Computer Engineering Commons^™

An Integrated Approach For Including Social Capacities, And Economic Valuation In Risk Assessment Of Water Related Hazards In Uncertain Scenarios, Carlo Giupponi, Vahid Mojtahed, Animesh K. Gain, Stefano Balbi, Claudio Biscaro

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We propose a conceptual framework, KR-FWK (i.e. KULTURisk Framework from the name of the European project within which it originated) and its implementation methods SERRA (Socio-Economic Regional Risk Assessment) for integrated (physical and economical) risk assessment, and economic valuation of risk prevention benefits on multiple receptors. The KR-FWK and the SERRA approach are characterised by: (i) integration of physical-environmental dimensions and the socio-economic ones in risk assessment; (ii) consideration of the role of social capacities (adaptive and coping capacity) in reducing risk and related costs, (iii) quantitative (even monetary) assessment of risks and of the benefits of risk reduction measures, …

Agile Workflows For Climate Impact Risk Assessment Based On The Ci:Grasp Platform And The Jabc Modeling Framework, Samih Al-Areqi, Anna-Lena Lamprecht, Tiziana Margaria, Steffen Kriewald, Dominik Reusser, Markus Wrobel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Analyzing and assessing potential impacts of climate change are critical and challenging tasks that require the processing of large and heterogeneous datasets. These analyses are particularly demanding because of the multi-scale and multi-objective nature of environmental modeling for climate change impact assessment. The Climate Impacts: Global and Regional Adaptation Support Platform (ci:grasp) is a web-based climate information service for exploring climate change related information in its geographical context. In this paper, we show how the agile workflow development style supported by the jABC process modeling and execution framework permits us to leverage the processes implemented in the ci:grasp platform to …

The Data Processing Inequality And Environmental Model Prediction, Steven V. Weijs

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Prediction in environmental systems, such as hydrological streamflow prediction, is a challenging task. Although on a small scale, many of the physical processes are well described, accurate predictions of macroscopical (e.g. catchment scale) behavior with a bottom-up mechanistic approach often remains elusive. On the other hand, conceptual or purely statistical models fitted to data often perform surprisingly well for prediction. The data processing inequality, from the field of information theory, says that processing data with statistical procedures can only decrease, and not increase the information content of the data. This seems to contradict the intuition that our knowledge of physical …

Managing Agricultural Landscapes For Favouring Ecosystem Services Provided By Biodiversity: A Spatially Explicit Model Of Crop Rotations In The Gama Simulation Platform, Hugo Thierry, Aude Vialatte, Jean-Philippe Choisis, Benoit Gaudou, Claude Monteil

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The need to reduce the use of pesticides in agricultural ecosystems requires studying and developing new pest regulation methods. Individual-based models are useful to better understand how dynamics of insects interact with agricultural landscapes and to study the potential effects of alternative regulation methods, taking into account the spatial and temporal stochasticity of agricultural ecosystems caused by human management. Crop rotations and crop phenology have an important impact on the life cycles of populations of insects. We developed an individual-based model simulating the dynamics of an agricultural landscape from GIS data. The spatiotemporal stochasticity is simulated using typical landcover rotations …

Digikey, Maziar Arjomand, Michael Hirabayashi, Tejender Singh

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

With the vast majority of university students carrying smartphones, more pieces of technology should take advantage of its availability. Currently, most lock and key systems are outdated and primitive. Our team is proposing a solution to this problem that makes use of the technology that we all carry in our pockets daily. Our solution, DigiKey, will improve security and ease of use along with adding on additional features to the current system with the use of smartphones as digital keys. DigiKey will utilize a database of digital keys that can be used from a smartphone to unlock a DigiKey lock …

Location Based Recommendation Application, Nicholas Dario, Steven Goetter, Christopher Polson

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For our senior design project we decided to make an iOS application that could generate a list of nearby locations for the user to visit. We wanted the recommendation list to be unique for each user instead of a list of the most popular locations in the area. To accomplish this we developed our own recommendation algorithm from scratch. The algorithm uses a tagging system in which users and system administrators are able to add and modify the tags associated with locations. By using the tags associated with each location and with each user, our algorithm is able to generate …

Preserving The Quality Of Architectural Tactics In Source Code, Mehdi Mirakhorli

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In any complex software system, strong interdependencies exist between requirements and software architecture. Requirements drive architectural choices while also being constrained by the existing architecture and by what is economically feasible. This makes it advisable to concurrently specify the requirements, to devise and compare alternative architectural design solutions, and ultimately to make a series of design decisions in order to satisfy each of the quality concerns.

Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence has shown that architectural knowledge tends to be tacit in nature, stored in the heads of people, and lost over time. Therefore, developers often lack comprehensive knowledge of underlying architectural design …

Power Management In The Cluster System, Leping Wang

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

With growing cost of electricity, the power management of server clusters has become an important problem. However, most previous researchers have only addressed the challenge in traditional homogeneous environments. Considering the increasing popularity of heterogeneous and virtualized systems, this thesis develops a series of efficient algorithms respectively for power management of heterogeneous soft real-time clusters and a virtualized cluster system. It is built on simple but effective mathematical models. When deployed to a new platform, the software incurs low configuration cost because no extensive performance measurements and profiling are required. Built upon optimization, queuing theory and control theory techniques, our …

System-Wide Performance Analysis For Virtualization, Deron Eugene Jensen

Dissertations and Theses

With the current trend in cloud computing and virtualization, more organizations are moving their systems from a physical host to a virtual server.

