Digital Commons Network^™

Distribution And Ecological Function Of Pacific Lamprey In The San Luis Obispo Creek Watershed, Parker Kalan

Master's Theses

Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) is an endemic species to coastal watersheds along the Pacific Rim in North America and Asia. The species' geographic distribution is retracting and has not been mapped precisely, and the ability for the species to provide ecosystem services, such as water filtration, for supporting watershed management has not been tested. The San Luis Obispo Creek watershed, California, USA is at the southern end of Pacific lamprey’s retracting distribution, and the San Luis Obispo watershed is impacted by degraded water quality, making investigation of Pacific lamprey in the San Luis Obispo Creek watershed of direct …

Wildfire Risk Assessment Using Convolutional Neural Networks And Modis Climate Data, Sean F. Nesbit

Master's Theses

Wildfires burn millions of acres of land each year leading to the destruction of homes and wildland ecosystems while costing governments billions in funding. As climate change intensifies drought volatility across the Western United States, wildfires are likely to become increasingly severe. Wildfire risk assessment and hazard maps are currently employed by fire services, but can often be outdated. This paper introduces an image-based dataset using climate and wildfire data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The dataset consists of 32 climate and topographical layers captured across 0.1 deg by 0.1 deg tiled regions in California and Nevada between …

Evaluation Of Automatic Text Summarization Using Synthetic Facts, Jaewook Ahn

Master's Theses

Automatic text summarization has achieved remarkable success with the development of deep neural networks and the availability of standardized benchmark datasets. It can generate fluent, human-like summaries. However, the unreliability of the existing evaluation metrics hinders its practical usage and slows down its progress. To address this issue, we propose an automatic reference-less text summarization evaluation system with dynamically generated synthetic facts. We hypothesize that if a system guarantees a summary that has all the facts that are 100% known in the synthetic document, it can provide natural interpretability and high feasibility in measuring factual consistency and comprehensiveness. To our …

Design Of An Automotive Iot Device To Improve Driver Fault Detection Through Road Class Estimation, Matt Murray

Master's Theses

Unsafe driver habits pose a serious threat to all vehicles on the road. This thesis outlines the development of an automotive IoT device capable of monitoring and reporting adverse driver habits to mitigate the occurrence of unsafe practices. The driver habits targeted are harsh braking, harsh acceleration, harsh cornering, speeding and over revving the vehicle. With the intention of evaluating and expanding upon the industry method of fault detection, a working prototype is designed to handle initialization, data collection, vehicle state tracking, fault detection and communication. A method of decoding the broadcasted messages on the vehicle bus is presented and …

Out-Of-Core Gpu Path Tracing On Large Instanced Scenes Via Geometry Streaming, Jeremy Berchtold

Master's Theses

We present a technique for out-of-core GPU path tracing of arbitrarily large scenes that is compatible with hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. Our technique improves upon previous works by subdividing the scene spatially into streamable chunks that are loaded using a priority system that maximizes ray throughput and minimizes GPU memory usage. This allows for arbitrarily large scaling of scene complexity. Our system required under 19 minutes to render a solid color version of Disney's Moana Island scene (39.3 million instances, 261.1 million unique quads, and 82.4 billion instanced quads at a resolution of 1024x429 and 1024spp on an RTX 5000 (24GB memory …

Effects Of Experimental Scale On The Adsorption Of Two Pharmaceutical Drugs Detected In Municipal Wastewater Effluent, Michael Moore

Master's Theses

Pharmaceutical drugs are being produced and consumed in increasing quantities every year and are poorly treated by conventional wastewater treatment processes, leading to increasing detection of such compounds in surface water, groundwater, and municipal drinking water. Soil aquifer treatment (SAT) is a promising method for treating these emerging compounds through combined adsorption and degradation of target compounds in soil. This thesis examines the consistency of results from typical studies like adsorption isotherms and soil columns utilized in analysis of SAT performance, across varying experimental scales. The adsorption behavior of two pharmaceuticals was investigated as a function of experimental scale and …

Low-Cost Uav Swarm For Real-Time Object Detection Applications, Joel Valdovinos Miranda

Master's Theses

With unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, becoming readily available and affordable, applications for these devices have grown immensely. One type of application is the use of drones to fly over large areas and detect desired entities. For example, a swarm of drones could detect marine creatures near the surface of the ocean and provide users the location and type of animal found. However, even with the reduction in cost of drone technology, such applications result costly due to the use of custom hardware with built-in advanced capabilities. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is to compile an …

