Dynamic deployment is an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) ambulance management strategy where 911 call demand coverage is maximized continuously through time. Unlike static deployment where dispatched ambulances leave a coverage gap until they return to their home-base after service, dynamic deployment redeploys idle ambulances to different locations if that leads to an increase in demand coverage. The purpose of this dissertation was to study dynamic deployment as a viable, beneficial, and cost-effective methodology in managing EMS ambulances and crews. The literature, while rich in studies on static deployment, was lacking when it came to ambulance management strategies like dynamic deployment. Through a discrete-event simulation model, hypothetical EMS systems were simulated under dynamic and static deployment with different demand patterns, demand loads, and system sizes. Dynamic deployment was found to be as good, or often better, in emergency response metrics than static deployment. When EMS systems want to meet a certain response goal, dynamic deployment may enable them to achieve that performance with fewer vehicles than static deployment. While savings in number of vehicles translate to substantial savings in crew wages and vehicular purchasing costs, dynamic deployment may increase operating costs per vehicle because of the extra mileage involved in redeployments. Many EMS systems with average vehicular utilizations of 40% to 50% may find, however, that dynamic deployment may be both cost-effective and beneficial in improving response performance. Different redeployment strategies were studied to address the added travel costs of dynamic deployment and a min-sum assignment model was found to decrease redeployment travel the most without impacting response performance. Finally, a procedure and a mathematical model were developed to route vehicles intelligently such that demand coverage is maximized throughout the redeployment process.

Perceived self-efficacy plays a key role in healthy reintegration post-deployment. Reintegration is characterized as the final stage in the deployment cycle, including returning home from combat and reassuming home-front roles and responsibilities. The objective of this study is to describe a program, specifically the Military Teen Adventure Camp (MTAC), and evaluate the program’s effectiveness in increasing perceptions of self-efficacy among adolescents who have experienced the deployment of at least one parent. The findings suggest participating in Military Teen Adventure Camps have a positive effect on adolescent perceptions of self-efficacy, which could decrease family distress during reintegration.

Doctor of Philosophy / Computing and Information Sciences / Scott A. DeLoach / Xinming (Simon) Ou / The Moving Target Defense (MTD) concept has been proposed as an approach to rebalance the security landscape by increasing uncertainty and apparent complexity for attackers, reducing their window of opportunity, and raising the costs of their reconnaissance and attack efforts. Intuitively, the idea of applying MTD techniques to a whole IT system should provide enhanced security; however, little research has been done to show that it is feasible or beneficial to the system’s security. This dissertation presents an MTD platform at the whole IT system level in which any component of the IT system can be automatically and reliably replaced with a fresh new one. A component is simply a virtual machine (VM) instance or a cluster of instances. There are a number of security benefits when leveraging such an MTD platform. Replacing a VM instance with a new one with the most up-to-date operating system and applications eliminates security problems caused by unpatched vulnerabilities and all the privileges the attacker has obtained on the old instance. Configuration parameters for the new instance, such as IP address, port numbers for services, and credentials, can be changed from the old ones, invalidating the knowledge the attackers already obtained and forcing them to redo the work to re-compromise the new instance. In spite of these obvious security benefits, building a system that supports live replacement with minimal to no disruption to the IT system’s normal operations is difficult. Modern enterprise IT systems have complex dependencies among services so that changing even a single instance will almost certainly disrupt the dependent services. Therefore, the replacement of instances must be carefully orchestrated with updating the settings of the dependent instances. This orchestration of changes is notoriously error-prone if done manually, however, limited tool support is available to automate this process. We designed and built a framework (ANCOR) that captures the requirements and needs of a whole IT system (in particular, dependencies among various services) and compiles them into a working IT system. ANCOR is at the core of the proposed MTD platform (ANCOR-MTD) and enables automated live instance replacements. In order to evaluate the platform’s practicality, this dissertation presents a series of experiments on multiple IT systems that show negligible (statistically non-significant) performance impacts. To evaluate the platform’s efficacy, this research analyzes costs versus security benefits by quantifying the outcome (sizes of potential attack windows) in terms of the number of adaptations, and demonstrates that an IT system deployed and managed using the proposed MTD platform will increase attack difficulty.

