Systems Engineering Commons^™

5g-Enabled Iot Gateway For Educational Purposes, Murat Kuzlu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The project aims to develop and implement a 5G-IoT gateway for efficient management and interconnection of IoT devices through advanced sensing and communication technologies. Sensing technologies encompass modern approaches for detecting and measuring physical properties with high accuracy across manufacturing, smart grids, healthcare, smart cities, and other domains. Communication technologies represent the latest developments in high-speed data transmission, offering enhanced reliability and network capacity. This 5G-IoT gateway functions as an educational platform, providing students and educators with hands-on experience in emerging technologies. The system creates opportunities for practical learning and research in telecommunication technologies by enabling direct engagement with 5G …

Leveraging Transformer-Based Ocr Model With Generative Data Augmentation For Engineering Document Recognition, Wael Khallouli, Mohammad Shahab Uddin, Andres Sousa-Poza, Jiang Li, Samuel Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The long-standing practice of document-based engineering has resulted in the accumulation of a large number of engineering documents across various industries. Engineering documents, such as 2D drawings, continue to play a significant role in exchanging information and sharing knowledge across multiple engineering processes. However, these documents are often stored in non-digitized formats, such as paper and portable document format (PDF) files, making automation difficult. As digital engineering transforms processes in many industries, digitizing engineering documents presents a crucial challenge that requires advanced methods. This research addresses the problem of automatically extracting textual content from non-digitized legacy engineering documents. We introduced …

A Theoretical Framework For Resilience In Complex System Governance (Csg), Susan A. Caskey

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation addresses a critical gap in resilience research within complex systems by developing a theoretical framework for governance resilience—an underexplored area despite governance's crucial role in maintaining system resilience. Using the Complex System Governance (CSG) framework (Keating, Katina, Chesterman, et al., 2022; Keating & Katina, 2019), resilience is conceptualized as a system's ability to absorb disturbances while sustaining performance and enabling adaptive transformation. This involves three main capabilities: persistence, adaptability, and transformation in response to both internal and external pressures.

Through a constructivist grounded theory approach involving iterative coding, memoing, and theory development, this study inductively constructs a governance …

A Systems Theory-Based Framework For Uncertainty In Complex System Governance, Teresa Anne Crater

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Complex systems are all around. A complex system is a system whose collective behavior is more than the behavior exhibited by the individual parts. Such a system is characterized by an exponential increase in information, complexity, ambiguity, emergence, and high levels of uncertainty (Jaradat, 2015). Uncertainty is intrinsic to complex systems. Uncertainty refers to epistemic situations involving imperfect or unknown information. Uncertainty can refer to the chance of certain anticipated outcomes occurring, or it can refer to the unknown events that are not foreseeable as to when or if one might occur. It applies to predictions of future events, to …

An Agent-Based Approach For Designing A Sustainable Supplier Selection In Stochastic Environment: A Simulation Study, Sheida Etemadidavan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In the 21st century, businesses are constantly striving for competitive advancement and increasing their economic performance in the rapidly changing market. Collaboration with other businesses and partnerships with them are becoming more common. As such, businesses are starting to invest in finding the right partners to stay competitive in an ever-changing business landscape. Suppliers play a crucial role in businesses' decision-making as they provide the materials, goods, and services necessary for a company to operate and succeed. Therefore, their selection, management, and relationship must be carefully considered to ensure optimal performance and profitability. A sustainable framework in a business's relationship …

Explainable Artificial Intelligence: Methods And Evaluation, Gayane Grigoryan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A wide array of techniques within explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) have been developed to measure the importance of features in machine learning models. A notable portion of these methods draws upon principles of cooperative game theory (CGT), with the Shapley value emerging as a widely used solution concept. Despite the rising prominence of the Shapley value, other promising solutions from cooperative game theory—such as the Nucleolus, Banzhaf power index, Shapley-Shubik power index, and solutions to conflicting claims problems—have been comparatively overlooked, even though they hold significant potential. In this dissertation, multiple XAI methods based on these other CGT solutions are …

Development Of A Conceptual Framework For Complex System Governance (Csg) Performance Measurement, James Hartwell Rutherford

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Within the Complex System Governance (CSG) paradigm, system performance is regulated by nine metasystem governance functions, which provide control, communication, coordination, and integration. However, CSG has lacked a fully developed model or language to richly articulate system performance at a conceptual level. The purpose of this research was to develop a systems theory-based conceptual framework to measure the performance of CSG metasystem governance using an inductive research design.