Improving Relation Extraction From Unstructured Genealogical Texts Using Fine-Tuned Transformers, Carloangello Parrolivelli

Master's Theses

Though exploring one’s family lineage through genealogical family trees can be insightful to developing one’s identity, this knowledge is typically held behind closed doors by private companies or require expensive technologies, such as DNA testing, to uncover. With the ever-booming explosion of data on the world wide web, many unstructured text documents, both old and new, are being discovered, written, and processed which contain rich genealogical information. With access to this immense amount of data, however, entails a costly process whereby people, typically volunteers, have to read large amounts of text to find relationships between people. This delays having genealogical …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of Mechanical Hinges With Snap-Fit Locking Mechanisms In Rigid Origami Structures, Colby James Scanlon

Master's Theses

The ancient art of ‘origami’ has recently become the source of inspiration for engineers to create structures that can unfold from a compact state to a fully deployed one. For instance, researchers have currently adopted origami designs in various engineering disciplines, including aerospace engineering, robotics, biomedical engineering, and architecture. In particular, architects have been interested in designing origami-inspired rigid walled structures that can be deployed as disaster-relief shelters. This type of design has three main advantages: transportability, constructability, and rigidity. Although there has been increased interests in deployable structures, limited research has been conducted on evaluating their structural performance, specifically …

Viability And Implementation Of A Vector Cryptography Extension For Risc-V, Jonathan W. Skelly

Master's Theses

RISC-V is an open-source instruction-set architecture (ISA) forming the basis of thousands of commercial and experimental microprocessors. The Scalar Cryptography extension ratified in December 2021 added scalar instructions that target common hashing and encryption algorithms, including SHA2 and AES. The next step forward for the RISC-V ISA in the field of cryptography and digital security is the development of vector cryptography instructions.

This thesis examines if it is viable to add vector implementations of existing RISC-V scalar cryptography instructions to the existing vector instruction format, and what improvements they can make to the execution of SHA2 and AES algorithms. Vector …

Strainer: State Transcript Rating For Informed News Entity Retrieval, Thomas M. Gerrity

Master's Theses

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid decline in public oversight of state and local governments. From 2003 to 2014, the number of journalists assigned to cover the proceedings in state houses has declined by more than 30\%. During the same time period, non-profit projects such as Digital Democracy sought to collect and store legislative bill and hearing information on behalf of the public. More recently, AI4Reporters, an offshoot of Digital Democracy, seeks to actively summarize interesting legislative data.

This thesis presents STRAINER, a parallel project with AI4Reporters, as an active data retrieval and filtering system for …

Designing With Force-Transfer Shear Walls: A Stiff Task To Achieve Better Performance And Cost Savings, Michael Deigert, John W. Lawson

Architectural Engineering

Wood-framed structural panel shear walls designed using the Force Transfer Around Openings (FTAO) method have become a very popular option for engineers, especially in areas with high lateral force requirements. The need for more affordable housing in metropolitan areas is leading to larger and taller multi-family residential buildings, and these typically wood-framed structures can benefit from the innovative approach behind FTAO design methodology. But do engineers have all the tools they need to accurately determine the stiffness of these walls and the associated lateral force required for their design.

Case Study Analysis Of The Sequencing Of Asphalt Paving For The San Luis Obispo Airport Runway Rehabilitation Project, Sierra H. Williamson

Construction Management

The following analysis of the San Luis Obispo Runway Rehabilitation Project is an examination of the asphalt paving sequence used to pave the 11-29 Runway and associated taxiways. The primary objective of this case study analysis is to gain insight as to how the pavement sequencing could have been done differently to decrease the potential for joint compaction issues between paving areas while still maintaining high efficiency and adhering to work limitations. To address issues encountered with the original paving sequence related to joint compaction, there are two alternative paving plans that this analysis will apply: wider paving areas with …

Can The In-House Installation Of Solar Panels Increase Residential Builder’S Profits?, Garrison M. O'Marr

Construction Management

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and determine if the In-house installation of solar panels by Residential Builders will lead to increased profits. Specifically, this pertains to Large Residential Developers that are focused on building single-family home developments with greater than 25 homes. With the demand for solar power in new homes continuously rising year after year, it is smart to find more profitable ways to install these systems, one of which is self-installation performed by the General Contractor. The Methodology of research I used is a combination of primary and secondary research, as well as interviews with …

Skip The Grid: Solar Powered Refrigeration In The Navajo Nation, Sydney Jo Sitton

