Infrastructure Commons^™

Urban Resilience And Impact On Utility Services - Panel Discussion Iii, Noman Ahmed, Laeeq Ahmed, Sadia Dada, Javed Younas

CBER Conference

The government services departments are ill-equipped to provide sufficient services to the people of Karachi. The authorities are solely responsible for lack of provision of services resulting in the city’s dysfunction in the event of natural disasters. The physical existence of service delivery corridors should be notified to the public and a comprehensive plan needs to be put in place to create awareness about the rights of the consumers and utilities service providers. 75% of Karachi today does not experience load-shedding, adding that the illegal encroachment in the city is leading to safety impairment. Currently the eco-system is not conducive …

Novel Method For Probabilistic Evaluation Of The Post-Earthquake Functionality Of A Bridge, Vesna Terzic, William Pasco

Mineta Transportation Institute

While modern overpass bridges are safe against collapse, their functionality will likely be compromised in case of design-level or beyond design-level earthquake, which may generate excessive residual displacements of the bridge deck. Presently, there is no validated, quantitative approach for estimating the operational level of the bridge after an earthquake due to the difficulty of accurately simulating residual displacements. This research develops a novel method for probabilistic evaluation of the post-earthquake functionality state of the bridge; the approach is founded on an explicit evaluation of bridge residual displacements and associated traffic capacity by considering realistic traffic load scenarios.

This research …

Predicting Bus Travel Times In Washington, Dc Using Artificial Neural Networks (Anns), Stephen Arhin, Babin Manandhar, Hamdiat Baba Adam, Adam Gatiba

Mineta Transportation Institute

Washington, DC is ranked second among cities in terms of highest public transit commuters in the United States, with approximately 9% of the working population using the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Metrobuses to commute. Deducing accurate travel times of these metrobuses is an important task for transit authorities to provide reliable service to its patrons. This study, using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), developed prediction models for transit buses to assist decision-makers to improve service quality and patronage. For this study, we used six months of Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) data for six Washington …

Seismic Safety Standards Of Private School Buildings In The San Francisco Bay Area: An Exploratory Study, Charles Stauss

Master's Projects

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the Private Schools Building Safety Act of 1986 had an impact on the seismic safety of private school buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Private Schools Building Safety Act was inspired by the Field Act of 1933 and subsequent legislation that significantly improved the seismic safety of California’s public schools. This paper begins by describing seismic activity characteristic of California and proceeds to elaborate upon legislation pertaining to the design and construction of school buildings. Following that is a description of the methods used to investigate the impact of …

Connecting Care Chains And Care Diamonds: The Elderly Care Skills Regime In Singapore, Yasmin Y. Ortiga, Kellyn Wee, Brenda S. A. Yeoh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on the globalization of care work often faces the persistent challenge of building meaningful connections between the movement of care labour at a global scale and place-based frameworks of care access and delivery. In addressing this gap in this article, we propose to take a closer look at how the care-migration nexus produces 'ideal' care workers through a skills regime. Based on the case of elderly care in Singapore, in this article, we demonstrate how state institutions and private agencies attempts to fill local labour needs by producing care workers among both Singapore citizens and migrant women. This leads …

Safety Considerations For All Road Users On Edge Lane Roads, Michael Williams, Marcial Lamera, Aleksander Bauranov, Carole Voulgaris, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute

Edge lane roads (ELRs), also known as advisory bike lanes or advisory shoulders, are a type of shared street where two-way motor vehicle (MV) traffic shares a single center lane, and edge lanes on either side are preferentially reserved for vulnerable road users (VRUs). This work comprises a literature review, an investigation of ELRs’ operational characteristics and potential road user interactions via simulation, and a study of crash data from existing American and Australian ELRs.

The simulation evaluated the impact of various factors (e.g., speed, volume, directional split, etc.) on ELR operation. Results lay the foundation for a siting criterion. …

Metro De Medellín: Urban Infrastructure And Historical Memory In The Creation Of Territorial Belonging And Identity, Phoenix Paz, Paula-Andrea Valencia-Londoño

Peace and Conflict Studies Journal Conference

Medellín and its sister cities in the Valle de Aburrá, Colombia is are renowned for their polarized past, a site of violent encounter between drug cartels, paramilitary groups, urban guerillas, and national forces from the 1970s until today. However, for over a century, it has also been a beacon of hope for thousands of people forcibly displaced by the country’s rural inter intercity violence or hoping to better their lives through participating in the growing industrial sector. In November 1995, just two years after the death of Pablo Escobar and the dissolution of the Medellín Cartel, the Metro of Medellín …

Limits And Possibilities Of The United States Military In Post-Conflict Reconstruction And Stabilization, Alcir Florentino Dos Santos Neto

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

This study probes the limits and possibilities of U.S. military efforts to facilitate the transition from warfighting to nation-building. Most comparative studies conceive the complexity of this transition along a spectrum from conflict to humanitarian assistance to post-conflict stabilization. While the last two stages have often been interpreted as a coordinated act of civil-military ‘nation-building’, the spectrum, in fact, represents an ideal type simplification. At one level, outcomes depend on the players involved, including sovereign nations, national militaries, international and regional institutions, U.N. peacekeepers, private security contractors, and non-governmental humanitarian providers, among others. On the other hand, because …

Reimagining China’S Transportation Funding Investments In Africa In The Context Of Covid-1, Clovia Hamilton, Sira Maliphol

