Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Drone-Assisted Emergency Communications, Di Wu

Dissertations

Drone-mounted base stations (DBSs) have been proposed to extend coverage and improve communications between mobile users (MUs) and their corresponding macro base stations (MBSs). Different from the base stations on the ground, DBSs can flexibly fly over and close to MUs to establish a better vantage for communications. Thus, the pathloss between a DBS and an MU can be much smaller than that between the MU and MBS. In addition, by hovering in the air, the DBS can likely establish a Line-of-Sight link to the MBS. DBSs can be leveraged to recover communications in a large natural disaster struck area …

Supporting User Interaction And Social Relationship Formation In A Collaborative Online Shopping Context, Yu Xu

Dissertations

The combination of online shopping and social media allow people with similar shopping interests and experiences to share, comment, and discuss about shopping from anywhere and at any time, which also leads to the emergence of online shopping communities. Today, more people turn to online platforms to share their opinions about products, solicit various opinions from their friends, family members, and other customers, and have fun through interactions with others with similar interests. This dissertation explores how collaborative online shopping presents itself as a context and platform for users' interpersonal interactions and social relationship formation through a series of studies. …

Monitoring Salt Diapir Related Land Deformation And Distribution: A Geophysical And Remote Sensing Approach Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia, Hannah G. Pankratz

Dissertations

Salt diapirs are rarely preserved on the surface and seldom considered as environmental hazards. The Jazan city diapir (JZD) is located in southwest Saudi Arabia along the Red Sea coastal plain and outcrops in the middle of a rapidly growing port city. The intrusion of the diapir (~ 2 km²) into the overburden sediments continues to cause uneven surfaces, compromises building foundations and infrastructure, caused dissolution sinkholes, and limits the expansion of the city along the coastline. This research aims to better understand the distribution and deformation associated with salt diapirs in arid environments.

Using integrated Interferometric Synthetic …

Systems For Free Parking Assignment, Abeer M. Hakeem

Dissertations

Finding a free, curbside parking spaces in metropolitan areas, especially during rush hours, is difficult for drivers. The difficulty arises from not knowing where the available spaces may be at that time; and, even if the spaces are known, many vehicles may pursue the same spaces, causing serious parking contention and traffic congestion. This dissertation presents three cost-effective and easily deployable free parking assignment systems that optimize the travel time of the drivers.

The first contribution is the Free Parking System (FPS), a centralized solution that solves the curbside parking problem. Unlike existing solutions, FPS is cost-effective, as it does …

Application Of Artificial Intelligence And Geographic Information System For Developing Automated Walkability Score, Md Mehedi Hasan

Dissertations

Walking is considered as one of the major modes of active transportation, which contributes to the livability of cities. It is highly important to ensure walk friendly sidewalks to promote human physical activities along roads. Over the last two decades, different walk scores were estimated in respect to walkability measures by applying different methods and approaches. However, in the era of big data and machine learning revolution, there is still a gap to measure the composite walkability score in an automated way by applying and quantifying the activityfriendliness of walkable streets. In this study, a street-level automated walkability score was …

Subspace Portfolios: Design And Performance Comparison, Anqi Xiong

Dissertations

Data processing and engineering techniques enable people to observe and better understand the natural and human-made systems and processes that generate huge amounts of various data types. Data engineers collect data created in almost all fields and formats, such as images, audio, and text streams, biological and financial signals, sensing and many others. They develop and implement state-of-the art machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms using big data to infer valuable information with social and economic value. Furthermore, ML/AI methodologies lead to automate many decision making processes with real-time applications serving people and businesses. As an example, mathematical …