Digital Commons Network^™

A Contractual Approach To Resolving Disputes Arising From Failure To Achieve Green Certification, Bahaa Chammout, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Green Construction Is An Approach To Reducing The Environmental Impact Of Resource-Intensive Construction. Several Certification Systems Have Been Devised And Are Globally Recognized To Provide Green Building Rating Frameworks. While A Building Can Be Designed To Achieve A Green Rating, The Rating Is Achieved Based On The Completed Facility's Actual Measured Performance. There Had Previously Been Limited Attempts To Give An In-Depth Examination Of The Remedies For Unrealized Green Ratings. As Such, This Paper Addresses This Knowledge Gap Using A Multistep Research Methodology. First, The Authors Analyzed And Classified The Nature Of Damages Resulting From Failed Green Certification Under The …

Investigating Price Fluctuation Transmission Among Construction Materials, Mohamad Abdul Nabi, Islam H. El-Adaway, Rayan H. Assaad

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Generally, Fluctuation In One Material's Price Can Cause A Series Of Chain Reactions In The Supply Chain System, Known As Price Fluctuation Transmission, As All Materials Are Interconnected And Interrelated. None Of The Previous Studies Have Investigated Price Fluctuation Transmission Among All Construction Materials. This Paper Aims To Fill This Gap In Knowledge. The Authors Collected Producer Price Index (PPI) Data For 16 Construction Materials, Modeled The Relationship Between Each Pair Of Materials Using Vector Autoregression Technique, And Validated The Causality Using Granger Causality Test. Network Analysis Was Performed To Identify The Price Fluctuation Transmission Capacity, Susceptibility, And Intermediatory Capacity …

Collect Spatiotemporally Correlated Data In Iot Networks With An Energy-Constrained Uav, Wenzheng Xu, Heng Shao, Qunli Shen, Jian Peng, Wen Huang, Weifa Liang, Tang Liu, Xin Wei Yao, Tao Lin, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Are Promising Tools For Efficient Data Collections Of Sensors In IoT Networks. Existing Studies Exploited Both Spatial And Temporal Data Correlations To Reduce The Amount Of Collected Redundant Data, In Which Sensors Are First Partitioned Into Different Clusters, A Master Sensor In Each Cluster Then Collects Raw Data From Other Sensors And Compresses The Received Data. An Energy-Constrained UAV Finally Collects The Maximum Amount Of Compressed Data From Different Master Sensors. We However Notice That The Compressed Data From Only A Portion Of Clusters Are Collected By The UAV In The Existing Studies, While The Data …

Resource Aware Clustering For Tackling The Heterogeneity Of Participants In Federated Learning, Rahul Mishra, Hari Prabhat Gupta, Garvit Banga, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Federated Learning Is A Training Framework That Enables Multiple Participants To Collaboratively Train A Shared Model While Preserving Data Privacy. The Heterogeneity Of Devices And Networking Resources Of The Participants Delay The Training And Aggregation. The Paper Introduces A Novel Approach To Federated Learning By Incorporating Resource-Aware Clustering. This Method Addresses The Challenges Posed By The Diverse Devices And Networking Resources Among Participants. Unlike Static Clustering Approaches, This Paper Proposes A Dynamic Method To Determine The Optimal Number Of Clusters Using Dunn Indices. It Enables Adaptability To The Varying Heterogeneity Levels Among Participants, Ensuring A Responsive And Customized Approach To …

Personalized Federated Graph Learning On Non-Iid Electronic Health Records, Tao Tang, Zhuoyang Han, Zhen Cai, Shuo Yu, Xiaokang Zhou, Taiwo Oseni, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Understanding The Latent Disease Patterns Embedded In Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Is Crucial For Making Precise And Proactive Healthcare Decisions. Federated Graph Learning-Based Methods Are Commonly Employed To Extract Complex Disease Patterns From The Distributed EHRs Without Sharing The Client-Side Raw Data. However, The Intrinsic Characteristics Of The Distributed EHRs Are Typically Non-Independent And Identically Distributed (Non-IID), Significantly Bringing Challenges Related To Data Imbalance And Leading To A Notable Decrease In The Effectiveness Of Making Healthcare Decisions Derived From The Global Model. To Address These Challenges, We Introduce A Novel Personalized Federated Learning Framework Named PEARL, Which Is Designed For …

