This study evaluates the impact of pedestrian flow through vehicular delays in a proposed DLT intersection located in an urban area with a high vehicular and pedestrian traffic volume. In addition, it evaluates the pedestrian–vehicle conflict points, the effect on the other accesses after the implementation of the displaced left turns, and the consequences of reorganizing pedestrian flow. Three scenarios are evaluated through microsimulation; the existing one, which is a conventional cross-shaped intersection; a proposed DLT intersection with two displaced left turns on adjacent accesses; and a third one, similar to the last one, but with the inclusion of a pedestrian underpass. Results indicate that a proposed conventional DLT increases the vehicle delays of the intersection by 6.0% compared to the existing condition, mainly due to the high volume of pedestrians and the conflicts it generates. However, with the inclusion of a pedestrian underpass, vehicle delays are reduced significantly by up to 34.0%.

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.24).

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.79).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Paolo Aluffi, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Mathematics. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 08, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, August 2009.

This project embraces the intersection of biophilic design and mindfulness as a means to positively impact its users' mental health. The use of intersections in this design embodies therapy's goal of creating a welcoming space where people can safely explore and accept who they are as they travel their mental health journey. Mental health is an increasing problem, particularly for younger people whose social development was abruptly interrupted and adversely impacted by the pandemic. Those struggling with mental health are plagued by constant battles with their own thoughts of insecurities, fear, anxiety, and self-harm or harm to others. Embrace provides architectural spaces that support mental health and therapy by leveraging biophilic design and mindfulness. Existing mental health and behavioral clinics commonly misuse or ignore the potential for architecture to aid in therapy. These designs further alienate those struggling with mental health and do not encourage people to stay at the building beyond their initial appointment. This project takes advantage of the potential for architectural features to become active tools in therapy through biophilic design and mindfulness, which can make therapy sessions more effective and pleasant. Biophilic design implements physical nature or natural influences into architectural form, materiality, patterns, and features in order to optimize the mental health benefits of natural surroundings. Examples of effective biophilic design strategies include the use of natural materials, daylighting, and views to the exterior. Mindfulness is a common therapy technique used to treat a variety of mental health disorders by reducing anxiety and negative thoughts. This state of mind can be practiced in architecture by tracing shapes, describing, and counting elements. The location selected is in Blacksburg, Virginia, just outside of the Virginia Tech campus. This location offers a lot of potential for interactions with the surrounding environment because of an existing tree grove, its adjacency to the Huckleberry Trail, views toward the Blue Ridge Mountains and elevation changes in the topography. By embedding the two-story building in the landscape, this offers three main view options: views to the south of the tree trunks from the existing tree grove, views to the south of the tree tops, and views to the north of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In addition, the proximity to the Virginia Tech campus is essential because there has been an increase in the number of students and faculty requiring mental health support. The project's parti reinforces the importance of intersection through its overall form. The building is split up into two parallel forms pierced by a third form. The materiality in the parallel portions of the building are mainly natural materials, like heavy timber. The materiality in the third, intersecting piece is mainly structured materials, like concrete. The moments of overlap in the building join the two materialities to make beautiful gathering spaces for those struggling with mental health to meet others in similar situations and promote group therapy involvement. The individual therapy rooms are tailored to the needs of the therapists and include private bathrooms, controlled acoustics, and ample seating. The building provides multiple spaces dedicated to group therapy, community gathering, and reflection. Throughout the building are common spaces designed to architecturally support specific therapy types. These spaces optimize the site location, materiality and building form to create spaces that not only meet the physical needs of the selected therapy, but also create a unique quality and atmosphere. While this building plans for numerous types of tailor-made therapy spaces, this project focuses on the detailed development of three main therapy types: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Trauma-Focused Therapy, and Existential Therapy. The aspiration of this project is to create a building that is welcoming to the Virginia Tech community while simultaneously supporting mental health with thoughtful architecture. Although the most common reason for students to first arrive at Embrace is for a therapy appointment, the goal is that people will also see the opportunity the architecture provides for reflection, community, and support outside of their appointments times. Ultimately, the architecture gathers the mental health community. / Master of Architecture / This project embraces the intersection of biophilic design and mindfulness as a means to positively impact its users' mental health. The use of intersections in this design embodies therapy's goal of creating a welcoming space where people can safely explore and accept who they are as they travel their mental health journey. Mental health is an increasing problem, particularly for younger people whose social development was abruptly interrupted and adversely impacted by the pandemic. This project takes advantage of the potential for architectural features to become active tools in therapy through biophilic design and mindfulness, which can make therapy sessions more effective and pleasant. The location selected is in Blacksburg, Virginia, just outside of the Virginia Tech campus. This location offers a lot of potential for interactions with the surrounding environment because of an existing tree grove, its adjacency to the Huckleberry Trail, views toward the Blue Ridge Mountains and elevation changes in the topography. In addition, the proximity to the Virginia Tech campus is essential because there has been an increase in the number of students and faculty requiring mental health support. The project's parti reinforces the importance of intersection through its overall form. The building is split up into two parallel forms pierced by a third form. The materiality in the parallel portions of the building are mainly natural materials. The materiality in the third, intersecting piece is mainly structured materials. The moments of overlap in the building join the two materialities to make beautiful gathering spaces for those struggling with mental health. The individual therapy rooms are tailored to the needs of the therapists. Throughout the building are common spaces designed to architecturally support specific therapy types. These spaces optimize the site location, materiality and building form to create spaces that not only meet the physical needs of the selected therapy, but also create a unique quality and atmosphere. The aspiration of this project is to create a building that is welcoming to the Virginia Tech community while simultaneously supporting mental health with thoughtful architecture. Ultimately, the architecture gathers the mental health community.

