Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Value Based Methodology To Evaluate Sensors For Bridge Structural Health Monitoring Systems, Jefferson Santos De Oliveira

Theses and Dissertations

Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems have become important tools in the transportation industry to help monitor the behavior and health of civil structures. Today, there is a real concern about the health of bridges because these structures are aging, and various failure events have contributed to increase that concern. Consequently, the topic of improving the effectiveness and appropriate use of SHM systems have become the focus of various government agencies and researchers, both in industry and academia. In this context, this thesis work was developed to understand the general components of bridge SHM systems, and present a methodology to help …

Incorporating A New Class Of Uncertainty In Disaster Relief Logistics Planning, Emre Kirac

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among emergency managers in using Social data in disaster response planning. However, the trustworthiness and reliability of posted information are two of the most significant concerns, because much of the user-generated data is initially not verified. Therefore, a key tradeoff exists for emergency managers when considering whether to incorporate Social data in disaster planning efforts. By considering Social data, a larger number of needs can be identified in a shorter amount of time, potentially enabling a faster response and satisfying a class of demand that might not otherwise be discovered. However, …

Profit Based Simulation Model For The Rail Transportation Industry, Mark Patrick Doran

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Schedules often conflict in the rail transportation industry. Operations managers assign resources and make scheduling decisions with no visibility of the revenue, cost, and profitability characteristics of the route they are manipulating. Transit speed decisions focus on ensuring trains safely reach their destination on time with little regard given to the actual service needs of the customer. Although all customers want on-time deliveries, few actually pay a premium to garner this level of preferential treatment. Operating in this type of environment results in decisions that severely erode profits.

In this dissertation, a simulation model referred to as the Rail Profit …

Synthesis Of Nanoporous Carbohydrate Metal-Organic Framework And Encapsulation Of Acetaldehyde, Saleh Al-Ghamdi, Ajay Kathuria, Mohamad G. Abiad, Rafael Auras

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Gamma cyclodextrin (γ-CD) metal organic frameworks (CDMOFs) were synthesized by coordinating γ-CDs with potassium hydroxide (KOH), referred hereafter as CDMOF-a, and potassium benzoate (C₇H₅KO₂), denoted as CDMOF-b. The obtained CDMOF structures were characterized using nitrogen sorption isotherm, thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). High surface areas were achieved by the γ-CD based MOF structures where the Langmuir specific surface areas (SSA) of CDMOF-a and CDMOF-b were determined as 1376 m² g⁻¹ and 607 m² g⁻¹; respectively. The dehydrated CDMOF structures demonstrated good thermal stability …

Design For Manufacturability: Off-Road Toyota Bumper, Drew Donlon

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project is to design a new off-road bumper that is improved from the stock form of a 1996-2002 Toyota 4Runner and a 1996-2004 Toyota Tacoma. The current state of the component is too weak to endure to off-road endeavors, and a kit bumper market is virtually untapped for these vehicles. The objectives of this project were met by redesigning the stock front bumper, conducting a finite element analysis on the model to test for strength, prototyping the bumper with CNC cut cardboard, and conducting a full cost analysis including the costs for waterjet and laser cutting …

Attending To Scientific Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina Quan, Chandra Turpen, Andrew Elby

Faculty Publications

Ford (2015) argues for viewing “scientific practice” not as a list of particular skills, but rather, more holistically as “sets of regularities of behaviors and social interactions” among scientists. This conceptualization of scientific practices foregrounds how they meaningfully connect to one another and are purposefully employed in order to explain nature. We apply this framework in the context of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) to understand the early forms of student engagement in scientific practices, and how these specific forms of engagement may be consequential for students’ future participation. Using video from interviews with students and research mentors, we argue that …

Privacy And The Information Age: A Longitudinal View, Charles E. Downing

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

As information systems and data storage capacity become increasingly sophisticated, an important ethical question for organizations is “What can/will/should be done with the personal information that has been and can be collected?” Individuals’ privacy is certainly important, but so is less costly and more targeted business processes. As this conflict intensifies, consumers, managers and policy makers are left wondering: What privacy principles are important to guide organizations in self-regulation? For example, do consumers view the five rights originally stated in the European Data Protection Directive as important? Comprehensive? Is there a product discount point where consumers would forsake these principles? …

