Thesis (Ph.D)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Co-Chair: George L. Nemhauser; Committee Co-Chair: Martin W. P. Savelsbergh; Committee Member: Bruce K. Sawhill; Committee Member: Joel Sokol; Committee Member: Ozlem Ergun. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

It is of nearly universal acceptance that one of the pillars of American economic success over the course of the 20th century was the rapid development of infrastructure. Transportation infrastructure has been of particular importance in the rise of the United States and attributed to the spread of an increasingly mobile culture. Americans undoubtedly enjoy traveling, and the ability to do so with relative ease is of immense value to many. In Texas, the majority of economic activity takes place within what is colloquially known as the “Texas Triangle”, an area bounded by the large metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and San Antonio. Intensive population growth in Texas, anchored by the triangle, has led to increasing road congestion on many routes, especially along Interstates 35 and 10. This congestion, and the wasted time and money that comes with it, are of increasing concern to the future economic vitality of the state. The Texas Triangle is also served by extensive aviation links via major airports in the major metropolitan areas, as well as smaller airports in other parts of the region. These flights, operated by American Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Southwest Airlines are frequent, but emit large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to ground level pollution and possibly climate change. High-speed rail has been considered by many to be a superior environmental option for intercity routes with lengths inherent to the Texas Triangle. However, given the fact that Texas is the top emitter of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and relies on an energy mix that is primarily fossil fuel powered; would a potential high-speed rail in Texas outperform the current air system environmentally, given similar passenger miles traveled? This report examines the environmental emissions of high-speed rail and compares it to the environmental emissions of our current aviation system, taking into account a life-cycle perspective. / text

This study discusses works by Martin Amis and Don DeLillo in the context of several key scientific and technological transformations that occur in the aftermath of the Second World War. I begin by revisiting one of the most-discussed aspects of DeLillo's work: the currents conspiracy and paranoia that recur in his novels and, he claims, pervade the wider culture. By demonstrating how paranoid narratives strive to accommodate contemporary technologies, I create a context in which the paranoia addressed in works such as Libra and Underworld becomes intelligible as a response to the specific technological character of surveilance and control in the post-War period. The sciences of information and cybernetics also cohere in the years folowing the War, and the second chapter explores the creative tension between metaphors of entropy and information in Amis's fiction as wel as DeLillo's. The third chapter focuses on television as a constitutive element of postmodernity, and traces how DeLillo and Amis adopt narrative strategies that enable them to represent subjects who have grown accustomed to living within an environment mediated, to an unprecedented degree, by visual imagery supplied by or formatted for television. Another product of postmodern technology, commercial air travel reconfigures relationships to place and to time for inhabitants of industrialized countries. Both the liberating and limiting consequences of living in the latter half of the century of flight are addressed in the fourth chapter. The final chapter offers an assessment of the role contemporary media and technology play in establishing the characteristics associated with postmodernity, and concludes with a brief discussion of the role the internet might play within the context of the specific technologies discussed in the body of the thesis.

Although the airline industry has drastically changed since its deregulation in 1978, publically available sources of data have remained nearly the same. In the U.S., most researchers and decision-makers rely on government data that contains highly aggregated price information (e.g., average quarterly prices). However, aggregate data can hide important market behavior. With the emergence of online distribution channels, there is a new opportunity to model air travel demand using detailed price information. This dissertation uses online prices and seat maps to build a dataset of daily prices and bookings at the flight-level. Several research contributions are made, all related to leveraging online data to better understand airline pricing and product strategies, and how these strategies impact customers, as well as the industry in general. One major contribution is the finding that the recent product debundling trend in the U.S. airline industry has diluted revenues to the U.S. Airport and Airways Trust Fund by at least five percent. Additionally, several new behavioral insights are found for one debundling trend that has been widely adopted by U.S. airlines: seat reservation fees. Customers are found to be between 2 and 3.3 times more likely to purchase premium coach seats (with extra legroom and early boarding privileges) when there are no regular coach window or aisle seats that can be reserved for free, suggesting that the ability of airlines to charge seat fees is strongly tied to load factors. Model results are used to explore optimal seat fees and find that an optimal static fee could increase revenues by 8 percent, whereas optimal dynamic fees could increase revenues by 10.2 percent. Another major contribution is in modeling daily bookings and estimating price elasticities using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression without correcting for price endogeneity and two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression, which corrects for endogeneity. Results highlight the importance of correcting for price endogeneity (which is not often done in air travel applications). In particular, models that do not correct for endogeneity find inelastic demand estimates whereas models that do correct for endogeneity find elastic demand estimates. This is important, as pricing recommendations differ for inelastic and elastic models. A set of instrumental variables are found to pass validity tests and can be used to correct for price endogeneity in future models of daily flight-level demand.