Nighttime intersection crashes account for nearly half of all the intersection crashes, making them a major traffic safety concern. Although providing lighting at intersections has proven to be a successful countermeasure against these crashes, existing approaches to designing lighting at intersections are overly simplified. Current standards are based on recommending lighting levels, but do not account for the role of human vision or vehicle headlamps or the numerous pedestrian-vehicle conflict locations at intersections. For effective intersection lighting design, empirical evidence is required regarding the effects of lighting configuration (part of the intersection illuminated) and lighting levels on nighttime visibility. This research effort had three goals. The first was to identify an intersection lighting design that results in the best nighttime visibility. The second goal was to determine the effect of illuminance on visual performance at intersections. The third goal was to understand the relationships between object luminance, contrast, and visibility. To achieve these goals, three specific configurations were used, that illuminated the intersection approach (Approach), intersection box (Box), and both the intersection approach and box (Both). Each lighting configuration was evaluated under five levels of illumination. Visibility was assessed both objectively (visual performance) and subjectively (perceptions of visibility and glare). Illuminating the intersection box led to superior visual performance, higher perceived visibility, and lower perceived glare. For this same configuration, plateaus in visual performance and perceived visibility occurred between 8 and 12 lux illuminance levels. A photometric analysis revealed that the Box lighting configuration rendered targets in sufficient positive and negative contrasts to result in higher nighttime visibility. Negatively contrast targets aided visual performance, while for targets rendered in positive contrast visual performance was dependent on the magnitude of the contrast. The relationship between pedestrian contrast and perceived pedestrian visibility was more complex, as pedestrians were often rendered in multiple contrast polarities. These results indicate that Box illumination is an effective strategy to enhance nighttime visual performance and perceptions of visibility while reducing glare, and which may be an energy efficient solution as it requires fewer luminaires. / Ph. D.

