Austin Logistics Inc. Solutions provides tools that help centralize resource management, optimize and maintain compliance of calling schedules for consumer financial service organization (banks, financial institutions). With the increasing number of customers, the amount of rework and availability of resources had been notably decreasing over time; thereby negatively affecting the overall cost and quality of the software being delivered. The improvement objectives of the company and its departments were broadly stated but lacking a goal-driven nature. The software measurement Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) approach was chosen and used for this research initiative to better support business driven quality improvement. Software defect density data was collected and analyzed to identify significant deviations in the software development life cycle.. The results of the initial analysis on the transformed defect-tracking data helped identify the negatively affected areas within the software development life cycle. The data showed significant variations in the requirements, design and implementation phases of the product life cycle, thus helping identify various process improvement opportunities. On quantifying the change in defect density, the effectiveness of using GQM has also provided valuable insights for process improvement. Based on these results, we were able to identify some of the weaknesses and shortcomings in our application development process. / text

There is plenty of support for local musicians in Austin. It ranges from providing health benefits to receiving home loans to equipment insurance. The live music capital of the world has provisions for recording artists as well as street performers whose primary source of income is music. These facilities go a long way in maintaining Austin‟s identity as one of the major music cities in the world. They also bring together members of this community for benefits that help strengthen the local music industry, which has been an important part of the city‟s economy for several years. / text

This study explores the social, technological economic, and environmental development of single-family residential water conservation programs at the Austin Water Utility and asks: What makes a conservation program successful? I hypothesize that water conservation programs will be successful if both institutional-producer goals and citizen-consumer goals are satisfied. While the findings suggest that this may be partially true, it also has become clear that my original actor-network model was too simple to predict the various types of influences on program success. Not only did I find other significant ‘actors’ involved in water conservation, I also found that utility and participant groups themselves represent a wide variety of interests. This study seeks to answer the research question by creating a series of narratives that critically explore water infrastructure and water conservation programs in Austin, Texas. Through a methodological lens referred to as ‘critical constructivism,’ I use mixed methods to analyze and interpret historic documents, interviews, and quantitative data as primary sources. Literature from Science and Technology Studies (STS) are used as secondary sources. This study will add to a body of knowledge that describes how and why we manage our environmental resources. The subject of conservation is especially relevant as urban growth continues with fewer affordable opportunities to increase regional water supplies. As we enter an era of expected water conflict, knowing how to conserve water effectively will help provide more opportunities for sharing a common resource amongst communities, industry, agriculture, and the environment. / text

Permeable Friction Course (PFC) is a layer of porous asphalt pavement with a thickness of up to 50 millimeters overlain on a conventional impervious hot mix asphalt or Portland cement concrete roadway surface. PFC is used for its driver safety and improved stormwater quality benefits associated with its ability to drain rainfall runoff from the roadway surface. PFC has recently been approved as a stormwater best management practice in the State of Texas. The drainage properties of PFC are typically considered to be governed primarily by two hydraulic properties: porosity and hydraulic conductivity. Both of these hydraulic properties are expected to change over the life of the PFC layer due to clogging of the pore space by trapped sediment. Therefore, proper measurement of the hydraulic properties can be problematic. Laboratory and field tests are necessary for accurately determining the hydraulic conductivity of the PFC layer in order to ensure whether the driver safety and water quality benefits will persist in the future. During testing, PFC experiences a nonlinear flow relationship which can be modeled using the Forchheimer equation. Due to the two-dimensional flow patterns created during testing, the hydraulic conductivity cannot be directly measured. Therefore, numerical modeling of the two-dimensional nonlinear flow relationship is required to convert the measureable flow characteristics into the theoretical flow characteristics in order to properly determine the isotropic hydraulic conductivity. This numerical model utilizes a new scalar quantity, defined as the hydraulic conductivity ratio, to allow for proper modeling of nonlinear flow in two-dimensional cylindrical coordinates. PFC core specimens have been extracted from three different roadway locations around Austin, Texas for the past four years (2007 to 2010). Porosity values of the core specimens range from 12% to 23%, and the porosity data suggest a statistical decrease over time due to trapped sediment in the pore space. A series of constant head tests used in the laboratory and a falling head test used in the field are recommended for measurement of PFC hydraulic characteristics using a modified Forchheimer equation. Through numerical modeling, regressions equations are presented to estimate the hydraulic conductivity and nonlinear Forchheimer coefficient from the measureable hydraulic characteristics determined during experimental testing. Hydraulic conductivity values determined for laboratory core specimens range from 0.02 centimeters per second (cm/s) to nearly 3 cm/s. Field measurements of in-situ hydraulic conductivity vary over a range from 0.6 cm/s to 3.6 cm/s. The results of this research provide well-defined laboratory and field methods for measurement of the isotropic hydraulic conductivity of PFC experiencing two-dimensional nonlinear flow and characterized by the Forchheimer equation. This methodology utilizes a numerical model which presents a proper solution for nonlinear flow in two-dimensions. / text

