Engineering Commons^™

Solar Urban Planning: Addressing Barriers And Conflicts Specific To Renewable Energy Policy And The Current Field And Practice Of Urban Planning Within The Context Of A Changing Climate, Toryl P. Hanna

Capstone Collection

The world is in a period of rapid urbanization while experiencing unprecedented rise in global temperature as a result of climate change. Questions have been raised as to how strategies for urbanization will be able to address the fetish for energy, while halting carbon emissions produced by traditional energy sources for urban inhabitants around the world. First, this paper seeks to look to cities, at the intersection of solar energy and the field of urban planning, looking into the opportunities and challenges that are currently surfacing. Conflicts and barriers in traditional urban land use patterns emerge as a topic of …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

Quantifying Transit Access In New York City: Formulating An Accessibility Index For Analyzing Spatial And Social Patterns Of Public Transportation, Maxwell S. Siegel

Theses and Dissertations

This paper aims to analyze accessibility within New York City’s transportation system through creating unique accessibility indices. Indices are detailed and implemented using GIS, analyzing the distribution of transit need and access. Regression analyses are performed highlighting relationships between demographics and accessibility and recommendations for transit expansion are presented.

Applying Gis Technology In Airport Management, Eleanor Clark

Honors Projects

This honors project involved applying two disciplines to aid in advancing the efficiency of airport management at the Toledo Express Airport. I utilized my geography and aviation knowledge and geographic information system (GIS) skills to create a GIS, a webmap, and a 3-in-1 map-based program that had the capabilities of executing Part 139 Self Inspections, asset management, and work orders. The GIS system and webmap were successfully created to aid in management, cohesiveness, and efficiency within the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, the managing entity of the Toledo Express Airport. For the 3-in-1 map-based program, I worked closely alongside a programmer …

Sparse Coding Based Feature Representation Method For Remote Sensing Images, Ender Oguslu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, we study sparse coding based feature representation method for the classification of multispectral and hyperspectral images (HSI). The existing feature representation systems based on the sparse signal model are computationally expensive, requiring to solve a convex optimization problem to learn a dictionary. A sparse coding feature representation framework for the classification of HSI is presented that alleviates the complexity of sparse coding through sub-band construction, dictionary learning, and encoding steps. In the framework, we construct the dictionary based upon the extracted sub-bands from the spectral representation of a pixel. In the encoding step, we utilize a soft …

Application Of Spatial And Descriptive Analysis Methods To Determine Relationship Between Hardware Subsidies And The Sanitation Marketplace, Danielle Devuyst

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sanitation marketing is an emerging approach of strengthening the local private sector to implement scalable and sustainable improved sanitation coverage in developing countries, specifically among the poor. It encourages the enhancement of sanitation market supply and demand by developing distribution infrastructure and stimulating consumer interest. Unlike interventions that provide hardware subsidies to initiate sanitation demand, financial support for sanitation marketing is used exclusively for the research and development of the market; this encourages the private sector to become independent and self-sufficient. Qualitative data suggests that while sanitation marketing projects have been successful at implementing replicable and sustainable sanitation coverage, they …

The Use Of Remote Sensing Technologies And Models To Study Pollutants In Pdn Region, Suhail Mahmud

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Using a suite of modeling techniques and instrumentation we study the atmospheric pollutants in the PdN Region. The first objective of this work was to measure hemi-spherically integrated, spectrally resolved solar photon flux (actinic flux) between the wavelengths 300 and 700 nm, and use the measured actinic flux to improve air quality simulations. Actinic flux was measured in the PdN region in order to calculate photolysis rate coefficients for different pollutants. The improved photolysis rate coefficients were then integrated into a photochemical air quality model (CAMx) in order to improve air quality forecasting. We present the simulations performed for a …