Engineering Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

I-Guide Climbers: A Model For Multidisciplinary Academic Labs For Early Career Development, Iman Haqiqi, Wei Hu, Ramya Kumaran, Pin-Ching Li, Nicholas Manning, Alex Michels, Ayman Nassar, Jinwoo Park, Jimeng Shi, Adam Tonks, Zhaonan Wang

I-GUIDE Forum

In this paper, we propose a new form of multidisciplinary academic collaboration that goes beyond the traditional modes of knowledge exchange. We argue that most research collaboration today is based on interactions between closely related disciplines, in which researchers share data, methods, and insights within a common framework or problem. However, such collaboration may not foster the development of the communication and management skills essential to a multi-disciplinary research career. Therefore, we suggest establishing a network of researchers from divergent, yet complementary, disciplines who are interested in improving these skills through regular interactions and feedback. The main goal of this …

Evaluation Of Static Horizontal Louvers On Annual Daylighting Performance In Classrooms, Kamal A. Saleem, Samir S. Hosny, Ashraf Nessim

Future Engineering Journal

Daylighting has a great impact on students’ health, learning performance, and productivity. The goal of this paper is to enhance daylighting performance by examining year-round daylighting performance of Southern facades in the case of one central window in a classroom located in Cairo, Egypt by using static external horizontal shading devices during the Fall, Spring and Summer semesters The scope of the study is to evaluate and assess the effect of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) in addition to the louvers’ configurations of depth and count parameters of the classroom on annual daylighting performance metrics for classrooms’ southern facades by using …

Increasing The Impact Of Utah State University's Extension Water Check Program With 5-Second Metering, Mahmud Aveek, David E. Rosenberg, Camilo Bastidas, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Belize A. Lane, Kelly Kopp, Peter Mayer, Joe Fazio

Reports

Study Goal – Increase the volume of water saved by the Utah State University (USU) Extension landscape Water Check program because outdoor water use is the largest component of residential use with the largest opportunity to reduce use. We used 5-second water use data collected with Flume Smart Home Water Monitoring devices (Figure 1) at residential homes before and after a Water Check (Box 1; Figure 2) to answer four questions:

1. How much water did households save?
2. Which Water Check recommendations did participants implement?
3. Why did participants implement some recommendations and not others?
4. How to further reduce landscape water use?

Power Outage And Environmental Justice In Winter Storm Uri: An Analytical Workflow Based On Nighttime Light Remote Sensing, Jinwen Xu, Yi Qiang, Heng Cai, Lei Zou

GIS Center

The intensity of extreme weather events has been increasing, posing a unique threat to society and highlighting the importance of our electrical power system, a key component in our infrastructure. In severe weather events, quickly identifying power outage impact zones and affected communities is crucial for informed disaster response. However, a lack of household-level power outage data impedes timely and precise assessments. To address these challenges, we introduced an analytical workflow using NASA’s Black Marble daily nighttime light (NTL) images to detect power outages from the 2021 Winter Storm Uri. This workflow includes adjustments to mitigate viewing angle and snow …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

Collaboration Between Science And Art Through A Special International Symposium For Ecosystem Health And Sustainability, Changwoo Ahn Dr.

The STEAM Journal

The collaborations between ecosystem restoration and art practices was epitomized by the eco-artist Jackie Brookner who said: “it is not a matter of the scientists providing the hard-core research and artists the soft outreach; rather, the dynamics engendered in the space between disciplines is full of information necessary to solve complex problems at the systemic level”. This paper reviews and summaries the goals, activities, and lessons learned from a special symposium, which was held at the 12^th INTECOL (International Congress of Ecology) conference in Beijing, China, August 21 through 25, 2017, where about 3000 people attended from 70 countries. …

Enabling An Equitable Energy Transition Through Inclusive Research, Michael Ash, Erin Baker, Mark Tuominen, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Matthew Burke, S. Castellanos, M. Cha, Gabe Chan, D. Djokic, J.C. Ford, Anna P. Goldstein, David Hsu, Matt Lacker, C. Miller, D. Nock, A.P. Ravikumar, Allison Bates, Anna Stefanopoulou, E Grubert, D.M Kammen, M. Pastor, S.Z, Attari, S. Carley, D.L Clark, D. Dean-Ryan, U. Kosar, Kerry Bowie, Tina Johnson

ETI Publications

Comprehensive and meaningful inclusion of marginalized communities within the research enterprise will be critical to ensuring an equitable, technology-informed, clean energy transition. We provide five key action items for government agencies and philanthropic institutions to operationalize the commitment to an equitable energy transition.

Analyzing Residential Curbside Collection For Food Waste In Humboldt County, Yvette Lindler

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The most prevalent material in the California landfill-destined solid waste stream is food. Food waste is not only an economic and social concern, but a significant environmental challenge as well. Most food waste is disposed of in landfills, where it anaerobically decomposes and releases methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas and driver of climate change. Policies passed in California, including AB 1826 and SB 1383, aim to implement organic waste recycling programs and reduce methane emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills. The technology to process this food waste exists, but these facilities are limited or nonexistent in rural areas …

Smoke, Air, Fire, Energy (Safe) In Rural California: Critical Reflections On An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Deepti Chatti, Carisse Geronimo, Cassidy Barrientos, Jana Ganion, Malcolm Moncheur, Peter Alstone Phd, Shawn Bourque, Tanya Garcia, Tesfayohanes Yacob

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article provides a synthesis of the interconnected problems of tenuous energy access, wildfires, and exposures to high air pollution in Indigenous communities in rural California through the lens of ongoing collaborative research being carried out by researchers at Cal Poly Humboldt, Schatz Energy Research Center, Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. The collaboration is funded by the Strategic Growth Council of the state of California, and we hope is the beginning of a longer term relationship between all partners. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawing on energy engineering, air pollution science, and …

Technical And Economic Feasibility Of A Microgrid For A Fire Station In Humboldt County, California., Nishaant Kumar Sinha

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Microgrids are emerging as a promising solution to unreliable grid energy. Today, California is not only witnessing grid resiliency challenges from natural disasters such as wildfires, earthquakes, floods and heatwaves, but it is also seeking to green the grid and bring more renewables online. For example, Humboldt County, where this project is focused, has recently experienced an earthquake of 6.4M (on December 22nd, 2022), which shut down the regional grid for ~20 hours.

Microgrid adoption enables critical facilities to operate seamlessly. The Humboldt Bay Fire Station (HBFS) No.1 is one such example, where first responders work to protect citizens against …