Undeniable Authentication Of Digital Twin-Managed Smart Microfactory, Anusha Vangala, Ashok Kumar Das, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Smart Microfactories Use Additive Manufacturing to Create Products with Mixed Materials and Variable Sizes. Digital Twin Technology Enhances Control of the Additive Manufacturing Equipment in These Factories, Increasing Productivity and Minimizing Errors. the Digital Twins Communicate with the Machines to Furnish Sensitive Data and Instructions, Which Must Be Protected from Tampering. Authentication Rescues the Digital and Physical Twins from Menacing Attacks Such as Privileged Insider, Impersonation, Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) and Man-In-The-Middle (MiTM) Attacks. to This End, We Propose Lightweight Authentication among the Digital and Physical Twins with the Undeniability of Issued Commands and Deniable Key Agreement. It Achieves Perfect …

Lease: Leveraging Energy-Awareness In Serverless Edge For Latency-Sensitive Iot Services, Aastik Verma, Anurag Satpathy, Sajal K. Das, Sourav Kanti Addya

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Resource Scheduling Catering to Real-Time IoT Services in a Serverless-Enabled Edge Network is Particularly Challenging Owing to the Workload Variability, Strict Constraints on Tolerable Latency, and Unpredictability in the Energy Sources Powering the Edge Devices. This Paper Proposes a Framework LEASE that Dynamically Schedules Resources in Serverless Functions Catering to Different Microservices and Adhering to their Deadline Constraint. to Assist the Scheduler in Making Effective Scheduling Decisions, We Introduce a Priority-Based Approach that Offloads Functions from over-Provisioned Edge Nodes to Under-Provisioned Peer Nodes, Considering the Expended Energy in the Process Without Compromising the Completion Time of Microservices. for Real-World Implementations, …

Early Detection Of Driving Maneuvers For Proactive Congestion Prevention, Debasree Das, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Sandip Chakraborty, Bivas Mitra, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Road Traffic Congestion Affects Not Only the Commute Delay but Also a city's overall Social, Economic, and Environmental Growth. Existing Approaches for Road Congestion Mitigation Primarily Adopt a Reactive Approach by Detecting Congestion after It Occurs and Recommending Alternate Routes to the Vehicles, Which Fails to Prevent Congestion Cascading. in Contrast, We Propose a Pervasive Platform Called ProCon that Proactively Infers the Driving Micro-Behaviors that Can Contribute to Congestion Formation and Assist the Drivers in Avoiding Such Maneuvers in Real-Time during the Navigation. Thorough Evaluations over Multiple Real-Life and Simulated Datasets Indicate that ProCon Can Reduce Congestion for More Than …

Incivility In Open Source Projects: A Comprehensive Annotated Dataset Of Locked Github Issue Threads, Ramtin Ehsani, Mia Mohammad Imran, Robert Zita, Kostadin Damevski, Preetha Chatterjee

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the dynamic landscape of open-source software (OSS) development, understanding and addressing incivility within issue discussions is crucial for fostering healthy and productive collaborations. This paper presents a curated dataset of 404 locked GitHub issue discussion threads and 5961 individual comments, collected from 213 OSS projects. We annotated the comments with various categories of incivility using Tone Bearing Discussion Features (TBDFs), and, for each issue thread, we annotated the triggers, targets, and consequences of incivility. We observed that Bitter frustration, Impatience, and Mocking are the most prevalent TBDFs exhibited in our dataset. The most common triggers, targets, and consequences of …

On The K-Weak Coverage Of Random Mobile Sensors, Sajal K. Das, Rafal Kapelko

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper studies the fundamental problem of energy consumption in the movement of mobile random sensors ensuring k-weak coverage on the domain. In particular, we analyze two notions of k-weak coverage on the unit square, namely (1) (k, x)-weak coverage in which every straight-line path across the width of the unit square passes through the sensing range of at least k sensors; and (2) (k, x, y)-weak coverage in which every straight-line path across the width and the length of the unit square passes through the sensing range of at least k sensors. The number of reliable and p-reliable sensors …

Posca: Path Optimization For Solar Cover Amelioration In Urban Air Mobility, Debjyoti Sengupta, Anurag Satpathy, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) encompasses both piloted and autonomous aerial vehicles, spanning from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like drones to passenger-carrying personal air vehicles (PAVs), to revolutionize smart transportation in congested urban areas. This emerging paradigm is anticipated to offer disruptive solutions to the mobility challenges in congested cities. In this context, a pivotal concern centers on the sustainability of transitioning to this mode of transportation, especially with the focus on incorporating clean technology into developing innovative solutions from the ground up. Recent studies highlight that a significant portion of the total energy consumption in UAM can be attributed …