Although ‘good performance’ may seem like an obvious idea, the current literature on performance measurement across many disciplines and contexts contains vastly inconsistent uses of the word ‘performance.’ Both researchers and practitioners …

Harnessing Social Media For Disaster Response: Intelligent Identification Of Reliable Rescue Requests During Hurricanes, Wael Khallouli

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Hurricanes pose a significant threat to both human lives and infrastructure. Decision-makers face substantial challenges during such events, as they must act quickly to address victims’ needs. Social media platforms provide a valuable source for quick and real-time information. Recent hurricane events have shown that people turn to social media to call for help when official communication channels, such as 911, are overwhelmed. However, extracting actionable information from the massive number of messages posted on social media is challenging. Furthermore, verifying social media messages posted by the public is a critical concern for disaster response practitioners, making them hesitant to …

Understanding The Impact Of Emergent Conflict On Communication And Team Cognition: A Multilevel Study In Engineering Teams, Francisco Cima

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The development of team cognition is crucial for fostering high-performing teams. In cognitive-intensive fields like engineering, effective communication serves as a primary precursor to team knowledge development, enabling group members to effectively retrieve and utilize each other's expertise. Despite the critical role of communication, there is a lack of empirical research examining how conflict situations, which are critical emerging factors inherent to teamwork, interact with communication processes to constrain team knowledge development and utilization. This study, rooted in information processing theory, investigates how emerging conflict shapes multilevel team knowledge structures by interacting with communication processes in engineering project teams. Prior …

Project Control System (Pcs) Implementation In Engineering And Construction Projects: An Empirical Study In Saudi's Petroleum And Chemical Industry, Sahar Jawad, Ann Ledwith, Rashid Khan

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Purpose

There is growing recognition that effective project control systems (PCS) are critical to the success of projects. The relationship between the individual elements of PCS and successfully achieving project objectives has yet to be explored. This research investigates the enablers and barriers that influence the elements of PCS success and drive project objectives.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts a mixed approach of descriptive analysis and regression models to explore the impact of six PCS elements on project outcomes. Petroleum and chemical projects in Saudi Arabia were selected as a case study to validate the research model.

Findings

Data from a …

User-Interaction With A Web-Served Global Ground Motion Relational Database, T. E. Buckreis, C. C. Nweke, P. Wang, S. J. Brandenberg, R. Shams, M. E. Ramos-Sepulveda, R. Pretell, S. Mazzoni

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

We present an application programming interface (API) which facilitates public access to a global relational database of earthquake ground motion intensity measures, associated metadata, and time-series data. Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)-East and NGA-West2 project spreadsheets have been adapted into a relational database format composed of multiple tables through a series of primary and foreign keys. The combined dataset has been expanded to include contributions from earthquakes, generally with magnitudes greater than M3.9, that have occurred since the conclusion of the data synthesis component of both projects in 2011. Currently the database includes 62,449 ground motions recorded at 9,092 stations for …

Methods That Support The Validation Of Agent-Based Models: An Overview And Discussion, Andrew Collins, Matthew Koehler, Christopher Lynch

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Validation is the process of determining if a model adequately represents the system under study for the model’s intended purpose. Validation is a critical component in building the credibility of a simulation model with its end-users. Effectively conducting validation can be a daunting task for both novice and experienced simulation developers. Further compounding the difficult task of conducting validation is that there is no universally accepted approach for assessing a simulation. These challenges are particularly relevant to the paradigm of Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) because of the complexity found in these models’ mechanisms and in the real-world situations they …