Although this can significantly reduce hardware, power, and administration costs, it can increase the cost of analyzing performance problems. With virtualization, there is an initial performance overhead, and as more virtual machines are added to a physical host the interference increases between various guest machines. When this interference occurs, a virtualized guest application may not perform as expected. There is little or no information to the virtual OS about the interference, and the current performance tools in …

Mobile Audiometry Application, Kevin Nguyen, Shweta Panditrao

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The Mobile Audiometry Application hopes to utilize the ubiquity of the mobile device by providing a means of healthcare focused on audiometry. This application enables a mobile device to perform audiometric testing to detect a user's hearing range, and notify the user whether he or she is suffering from hearing loss. This project seeks to fulfill a social need for increased access to hearing testing by providing a portable, affordable, and reliable screening tool that is accurate. The result was sleek application that provided a calibration method, executed an audiometry test using accurate and calibrated files, displayed the results graphically, …

Namebuzzer, Diane Keng, Haiwen Chen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The NameExpert is an iOS mobile application that will help users remember the names of new acquaintances. Many people often experience situations where they would run into someone they have been introduced to before, but could not remember the name to. Situations like this tend to instigate feelings of frustration and awkwardness between both parties. Names are important as part of identity and so the NameExpert would allow individuals to connect names to things like location of the meet, appearances, and other systematic ways. The NameExpert would utilize an algorithm that is derived from a proven psychological research regarding the …

Legacy Borehole Project, Maza Brady, Luke Cashman, Erin Hicks, Meghan Richey

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The Legacy Borehole Project is a three-year effort to design and build a sensor package that will be used to explore the geological and chemical conditions of the ocean floor. Over the course of three years, a mechanical structure and a robotic system will be constructed to lower sensors into previously drilled boreholes. As the team responsible for the development of the first year of this project, we have constructed a prototype sensor package and mock mechanical structure to test a communication interface between the sensors and a graphical user interface. The sensors were tested by lowering the sensor package …

Tail: Data Structures Tutorial Site, Lauren Jauco, Ian Parker, Allie Rodriguez, Tyler Upadhyaya

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Any intermediate computer programmer will learn data structures. A data structure stores and organizes in-formation into useful groups in order for a computer program to run as efficiently as possible. Data structures become extremely important when managing large amounts of data, whether it be as simple as managing statistics for a basketball team, or as critical as accounts for online banking. The current way to learn data structures is through classes and online Java applets. In classes, most professors teach by drawing the data structure and editing the information on a board. Data structure tutorial websites mimic this visual way …

Distributed Smart Camera Network For Safety And Security, Nathan Fox, Matthew Kelley, Christopher Rapa, Christopher Yarp

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Current CCTV surveillance solutions are generally retrospective tools. Because real time use of CCTV requires human monitors to view a potentially exorbitant number of video feeds, CCTV is usually only useful after an incident has occurred. However, new technologies are making it possible for machines to perform some tasks that previously required a human monitor. The proposed project seeks to augment existing CCTV systems with behavioral analytics. The system uses a series of cameras, FPGAs, and computers to track object movement throughout a facility. This information is used to build a model of normal movement. Object movements are compared against …

Low Energy Smart Phone For The Homeless, Sean Kinzer, Daniel Marks

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For our senior design project, we conducted research on the Android mobile operating system, looking for ways to improve it for the homeless. The problem with the current system is that it is designed for wealthier consumers, while less fortunate consumers such as the homeless have different requirements for them. In our researched, we attemepted to reconfigure the android operating system so that it would be more tailored to the homeless. We first researched what features the homeless value in a mobile device. We then determined how we could improve the battery life at a user configuration level based on …

Ranked Similarity Search Of Scientific Datasets: An Information Retrieval Approach, Veronika Margaret Megler

Dissertations and Theses

In the past decade, the amount of scientific data collected and generated by scientists has grown dramatically. This growth has intensified an existing problem: in large archives consisting of datasets stored in many files, formats and locations, how can scientists find data relevant to their research interests? We approach this problem in a new way: by adapting Information Retrieval techniques, developed for searching text documents, into the world of (primarily numeric) scientific data. We propose an approach that uses a blend of automated and curated methods to extract metadata from large repositories of scientific data. We then perform searches over …

Streetconnect, Kelsey Dedoshka, Kaitlin Kirasich, Katie Le

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

An estimated 2.5 million youth ages 16-24 experience homelessness in the U.S. each year. These youth are disproportionately affected by sexual health issues, including HIV,STIs, teen pregnancy and teen dating violence. For youth, mobile phones are increasingly one of the main ways that they connect to the people and resources around them. Additionally, mobile apps via tech tablet are becoming a major tool for many healthcare providers in the U.S. Healthcare providers can play a critical role in providing appropriate care to homeless youth, and linking them to other health services. Research suggests that linking healthcare with other services needed …

Text To Learn: A Digital Training System For Global Social Enterprises, Melissa Bica, Elizabeth Donahue

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Text to Learn is a training tool made with Social Enterprises in mind that uses SMS to distribute training materials and to test users on their learning. Our goal is to give social enterprises a way to train employees and customers digitally and remotely. We will create an online dashboard, using RapidSMS and a cloud storage service, for social enterprises to upload and send training materials, manage users, and create SMS-based quizzes to assess users progress.