Architecture Design for deploying or improving a tool or application is a vital step which should be neither ignored nor avoided. The architecture will provide the framework and instructions on how the tool needs to be created in order to comply with the stakeholders’ most important requirements. Utilizing data collected from the different stakeholders involved in the use of an existing tool, an effective architecture structure will be created to improve the tool and satisfy the users’ needs to achieve the desired goals in it. Through the use of an effective architecture design, a toolkit will be created to improve an existing Management Tool to provide a desired outcome. We have learned that having an architecture established prior to starting a development project or in the early lifecycle stages will positively influence the project’s outcome, timely deliverables and financial impact associated with it. It is crucial to consider all aspects surrounding a process or software design, such as stakeholder requirements, internal and external customer feedback, and any particular feature that will guarantee a reliable structure and deployment process. / text

Airmen serving in the U.S. Air Force have made significant contributions to the overall war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Deployment, combat exposure, and subsequent combat-related mental health issues can have effects that extended beyond the airmen to the family. The primary aim of this study was to determine the path through which such effects occur within the context of risk and protective factors. The risk factors identified in this study were: deployment length and frequency and psychological symptomology. The construct of social support was also examined as an identified protective factor. This study examined the relationships between all of these variables using regression, moderation and mediation. Method: Secondary data were obtained from the Air Force Community Assessment, a large-scale, anonymous survey fielded in the spring of 2008 from a stratified random sample of active duty airmen. Results: Long and repeated deployments slightly increased the likelihood of the presence of both posttraumatic and depressive symptoms (.6% of variance explained in the variable deployment length and .5% in variable deployment frequency, p< .001). Furthermore, as psychological symptoms increase, there is a decrease in the quality of family relationships (7.2% of the variance explained in variable spousal relationships and 9.7% of the variance explained in the variable parent-child relationships, both statistically significant at p< .001). Social support was found to have a slightly moderating effect on the relationship between the deployment factors and both spousal and parent–child relationships (2.3% of the variance explained in both spousal and parent-child relationships, statistically significant at p< .001). Finally, this study examined the roll of psychological symptomology as a mediator between the variables deployment length/frequency and family relationships (spousal and parent-child). Findings demonstrate the strongest support for psychological symptomology (posttraumatic stress and depressive) as a mediator for the relationship between deployment length and spousal relationships. Findings were less conclusive and did not point toward mediation, for the relationship between deployment frequency and spousal relationships mediated by either type of psychological symptomology; i.e. posttraumatic stress of depressive. In addition, psychological symptomology did not mediate the relationship between both deployment length and frequency and parent-child relationships. This is, in part, a notable finding because “deployment frequency” has been a significant hallmark of the OIF and OEF conflicts; much emphasis has been placed on both deployment length and deployment frequency in the context of the current OIF and OEF war efforts. The current data demonstrate more implications for deployment length compared to frequency when predicting outcomes related to family relationships.

Purpose: Since September 11, 2001 military personnel have experienced a pattern of frequent deployment and reintegration, known as the deployment cycle. Deployments present unique challenges and opportunities to military personnel with lasting effects. This study examines group differences based on risk and protective factors, which were grouped into four domains (physical, mental, social, and spiritual) according to the Comprehensive Airman Fitness model in use by the U.S. Air Force to teach and increase resilience. The groups represent various levels of exposure to deployment dangers, up to and including combat, and time, recent deployment within two years and past deployment more than two years ago. Method: Secondary analysis was conducted with the 2013 Air Force Community Assessment Survey, a large, anonymous survey collected among U.S. Airmen. Discriminant analysis was utilized to determine and describe group differences. Results: The null hypothesis of no difference between group centroids was rejected. The primary group difference existed between Airmen who experienced combat and all other Airmen. The result of the discriminant analysis demonstrates at least two, possibly three, distinct groups exist among Airmen related to deployment experiences. The discriminant analysis generated six functions. Health and PTSD demonstrated the highest discriminant ability, although social support systems also played a significant role. Recent deployers reported higher levels of resilience and hardiness compared to past deployers regardless of exposure to deployment danger and combat. Meanwhile, past deployers reported higher levels of spirituality across all groups. Discussion: This study utilized aspects of resilience theory through the incorporation of time and a person-in-environment approach to the study of deployment and resilience. Implications related to social work practice include assessment of deployment frequency and the cumulative effects of deployment stressors. A specific policy recommendation is to ensure adequate leadership training in resilience promotion, as leadership represented an important component of resilience in this study. Finally, future research following this study could include qualitative analysis and studies utilizing more comprehensive scales among Airmen.

