Infrastructure Commons^™

The Evolution Of Global Competition: The Creation Of A Soft Power Escalatory Dilemma, Hunter M. Willis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As relationships between actors have become much more important for security in a globalized world and raw capabilities have become less important, the security landscape has fundamentally changed. When looking at the modern competition between the United States and European Union against China, global infrastructure investment has become a new arena to compete within. When examining each actor’s global infrastructure initiatives, China with the Belt and Road Initiative, the European Union with its Global Gateway, and the United States heading the G7’s initiative dubbed the Build Back Better World initiative, competition is deemed to be present within the global system. …

Investment Without Displacement: A Study Of The Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors Initiative In East Oakland, Jeremy Mack

Master's Projects and Capstones

This Capstone interrogates the teleology of neoliberal community development – does investment in historically disinvested working-class urban neighborhoods inevitably lead to gentrification? Learning from the Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors Initiative (BNSN) in Deep East Oakland as a case study, the Capstone uses a Transformative Justice (TJ) framework to make the case for an ethical approach to community development: one in which working-class urban residents are the authors and architects of their own neighborhood’s future, community needs are centered, and long-term residents are able to continue to age-in place. This approach utilizes the lens of Black-centered community development, integrating an understanding …

Positive Out Of The Negative: Tracking Renewable Energy Projects In Central America, Jordan Ethan Castillo (Miner)

Master's Theses

Central America is undertaking a vast Renewable Energy (RE) transition, due to widespread investments across the region in an array of technologies. These technologies include Community Solar, Wind, and Hydroelectricity. Hydroelectricity has long been the backbone of many countries’ energy grids in the region due to the region’s long history with hydroelectricity. Ambitious climate goals coupled with diminishing hydroelectric power generation opportunities have led to an expansion of investment in Community Solar and Wind energy. The embrace of Solar and Wind has been accelerated due to declining costs for these technologies as they mature. Central America as a case study …

Historic Downtown Streetscape Plan Price City, Utah, Patricia Beckert

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The idea of a small-town Main Street has profound meaning within the American culture that has prevailed for the past two centuries. Historically, Main Street serves as the beating heart of a community, a place where economic, social, cultural, and civic activities are centered (Francaviglia, 1996; Main Street America, n.d.). Since the beginning of the 19th century, many factors have led to the decline of Main Streets, and despite a variety of efforts from different stakeholders, that decline has only intensified in recent decades (Isenberg, 2008; Orvell, 2014 Howard, 2015). In 1980, after a three-year project conducted by the National …

Apartheid’S Leviathan : Electricity And The Power Of Technological Ambivalence, Faeeza Ballim

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A fascinating study that shows how the intersection of technology and politics has shaped South African history since the 1960s.

This book details the development of an interconnected technological system of a coal mine and of the Matimba and Medupi power stations in the Waterberg, a rural region of South Africa near the country’s border with Botswana. South Africa’s state steel manufacturing corporation, Iscor, which has since been privatized, developed a coal mine in the region in the 1970s. This set the stage for the national electricity provider, Eskom, to build coal-fueled power stations in the Waterberg.

Faeeza Ballim follows …

Sex In The Cities: A Comparative Analysis Of Vienna And The United States’ Efforts In Gender Mainstreaming Transportation, Sarah Miller

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The paper focuses on the differences in transportation systems between the United States and Vienna, Austria. Research shows that women have been an overlooked group of people within cities. Due to this, cities have not been designed for them and an example of this is transportation. Some cities like Vienna, Austria have made it their mission to create gender-equitable cities. To better understand this problem women were interviewed who had experience in the Viennese and American systems to analyze the differences. Also, certain government agencies were contacted to understand this problem from a governance standpoint. All of the interviews supported …

Property Pillagers: Effects Of Dirty Urbanism, Chase Wilson, Kayli Clark

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

This podcast dives into American urbanism and its associated development targeting certain minority communities; the ill intentions to disrupt specific neighborhoods led us to refer to the practice as “dirty urbanism”. The pair of I-40 and Jefferson Street in north Nashville, alongside similarly treated areas across the United States, exemplify dirty urbanism. Exercising their raw power and ability to cover up to 90% of the costs, the federal government incentivizes the local governments to construct the highway system: a highway system used as a racially motivated tool to sever black-built urban fabrics. With the highways, vehicular space overrides …