Tasr: A Novel Trust-Aware Stackelberg Routing Algorithm To Mitigate Traffic Congestion, Doris E.M. Brown, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Stackelberg routing platform (SRP) reduces congestion in one-shot traffic networks by proposing optimal route recommendations to the selfish travelers. Traditionally, Stackel-berg routing is cast as a partial control problem where a fraction of the traveler flow complies with route recommendations, while the remaining responds as selfish travelers. In this paper, we formulate a novel Stackelberg routing framework where the agents exhibit probabilistic compliance by accepting SRP's route recommendations with a trust probability. Specifically, we propose a greedy Trust-Aware Stackelberg Routing algorithm (in short, TASR) for SRP to compute unique path recommendations to each traveler flow with a unique demand. …

Traffic Prediction-Based Vnf Auto-Scaling And Deployment Mechanism For Flexible And Elastic Service Provision, Bo Yi, Jiacheng Wang, Qiang He, Xingwei Wang, Min Huang, Sajal K. Das, Keqin Li

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides a flexible way to provision new services by decoupling network functions from hardware and implementing them as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). However, the rapid development of technologies greatly promotes the explosion of diverse services, which directly results in the exponential increase of heterogeneous traffic. In addition, such a tremendous amount of heterogeneous traffic will generate bursts in a more dynamic and unexpected manner, so it becomes extremely hard to satisfy the customer demands. Aiming at addressing these challenges, this work proposes a positive and elastic VNF deployment mechanism for service provisioning, which introduces three novelties: …

L3geocast: Enabling P4-Based Customizable Network-Layer Geocast At The Network Edge, Xindi Hou, Shuai Gao, Ningchun Liu, Fangtao Yao, Hongke Zhang, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Geocast is a one-to-many communication paradigm that enables the transmission of data packets to a designated area rather than an IP address. The most common geocast solutions rely on the application-layer Geolocation-to-IP database. But these IP-based approaches cannot cope with the challenges of flexibility and mobility in a granularity-customizable geocast scenario. While some non-IP network-layer (L3) attempts have resulted in low addressing accuracy and poor routing scalability. Besides, the clean-slate design is incompatible with the existing network. To address these issues, this article proposes an innovative network-layer geographic addressing scheme that leverages P4-based Software Defined Networks (SDN) to enable flexible …

Learning Social Fairness Preferences From Non-Expert Stakeholder Opinions In Kidney Placement, Mukund Telukunta, Sukruth Rao, Gabriella Stickney, Venkata Sriram Siddardh Nadendla, Casey I. Canfield

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern kidney placement incorporates several intelligent recommendation systems which exhibit social discrimination due to biases inherited from training data. Although initial attempts were made in the literature to study algorithmic fairness in kidney placement, these methods replace true outcomes with surgeons' decisions due to the long delays involved in recording such outcomes reliably. However, the replacement of true outcomes with surgeons' decisions disregards expert stakeholders' biases as well as social opinions of other stakeholders who do not possess medical expertise. This paper alleviates the latter concern and designs a novel fairness feedback survey to evaluate an acceptance rate predictor (ARP) …

Comprehensive Investigation Of Using Tire-Derived Aggregate In Chip Seal Subjected To Various Traffic And Environmental Conditions, Alireza Pourhassan

Doctoral Dissertations

"Chip seal is one of the most cost- and performance-effective pavement preservation treatments commonly used in the United States. Using crumb rubber obtained from scrap tires as a partial or full replacement for mineral aggregate has been proposed as a sustainable solution to reduce the negative environmental impacts of scrap tire accumulation and excessive consumption of natural resources. However, there was no data available regarding the performance of rubberized chip seal under traffic loads and environmental conditions. An extensive study using laboratory specimens and conditioning as well as field implementation and assessments were conducted to bridge this gap. Different traffic …

Disseminating Over-The-Air Updates Via Intelligent Labeling In Multi-Tier Networks, Atefeh Asayesh, Asad Waqar Malik, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Connected Vehicles Rely on Sophisticated Software Systems for Diverse Features, Including Navigation, Entertainment, Communication, and Safety Functions. as Technology Continues to Advance, the Reliance on Software in Connected Vehicles Becomes Increasingly Integral to their overall Performance and the Delivery of Innovative Features. Therefore, in the Domain of Software-Enabled Automobiles, the Implementation of over-The-Air (OTA) Software Updates is Deemed Essential for the Dissemination of Software and Fixes in Connected Vehicles. the Conventional Method of Addressing This Matter Entailed Manufacturers Undertaking the Task of Recalling Outdated Vehicles; However, the Central Issue Lies in the Considerable Challenge of Effectively Notifying Owners through Recall …