Reinforcing Digital Trust For Cloud Manufacturing Through Data Provenance Using Ethereum Smart Contracts, Trupti Narayan Rane

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cloud Manufacturing(CMfg) is an advanced manufacturing model that caters to fast-paced agile requirements (Putnik, 2012). For manufacturing complex products that require extensive resources, manufacturers explore advanced manufacturing techniques like CMfg as it becomes infeasible to achieve high standards through complete ownership of manufacturing artifacts (Kuan et al., 2011). CMfg, with other names such as Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) and Cyber Manufacturing (NSF, 2020), addresses the shortcoming of traditional manufacturing by building a virtual cyber enterprise of geographically distributed entities that manufacture custom products through collaboration.

With manufacturing venturing into cyberspace, Digital Trust issues concerning product quality, data, and intellectual …

Sealion Cubesat Mission Architecture Using Model Based Systems Engineering With A Docs As Code Approach, Kevin Yi-Tzu Chiu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

CubeSats are a growing population within the space industry. Every year, universities launch numerous amounts of CubeSats due to their inexpensive cost of development, launch, and deployment. However, this comes with numerous challenges. As the number of university-CubeSats grow, so too do the numbers that fail. With development teams consisting mainly of students with little to no training, proper and yet easy to use tools or methods should be implemented to help ensure mission success. Especially in the critical stages of planning before and during development, a technical approach to quickly track life cycle development of a CubeSat is needed. …

Strengthening Urban Resilience: Understanding The Interdependencies Of Outer Space And Strategic Planning For Sustainable Smart Environments, Ulpia-Elena Botezatu, Olga Bucovetchi, Adrian V. Gheorghe, Radu D. Stanciu

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The conventional approach to urban planning has predominantly focused on horizontal dimensions, disregarding the potential risks originating from outer space. This paper aims to initiate a discourse on the vertical dimension of cities, which is influenced by outer space, as an essential element of strategic urban planning. Through an examination of a highly disruptive incident in outer space involving a collision between the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 satellites, this article elucidates the intricate interdependencies between urban areas and outer space infrastructure and services. Leveraging the principles of critical infrastructure protection, which bridge the urban and outer space domains, and …

Enablers And Barriers Of Communication In Virtual Engineering Teams: The Role Of Teamwork Skills And Emergent Conflict, Pilar Pazos, Francisco Cima

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Communication is a critical process that facilitates team members' coordination, expertise exchange, decision-making, and, consequently, team elfectiveness. A focus on effective communication is critical in virtual teams due to their lack of face-to-face interactions and social presence. Communication becomes challenging in remote settings, and specific skills emerge as more essential to success. It is known that effective teams rely on planning, execution, and interpersonal skills to be successful. Still, the specific impact of these skills on virtual team effectiveness is not well understood. Additionally, conflict can emerge as a significant barrier to collaboration for remote teams that can hinder their …

Model Based Systems Engineering With A Docs-As-Code Approach For The Sealion Cubesat Project, Kevin Chiu, Sean Marquez, Sharanabasaweshwara Asundi

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The SeaLion mission architecture team sought to create a model-based systems engineering approach to assist improving CubeSat success rates as well as for the SeaLion CubeSat project to guide an implementation for the flight software. This is important because university CubeSat teams are growing in number but often have untrained students as their core personnel. This was done using a document-as-code, or docs-as-code, approach. With this the team created tools for the systems architecture with the Mach 30 Modeling Language to create an architecture that is easy to learn and use even for newly admitted team members with little to …

Computational Decision Support For Socio-Technical Awareness Of Land-Use Planning Under Complexity—A Dam Resilience Planning Case Study, Andreas Tolk, Jennifer A. Richkus, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman

VMASC Publications

Land-use planning for modern societies requires technical competence as well as social competence. We therefore propose an integrative solution enabling better land-use planning and management through better-informed decision-making. We adapt a method developed for cross-disciplinary team building to identify the stakeholders and their various objectives and value systems. We use these results to populate artificial societies embedded into a dynamic data analytics framework as a tool to identify, explore, and visualize the challenges resulting from the different objectives and value systems in land-use planning and management. To prove the feasibility of the proposed solution, we present two use cases from …