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Africa has not invested enough in its healthcare system, and China has been investing in and financing much of Africa’s transportation system. Many African countries’ fragile health and transportation systems have been further weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic. This literature review confirms the interdependence of the key functional areas of comprehensive development planning and the importance of building and maintaining a sound transportation infrastructure. With respect to partnerships with China, African nations need to strengthen government functional areas more comprehensively, considering all of the areas of development planning including trade as well as transportation and aid issues. It is all …

Attuning To Need: Reconceptualizing “Help” In Poor Rural Areas, Jennifer M. Frank, Laura Brierton Granruth, Brittany Leffler, Rachel Preibisch, Dawn Watson, Heather Girvin, Mary Glazier

Contemporary Rural Social Work Journal

Social isolation is closely linked to overall health and well-being and is a serious concern for those in rural areas. Our research seeks insights into the needs experienced in poor rural areas by utilizing letter writing between students and community agency participants as a research methodology. In the letters, we observed that community participants relied upon friend and family style relationships and even viewed their agency relationships as such. This suggests that transforming "professional helping relationships" into alliances that are less impersonal might be in order. Such relationships and connections seemed conducive to the development of empowering self-efficacy. This finding …

Education Inequality In The United States: A Wicked Problem With A Wicked Solution, Lincoln Bernard

CMC Senior Theses

A problem wicked in its complexity and detriment; the United States has failed most of its students in its inability to address the unashamedly rampant inequality throughout its public education system. The inequality in American public schools appears evident and boundless, but the causes of that inequality, and especially its solutions, are not as obvious. It is easy to explain away the system’s failures as a product of the United States’ ultra-varied environment, but further investigation reveals much of the systems problems are self-caused, resulting from the United States’ uniquely local approach to supporting its schools. A misguided fear of …

Preventing Obesity: A Social Ecological Exploration Of Centers For Disease Control Prevention Strategies And Guidance Toward Healthy Eating, Physical Activity, And Communities, Ryan Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Obesity has reached nearly 40% of the adult public in the United States, costing the citizen taxpayer over $200 billion annually in healthcare costs. Those suffering from obesity deal with multiple physical and mental repercussions. Through a content analysis of four Centers for Disease Control (CDC) documents and guided by the conceptual framework of the social ecological model, this research explores the federal approach to preventing obesity. The analysis finds that CDC solutions to obesity involve connecting people to each other and healthier choices, an orientation toward local public administration, and an emphasis on environmental and infrastructure improvements. The …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Workshop Outcomes Report: 1st International Workshop On Seismic Resilience Of Arctic Infrastructure And Social Systems, Majid Ghayoomi, Katharine Duderstadt, Alexander Kholodov, Alexander Shiklomanov, Matthew Turner, Elham Ajorlou

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Putting Policy In Its Place: Policy Enactment And Engagement Through A Multiscalar Policy-Shed Framework, Barbara L. Maclennan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this research is to examine the spatial components integral to policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. The research uses solid waste as a case study to explore a multiscalar GIS policy-shed framework. To this end, the goal of this dissertation is to examine the spatial nature of public policy. The research applies spatial concepts and multiscalar methodological applications embedded within GIS and geovisualization to explore the complex spaces surrounding public policy implementation and evaluation.

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

Infrastructure Academy Transportation Program, Hassan Hashemian

Mineta Transportation Institute

The College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at the California State University, Los Angeles has expanded its National Summer Transportation Institute into a year-long program by creating the Infrastructure Academy Transportation Program (IATP). The goal of this program is to build a pipeline of diverse, well qualified young people for the transportation industry. The program works with high school students and teachers to offer academic courses, basic skills, workforce readiness training, internships, extracurricular activities, and career placements to prepare students and place them into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) College track. The academy emphasizes on transportation as …

A Transdisciplinary Analysis Of Just Transition Pathways To 100% Renewable Electricity, Adewale Aremu Adesanya

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The transition to using clean, affordable, and reliable electrical energy is critical for enhancing human opportunities and capabilities. In the United States, many states and localities are engaging in this transition despite the lack of ambitious federal policy support. This research builds on the theoretical framework of the multilevel perspective (MLP) of sociotechnical transitions as well as the concept of energy justice to investigate potential pathways to 100 percent renewable energy (RE) for electricity provision in the U.S. This research seeks to answer the question: what are the technical, policy, and perceptual pathways, barriers, and opportunities for just transition to …

Enhancing Research In Natural Hazards Engineering Through The Designsafe Cyberinfrastructure, Ellen M. Rathje, Clint Dawson, Jamie E. Padgett, Jean Paul Pinelli, Frederick L. Haan

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

The DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure (www.designsafe-ci.org) is part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and provides cloud-based tools to manage, analyze, understand, and publish critical data for research to understand the impacts of natural hazards. The DesignSafe Data Depot provides private and public disk space to support research collaboration and data publishing through a web interface. The DesignSafe Reconnaissance Portal uses a map interface to provide easy access to data collected to investigate the effects of natural hazards, and the DesignSafe Workspace provides cloud-based tools for simulation, data analytics, and visualization; as well as access to high performance computing …

‘No Possible Peace’: Rising Construction Worker Deaths In New York And Tennessee, Ana Lucia Murillo, Mary Conlon

Capstones

Construction worker fatalities and injuries are a growing problem across the U.S. And for a myriad of factors, death rates are higher in the Southern and Western U.S. than in other regions. Over 1,000 construction workers died from injuries received on the job in 2019, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, many of whom are Latino workers. Now, advocates and workers are demanding reform after years of diminished regulation and little oversight that have cost numerous lives. Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@analucia.murilloa/no-possible-peace-rising-construction-worker-deaths-in-new-york-and-tennessee-796f757dd199