The Dormant Commerce Clause As A Way To Combat The Anti-Competitive, Anti-Transmission-Development Effects Of State Right Of First Refusal Laws For Electricity Transmission Construction, Walker Mogen

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

To quickly decarbonize the electricity grid, new sources of renewable energy have to be connected to the grid. To connect these sources of energy to the grid, the rate of construction of new electricity infrastructure must increase quickly. The process to construct new electricity transmission infrastructure, however, is filled with chokepoints that slow its construction. State right of first refusal laws for transmission construction are one the things slowing the build out of the grid. These laws limit which companies can construct new transmission infrastructure to utilities and other companies already operating transmission infrastructure in a state. This Note, using …

Using Satellites To Map The Urban Heat Island Effect And Using Products To Generate Public Action In Harrisonburg, Trevor Brooks, Timothy A. Kreps

ASPIRE 2023

The Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) is a phenomenon where urban centers are hotter than their surrounding rural counterparts. Ever since it was first discovered there have been a variety of methods of mapping this effect from using terrestrial sensors to satellites. This study attempts to evaluate different mapping methods, specifically two different satellite methods (ECOSTRESS and MODIS). As well as a community driven mapping method that involved terrestrial sensors attached to cars. This study then discusses remedies to the UHI and documents efforts to remedy it through a partnership between researchers, the community, and the city of Harrisonburg as …

Chatgpt As Metamorphosis Designer For The Future Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai): A Conceptual Investigation, Amarjit Kumar Singh (Library Assistant), Dr. Pankaj Mathur (Deputy Librarian)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to explore ChatGPT’s potential as an innovative designer tool for the future development of artificial intelligence. Specifically, this conceptual investigation aims to analyze ChatGPT’s capabilities as a tool for designing and developing near about human intelligent systems for futuristic used and developed in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also with the helps of this paper, researchers are analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT as a tool, and identify possible areas for improvement in its development and implementation. This investigation focused on the various features and functions of ChatGPT that …

Final Report: California Tribal Nations Transportation Planning Needs Assessment Study, Seetha Reddy, Ashley Parker, David Reinke, Kaely Colligan

Mineta Transportation Institute

The Tribal Transportation Planning Needs Assessment Study was a collaborative project conducted by Caltrans and the Mineta Transportation Institute, San Jose State University. The primary goal of the project was to identify the current state of transportation planning activities and partnerships within Tribal governments in California, so that Caltrans can meaningfully engage more actively with Tribal governments early in the planning process and better meet the transportation needs of Tribal communities. The study focused on the 109 federally recognized Tribal Nations in California, and collected data through a survey questionnaire. The key task undertaken by the study team was to …

Attention-Based Data Analytic Models For Traffic Flow Predictions, Kaushal Kumar, Yupeng Wei

Mineta Transportation Institute

Traffic congestion causes Americans to lose millions of hours and dollars each year. In fact, 1.9 billion gallons of fuel are wasted each year due to traffic congestion, and each hour stuck in traffic costs about $21 in wasted time and fuel. The traffic congestion can be caused by various factors, such as bottlenecks, traffic incidents, bad weather, work zones, poor traffic signal timing, and special events. One key step to addressing traffic congestion and identifying its root cause is an accurate prediction of traffic flow. Accurate traffic flow prediction is also important for the successful deployment of smart transportation …

Public-Private Partnership (P3) Success: Critical Success Factors For Local Government Services And Infrastructure Delivery, Antonio M. Lopez, George M. Marakas

Engaged Management ReView

The Public-Private Partnership (P3) approach is a viable option to address the slow growth and burgeoning need to deliver infrastructure projects and services by state and local governments. This study focuses on identifying critical success factors (CSF) that influence the success of P3s for local government service and infrastructure delivery. A framework is presented for integrating relationship and project management CSFs identified from previous literature into P3s. In addition, public agency entrepreneurial orientation is introduced as a potential CSF – a focus that has been absent in previous P3 CSF literature. To empirically assess the influence of these CSFs on …

The Impact Of Organized Activism On Technology Sharing, Ahmed Chennak, Amalia Yiannaka

Cornhusker Economics

What factors influence a firm's decision to share its technology with competitors? While patent licensing has received considerable attention in the literature, studies have typically focused on the optimal licensing contract for product and process innovations in various market settings. A key finding of this literature is that the optimal licensing strategy depends on the type of the patentee; that is, whether the patentee is a producer in the market (insider patentee) or not (outsider patentee). Little attention has been given, however, to the role the general public can play on firms' incentives to share their innovations through licensing contracts …