An Ioe Blockchain-Based Network Knowledge Management Model For Resilient Disaster Frameworks, Amir Javadpour, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour, Arun Kumar Sangaiah, Weizhe Zhang, Forough Ja'far, Ashish Singh

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The disaster area is a constantly changing environment, which can make it challenging to distribute supplies effectively. The lack of accurate information about the required goods and potential bottlenecks in the distribution process can be detrimental. The success of a response network is dependent on collaboration, coordination, sovereignty, and equal distribution of relief resources. To facilitate these interactions and improve knowledge of supply chain operations, a reliable and dynamic logistic system is essential. This study proposes the integration of blockchain technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the Internet of Everything (IoE) into the disaster management structure. The proposed disaster …

Fugacity-Based Lattice Boltzmann Method For Multicomponent Multiphase Systems, Muzammil Soomro, Luis F. Ayala, Cheng Peng, Orlando M. Ayala

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The free-energy model can extend the lattice Boltzmann method to multiphase systems. However, there is a lack of models capable of simulating multicomponent multiphase fluids with partial miscibility. In addition, existing models cannot be generalized to honor thermodynamic information provided by any multicomponent equation of state of choice. In this paper, we introduce a free-energy lattice Boltzmann model where the forcing term is determined by the fugacity of the species, the thermodynamic property that connects species partial pressure to chemical potential calculations. By doing so, we are able to carry out multicomponent multiphase simulations of partially miscible fluids and generalize …

Cybersecurity And Digital Privacy Aspects Of V2x In The Ev Charging Structure, Umit Cali, Murat Kuzlu, Onur Elma, Osman Gazi Gucluturk, Ahmet Kilic, Ferhat Ozgur Catak

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

With the advancement of green energy technology and rising public and political acceptance, electric vehicles (EVs) have grown in popularity. Electric motors, batteries, and charging systems are considered major components of EVs. The electric power infrastructure has been designed to accommodate the needs of EVs, with an emphasis on bidirectional power flow to facilitate power exchange. Furthermore, the communication infrastructure has been enhanced to enable cars to communicate and exchange information with one another, also known as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology. V2X is positioned to become a bigger and smarter system in the future of transportation, thanks to upcoming digital technologies …

A Systems Theory-Based Framework For Environmental Scanning In Complex System Governance, Dale E. Baugh

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a Systems Theory-based framework for Environmental Scanning (ES) in Complex System Governance (CSG) using an inductive research design. Complexity and uncertainty are normal for external environments in which today’s systems (organizations) exist. These environmental characteristics provide impetus for researchers to focus on organizational planning for disruptive external forces that could threaten system stability and future system existence. The ES function supports the requisite governance metasystemic functions to be enabled, executed, and evolved sufficiently well to promote continuous system viability. In this research the functioning of ES was examined from a diverse literature-based …

Hard-Real-Time Computing Performance In A Cloud Environment, Alvin Cornelius Murphy

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is rapidly working with DoD Services to move from multi-year (e.g., 7-10) traditional acquisition programs to a commercial industrybased approach for software development. While commercial technologies and approaches provide an opportunity for rapid fielding of mission capabilities to pace threats, the suitability of commercial technologies to meet hard-real-time requirements within a surface combat system is unclear. This research establishes technical data to validate the effectiveness and suitability of current commercial technologies to meet the hard-real-time demands of a DoD combat management system. (Moreland Jr., 2013) conducted similar research; however, microservices, containers, and container …

Using Strategic Options Development And Analysis (Soda) To Understand The Simulation Accessibility Problem, Andrew J. Collins, Ying Thaviphoke, Antuela A. Tako