This thesis examines the circulation of physical music media (78rpm records, LPs, CDs, tape) in the independent music marketplace. It is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Austin, Texas, amongst the producers of goods for the independent marketplace, independent music stores and consumers of these goods and services. Against prevailing constructivist interpretations, I will argue for the value of authenticity as an analytical anthropological concept because it unites what my research participants value about materiality, technology, and marketplace relationships. In the independent marketplace for physical music media, authenticity is a multi-local, multi-vocal phenomenon. A nexus of economic rationales, design, reproduction-technologies, histories and personal conduct interact in an ongoing process that authenticates music commodities and their marketplace. This means that particular commodities are sought out over others on account of the multi-local authenticities they anchor. The thesis firstly demonstrates how the independent music scene safeguards claims to authentic identities by constructing an opposition to the mainstream, drawing on discourses of ethical production and consumption, sound technologies, spaces of consumption and cultural production. Secondly, I will uncover how physical music media and sound-reproduction technologies are assessed as effective providers of authentic musical reproductions according to their historical contingencies and performative material capacities. Thirdly, I develop the notion of the scene (Shank 1994) from its previously genre-fixed perspective to encompass multiple musical styles operating within a common social network of producers, retailers and collectors. The pluralistic scene I describe utilises multiple musical genres and nuanced notions of materiality and authenticity to establish their complex hierarchy of sonic and technological experiences.

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Este trabajo de disertación doctoral tiene el objetivo de analizar la creación de las pautas de interacción socio-espacial en lugares públicos urbanos de tres sociedades contemporáneas: Barcelona, Austin y Saltillo. Para tal efecto, se eligió el tipo de espacio que apareciera en los tres contextos reconocido por sus usuarios, en mayor o menor medida, como lugar que tuviera las mismas características básicas: encuentro, descanso, ocio, convivencia o aislamiento de otros marcos privados. Tal lugar son las plazas. En Barcelona, el escenario de estudio fue la Placa de Catalunya y sus calles aledañas; en Austin fueron diversos escenarios del Centro de la Ciudad y principalmente, la explanada estudiantil de la Universidad de Texas en Austin; en Saltillo, el punto de observación y análisis se ubicó en la plaza vecinal de la Colonia Jardines de Valle. El proceso de elaboración de este documento es resultado de la metodología que se siguió para la recolección y el análisis de datos. Bajo el enfoque de la Teoría Fundamentada de Strauss y Corbin, del Interaccionismo Simbólico así como utilizando las herramientas propuestas por Lyn H. y John Lofland para el abordaje de los fenómenos urbanos en sus espacios públicos, este trabajo intenta desentrañar la lógica y las formas que explican la dinámica de la interacción pública urbana en las tres ciudades. Finalmente, en las conclusiones se presentan las variables que aparecen como constantes en la toma de decisiones de los usuarios de estos espacios así como las diferencias que, a partir del contexto económico, político y cultural de cada una de sus sociedades, generan en cada plaza y cada calle dinámicas particulares entre los grupos de usuarios en esa etapa espacio-temporal. / In this doctoral dissertation I intent to analyze the social interaction that takes place on urban public spaces located in three different societies: Barcelona, Austin and Saltillo. For such effect, I chose as scenario their most visited parks as well as the streets around these parks. This type of place appeared as a remarkable site for encounters, rest, leisure or to isolate from other private places. In Barcelona, I made fieldwork in Catalonia Square as well as in the streets around it. In Austin, I basically observed the Main Building Park at UT Austin. In Saltillo, I chose a small neighborhood park at Colonia Jardines de Valle. This work has been elaborated under the Strauss and Corbin approach on Grounded Theory as well as under Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism. It also integrates research tools proposed by Lyn H. and John Lofland for the analysis of urban phenomena in its public spaces. Under this framework, I intent to present the logic and the forms that could explain the dynamics of public interaction in city parks. Conclusions are that some variables seem to be constantly in mind when users decide the strategies for approaching these places. Differences on uses and on symbolic interpretation in each urban park, seem to correspond to the actual socio-political context where they are placed.