Minimally invasive vascular interventions with stent deployment have become a popular alternative to conventional open surgery in the treatment of many vascular disorders. However, the high initial success rates of endovascular repairs have been overshadowed by reported complications that cause re-interventions and, in the worst case, morbidity and mortality. The dangerous complications could be mitigated by better choice of device design and by the appropriate positioning of the implant inside the vessel. However, there is currently no possibility for the interventionist to predict the resulting position and the expanded shape of the device for a given patient, before the actual procedure, within the clinical setting. Motivated by this unmet clinical need and the lack of suitable methods, this thesis develops a methodology for modelling virtual deployment of implantable devices inside patient vessels, that features fast computational execution times and can be used in clinical practice. This novel deployment method was developed based on a spring-mass model and was tested in different deployment scenarios, expanding stents inside vessels in the order of seconds. Further, the performance of the novel method was optimised by calibrating a set of parameters with the help of a genetic algorithm, which utilises the outcomes of a finite element analysis as a learning reference. After the calibration, the developed stenting method demonstrated acceptable accuracy as compared to the "gold standard" of the finite element simulation. Finally, on a real patient case, 4 alternative stenting scenarios were investigated by comparing the subsequent blood flow conditions, via computational haemodynamics. The obtained results suggested that device design, dimensions, stiffness and positioning have important implications on the post-procedural haemodynamics of the vessel. Ultimately, the presented results can play a transformative role in aiding clinical decision-making and also give rise to overall improvements in implant design and deployment procedure.

Cloud computing is nowadays a popular computing paradigm. Computers are interconnected via network and jointly offer a lot of computing performance. SOFA 2 is a hierarchical component system offering a distributed run-time environment; therefore, it is a suitable environment for cloud computing. Applications are composed from components; each component may run on different computer in the `cloud'. The deployment of the components influences the overall performance of the application and the utilization of resources in the `cloud'; therefore, it has to be planned carefully. In this thesis, an algorithm for automated deployment planning of hierarchical component-based applications is proposed and further implemented in the SOFA 2 system. The algorithm incorporates components' demands and machines' resources in order to maximize performance of the deployed applications. The thesis also proposes and implements extensions that allow using the SOFA 2 component system as an actual cloud platform.

Nowadays software performance is evaluated not only by specialized review companies but it is more and more starting to be a common practice for the software developers themselves. Companies are often forced to develop and maintain their own tools for measuring performance of the developed applications. On the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics there has been created a toolkit for automation of software performance evaluation called BEEN. This toolkit should significantly ease the management of individual performance measurements but it is not possible to test it thoroughly in the environment where it was created. The goal of this thesis is to deploy BEEN in a real environment of commercially oriented company and evaluate the usability of this toolkit for the developers. We will focus on evaluating both objective and subjective positives and drawbacks of this toolkit as observed by unbiased users.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / F. Todd Goodson / By the end of March 2011, 2.3 million active-duty military personnel and reservists had deployed to combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (Golding, 2011). Many of them had experienced multiple deployments in which they served in war zones for 12 to 15 months, returned to the US for 12 months, and then deployed again to another war zone (Huebner & Mancini, 2008; Morse, 2006). Adolescents in military families whose service members are deployed repeatedly, and for longer durations, experience circumstances unique to current conflicts. Documents such as the Educator’s Guide to the Military Child During Deployment (retrieved 2008) recommend various literacy practices as a means of coping with the circumstances of deployment. This qualitative phenomenological inquiry seeks to extend the body of research in the area of adolescent literacy by examining the perceptions of adolescents regarding their out-of-school literacy practices within the experience of deployment. In this study, the perspectives of five adolescents were examined regarding their literacy practices as they shaped their identities, enacted agency, and navigated structures of power during deployment. Phenomenological analysis, critical discourse analysis, and sociocultural theory were applied to data gathered from initial interviews, literacy logs, and follow-up interviews. During the phenomenological analysis, descriptions of each participant’s experiences were developed, replete with the words and expressions of the adolescents themselves. Horizontalization of significant statements from these descriptions yielded a composite description offering an understanding of what it is like to engage in out-of-school literacy practices within the circumstances of military deployment. Three themes emerged; ambiguity, responses, and roles. A theoretical analysis utilizing critical discourse analysis and sociocultural theory examined the discourses of the participants and interpreted relationships between the adolescents’ literacy practices and their experiences with deployment. This examination offered insight to the ways these adolescents established identity and enacted agency within power circulations as their families experienced deployment. This study places the voices of adolescents at the foreground of consideration. Listening to their words and reading their texts offers true insight into their literacy practices as they navigate the lived experience of deployment.