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Simulation modelling is applied to a wide range of problems, including defense and healthcare. However, there is a concern within the simulation community that there is a limited use and implementation of simulation studies in practice. This suggests that despite its benefits, simulation may not be reaching its potential in making a real-world impact. The main reason for this could be that simulation tools are not widely accessible in industry. In this paper, we investigate the issues that affect simulation modelling accessibility through a workshop with simulation practitioners. We use Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA), a problem-structuring approach that …

Predictors Of Email Response: Determinants Of The Intention Of Not Following Security Recommendations, Miguel Angel Toro-Jarrin

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Organizations and government leaders are concerned about cyber incidents. For some time, researchers have studied what motivates people to act in ways that put the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information in organizations at risk. Still, several areas remained unexplored, including the role of employees’ evaluation of the organizational systems and the role of value orientation at work as precursors of secure and insecure actions in relation to information technologies (information security [IS] action). The objective of this research project was to examine how the evaluations of formal and informal security norms are associated with the intention to follow them …

Complex System Governance Leadership, David C. Walters

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a systems theory-based framework for leadership in governance of complex systems. Recognizing complexity and uncertainty as norms for the environments in which organizations exist encouraged researchers to suggest complexity theory, complex systems, and complex adaptive systems as appropriate for addressing these conditions. Complex System Governance (CSG), based in systems theory, management cybernetics, and governance, endeavors to provide for the design, execution and evolution of functions that provide control, communication, coordination, and integration at the metasystem level to support operations and continued system existence (viability). From a management cybernetics perspective, CSG leadership has …

Risk-And-Resiliency-Intelligent Supply Chain (Rrisc), Ahmad A. Abdelnabi, Ahmed M. Abdelmagid, Ghaith Rabadi, Andres Sousa-Poza, C. Ariel Pinto

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

This work proposes a risk-and-resiliency-intelligent supply chain (RRiSC) tool which is an SC risk management framework that leverages cutting-edge technologies in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics (BDA), and Digital Twins (DT) to develop specific capabilities for SC risk management. RRiSC is a convergence of mature tools and techniques embedded in three modules: Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization – all together integrate the optimization, simulation, and data analytics to test the performance of the whole supply network under different scenarios through measuring the vital KPIs, identifying the vulnerabilities, and setting proactive plans to diminish risks consequences.

Agile Research - Getting Beyond The Buzzword, Trupti Narayan Rane

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

"Oh yeah, we're an Agile shop, we gave up Waterfall years ago." - product owners, managers, or could be anyone else. You will seldom have a conversation with a product or software development team member without the agile buzzword thrown at you at the drop of a hat. It would not be an oversell to say that Agile software development has been adopted at a large scale across several big and small organizations. Clearly, Agile is an ideology that is working, which made me explore more on its applicability in research. As someone who has been in the Information Technology …

Blockchain-Based Digital Trust Mechanism: A Use Case Of Cloud Manufacturing Of Lds Syringes For Covid-19 Vaccination, Trupti Rane, Jingwei Huang

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Trust is essential in the digital world. It is a critical task to build digital trust for the ongoing digital engineering transformation. Aiming at developing a blockchain-based digital trust mechanism for Cloud Manufacturing or Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS), in this paper, we use the manufacturing of low dead space (LDS) medical syringes through Cloud Manufacturing as a motivating scenario to develop a basic framework. To meet the need of optimally saving COVID-19 vaccine doses to save more lives, the medical device manufacturing community needs to make a swift move to meet the surged need for LDS syringes. Cloud Manufacturing is a form …

Adapting The Human Factors Analysis And Classification System For Commercial Fishing Vessel Accidents, Peter Zohorsky, Holly Handley, Ronald Boring (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The commercial fishing industry is frequently described as one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States. The objective, to maximize the catch, is routinely challenged by a variety of elements due to the environment, the vessel, the crew, and how they interact with each other. This study developed and evaluated a version of Wiegmann and Shappell’s (2003) Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), specifically for commercial fishing industry vessels (HFACS-FV), using data from ten years of fatal fishing vessel accidents. For this study, the accident investigation information was converted into the HFACS-FV format by independent raters and …