In this dissertation project, I examine the experiences of displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors in the context of post-disaster housing policies and practices. This research is based on two years of in-depth interviews with Katrina survivors who were displaced to Austin, Texas. I analyze these interviews to understand the raced, classed, and gendered implications of post-disaster housing policies and to consider what these implications reveal about the relationship between social policies, housing, and social inequality more broadly. This project is informed by an intersectional understanding of social stratification systems and inequalities and a critical analysis of neoliberal social policy. First, I outline the gender, family, and class ideologies embedded in government-run post-Katrina housing policies and practices, and show how they specifically disadvantaged people who did not conform to them. I identify temporal domination as a specific aspect of class oppression evident in respondents’ experiences with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) rental assistance programs. Next, I specifically examine respondents’ experiences settling into their new neighborhoods and searching for jobs. I found that many black survivors ended up in segregated remote areas of the city, far from jobs and public transportation. Their job searching experiences suggest that employers used racist stereotypes about Latino workers to coerce them to work for low wages. This reveals the complex and interrelated racial dynamics of low-wage urban housing and labor markets. Finally, I explore how survivors got by in the face of such difficult and in some cases dire circumstances. One primary way survivors coped with the uncertainty caused by their displacement was relying on their social networks. While women tended to depend on adult child - parent and other familial relationships, men tended to distance themselves from the potential support of their mothers and other relatives. Respondents also constructed fictive kin relationships to provide support to others, sometimes for the explicit purpose of ensuring one or both members of the relationship had access to stable housing. This reveals how both gender and family relationships can shape disaster recovery and everyday experiences of poverty. Overall, this project contributes to the study of race/class/gender inequality, social policy, housing, and disaster recovery. / text

The purpose of this Master’s Report was to determine an appropriate preservation strategy for a particular set of buildings and their accompanying art from the Modern Architecture Movement. The research question was: What type of strategy is best suited for the preservation of installed art created for Modern style buildings? The study analyzed preservation strategies afforded to Modern art and architecture during rehabilitation of the buildings. The case studies are Modern Movement office or bank buildings with art commissioned for the space by the architects or owners. An analysis of the main case study’s preservation strategies looks at all the actions taken and proposed to protect, not only the material fabric of the art, but the primary interior space. The main case study was the American National Bank building in Austin, Texas designed by Kuehne, Brooks and Barr Architects with a mural by Seymour Fogel. The secondary case studies were: Harry Bertoia sculpture + Manufacturers Trust Building, New York City, Pietro Belluschi mural + Equitable Building, Portland, Oregon, Richard Lippold sculpture + Inland Steel Building, Chicago, and Roger Darricarrere dalle de verre + Columbia Savings Buildings, Los Angeles. After study and analysis, the preservation strategies were categorized in four categories: in situ conservation, removal, recreation/replacement and demolition/destruction. It was concluded that there is not a general approach for these projects, and each should be analyzed through various factors (Design Intent, Intrinsic Value, Collaboration and Context) to determine the appropriate intervention. / text

This report analyzes the current greenhouse gas emissions inventory for The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), reviews the carbon reduction strategies being implemented at UT-Austin and other peer institutions, and offers recommendations for strategies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions at UT-Austin in the future. / text