The Use Of The Blackboard Architecture For A Decision Making System For The Control Of Craft With Various Actuator And Movement Capabilities, Jeremy Straub, Hassan Reza

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper provides an overview of an approach to the control of multiple craft with heterogeneous movement and actuation characteristics that is based on the Blackboard software architecture. An overview of the Blackboard architecture is provided. Then, the operational and mission requirements that dictate the need for autonomous control are characterized and the utility of the Blackboard architecture is for meeting these requirements is discussed. The performance of a best-path solver and naïve solver are compared. The results demonstrate that the best-path solver outperforms the naïve solver in the amount of time taken to generate a solution, however, the number …

Arsenic Detection Project: Electronics, Anthony Clemetson, John Barth

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

This project is a collaboration with a team of bioengineers to adapt the functionality of laboratory equipment onto a platform which could be used in the field to determine the concentration levels of toxins in ground water. To this end, using a set of printed electrodes, a device was designed and fabricated with the constraints of field use in mind: low power, low cost, with a mobile user interface. An Android phone served as the mobile user interface, and also as the power supply for the circuit and microcontroller that performed the test. This circuit applied a stimulus voltage across …

Beehive Monitor, Tyler William Lewis

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Talk Vox, Javier Thiele-Ruiz

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Possible Geometric Explanations For Basic Empirical Dependencies Of Systems Engineering, Francisco Zapata, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we provide possible geometric explanation for basic empirical dependencies of system engineering: that a properly designed system should have no more than 7 plus minus 2 elements reporting to it, and that the relative cost of correcting a defect on different stages of the system's life cycle is 3--6 on the second (design) stage, 20--100 on the third (development) stage, and 250--1000 on the fourth (production and testing) stage.

Towards Fast And Reliable Localization Of An Underwater Object: An Interval Approach, Quentin Brefort, Luc Jaulin, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To localize an underwater object, we measure the distance to this object from several sonar sensors with known locations. The problem is that the signal sent by some of the sonars is reflected not by the desired object(s), but by some auxiliary object and thus, the values measured by these sensors are drastically different from the distance to the desired object. To solve this problem, currently probabilistic methods are used; however, since we do not know the exact probability distributions, these methods may miss the actual location of the object. There exist interval-based methods which provide guaranteed (reliable) bounds on …

Multi-Team Strategic Game Development, Alvin Bokun Feng

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

How To Explain The Definition Of Stochastic Affiliation To Economics Students, Tonghui Wang, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To formally describe the intuitive idea of "positive correlation" between two quantities, it is often helpful to use the notion of stochastic affiliation. While this notion is useful, its usual definition is not intuitively clear -- which make it difficult to explain this notion to, e.g., economics students. To help students understand this notion, in this paper, we show how the notion of stochastic affiliation can be explained in clear probabilistic terms.

Observable Causality Implies Lorentz Group: Alexandrov-Zeeman-Type Theorem For Space-Time Regions, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The famous Alexandrov-Zeeman theorem proves that causality implies Lorentz group. The physical meaning of this result is that once we observe which event can causally affect which other events, then, using only this information, we can reconstruct the linear structure of the Minkowski space-time. The original Alexandrov-Zeeman theorem is based on the causality relation between events represented by points in space-time. Knowing such a point means that we know the exact moment of time and the exact location of the corresponding event - and that this event actually occurred at a single moment of time and at a single spatial …

Frameworks For A General-Purpose Smart Home Operating System, Donald Hoelle

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Smart home technologies are rapidly growing in prevalence. For my senior project, I designed and implemented the beginnings of a general-purpose framework for a unified Smart Home Operating System, capable of controlling all of the diverse aspects of automated homes. This paper outlines the design challenges involved in building generic smart home systems, as well as the project architecture I designed and implemented to attempt to solve this problem.

Implementing A Robust Data Storage Software System For Cp9, Stuart Andrew Weickgenant

Computer Engineering

This project focuses on the continuation of the CP9 CubeSat project, specifically the software which will be running on the satellite when it goes into space. This project mostly goes into designing a robust system which stores the data collected from the sensors on board CP9, whose purpose is to collect vibrations data from its launch vehicle during its ascent into space, into an easy to analyze system once the data is downlinked to PolySat’s ground station after launch. One other thing this system does is to prevent CP9 from collecting unnecessary data after launch. Testing was done on this …

Gesture Recognition Using Microsoft’S Kinect V2, Andrew Weinfield

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.