A Human-Centered Framework For Oncological Healthcare System Modeling Applied To Mobile Radiation Delivery, Alex Price

Doctoral Dissertations

"Healthcare systems engineering is challenging due to the complexity, geographic expansiveness, inertial properties, and the heterogeneous sub-systems, with varying vested interests. Additionally, humans comprise many of the forms and functions, and are independent, with resistance and uncertainty in their decision-making that adds complexity. Human-centered systems modeling approaches are therefore needed to capture this unique aspect of a healthcare system and to enhance understanding of emergent healthcare properties. This dissertation focuses on integrating systems modeling within healthcare and emphasizes the importance of incorporating human decision-making. Moreover, the incorporation of a human-centered approach yields particularly valuable insights into the decision-making processes that …

Experimental Investigation Of High-Temperature Brine-Shale Interactions, Anna Atasha Hoffmann

Doctoral Dissertations

"Hydrofracturing (fracking), a common practice in the Petroleum Industry to induce or improve fluid flow in tight formations, creates chemical disequilibrium that further alters the porosity and permeability of host rocks and results in the production of saline and contaminated produced waters (PW). The PW of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) are Na-Ca-Mg-K-Cl brines with mean concentrations of approximately 16% Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and circumneutral pH. Analysis of composition suggests the PW result from a 20 to 80% dilution of formation waters (relict brines of the Louann Salt) by fracking fluid. Trace element concentrations generally show moderate to strong …

The Comprehensive Study Of High Viscosity Friction Reducers In High-Tds And High-Temperature Environments, Xiaojing Ge

Doctoral Dissertations

"High viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) have been recently gaining more attention and increasing in use, not only as friction-reducing agents but also as proppant carriers. Reusing of produced water has also been driven by both environmental and economic benefits. Currently, most friction reducers on the market are anionic friction reducers, which are fully compatible with most produced water with low to medium level of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) but show a significant drop at high TDS conditions in term of their friction reduction performance in most cases. On the contrary, cationic friction reducers are believed to have better TDS tolerance …

Communication Modality And Activity Recognition In Smart Manufacturing, Haodong Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Advancements in sensors, computational intelligence, and big data have been rapidly transforming and revolutionizing the manufacturing sector, leading to robot-rich and digitally connected factories. To facilitate such a transformative process, workforce training and coordination between the human workforce and robots have remained a major challenge. This study aims to create intelligent workforce training systems for human-computer interaction and human-robot collaboration. It proposes the use of dynamic gestures and speech commands for seamless communication between a worker and a robot, leveraging Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and multiple threading for recognition and integration. Additionally, a fine-grained activity recognition model has been crafted …

Kinetic Modeling And Simulations Of Plasma-Surface-Dust Interactions For Lunar Exploration, David Clifford Lund

Doctoral Dissertations

"Due to the recent relevance of NASA’s focus on lunar missions, a better understanding of the lunar plasma-surface-dust environment is vital for their success. The lunar surface, devoid of an atmosphere and a global magnetic field, is directly exposed to solar radiation and solar wind plasma. This exposure leads to the electrical charging of the lunar surface due to the bombardment of solar wind plasma and the emission/collection of photoelectrons. Therefore, this research developed accurate and efficient computational models of plasma-surface-dust interactions and extend a legacy simulation code, namely the Immersed-Finite-Element Particle-in-Cell (IFE-PIC), to a parallel version: Parallel Immersed-Finite-Element Particle-in-Cell …

Optimization Of Fire Emergency Preparedness In Underground Mining Environments: An Agent-Based Evacuation Approach, Oluwafemi Babatunde Salami

Doctoral Dissertations

"Underground mining environments present a complex interplay of thermal and non-thermal hazards, with fires constituting a significant risk due to the release of heat smoke from incomplete combustion. The propagation of these hazards through the ventilation networks underscores the critical need for understanding fire scenarios and their interaction with the underground environment. Existing knowledge regarding past mine fire disasters, and quantification of associated hazards and risks are insufficient for optimizing emergency evacuation strategies in the event of an underground fire emergency.