An Empirical Investigation On Ceo Turnover In It Firms And Firm Performance, Peiqin Zhang, David Wierschem, Francis A. Mendez Mediavilla, Keejae P. Hong

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Drawn upon upper echelon theory and organizational theory, this research proposes to examine the impact of CEO turnover in IT firms on firm performance in terms of both sustainable accounting performance and market performance. We find that CEO turnover is a significant determinant of firm performance, especially in IT firms. This paper contributes to the IS literature by investigating the CEO turnover impact in IT firms compared to other industries. This study also has practical implications by providing the guideline for IT firms on the CEO turnover policy. Such firms should place additional emphasis on their succession planning efforts.

Facebook Use Among African American And Hispanic Students: An Exploratory Investigation Of Perceived Academic Impact, Sathasivam Mathiyalakan, Sharon D. White, Jorge O. Brusa

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Facebook is one of the world’s leading social networking sites. It is pervasive in students’ lives and can impact their academic careers in a variety of ways. However, little research exists evaluating the use of Facebook in minority academic settings. An early step in this direction is to gain an understanding of how different student demographic groups use Facebook. An interest in further assessment of Facebook’s role in diverse segments of academia motivates the collection and analysis of Facebook-related data from minority serving institutions such as Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). This study presents …

Crowdsourcing Management Education Assessment, Owen P. Hall Jr, Charla Griffy-Brown

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Assessment is now at the center of the new business education zeitgeist. This focus is the direct result of feedback from the business community regarding the growing gap between their needs and graduates from many business schools. Recently this divide has fallen under even closer scrutiny because of increasing student debt and the growing controversy over return-on- investment. Today business leaders are looking for web-savvy, problem-solving graduates. To this end, AACSB and regional accrediting bodies are calling for the adoption of comprehensive collaborative learning strategies to better align graduates’ skill sets with the real needs of business. Crowdsourcing, which is …

Towards A Taxonomy Of Challenges In An Integrated It Governance Framework Implementation, Mathew Nicho, Suadad Muamaar

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The rapid adoption of IT governance (ITG) frameworks in organizations worldwide, along with the subsequent need to select and integrate overlapping ITG frameworks has presented practitioners with challenges in choice and integration of frameworks. In this respect, the purpose of this study was to explore the ITG frameworks integration (ITGFI) challenges faced by organizations worldwide; develop and test a theory-based integrated ITG challenges (IIC) taxonomy model created from extant literature; and validate and compare these with those empirically extracted from three case studies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The results present the audience with a taxonomy of a prioritized …

Comparative Empirical Analysis On Computer Software Piracy Behaviors Between China And The United States: An Exploratory Study, Xiang Fang, Sooun Lee

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Using the data collected from several universities in China and the United States, which have drastically different piracy rates, economic development stages, income levels, and national cultures, this study aims to identify which demographic factors affect software piracy significantly. Totally, the dataset includes 600 valid responses. Multivariate data analysis, supported by Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Turkey’s test, reveals that among various factors, country difference and gender most significantly influence software piracy. In addition, this study offers recommendations on how to curb software piracy effectively.

The Eco-Friendly Intermodal Delivery Network, Sergio Mourelo

Senior Honors Theses

The design of the distribution process is a strategic issue for almost every company. As the use of advanced technology and automation increases in manufacturing and logistics, the implementation of autonomous and electrical transportation, such as driverless vehicles and electric trucks, has become an interesting topic of study within the last few years, with the main objective of minimizing distribution costs and delivery times. The purpose of this research is to prove that intermodal delivery networks, which may combine a train and several electric vehicles, are more efficient and environmentally friendly than unimodal networks for high volume and long haul …

A Hybrid Tabu/Scatter Search Algorithm For Simulation-Based Optimization Of Multi-Objective Runway Operations Scheduling, Bulent Soykan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