The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of the intersection of race, gender and social class on women leaders’ work experience and career progression in order to come up with strategies for gender transformation at leadership level in corporate South Africa. The problem statement of this research study concerns the indication in the annual report of the Commission for Employment Equity (Department of Labour 2012) that there is under-representation of women, especially African and Coloured women, at top management level relative to the economically active population. The Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill was published in the Government Gazette No. 37005 of 6 November 2013. This Bill aims to enforce compliance with the stipulated minimum representation of women at senior levels in both the private and public sectors. This study, with its objective of reaching an understanding of the impact of the intersection of race, gender and social class on women’s career progression, is therefore timeous. Getting the perspective of woman CEOs across race and class on how to transform gender at leadership level could add an important voice to transformation and could be of benefit to decision makers in business and in government. Based on this problem statement the following research questions were formulated: - To what extent does the intersection of race, social class and gender impact on women CEOs’ experience in their work roles and career progression? - How might an understanding of women leaders’ experiences in their roles assist with strategies to transform gender at leadership level in corporate South Africa? Qualitative research methodology was chosen as the appropriate methodology and grounded theory was employed. Purposive, snowball and theoretical sampling methods were used to identify fourteen participants (13 CEOs and one chairman).The life story method was employed for in-depth semi-structured interviews from which rich descriptive data was collected and which was analysed using grounded theory. Findings confirmed that the intersection of race, gender, age and class does have an impact on women’s career progression and their life experiences. The dominant social identity was race for blacks and gender whites; class and age were the overlay. In terms of strategies for gender transformation, first-order constructs from the participants were related to abstract second-order constructs from the literature, which led to the formulation of the WHEEL Theoretical Model. The theoretical model is an integration of different elements required for the formulation of strategies for gender transformation at leadership level. The different elements were women themselves; domestic and family support; the organisation; society and government. Despite some limitations that were encountered, the aim of the study was achieved by making a contribution not only to the development of theory related to strategies for gender transformation at leadership level, which other scholars can build from, but also to the gaining of insights into the intersection of multiple social identities and their impact which can be used by business leaders and policymakers to address inequalities in organisations. In addition, this research study made various recommendations for future research / Business Management

This thesis studies calibration of SIDRA Intersection roundabout models. The calibration has been performed with three different methods; manual calibration of gap-acceptance parameters, manual calibration of the parameter environment factor and automatic calibration of the environment factor based on optimization. The main aim has been to evaluate and compare 3 the three methods. One part of the purpose was also to test the possibility of finding a general value of environment factor by testing a few different types of models. SIDRA Intersection is a micro-analytical model used for capacity and performance estimations. The capacity model is based on gap-acceptance theory where follow-up headway and critical gap have a great impact. An application for automatic calibration was developed in Microsoft Excel/VBA. The calibration process is based Differential evolution and the cost function uses root mean square percent error where capacity and average delay are used as performance measures. The application has been tested with a test model at first to make sure the calibration is correct. The application has then been tested on data from a site in Farsta, Stockholm. For this site all three calibration methods, the two manual and the automatic, has been tested. The results show that all three methods performed equally well, with only small differences in precision. The most effective method considering results and time required for process was the manual calibration of environment factor.In the last part of this project the method for manual calibration of environment factor was tested with three more models with different characteristics in order to investigate the possibility of finding one value for environment factor suitable for all approaches. However the tests show difference in environment factor between small and large roundabouts and difficulties to set one value for environment factor for two-lane approaches.

This research develops an optimization model for eco-driving at signalized intersection. In urban areas, signalized intersections are the “hot spots” of air emissions and have significant negative environmental and health impacts. Eco-driving is a strategy which aims to reduce exclusive fuel consumption and emissions by modifying or optimizing drivers’ behaviors. With the help of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (V2I), eco-driving could utilize the signal phase and the queue-discharging time information to optimize the speed trajectories for the vehicles approaching an intersection in order to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. A few research studies have been conducted on the development of algorithms that utilize traffic signal information to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Hence, the goal of this research is to develop an optimization model to determine the optimal eco-driving trajectory (the speed profile) at a signalized intersection, which aims to achieve the minimization of a linear combination of emissions and travel time. Then enumeration method, simplex optimization and genetic algorithm are investigated to determine a practicable and efficient method to solve the proposed optimization problem. As various scenarios of distance from the vehicle to the intersection, queue discharging time and weights of emission/travel time will lead to different optimal trajectories and different emissions and travel times. A sensitivity study is conducted to analyze and compare the performance of the optimal solution in various scenarios of different such parameters. In addition, a baseline study is conducted to investigate the benefits of eco-driving when drivers only decelerate in advance but not apply the recommended speed trajectory. The results of case study show that genetic algorithm is a preferred method to solve the proposed optimization problem; Eco-driving could achieve satisfied reduction in emissions without significantly increasing travel time and emissions is more sensitive to various scenarios than travel time; Eco-driving still could achieve reduction in emissions as long as the drivers decelerate earlier even though the they would not apply the recommended speed trajectory under certain conditions.