The overarching research objective is to address the tightly-coupled interactions between the demand-side and supply-side components of the United States Commercial Air Transportation System (CATS) in a time-variant environment. A system-of-system perspective is adopted, where the scope is extended beyond the National Airspace System (NAS) level to the National Transportation System (NTS) level to capture the intermodal and multimodal relationships between NTS stakeholders. The Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation technique is employed where the NTS/NAS is treated as an integrated Multi-Agent System comprising of consumer and service provider agents representing the demand-side and supply-side components respectively. Successful calibration and validation of both model components against the observable real world data provided a CATS simulation tool where the aviation demand is estimated from socioeconomic and demographic properties of the population instead of merely based on enplanement growth multipliers. This valuable achievement enabled a 20-year outlook simulation study to investigate the implications of a global fuel price hike on the airline industry and the U.S. CATS at large. Simulation outcomes revealed insights into the airline competitive behaviors and the subsequent responses from transportation consumers.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 22, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Sydney College of the Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Air travel accounts for a major share of individual greenhouse gas emissions in high-income countries. Technical development alone will not be sufficient to meet international climate goals if air travel continues to increase as predicted. Behavioral change is thus essential. Earlier research has shown that the gap between environmental attitudes and behavior is large when it comes to air travel; few reduce flying because of climate concerns. However, some people do, and there is a rising debate about individual responsibility and travel habits. This study, based on semi-structured interviews with Swedish residents who quit, reduce or continue flying, describes how such behavioral change comes about. Important incentives and barriers for this process are highlighted. A framework of societal transformation is applied to show where these incentives and barriers are located – in personal and political spheres. This thesis suggests that internalized knowledge about the impacts of global warming is crucial to spark the process of reducing air travel. This awareness evokes negative emotions, often anxiety, guilt or frustration, which may lead to a personal tipping point where a decision to reduce flying is made. For many, such behavioral change is counteracted by both personal values and societal structures promoting air travel. Also individuals with a strong personal drive to reduce flying may feel trapped in social and professional practices, and even counteracted and ridiculed by society. The study shows a lack of incentives from societal levels, pointing to the need for political action aiming to create economic incentives and more attractive alternatives to air travel, as well as deepened climate knowledge and change of social norms. The findings are valuable for policy makers who want to contribute to a transformation towards a more sustainable travel system.

Plataformas de mídia social têm possibilitado que indivíduos produzam, compartilhem e distribuam seu conteúdo, facilmente, pela Internet – interagindo com outros indivíduos e firmas. Atualmente, qualquer pessoa pode ter seu próprio jornal (blog), rádio (podcast) ou canal de TV (YouTube) e construir uma audiência. Redes sociais, como Facebook e Twitter, permitem que as pessoas espalhem o boca-a-boca ainda mais. Neste novo ambiente social, consumidores tornaram-se ativos produtores – influenciando seus pares, criticando produtos/serviços, co-desenvolvendo suas próprias soluções, etc. Finalmente, as firmas se deram conta de que deviam aprender como fazer uso de mídia social para participar das conversas, acessar conhecimentos externos e tentar co-criar algum valor. Mas como o uso destas plataformas de mídia social pela firma para co-criação com consumidores pode influenciar seus processos de negócio? Para responder a essa questão, este estudo utilizou dois métodos de pesquisa qualitativos interpretativos – netnografia e grounded theory – para explorar dados públicos disponíveis em plataformas de mídia social. A pesquisa empírica investigou um ecossistema de mídia social no setor de transporte aéreo. Como resultados, este estudo apresenta: um conjunto de categorias inter-relacionadas que emergiram dos dados empíricos; descrições de campo; e hipóteses teóricas propostas a respeito deste processo de co-criação no setor de transporte aéreo e suas implicações. Resultados indicam que três tipos de co-criação em plataformas de mídia social (co-criação de experiências online, de marca em tempo real e de conhecimento sobre produtos/serviços) influenciam positivamente a integração de capacidades/conhecimentos dos consumidores aos processos de negócio da empresa (como relacionamento com clientes, suporte, relações públicas, propaganda e desenvolvimento de produtos/serviços), enquanto a falta destes tipos de co-criação pode influenciar negativamente a efetividade destes processos de negócio. / Social media platforms have enabled individuals to easily produce, share and distribute their own content over the Intenet – interacting with other individuals and firms. Currently, anyone may have his own newspaper (blog), radio (podcast) or TV channel (YouTube) and build an audience. Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, allow people to spread the word of mouth even further. In this new social environment, consumers became active producers - influencing their peers, criticizing bad products/services, codeveloping their own solutions, etc. Eventually, firms found out that they must learn how to use social media to become part of the conversation, access external knowledge and try to cocreate some value. But how could firm’s usage of social media platforms to co-create with consumers influence its business processes? In order to answer to that question, this study used two qualitative interpretive research methods – netnography and grounded theory – to explore public data available on social media platforms. The empirical research investigated a social media ecosystem of the air travel industry. As results, this study presents: a set of interrelated categories that emerged from empirical data; field descriptions; and the theoretical hypothesis regarding the co-creation process in air travel industry and its implications. Results show that three types of co-creation using social media platforms (online experiences cocreation, brand real-time co-creation and products/services knowledge co-creation) positively influence customers’ capabilities/knowledge integration to firms’ business processes (such as customers relationship, support, public relations, advertising, products/services development) - while the lack of those types of co-creation may negatively influence those business processes effectivity.