Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Threats From Climate Change Are Increasing For Natural World Heritage Sites, Martin Falk, Eva Hagsten

GSTC Academic Symposium - In conjunction with the GSTC Global Conference Sweden April 23, 2024

The aim of the paper is to analyse the occurrence and intensity of threats to Natural World Heritage Sites from climate change as assessed by IUCN experts. The data comes from the Conservation Outlook Assessment database, which covers 250 sites for three time periods (2014, 2017 and 2020). The threat of climate change is broadly defined and includes temperature extremes, rapidly disappearing glaciers, coral bleaching, droughts, desertification, rising temperatures and rising sea levels. Simultaneous probit and ordered models with individual site effects are used to analyse the occurrence and intensity of both a perceived actual and a potential threat.

The …

The Impact Of Accessible Data On Cyberstalking, Elise Kwan

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Upleft: Pick Up Leftovers, Uplift Those In Need, Veronica Galles

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Complex Impacts Of Wars On Global Sustainable Development In A Metacoupled World, Qutu Jiang, Zhenci Xu, Yuanzheng Cui, Jianguo Liu

I-GUIDE Forum

Wars and armed conflicts have had profound impacts on local and global sustainable development in an interconnected world. However, evidence on the impacts of wars is fragmented and little attention has been paid to the impacts on the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a unifying framework for achieving global sustainable development. This perspective synthesizes the scattered information to provide a holistic analysis and highlight the applications of remote sensing in assessing the impacts of wars on global sustainable development in a metacoupling world. Wars have complex impacts on all 17 SDGs, which cascade beyond conflict zones and spillover to …

Geospatial Data Integration Middleware For Exploratory Analytics Addressing Regional Natural Resource Grand Challenges In The Us Mountain West, Shannon Albeke, Nicholas Case, Samantha Ewers, Jeffrey Hamerlinck, William Kirkpatrick, Jerod Merkle, Luke Todd

I-GUIDE Forum

This paper describes CyberGIS-based research and development aimed at improving geospatial data integration and visual analytics to better understand the impact of regional climate change on water availability in the U.S. Rocky Mountains. Two Web computing applications are presented. DEVISE - Derived Environmental Variability Indices Spatial Extractor, streamlines utilization of environmental data for better-informed wildlife decisions by biologists and game managers. The WY-Adapt platform aims to enhance predictive understanding of climate change impacts on water availability through two modules: “Current Conditions” and “Future Scenarios”. It integrates high-resolution models of the biophysical environment and human interactions, providing a robust framework for …

Large-Scale Google Street View Images For Urban Change Detection, Fangzheng Lyu, Xinlin Ma, Yan Song, Eric Zhu, Shaowen Wang

I-GUIDE Forum

Urbanization has entered a new phase characterized by urban changes occurring at a micro-scale and “under the roof”, as opposed to external modifications. These changes, known as urban retrofitting, involve the incorporation of novel technologies or features into pre-existing systems to promote sustainability. Given the limitations of remote sensing images in identifying such urban changes, novel tools need to be developed for detecting urban retrofitting. In this study, we first build a pipeline to collect large-scale time-series urban street view images from Google Street View in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. And we examine the feasibility of utilizing the acquired dataset …

Solving Geospatial Problems Under Extreme Time Constraints: A Call For Inclusive Geocomputational Education, Coline C. Dony

I-GUIDE Forum

To prepare our next generation to face geospatial problems that have extreme time constraints (e.g., disasters, climate change) we need to create educational pathways that help students develop their geocomputational thinking skills. First, educators are central in helping us create those pathways, therefore, we need to clearly convey to them why and in which contexts this thinking is necessary. For that purpose, a new definition for geocomputational thinking is suggested that makes it clear that this thinking is needed for geospatial problems that have extreme time constraints. Secondly, we can not further burden educators with more demands, rather we should …

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

Instagram Travel Influencers Coping With Covid-19 Travel Disruption, Andrei Kirilenko, Katarzyna Emin, Karen Tavares

ITSA 2022 Gran Canaria - 9th Biennial Conference: Corporate Entrepreneurship and Global Tourism Strategies After Covid 19

A significant portion of today’s marketing is done through social media influencers, that is, through bloggers with established online credibility in a certain area who are recognized and followed by a sizable online audience. In the travel and hospitality industry, the influencer marketing is primarily done through Instagram due to its emphasis on visual images rather than texts. Covid-19 related travel restrictions and shrinking social media advertisement in travel industry have heavily impacted travel influencers, reducing their income and forcing many out of business. We present the outcomes of a study of the top 150 online travel influencers. The analysis …

Public Acceptance Of Guidance And Regulations For Space Flight Participation, Cory Trunkhill, Robert Joslin, Joseph Keebler

