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This thesis will, in the main, deal with the more important technical developments of the automobile. It will attempt to report these developments as they affected the evolution of the motor vehicle, to show how they came about, and to set forth the conditions that influenced them.

Agricultural operations such as harvesting and sorting typify controlled processes. Engineering students who wish to specialize in automatic control often do not get sufficient experience in the integration of the three areas of a complete control system: sensors, computing, and actuation. A teststand was designed and built for laboratory exercises which illustrate the inter-relationship of sensors, computing, and actuation in a sorting operation. Black, gray, and white blocks were placed on a conveyor and moved past two sensors which provided color and position information to a control program. Based upon the information provided by the sensors, the control algorithm activated pneumatic cylinders that sorted the blocks. Two algorithms, identified as open-loop and closed-loop, were tested. For the open-loop tests, the conveyor moved at constant velocity, and for the closed-loop tests, conveyor velocity was cycled. The algorithms calculated the delay between the time a block passed the position sensor and the point where the block was struck by a cylinder, and adjusted the actuation time accordingly. Tests were run at conveyor speeds between 10 and 80 cm/s. Using the open-loop algorithm, 99.7% of the blocks were identified and struck by the correct cylinder, and for the closed-loop algorithm the accuracy was 98.6%. The control program was written in C and executed on an IBM PC. Three laboratory exercises at various levels of difficulty were developed for the teststand. / Master of Science

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M.Com. (Business Management) / Since the dawn of democracy, South Africa has experienced continued service delivery protests. The extent to which these protests manifest themselves could be indicative of the communication gap that exists between local councillors and communities. In response, communities might use protests to serve as a medium of communication to highlight their unhappiness with service delivery. The e-participation programme is an intervention introduced by the German International Cooperation to explore the potential and assist municipalities with the implementation of a short message system-based, two-way channel for citizen-municipality communication. This study examined the level of readiness of municipalities with regard to the implementation and the sustainability of the e-participation programme. It used a mixed method approach to investigate a sample of municipalities. Findings and recommendations to government on considerations for implementation of the programme is discussed. The study concludes by highlighting earned benefits that can be enjoyed by all South African municipalities by employing the core pillars of various models used in other countries in implementing e-participation.

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Building (Project Management) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Construction Economics and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / E-procurement has been implemented globally with the aim of optimising efficiency and effectiveness within procurement processes of organisations and has become one of the preferred systems for the acquisition of goods, works and services. In recent years, e-procurement processes have been widely adopted and their application has been the norm in many organisations’ procurement processes. However, while e-procurement presents some significant opportunities, a set of challenges has emerged with the implementation of e-procurement. For example, in the South African context, small and medium construction firms (SMCFs) that do not have access to technological infrastructure are often not able to participate fully in the e-procurement transactions. In that regard, the implementation of e-procurement by the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID), a public sector organisation within the Republic of South Africa (RSA) and its impact on the development of SMCFs was investigated in this study. This was done to ascertain the extent of e-procurement implementation and the experiences of SMCFs, benefits and challenges associated with this in the study area. In order to address the research question, the research design adopted involved a detailed examination of the e-procurement methodologies used by the GDID in its procurement for infrastructure projects. This was done through the utilisation of questionnaires. 10 GDID officials chosen through the utilisation of a combination of the stratified random and purposive sampling methods, participated on the research. Secondly, to ascertain the impact of e-procurement implementation on the development of SMCFs, 250 SMCFs within the GDID supplier database were emailed questionnaires to obtain information regarding their experience, benefits realised and the inhibiting factors associated with their participation in e-procurement. The 250 SMCFs were selected through purposive sampling method were selected on the basis that they participated in the procurement of infrastructure projects implemented by GDID in the previous three financial years which are 2014/15; 2015/16 and 2016/17. Twenty-seven of the 250 SMCFs responded. The e-procurement methodologies used by the GDID were found to be e-notification, partial e-tendering, e-contract award, e-contract management and e-maintenance, repairs and operations (e-MRO). There was no single integrated e-procurement system used for carrying out all the e-procurement activities. E-notifications were done through the notification of tender opportunities for infrastructure projects through the Government Tender Bulletin, Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) website, Department of National Treasury e-tenders’ portal and the Lead-2-Business website. Partial e-tendering is carried out through the Department of National Treasury e-tenders portal. E-contract award was done through sending of award letters to service providers as email attachments. E-contract management is done through the utilisation of Oracles’ Primavera P6 and Unifier software and Microsoft Project and emails for normal formal communication and circulation of instructions and project reports. E-MRO was done through the emaintenance software developed by GDID. It was also found that only around 33.3% of the 27 SMCFs that responded were able to fully engage with all the 5 major eprocurement methodologies, excluding e-MRO implemented by the GDID. The remaining SMCFs still relied on the utilisation of a combination of both electronic and paper based systems. The main impact of e-procurement on the development of SMCFs was found to be both positive and negative. On the positive side, it increased profitability through cost saving benefits and reduction in time required for transactions, increased their market access (as they are able to view more tender opportunities), made transactions faster, increased production rate on site (through reduction in the time spent on tendering, thus releasing more time for managing projects on site), and safer storage and back-up of information for reference purposes and benchmarking of other projects, as well as, for dispute resolution. The main disadvantages were found to be high capital cost of procuring and installing Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) infrastructure, the lack of resources, unreliable power supply, security risk and the lack of infrastructure and the non-compatibility of different software packages and application (interoperability challenge). The study confirms that the use of e-procurement by the GDID is still evolving and is yet to be fully implemented in a way that guarantees its full potential and benefits. It also confirms that e-procurement impacts both positively and negatively on the development of SMCFs, and that the systems need to be carefully designed and applied in order to ensure the growth, inclusiveness, sustainability and development of SMCFs in South Africa. / MT2018

