Engineering Commons^™

Benefits Of Pre-Construction Analysis: Cet Senior Capstone Expands Understanding Of An Urban Refuge At Gallopnyc Sunrise Stables, Aalaa Mohammed

Publications and Research

For any construction project, there exists a phase of planning known as “pre-construction.” This initial phase of the project provides a definition of the project, identification of potential issues, planning and scheduling, scope, cost estimation, and analysis of needs for the job. My research analyzes a pre-construction case study conducted for Gallop NYC’s Stable in Howard Beach, Queens. The findings suggest that the practice of construction planning is effective in order to avoid delays in construction itself and ensure successful project completion. Supporting literature examines some of the best practices for pre-construction analysis. These include but are not limited to: …

Adaptive Water Infrastructure Planning For A Changing World, Sarah Fletcher

All ECSTATIC Materials

Water planners face the challenge of ensuring reliable water supply for people and the environment. Long-term changes and short-term variability in both the natural and social environments create large uncertainty in future water supply and demand. This makes it difficult to know when and how to adapt water systems through operational changes, policy, and infrastructure development. Adaptive planning approaches, in which planners defer action and respond as the system changes over time, have the potential to enable robustness to an uncertain future without unnecessary infrastructure development or policy changes. However, adaptive approaches may prevent planners from leveraging economies of scale, …

Rails To Resilience: Evaluating New Orleans And Baton Rouge Rail Terminals And Transit Links, Tara M. Tolford, James Amdal, Guang Tian, Alahna Moore, Marin Tockman

Data

This study evaluates the multimodal linkages to and opportunities for proposed terminal sites for a potential future passenger rail connection between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. The project included a comprehensive analysis of recent planning processes and documents and distribution of a statewide survey aimed at understanding ridership potential (including non-work trips) and the needs of likely users, the results of which were modeled to illuminate key considerations for service design and station area planning. This study finds a strong foundation for, and support of, the proposed rail service, but distinct deficiencies in the current multimodal transportation environment connecting …

Rails To Resilience: Evaluating New Orleans And Baton Rouge Rail Terminals And Transit Links, Tara M. Tolford, James Amdal, Guang Tian, Alahna Moore, Marin Tockman

Publications

This study evaluates the multimodal linkages to and opportunities for proposed terminal sites for a potential future passenger rail connection between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. The project included a comprehensive analysis of recent planning processes and documents and distribution of a statewide survey aimed at understanding ridership potential (including non-work trips) and the needs of likely users, the results of which were modeled to illuminate key considerations for service design and station area planning. This study finds a strong foundation for, and support of, the proposed rail service, but distinct deficiencies in the current multimodal transportation environment connecting …

Methodological Approach To Substantiating Economically Feasible Volumes Of Work In The Road Sector, I.M. Tsarenkova

Journal of Tashkent Institute of Railway Engineers

This paper presents the results of a study aimed at developing methodological bases for selecting the most rational management decisions in the current economic situation to improve the transport and operational condition of individual sections of roads and the development of the national road network. The relevance of road infrastructure modernization as a system of measures aimed at improving it and improving consumer qualities is proved. In this regard, the theoretical substantiation of the content of the concept "modernization of highways" and the characteristics of the types of work performed in this case are presented. In the development of the …

Algorithmic Robot Design: Label Maps, Procrustean Graphs, And The Boundary Of Non-Destructiveness, Shervin Ghasemlou

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is focused on the problem of algorithmic robot design. The process of designing a robot or a team of robots that can reliably accomplish a task in an environment requires several key elements. How the problem is formulated can play a big role in the design process. The ability of the model to correctly reflect the environment, the events, and different pieces of the problem is crucial. Another key element is the ability of the model to show the relationship between different designs of a single system. These two elements can enable design algorithms to navigate through the …