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Space flight participants are not professional astronauts and not subject to the rules and guidance covering space flight crewmembers. Ordinal logistic regression of survey data was utilized to explore public acceptance of current medical screening recommendations and regulations for safety risk and implied liability for civil space flight participation. Independent variables constituted participant demographic representations while dependent variables represented current Federal Aviation Administration guidance and regulations. Odds ratios were derived based on the demographic categories to interpret likelihood of acceptance for the criteria. Significant likely acceptance of guidance and regulations was found for five of twelve demographic variables influencing public …

The Model 2.0 And Friends: An Interim Report, Garrison W. Cottrell, Martha Gahl, Shubham Kulkarni, Shashank Venkatramani, Yash Shah, Keyu Long, Xuzhe Zhi, Shivaank Agarwal, Cody Li, Jingyuan He, Thomas Fischer

MODVIS Workshop

Last year, I reported on preliminary results of an anatomically-inspired deep learning model of the visual system and its role in explaining the face inversion effect. This year, I will report on new results and some variations on network architectures that we have explored, mainly as a way to generate discussion and get feedback. This is by no means a polished, final presentation!

We look forward to the group’s suggestions for these projects.

How Object Segmentation And Perceptual Grouping Emerge In Noisy Variational Autoencoders, Ben Lonnqvist, Zhengqing Wu, Michael H. Herzog

MODVIS Workshop

Many animals and humans can recognize and segment objects from their backgrounds. Whether object segmentation is necessary for object recognition has long been a topic of debate. Deep neural networks (DNNs) excel at object recognition, but not at segmentation tasks - this has led to the belief that object recognition and segmentation are separate mechanisms in visual processing. Here, however, we show evidence that in variational autoencoders (VAEs), segmentation and faithful representation of data can be interlinked. VAEs are encoder-decoder models that learn to represent independent generative factors of the data as a distribution in a very small bottleneck layer; …

Evaluating Models Of Scanpath Prediction, Matthias Kümmerer, Matthias Bethge

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Dynamical Model Of Binding In Visual Cortex During Incremental Grouping And Search, Daniel Schmid, Daniel A. Braun, Heiko Neumann

MODVIS Workshop

Binding of visual information is crucial for several perceptual tasks. To incrementally group an object, elements in a space-feature neighborhood need to be bound together starting from an attended location (Roelfsema, TICS, 2005). To perform visual search, candidate locations and cued features must be evaluated conjunctively to retrieve a target (Treisman&Gormican, Psychol Rev, 1988). Despite different requirements on binding, both tasks are solved by the same neural substrate. In a model of perceptual decision-making, we give a mechanistic explanation for how this can be achieved. The architecture consists of a visual cortex module and a higher-order thalamic module. While the …

Optimizing Cybersecurity Budgets With Attacksimulation, Alexander Master, George Hamilton, J. Eric Dietz

Faculty Publications

Modern organizations need effective ways to assess cybersecurity risk. Successful cyber attacks can result in data breaches, which may inflict significant loss of money, time, and public trust. Small businesses and non-profit organizations have limited resources to invest in cybersecurity controls and often do not have the in-house expertise to assess their risk. Cyber threat actors also vary in sophistication, motivation, and effectiveness. This paper builds on the previous work of Lerums et al., who presented an AnyLogic model for simulating aspects of a cyber attack and the efficacy of controls in a generic enterprise network. This paper argues that …

Understanding The Influence Of Perceptual Noise On Visual Flanker Effects Through Bayesian Model Fitting, Jordan Deakin, Dietmar Heinke

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Streamlining Project Development Through Planning & Environmental Linkages, Karen Hadley, Brett Lackey

Purdue Road School

As transportation agencies continue to explore ways to be more efficient in the project development process, they are embracing integrated methodologies like planning and environmental linkages. This tool is practical, yet highly effective and inclusive, and teams across the country are experiencing its value. This presentation will highlight a variety of use cases, discuss lessons learned and best practices, and specifically address how planning and environmental linkages can be applied in Indiana and the Midwest.

Password Managers: Secure Passwords The Easy Way, Alexander Master

CERIAS Technical Reports

Poor passwords are often the central problem identified when data breaches, ransomware attacks, and identity fraud cases occur. This Purdue Extension publication provides everyday users of Internet websites and computer systems with tools and strategies to protect their online accounts. Securing information access with password managers can be convenient and often free of cost, on a variety of devices and platforms. “Do’s and Don’ts” of password practices are highlighted, as well as the benefits of multi-factor authentication. The content is especially applicable for small businesses or non-profits, where employees often share access to systems or accounts.

A Note From The Co-Editors, Fayth Schutter

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

An introduction to the first issue of the third volume of Ideas Magazine, concerning the work and research of Dr. Shoshana Magnet.