As air traffic continues to increase, air traffic flow management is becoming more challenging to effectively and efficiently utilize airport capacity without compromising safety, environmental and economic requirements. Since runways are often the primary limiting factor in airport capacity, runway operations scheduling emerge as an important problem to be solved to alleviate flight delays and air traffic congestion while reducing unnecessary fuel consumption and negative environmental impacts. However, even a moderately sized real-life runway operations scheduling problem tends to be too complex to be solved by analytical methods, where all mathematical models for this problem belong to the complexity class …

An Advanced Tabu Search Approach To The Dynamic Airlift Loading Problem, August G. Roesener, J. Wesley Barnes

Faculty Publications

This research effort presents a tabu search algorithm to solve the dynamic airlift loading problem. Given a set of palletized cargo items which require transportation from an aerial port of embarkation to an aerial port of debarkation within a pre-specified time frame, the dynamic airlift loading problem seeks to partition the pallets into aircraft loads, select an efficient and effective subset of aircraft from available aircraft, and assign the pallets to allowable positions on those aircraft. The dynamic airlift loading problem differs from many partitioning and packing problems described in the literature because, in addition to spatial constraints, factors such …

Oversampling Methods For Imbalanced Dataset Classification And Their Application To Gynecological Disorder Diagnosis, Iman Nekooeimehr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In many applications, the dataset for classification may be highly imbalanced where most of the instances in the training set may belong to some of the classes (majority classes), while only a few instances are from the other classes (minority classes). Conventional classifiers will strongly favor the majority class and ignore the minority instances. The imbalance problem can occur in both binary data classification and also in ordinal regression. Ordinal regression is a supervised approach for learning the ordinal relationship between classes. Extensive research has been performed for addressing imbalanced datasets for binary classification; however, current methods do not address …

A New Application Of Machine Learning In Health Care, Kaj Mikael Björk, Yoan Miche, Emil Eirola, Amaury Lendasse

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In Our Ever More Complex World, the Field of Analytics Has Dramatically Increased its Importance. Gut Feeling is No Longer Sufficient in Decision Making, But Intuition Has to Be Combined with Support from the Huge Amount of Data Available Today. Even If the Amount of Data is Enormous, the Quality of the Data is Not Always Good. Problems Arise in at Least Two Situations: I) the Data is Imprecise by Nature and Ii) the Data is Incomplete (Or There Are Missing Parts in the Data Set). Both Situations Are Problematic and Need to Be Addressed Appropriately. If These Problems Are …

Rule-Based Risk Monitoring Systems For Complex Datasets, Mona Haghighi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation we present rule-based machine learning methods for solving problems with high-dimensional or complex datasets. We are applying decision tree methods on blood-based biomarkers and neuropsychological tests to predict Alzheimer’s disease in its early stages. We are also using tree-based methods to identify disparity in dementia related biomarkers among three female ethnic groups. In another part of this research, we tried to use rule-based methods to identify homogeneous subgroups of subjects who share the same risk patterns out of a heterogeneous population. Finally, we applied a network-based method to reduce the dimensionality of a clinical dataset, while capturing …

Integrating E-Learning Modules Into Engineering Courses To Develop An Entrepreneurial Mindset In Students, Nadiye O. Erdil, Ronald S. Harichandran, Jean Nocito-Gobel, Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, Cheryl Q. Li

Engineering and Applied Science Education Faculty Publications

Engineering graduates who will be leaders in today’s rapidly changing environment must possess an entrepreneurial mindset and a variety of professional skills in addition to technical knowledge and skills. An entrepreneurial mindset applies to all aspects of life, beginning with curiosity about our changing world, integrating information from various resources to gain insight, and identifying unexpected opportunities to create value. The Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) defines curiosity, connections and creating value as three core components of an entrepreneurial mindset. These 3Cs coupled with associated engineering skills forms KEEN’s entrepreneurial mindset framework. An entrepreneurial mindset enables engineers to develop sound …