Wooden Bridge Demolition And Reconstruction, Josh Simon Rogers

Construction Management

The Conejo Recreation and Park District (CRPD) is a nonprofit city government organization that maintains the parks and hiking trails in Thousand Oaks, California. They were informed that one of the bridges at the Stagecoach Inn, a landmark park located in Thousand Oaks California, was old and sagging in a way that made interfered with the flow of the creek it spanned over. A plan to demolish the current bridge was created. Utilizing ArchiCAD and Microsoft Excel a design and an estimate were developed for a new bridge that would be built in its place. This bridge would be tall …

Cal Poly Rodeo Observation Deck, Timothy Smith

Construction Management

This senior project was designed to help continue the winning tradition that the Cal Poly Rodeo program established in 1939 with a new observation deck for the practice arena. The major steps taken to complete this project were design, fundraising and construction. The total area of the deck is approximately 1,100 square feet and includes connections to an ADA approved ramp and multiple staircases. This is a landmark project for the Cal Poly Rodeo program and will assist them in keeping the winning Mustang tradition alive.

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

An Integrated Resource Plan For Arizona Public Service Electric (Aps), Irene Boghdadi, Randy Chiu

Master's Projects and Capstones

Our Masters Capstone Project is an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for Arizona’s largest electric utility, Arizona Public Service Electric (APS).

An IRP is developed by utilities to identify the optimal combination of demand- and supply-side resources needed to reliably meet forecasted demand for energy and capacity, including a planning reserve margin, over a future period.

In addition to APS’s obligation to serve the growing load in Arizona while minimizing costs, it is required by the state to adhere to the Renewable Energy Standard (RES) policy of 15 percent retail sales from renewable energy resources by 2025.

The analysis described in …

Hester Gardens - A Lifemoves Temporary Interim-Housing Facility, Jeffrey Meier, Megan Sauter, Jenna Tran, Taylor Klauser

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

LifeMoves, an organization that provides interim housing and supportive services to families and individuals experiencing homelessness, recently purchased 0.35 acres of land, located at 1759 Hester Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128. LifeMoves has challenged the design team to provide preliminary building layouts, a structural alternative analysis, construction management plans, and general civil plans for a multi-story, family-friendly, interim housing facility, which has been named Hester Gardens. The design team considered both steel, a traditional building material, and shipping containers, a sustainable alternative building material, for this project. Each alternative included a structural design and analysis, as well as a cost …

Spatial Indexing For System-Level Evaluation Of 5g Heterogeneous Cellular Networks, Roohollah Amiri, Eren Balevi, Jeffrey G. Andrews, Hani Mehrpouyan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

System level simulations of large 5G networks are essential to evaluate and design algorithms related to network issues such as scheduling, mobility management, interference management, and cell planning. In this paper, we look back to the idea of spatial indexing and its advantages, applications, and future potentials in accelerating large 5G network simulations. We introduce a multi-level inheritance based architecture which is used to index all elements of a heterogeneous network (HetNet) on a single geometry tree. Then, we define spatial queries to accelerate searches in distance, azimuth, and elevation. We demonstrate that spatial indexing can accelerate location-based searches by …

Route Planning For Long-Term Robotics Missions, Christopher Alexander Arend Tatsch

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Many future robotic applications such as the operation in large uncertain environment depend on a more autonomous robot. The robotics long term autonomy presents challenges on how to plan and schedule goal locations across multiple days of mission duration. This is an NP-hard problem that is infeasible to solve for an optimal solution due to the large number of vertices to visit. In some cases the robot hardware constraints also adds the requirement to return to a charging station multiple times in a long term mission. The uncertainties in the robot model and environment require the robot planner to account …

The Role Of Geospatial Information And Effective Partnerships In The Implementation Of The International Agenda For Sustainable Development, Etta Delores Jackson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (2014), repeated the core promise in the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development, in which the General Assembly called for an approach guaranteeing meaningful participation of everyone in development and the fair distribution of the benefits of that development. To this end, partnerships are central and can lead to the dignity of the citizens involved as they participate in the development of their own communities. This dissertation research conducted in Manyatta A and B in the Port City of Kisumu, Kenya sought to do just that. The purpose of this study …