This research endeavors to bridge this gap by developing advanced quantitative risk assessment and evacuation models tailored specifically for …

Investigating The Potential Of Blended Feedstocks For Biofuel Production Via Pyrolysis Process: Experimental And Aspen Simulation Approach, Hasan Jawad Hammood Al-Abedi

Doctoral Dissertations

"The development of renewable energy sources has become increasingly urgent considering the climate crisis and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Pyrolysis, which is decomposition of an organic feedstock without oxygen, is a thermo-chemical process that has garnered significant attention as a promising technology for sustainable energy production, capable of converting biomass and waste materials into biofuels.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the pyrolysis and co-pyrolysis behaviors of corn stover (CS), refuse-derived fuel (RDF), and oil shale (OS) in equal mass ratios. Utilizing a thermogravimetric analyzer and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), the co-pyrolysis process is …

Development Of A Comprehensive Multi-Factored Methodology For Identification Of Landslides In The Buffalo National River Of Arkansas, Abdurraouf Okok

Doctoral Dissertations

"In northern Arkansas's Springfield and Boston Mountain Plateaus, distinctive geomorphological landslide features have shown historical continuity. USGS topographic maps (1:24,000, 7.5-minute series) serve as valuable resources for studying terrain characteristics and hydrological patterns.

This study uses a manual mapping approach with high-resolution LiDAR data and geological maps in a GIS environment. The method identifies historic landslide features by analyzing anomalous topographic contour patterns overlaid on LiDAR-derived hillshade maps, revealing various mass movements along the Buffalo National River. Data from the Office of State Geologist and fieldwork reconnaissance were utilized to map older landslide features with high confidence. Some previously unrecognized …

Statistical Analysis Of Electromagnetic Coupling To Printed Circuit Boards, Shengxuan Xia, Victor Khilkevich, Daryl Beetner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Determining electromagnetic (EM) coupling to printed circuit boards (PCBs) is essential to finding potential EM susceptibilities early in the design process. For realistic PCB structures, analysis usually relies heavily on time-consuming full-wave simulations because of the complexity of the geometries and the lack of analytical solutions. In this paper, we adopt a segmentation approach based on far-field reciprocity which allows for rapid estimation of the voltage induced at trace terminations over frequency, and which is then used to estimate statistical characteristic of coupling across trace geometries. Frequency-domain results can then be used to estimate time-domain responses with appropriate transformations. Super-position …

Uncertainty Quantification For Peec Based On Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network, Yuan Ping, Yanming Zhang, Lijun Jiang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article proposes a modified generative adversarial network (GAN)-based approach, namely Wasserstein GAN (WGAN), for the uncertainty quantification (UQ) in partial equivalent element circuit (PEEC) models. Initially, the stochastic PEEC is constructed to obtain the sample data of the quantities of interest (QoI). This sample data, along with the fake data from the generator, serves as input for the discriminator in WGAN. The loss function of the generator in WGAN is constructed using the Wasserstein distance to provide a more usable gradient than that in the traditional GAN. By estimating the distribution of sample data using the fake data in …

Evaluation Of Transfer Learning Models On Traumatic Brain Injury Severity Classification, Ngoc Do, Daniel B. Hier, Tayo Obafemi-Ajayi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

After traumatic brain injury (TBI), clinicians use the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) to classify patients by severity and radiologists use the Rotterdam score and the Marshall score to classify CT scans by severity. This work investigates a viable efficient low-cost transfer learning model to use MRI images to predict GCS, Rotterdam, and Marshall severity class after TBI. The enhanced transfer learning model architecture integrates multiple fine-tuning steps in which a few layers of the pre-trained model is unfrozen in each iteration so that the neural network is able to learn layer by layer further aspects of the image for better …

Radiated Emission Modeling Of A Wireless Power Transfer System, Hanyu Zhang, Guanghua Li, Viswa Pilla, Chulsoon Hwang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A radiated emission (RE) model of a wireless power transfer (WPT) system is proposed in this paper to help designers predict, analyze, and mitigate the RE issues during the design process. The proposed model employs both full-wave simulation and circuit simulation to derive a transfer function. Subsequently, it predicts the emission level by combining the transfer function with the measured transmitter waveform through a straightforward calculation. The predicted emissions match the measured RE peaks well up to 300 MHz, with the error within 3 dB. The impact of functional parameters, such as load and coil gap distance, is analyzed based …

Low Noise Wireless Sensing In Termite Detection, Wei Zhang, Xiangshu Qi, Yunlong Luo, Alex Qi, Yihong Qi, Gang Feng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Termites cause enormous financial damages all around the world every year. The majority of research on wireless sensing is always concerned with the various human-centric applications, however, the vast potential of wireless sensing for termite detection is often disregarded. In this article, a Wireless Intelligent Sensing (WISe) millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar system for termite detection is proposed. Here, we design a three-layer architecture with some intelligent resources to monitor the movement signs of the termites. In addition, we present a low noise sensing architecture that minimizes the noise in hardware and digital signal processing, which can reduce the impact of environment …