What Does It Mean To Be An Engineer? A Comparison Of Adult Students At Three Institutions, Tressa Kay Mikel, Pedro Sh Kim, Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, Shannon Ciston

Engineering and Applied Science Education Faculty Publications

Our work is motivated by the need to cultivate a diverse group of talented future engineers. Adult undergraduate students over the age of 25 are an important source of engineers, with life experience that can enhance student experience, but not much is understood yet about this specific group. Adult students face challenges specific to their demographic due to responsibilities in other aspects of their life as employees, parents, spouses, and more. This paper examines adult engineering students’ conceptions of what an engineer is, across three distinct academic environments: a community college, a small private undergraduate university, and a large public …

Preliminary Assessment Of And Lessons Learned In Pitch: An Integrated Approach To Developing Technical Communication Skills In Engineers, Nadiye O. Erdil, Ronald S. Harichandran, Michael A. Collura, Jean Nocito-Gobel, David J. Adams, Amanda Simson

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

The Project to Integrate Technical Communication Habits (PITCH) has been implemented across seven engineering and computer science undergraduate programs starting in fall 2012. The overarching goal of PITCH is to develop written, oral and visual communication skills and professional habits in engineering students. PITCH activities begin in the very first semester and are reinforced and extended through all four years of each program. After three years of progressively more extensive development and deployment, a preliminary assessment of student writing over their first three years in programs was performed. In May 2016 the first cohort of students will have completed the …

Developing Entrepreneurial Mindset In Industrial Engineering Classes: A Case Study, Farnaz Ghazi Nezami, Massoud Tavakoli, Mohammad Torfeh

Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

Instilling entrepreneurial mindset among engineering students is one of the challenges in engineering education. This paper presents the efforts to improve a core undergraduate industrial engineering course, Designing Value in Supply Chain, to infuse entrepreneurial thinking among students using an internally funded grant by Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN). For this purpose, three new course modules are designed and their effectiveness on student learning is evaluated. This course is ideal for establishing entrepreneurially minded learning (EML) as a systematic approach is required for managing the chain of supply, especially since the impacts of the decisions are not isolated and will …

Using Approximate Dynamic Programming To Solve The Stochastic Demand Military Inventory Routing Problem With Direct Delivery, Ethan L. Salgado

Theses and Dissertations

A brigade combat team must resupply forward operating bases (FOBs) within its area of operations from a central location, mainly via ground convoy operations, in a way that closely resembles vendor managed inventory practices. Military logisticians routinely decide when and how much inventory to distribute to each FOB. Technology currently exists that makes utilizing cargo unmanned aerial vehicles (CUAVs) for resupply an attractive alternative due to the dangers of utilizing convoy operations. However, enemy actions, austere conditions, and inclement weather pose a significant risk to a CUAV's ability to safely deliver supplies to a FOB. We develop a Markov decision …

Efficient Employment Of Large Format Sensor Data Transfer Architectures, Jeffrey R. Oltmanns

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the increasing quantity of data collected by Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets and the focus on timely access to the data collected by these systems, operational data transfer network architectures have become a critical component of their employment in the intelligence production process. Efficient utilization of the provided long-haul communications component of the ISR system improves the value of the single asset to the warfighter and enables connectivity of additional assets via the data transfer network architecture. This research effort focused on the creation and implementation of a structured test design methodology based on the …

Short-Term Building Energy Model Recommendation System: A Meta-Learning Approach, Can Cui, Teresa Wu, Mengqi Hu, Jeffery D. Weir, Xiwang Li

Faculty Publications

High-fidelity and computationally efficient energy forecasting models for building systems are needed to ensure optimal automatic operation, reduce energy consumption, and improve the building’s resilience capability to power disturbances. Various models have been developed to forecast building energy consumption. However, given buildings have different characteristics and operating conditions, model performance varies. Existing research has mainly taken a trial-and-error approach by developing multiple models and identifying the best performer for a specific building, or presumed one universal model form which is applied on different building cases. To the best of our knowledge, there does not exist a generalized system framework which …