Role Of Social Network On Technology Adoption: Application To Nebraska Producers In The Face Of Undesirable Vegetation Transitions, Sabrina Gulab, Holly K. Nesbitt, Simanti Banerjee, Theresa Floyd, Karina A. Schoengold

Cornhusker Economics

Conclusion

Producers need to have access to information regarding new conservation practices and technologies to ensure land management in the face of ecological threats in general and vegetation transitions (VTs) in the context of our study. This study investigates the role of an individual producer's social network on the willingness to seek information about technologies and management practices and the likelihood of new technology adoption with special attention to risk attitudes and producer spillover effects. Our results provide evidence that network composition and information obtained through a producer's social network don't influence an individual's willingness to seek information about new …

An Investigation Of Food System Localization Efforts In New York Municipalities: Projects, Practices And Policies, April Roggio, Beomgeun Cho, Luis Luna-Reyes, Jason R. Evans, Eliot Rich, Alexander Buyantuev

Public Administration and Policy Faculty Scholarship

This document is a component of a research project funded by the New York State Health Foundation from January 2022 to May 2023. The overall project goal was to better understand how we design and sustain resilient local food systems in New York from the perspective of elected officials. The project used three different data collection methods, interviews, a survey and spatial analysis. This document reports on the interview component of the project.

These are the main highlights from the interviews.

• Interviews were conducted primarily between February 2022 and July 2023, and included 38 full length conversations with town supervisors …

A Participatory Drone Mapping And Critical Physical Geography Of Water Security For Irrigation In Northern Ghana, Dinko Hanaan Dinko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dam discourse frequently incorrectly assumes that their emergence unilinearly translates to an expansion of economic opportunities while not considering how dams become sites for the reproduction of inequality and injustice. This dissertation investigates how the politics of irrigation water access are nested in a complex web of physical materialities of the 'natural' environment and power relations, with lived consequences on differentiated social identities in semiarid Ghana. The research draws on transdisciplinary perspectives from political ecology, embodiment, critical physical geography, and mixed methods, including interviews, focus group discussions, surveys, participatory drone mapping, and laboratory analysis of soil biochemical properties. The study …

An Integrated Hydrologic Model To Support The Central Platte Natural Resources District Groundwater Management Plan, Central Nebraska, Jonathan (Jp) Traylor, Moussa Guira, Steven M. Petersen

United States Geological Survey: Water Reports and Publications

The groundwater and surface-water supply of the Central Platte Natural Resources District supports a large agricultural economy from the High Plains aquifer and Platte River, respectively. This study provided the Central Platte Natural Resources District with an advanced numerical modeling tool to assist with the update of their Groundwater Management Plan.

An integrated hydrologic model, called the Central Platte Integrated Hydrologic Model, was constructed using the MODFLOW-One-Water Hydrologic Model code with the Newton solver. This code integrates climate, landscape, surface water, and groundwater-flow processes in a fully coupled approach. Model framework included 163 rows; 327 columns; 2,640 feet cell sides; …

Evaluation Of Left Shoulder As Part-Time Travel Lane Design Alternatives And Transportation Management Center Staff Training Module Development, Zhuohang Deng, Zhiliang Luo, Neil Hockaday, Ahmed Farid, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute

Permanent capacity expansion, such as adding new lanes, is no longer a viable strategy to address traffic congestion in California; hence, ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) strategies, such as part-time use of the shoulder as a travel lane, need to be explored. The use of the shoulder as a travel lane during peak traffic hours has limited applications in the US, and most use the right shoulder as a part-time travel lane even though either the right or left shoulder (but not both) may be used. Caltrans District 5 is exploring the use of Left Shoulder as a Part-time Travel Lane …

Disparities In Mental Health Technology Among African Americans: Breaking Cultural Inclusion Barriers, Nyoki Cosey-Brown

DSW Capstone Projects

Mental health technology is a healthcare delivery model of the future. The engagement in virtual healthcare was intensified when traditional healthcare methods were inaccessible during the federal restrictions implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing digital apparatuses for healthcare improved the convenience, efficiency, and accessibility of various mental health services that were inoperable in past healthcare models. However, the historical constructs of stigma, discrimination, inequity, exclusion, and structural racism in mental healthcare were prevalent problems that remained present in virtual mental health platforms concerning the experiences of African-American patients and professionals who utilized the spaces.

This research explored mental health …