Participatory Action Research: Undergraduate Researchers Engaging Secondary Students In Social Justice Mathematics, Isabelle Miller, Alexis Grimes, Camryn Adkison

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Automated Data Processing: Making Community Indicators Possible For Lafayette, Indiana, Jace T. Newell, Eli W. Coltin, Eric D. Flaningam

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Removing Racially Biased Algorithms In Policing, Andie Lee

Student Papers in Public Policy

Local police departments use algorithm-based programs to do police work and predict crime. Technology has created the police tactic of predictive crime prevention. Police work, however, requires social skills, assessment of the environment, and most importantly human interaction. Automated policing lacks these characteristics. Moreover, the algorithms used to make crime predictions and risk assessments have disproportionately affected minorities.

The Case For Online Ranked-Choice Voting, Rayyan Khan

Student Papers in Public Policy

Maine was the first to embrace ranked-choice voting on a statewide level in 2018, using it for all state and general elections. Maine voters will be the first to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential election in 2020. This system differs from traditional voting in that voters rank candidates rather than choose just one. Supporters of ranked-choice voting tout it as a better model for accurately representing the values of the voting population; however, a study conducted in San Francisco details a potential shortfall referred to as “ballot fatigue” that the theoretically-ideal system may face as it struggles to deal …

High Wind Alerts: A System Created With Observations From The X-Band Teaching And Research Radar, Lauren Warner

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Following the August 13, 2011, Indiana State Fair stage collapse tragedy, caused by a wind gust from an approaching thunderstorm, Purdue University enforced a wind speed restriction of 30 mph (13 m s-1) for tents at outdoor events. During these events, volunteers stand outside with handheld anemometers, measuring and reporting when the wind speeds exceed this limit. In this study, we report testing of a new system to automate high-wind alerts based on observations from a Doppler radar, the X-band Teaching and Research Radar (XTRRA), near Purdue’s campus. XTRRA scans over campus at low elevations approximately every 5 minutes. Using …

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

Wireless Underground Communications In Sewer And Stormwater Overflow Monitoring: Radio Waves Through Soil And Asphalt Medium, Usman Raza, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Storm drains and sanitary sewers are prone to backups and overflows due to extra amount wastewater entering the pipes. To prevent that, it is imperative to efficiently monitor the urban underground infrastructure. The combination of sensors system and wireless underground communication system can be used to realize urban underground IoT applications, e.g., storm water and wastewater overflow monitoring systems. The aim of this article is to establish a feasibility of the use of wireless underground communications techniques, and wave propagation through the subsurface soil and asphalt layers, in an underground pavement system for storm water and sewer overflow monitoring application. …

Internet Of Things For Sustainable Community Development: Introduction And Overview, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

The two-third of the city-dwelling world population by 2050 poses numerous global challenges in the infrastructure and natural resource management domains (e.g., water and food scarcity, increasing global temperatures, and energy issues). The IoT with integrated sensing and communication capabilities has the strong potential for the robust, sustainable, and informed resource management in the urban and rural communities. In this chapter, the vital concepts of sustainable community development are discussed. The IoT and sustainability interactions are explained with emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and communication technologies. Moreover, IoT opportunities and challenges are discussed in the context of sustainable community …

Soil Erosion Analysis Of The Monroe County’S Watersheds In Indiana, Danielli De Melo Moura, Jie Shan

Purdue GIS Day

This study was carried out to spatially predict the amount of soil loss (tons/ha/year ) of Monroe County’s watersheds using Geographic Information System (GIS). Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used to estimate potential soil losses by using information such as rainfall data for calculating the rainfall erosivity (R) , soil map for calculating the soil erodibility (K), digital elevation model for obtaining the topography factor (LS) and vegetation/cropland cover for calculating the cover management factor (C) and support practice factor (P). The result of the analysis depicted that the soil loss rate in Moroe’s watersheds ranges from 0 …

An Extensible Geospatial Data Framework (Geoedf) For Fair Science, Carol Song, Rajesh Kalyanam, Lan Zhao

Purdue GIS Day

The growing urgency in dealing with the 21st century’s grand challenges associated with increasing population, food and water security, frequently occurring natural disasters, and changing climate demands innovative, collaborative, and multidisciplinary solutions for sustainability and resilience. However, scientific data, especially geospatial data, presents significant barriers to the effective access, use and sharing of data as they come in large volumes, from different sources, and with widely varying formats, resolutions, or annotation schemas that can differ among disciplines or even research groups. This presentation describes a recently funded NSF CSSI project to develop an open source, extensible geospatial data framework (GeoEDF), …

Data Curation Workshop: Tips And Tools For Today, Matthew M. Benzing

Charleston Library Conference

The current state of research data is like a disorganized photo collection: a mix of formats scattered across different media without a lot of authority control. That is changing as the need to make data available to researchers across the world is becoming recognized. Researchers know that their data needs to be maintained and made accessible, but often they do not have the time or the inclination to get involved in all of the details. This provides an excellent opportunity for librarians. Data curation is the process of preparing data to be made available in a repository with the goal …