Socio-Eco-Efficiency Analysis Of Highways: A Data Envelopment Analysis, Omer Tatari, Gokhan Egilmez, Dhruva Kurmapu

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

To ensure the large network of highways is performing sustainably, there is a dire need to quantify sustainability for highways. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) based mathematical model is developed to evaluate sustainability in an attempt to aid these efforts. Sustainability goals pertaining to the three dimensions of sustainability, social, economic and environmental, were utilized. Utilizing the developed model, sustainability scores of thirty highway sections were calculated and ranked accordingly. Percent improvement analysis was carried out to gain more insight. In addition, sensitivity analysis was carried out to understand how different values of input parameters impacted the socio-eco-efficiency …

Seafloor Visual Saliency Evaluation For Navigation With Bow And Dbscan, Yue Geng, Zhiyuan Wang, Congcong Shi, Rui Nian, Cheng Zhang, Bo He, Yue Shen, Amaury Lendasse

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In This Paper, We Try to Combine Bag-Of-Words (Bow) with Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) Together for One Kind of Sparse Representation in the Seafloor Visual Saliency Evaluation. Properties in the Water, Due to the Large Amount of Acoustic Noises, Sonar Signals Are Easily Polluted and Interfered during Image Collection, and the Sonar Images Usually Diverge from the True Underwater Environment or Degrade the Accuracy of the Measure, So Sparse Representation Has Been Taken into Consideration for Underwater Sonar Image Visual Saliency Evaluation. Our Method is a Simple and Computationally Efficient Extension of an Order less Bow …

Underwater Object Detection With Efficient Shadow-Removal For Side Scan Sonar Images, Ruijie Chang, Yaomin Wang, Jiaru Hou, Shuqi Qiu, Rui Nian, Bo He, Amaury Lendasse

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Side Scan Sonar Has Been Widely Used in Ocean Investigations, Underwater Object Detection by Side Scan Sonar is One of the Most Essential and Fundamental Tasks These Years. in This Paper, We Present One Simplified Underwater Object Detection Scheme with the Help of Shadow Removal of Side Scan Sonar Images. the Fuzzy C-Mean Clustering (FCM) Algorithm is First Taken to Partition All Pixels from the Side Scan Sonar Images into a Collection of C Fuzzy Clusters, Which Makes Shadow Regions Be Segmented. the Criminisi Algorithm based on Isophote-Driven Image Sampling Process is Then Made Full Use of to Undertake the …

Underwater 3d Object Reconstruction With Multiple Views In Video Stream Via Structure From Motion, Xiao Xu, Renzheng Che, Rui Nian, Bo He, Meimei Chen, Amaury Lendasse

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Underwater 3d Object Reconstruction is One of the Most Essential and Fundamental Tasks in Ocean Investigations. in This Paper, We Try to Capture the Inherent Geometrical Variation of 3d Objects at Multiple Visual Angels with the Underwater Vehicles and Develop a Novel Underwater 3d Object Reconstruction Model for the Continuous Video Stream. Image Enhancement Will Be First Taken into Consideration by Guided Image Filtering to Acquire Clearer Images for Object Tracking Which Can Be Completed by the Particle Filter. and Then, We Use Scale Invariant Feature Transform (Sift) and Random Sample Consensus (Ransac) to Detect and Correspond the Features of …

Analysis Of A Parallel Machine Scheduling Problem With Sequence Dependent Setup Times And Job Availability Intervals, Ridvan Gedik, Chase Rainwater, Heather Nachtmann, Edward A. Pohl

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

In this study, we propose constraint programming (CP) model and logic-based Benders algorithms in order to make the best decisions for scheduling non-identical jobs with availability intervals and sequence dependent setup times on unrelated parallel machines in a fixed planning horizon. In this problem, each job has a profit, cost and must be assigned to at most one machine in such a way that total profit is maximized. In addition, the total cost has to be less than or equal to a budget level. Computational tests are performed on a real-life case study prepared in collaboration with the U.S. Army …