Construction Management

The Skip the Grid project was a combined effort of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) students, and company sponsors SOLV Energy, Dometic, and Goal Zero, facilitated through the non-profit, Heart of America. The interdisciplinary project team successfully installed photovoltaic energy systems with refrigerators and lights for families within the Navajo Nation. Skip the Grid’s mission focuses on improving quality of life and providing access to clean, affordable off-grid energy. In the Navajo Nation, access to electricity and running water is not necessarily a given, with large disparities from family to family. This issue was exacerbated during …

Journeyman International: The Well Rusororo Project, Maranda F. Maliska

Construction Management

The Well Rusororo Project is based in Kigali, Rwanda on the same property of the Light Church of Kabuga. The non-profit organization, Journeyman International has teamed up with the Africa Mission Alliance in an effort to create a community campus available to the public. This project has been broken up into two stages; the first is a renovation of two existing buildings totaling 500 square meters, and the second is a ground-up construction of a 3,000 square meter multipurpose center. For their project-based senior project, this student volunteered with Journeyman International to assist in the creation of the following deliverables …

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Children's Learning Center Deck - The Preconstruction, Dakota Reynolds

Construction Management

This project team consisted of three construction management majors and one architectural engineering student. The goal of this project was to build a deck at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden, but due to setbacks in design, permitting, and communication with the owner, the group was unable to achieve this goal. The goal then shifted, and this group focused on delivering a preconstruction package that would be given to new students to build the deck. In addition, the architectural engineer will still be a part of this new group to make sure the project runs smoothly. This pre-construction package includes …

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden - Children's Garden Observation Deck, Troy James Kauffman

Construction Management

This paper will explain the preconstruction process for an observation deck in the San Luis Obispo Botanical Gardens, specifically the children’s garden. The children’s garden is a subsection of the botanical gardens dedicated to educating children through outdoor learning. The San Luis Obispo Botanical Gardens reached out to the Cal Poly Construction Management department in need of a team to create an outdoor learning space. Four students were interested in the project and decided to pursue it. The team for this senior project is an interdisciplinary group consisting of 3 construction management students and 1 architectural engineering student. The team …

Impact Of Cell Phone Usage On Jobsite Productivity, Nathan C. Saedi

Construction Management

Technological advances in cell phones have led to a change in the way contractors are able to complete project management tasks. When utilized while upholding safety standards, smartphones possess the capabilities to successfully function as a supervision, reporting, and communication tool. This paper examines some of the daily time spent on cell phones and impacts safe cell phone usage can yield. This paper further presents an exploration into an effective usage of cell phone applications to support construction field activities and promote productivity on the jobsite. The primary objective of this research is to highlight cell phone applications that can …

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Alternative Learning Space- Preconstruction, Jonah Kirmse

Construction Management

This paper will review the process behind the preconstruction efforts for the creation of an alternative learning space within the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. The SLO Botanical Garden is a nonprofit that serves the local community by supporting public interest in the natural environment. The project sought to aid in the garden’s aforementioned mission by building upon their ability to provide outdoor education spaces. The project’s eventual completion was a collective effort that spanned across multiple disciplines, representing the building industry. The original intention of the project group was to complete the project from concept to construction, but delays …

Preconstruction Services For Hiinga Hospital Kampala, Uganda, Brett Robert Shank

Construction Management

This project outlines the role of a construction management student in the interdisciplinary development of a hospital in Kampala, Uganda. The Hiinga Organization, an investment fund in Eastern Africa, tasked a team of students to develop a preliminary design and put together construction resources for a new hospital. Hiinga will use these documents, with the preliminary drawings, to gather funding for the actual construction of the building. The interdisciplinary team consisted of an architecture student (Annebel van der Meulen), two architectural engineering students (Abbie Coffing and Lexi Buhr), and two construction management students (Arley Landis and Brett Shank). Van der …

Updating The Cal Poly Construction Management Community Partners List, Braden Hotra

Construction Management

The Cal Poly Construction Management Department currently has a list of community partners that students use to find organizations to contact for classes that involve construction service learning and senior project project-based ideas. There are many project-based class projects that are designed and built every year for organizations in the community. The current list needs to be updated to help construction service learning and project-based topics become more successful in the future. This project was created with the goal of updating the Cal Poly Construction Management Community Partners List with new community partners and an updated sheet layout that includes …

Refining The Construction Communication Cal Poly Technical Elective Course, Anna Dissman

