a large-scale decentralized multi-agent environment remains a challenging problem due to the partial observability and limited communications between agents. In this paper, we develop a model-based kernel RL approach and a model-free deep RL approach for learning a decentralized, shared policy among homogeneous agents. By leveraging the strengths of both these methods, we further propose a novel deep ensemble multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) method that efficiently learns to arbitrate …

How Do Environmental Factors Affect Drivers’ Gaze And Head Movements?, Arash Tavakoli, Vahid Balali, Arsalan Heydarian

Mineta Transportation Institute

Studies have shown that environmental factors affect driving behaviors. For instance, weather conditions and the presence of a passenger have been shown to significantly affect the speed of the driver. As one of the important measures of driving behavior is the gaze and head movements of the driver, such metrics can be potentially used towards understanding the effects of environmental factors on the driver’s behavior in real-time. In this study, using a naturalistic study platform, videos have been collected from six participants for more than four weeks of a fully naturalistic driving scenario. The videos of both the participants’ faces …

Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of The Roadside Transportation Related Air Quality (Startraq) And Neighborhood Characterization, Jaymin Kwon, Yushin Ahn, Steve Chung

Mineta Transportation Institute

To promote active transportation modes (such as bike ride and walking), and to create safer communities for easier access to transit, it is essential to provide consolidated data-driven transportation information to the public. The relevant and timely information from data facilitates the improvement of decision-making processes for the establishment of public policy and urban planning for sustainable growth, and for promoting public health in the region. For the characterization of the spatial variation of transportation-emitted air pollution in the Fresno/Clovis neighborhood in California, various species of particulate matters emitted from traffic sources were measured using real-time monitors and GPS loggers …

A Portrait Of Latino Children: The Gap With Non-Latinos In Massachusetts, Phillip Granberry, Alejandro Alvarez, Vishakha Agarwal, Fabián Torres-Ardila, Gaston Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gastón Institute Publications

Latino children are one of Massachusetts' fastest-growing segments of the population. However, evidence suggests that the social and economic context in which Latino children live does not adequately support their development and overall wellbeing. Nearly a third of Latino children in the United States live in very low-opportunity neighborhoods as defined by a scale of educational, health, environmental, and socioeconomic outcomes. Compared to non-Latino children, Latinos are more likely to grow up in households below the federal poverty threshold and less likely to have a mother with at least a Bachelor's degree. The research included in this report aims to …

Food Insecurity In Detroit: Exploring The Relationship Between Patient-Reported Food Insecurity And Proximity To Healthful Grocery Stores, Sara Santarossa, Alex B. Hill, Alexandra R. Sitarik, Mackenzie Taylor, Susan Hawkins, Katherine Scher, Aaron Sohaski, Mohammed Baseer, Rachael Dombrowski, Alexander Plum, Christine Lm Joseph

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

Objective:
The objective of the current study was to determine if patients of a large health care system in Detroit who self-identify as food insecure live further away from healthy grocery stores compared with food secure patients. Second, we explored whether food insecurity and distance to healthy grocery stores are related to ecological measures of vehicle availability in the area of residence.

Design:
A secondary data analysis that uses baseline data from a pilot intervention/feasibility study.

Setting:
Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Participants:
Patients of Henry Ford Health System were screened for food insecurity to determine eligibility for a pilot intervention/feasibility study …

Terrorism Hazard And Infrastructure Projects: The Moderating Role Of Home Experience And Institutions, Alfredo Jiménez, Nathaniel C. Lupton

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This paper analyzes the impact of terrorism hazard on the performance of private participation infrastructure projects. Applying transaction cost theory, we hypothesize that terrorism hazard has a negative relationship with infrastructure project completion, and that host government accountability and investor experience with terrorism hazard have opposing impacts on this relationship. Host government accountability, we argue, produces higher indirect costs of managing terrorism hazard, which reduces investor confidence, and reinforces the negative relationship between terrorism hazard and the probability of satisfactory project completion. Conversely, investor’s experience with terrorism hazard increases investor confidence and hence partially mitigates the negative consequences of terrorism …

Conducting Field Work With Microfinance Programs’ Participants In A Non-Western Setting: A Reflexive Account, Mohammad Shahjahan Chowdhury

The Qualitative Report

While volumes of procedural guidelines are available on how to conduct fieldwork, in practice a researcher encounters various challenges and dilemmas in the field. This paper presents a holistic view of the puzzles this researcher encountered in gaining access, negotiating positionality, application of the pre-determined methodology, and ensuring ethics during his fieldwork with microfinance program participants in a non-Western setting. This paper contributes to the fieldwork literature by enhancing a researcher’s understanding of the unanticipated challenges.

Environmental Perception In Colombia's Páramo Protected Areas, Juliana Delgado

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the gap between farmers' environmental perceptions in Téquita, a small village in Colombia, and the definition of protected areas has led to a conflict for the use of natural resources. I examine if the protected area's policies have dealt with the social and ecological issues in the páramos and recognized the social construction of the landscape, farmers' identities, and their interpretations about work and land. The case study focuses on Güina High Mountain in the Guantiva-La Rusia páramo complex, which recently the Colombian government declared as a protected area. In light of anthropologist Tim Ingold's meaning of …

Quantifying The Representation Of Plant Communities In The Protected Areas Of The U.S.: An Analysis Based On The U.S. National Vegetation Classification Groups, Alexa Mckerrow, Anne Davidson, Matthew Rubino, Don Faber-Langendoen, Daryn Dockter

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

Plant communities represent the integration of ecological and biological processes and they serve as an important component for the protection of biological diversity. To measure progress towards protection of ecosystems in the United States for various stated conservation targets we need datasets at the appropriate thematic, spatial, and temporal resolution. The recent release of the LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Data Products (2016 Remap) with a legend based on U.S. National Vegetation Classification allowed us to assess the conservation status of plant communities of the U.S. The map legend is based on the Group level of the USNVC, which characterizes the regional …