Traditional methods such as distance weighing, correlation and data driven methods have been used in the estimation of missing precipitation data. Also common is the use of radar (NEXRAD) data to provide better spatial distribution of precipitation as well as infilling missing rain gage data. Conventional regression models are often used to capture highly variant nonlinear spatial and temporal relationships between NEXRAD and rain gage data. This study aims to understand and model the relationships between radar (NEXRAD) estimated rainfall data and the data measured by conventional rain gages. The study is also an investigation into the use of emerging computational data modeling (inductive) techniques and mathematical programming formulations to develop new optimal functional approximations. Radar based rainfall data and rain gage data are analyzed to understand the spatio-temporal associations, as well as the effect of changes in the length or availability of data on the models. The upper and lower Kissimmee basins of south Florida form the test-bed to evaluate the proposed and developed approaches and also to check the validity and operational applicability of these functional relationships among NEXRAD and rain gage data for infilling of missing data. / by Delroy Peters. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Exclusive bus lanes and the Transit Signal Priority are often not effective in saturated peak-traffic conditions. An alternative way of providing priority for transit can be queue jumpers, which allows buses to bypass and then cut out in front of waiting queue by getting an early green signal. Utah Transit authority deployed Bus Rapid Transit system at Salt Lake County, Utah along W 3500 S. This research evaluates the impacts of queue jumpers with TSP on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and private vehicular traffic. Four VISSIM models were developed for analysis : Basic scenario, no TSP with queue jumpers, TSP with no queue jumbers, and TSP with queue jumpers. In TQ scenario travel time was reduced between 13.2-19.82% with respect to basic scenario. At the same time, travel time of private traffic increased very little 0.38-3.28%. Two TSP strategies : green extension and red truncation are implemented in this research work. / by R.M. Zahid Reza. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Radar rainfall estimates have become a decision making tool for scientists, engineers and water managers in their tasks for developing hydrologic models, water supply planning, restoration of ecosystems, and flood control. In the present study, the utility of a power function for linking the rain gauge and radar estimates has been assessed. Mean daily rainfall data from 163 rain gauges installed within the South Florida Water Management District network have been used and their records from January 1st, 2002 to October 31st, 2007 analyzed. Results indicate that the power function coefficients and exponents obtained by using a non-linear optimization formulation, show spatial variability mostly affected by type of rainfall events occurring in the dry or wet seasons, and that the linear distance from the radar location to the rain gauge has a significant effect on the computed values of the coefficients and exponents. / by Mario Mayes-Fernandez. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.