Construction Management

Communication is one of the most necessary parts in what makes a project successful in the construction industry. Normally, successful communication skills are developed through experience over time in this industry. When looking into the Construction Management (CM) program at California Polytechnic State University of San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), a lack of direct focus on multiple key communication skills is present. Furthermore, a new CM communication technical elective should be taught to focus and reinforce the communication skills needed for careers of future students post graduation. By crafting and distributing a well-thought out survey, new knowledge from the perspectives …

Dallidet Adobe And Gardens Vegetable Renovation, Cristian Melo

Construction Management

This paper will construe the steps of determining the original concept design by discussing the challenges of the current conditions of the scope work, coordinating with the Garden Director by insuring all his requests were met, recycling existing material, implementing skills learned in surveying, installing a new brick walkway, and renovating 31 planter boxes. All of this was designed and installed in the San Luis Obispo Dallidet Adobe & Gardens. These gardens are a historic site located in the heart of San Luis Obispo where the public can utilize this area for certain events. The goal for this project was …

Water Efficiency In Residential Homes In San Luis Obispo County, Parker John Jacobs

Construction Management

Sustainable building has reshaped the construction industry and has led to new innovations that have benefitted the human race. Water efficiency in buildings has become increasingly important to the U.S. Green Building Counsel (USBGC) for buildings to obtain a LEED certification. To obtain a LEED certification buildings are rated on a point system in which the building is rewarded points by being environmentally responsible and using its resources efficiently. There are nine categories of LEED points with water efficiency being one of them. This has led the construction industry to innovate new technologies that help conserve one of if not …

Methods Residential Construction Firms Have Taken In The Past To Survive A Recession And How To Apply Them Towards The Next One, Dustin Thompson

Construction Management

The success of construction firms and the health of the U.S. economy have always been interdependent. Recessions continually set back the construction industry in terms of growth, production, layoff rates, profit, and cause a high number of firms to go out of business. No other sector in construction feels the painful effects of a recession more than the residential side. This research aimed to produce a playbook of steps a residential builder should take to come out of a recession successfully. In order to create this playbook residential professionals who have experienced recessions in the past and pulled their companies …

Shabang Music Festival Seating, Carter L. Norton

Construction Management

This outlines the process of the building and installation of four shaded seating areas at the SHABANG Music Festival located at Laguna Lake Park in San Luis Obispo. This paper places an emphasis on the pre-construction elements of the building stage. SHABANG Music Group rented out a section of Laguna Lake Park to host a music festival designed to bring the San Luis Obispo community together. The goal of the project discussed was to build a raised VIP seating area facing the main stage on which music lovers could relax while still being able to enjoy an unobstructed view of …

Dallidet Adobe And Gardens Vegetable Renovation, Nicholas John Campbell

Construction Management

This paper will construe the steps of determining the original concept design by discussing the challenges of the current conditions of the scope work, coordinating with the Garden Director by insuring all his requests were met, recycling existing material, implementing skills learned in surveying, installing a new brick walkway, and renovating 31 planter boxes. All of this was designed and installed in the San Luis Obispo Dallidet Adobe & Gardens. These gardens are a historic site located in the heart of San Luis Obispo where the public can utilize this area for certain events. The goal for this project was …

Safely Covered Or Dangerously Exposed: Analyzing The Safety Vest Code Of Compliance, Sophie L. Stewart

Construction Management

As the construction industry transitions to reflect a more diverse population, it is essential that personal protective equipment (PPE) accommodates this shift in demographics. In particular, the “One size fits all” approach is no longer an appropriate metric of fit for the safety vest. Previous student research reflected an overwhelming consensus that construction workers do not have vests which appropriately fit them. In response, the Cal Poly Construction Management Department hosted the first ever Verifying Everyone's Safety Together (VEST) Hackathon. This two-day event fostered a space for industry members, students, and faculty to discuss and develop several prototypes which better …

Determining Student Interest For A Virtual Reality Safety Training Course, Courtney Martin

Construction Management

The purpose of Cal Poly’s Construction Management Department is to provide students with the best education they can get so they can be prepared for the challenges they may encounter in their professional careers. This research paper analyzes students' prior knowledge of virtual reality (VR) and determines the interest in creating a Construction Management (CM) technical elective covering VR and safety training which can help educate and train students about safety, hazardous jobsite situations, and accident prevention measures. This paper also examines the advantages of a VR construction training course taught on campus compared to online training without VR. VR …