Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-120).

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Architecture, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Urban Design / This discourse represents a searching process. Its outcomes are consciously unpredictable and open-ended. Its topic is influenced by spatial dilemma across the spectrum of South - African cities and the fact that opportunities of finding answers towards integration on a regional level has only now become desirable and feasible through national policy. During a period of heightened political awareness the need for integration and improved access has become a pressing issue which forces us to seek answers on our feet.( Abbreviation abstract ) / AC2017

The study was designed with a dual purpose. First, the study was designed to develop and assess a systematic decision making procedural 'model which would aid in the resolution of critical issues. Second, the purpose of the study was to assess the decision making procedures of the school's chief executive officer when dealing with critical issues. The study was conducted by interviewing ten chief executive officers of Indiana school corporations. The data generated was reported in narrative and table form. The data was used to assess the developed model for comprehensiveness and adaptability and to assess the decision making procedures of chief executive officers for comprehensiveness and systematization.The findings reported herein were based on the evaluation and analysis of the data reported by public school chief executive officers and a review of related research.1. The Decision Support System model was found to be comprehensive and provided a thorough description of the processes needed by the chief executive officer in the decision making processes.2. In all cases, the Decision Support System model processes adapted to the processes of the chief executive officer.3. The chief executive officers selected and analyzed a limited amount of data to support the identification of impacts, options, and alternatives in the decision making process.4. The chief executive officers identified a limited number of impacts, options, and alternatives in the decision making process.5. The process of decision making by the chief executive officers was arranged in a form which was not consistently orderly, methodical, or well organized.6. The data in the table has shown that twenty-four of thirty-eight identified critical educational issues concerned financial problems.7. Eighty percent of the interviewed chief executive officers utilized the trade-off processes of the Decision Support System model as the option for the solution of the 8. The trade-off processes of eighty percent of the chief executive officers utilized the option of exchanging qualitative resources for quantitative resources or deleted qualitative resources in the absence of adequate funds.9. The trade-off processes of eighty percent of the chief executive officers resulted in problems involving attitudes and motivation.

JS McMillan Fisheries Ltd. (JSM) is a Vancouver-based company with operations in nearly all levels of the commercial fishing industry, from supply through distribution. The heart of the operation is the processing facilities where freshly caught Pacific salmon are prepared for sale to end consumers and institutional buyers. As the operations of JSM evolved, the decision making for allocating a catch of salmon with varying characteristics amongst a set of final products has become too complex and time consuming. The focus of this study is to determine an effective and efficient method for JSM to allocate daily a fresh salmon harvest between the various products they produce on a daily basis. The goal is short-term production planning, to allocate the catch among the products in such a manner that the profit potential of the catch is maximized, i.e. prepare a production schedule that maximizes the total profit over the planning horizon. Additional goals of this project include: automation of the decision making process for the catch allocation, "what if" planning, decreasing expert dependency, reducing decision making time, and building a practical and innovative decision support tool. In order to solve this problem efficiently and effectively, optimization models were developed for allocating the catch to the end products. A corresponding decision support tool was built for the end-users at JSM.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2007. / Härtill 6 uppsatser.

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.Comm. Hons.)-- University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, Faculty of Business and Technology, Dept. of Manufacturing and Quality Systems, 1996.

After a huge amount of success within the military, the benefits of the use of unmanned aerial systems over manned aircraft is obvious. They are becoming cheaper and their functions advancing to such a point that there is now a large drive for their use by civilian operators. However there are a number of significant challenges that are slowing their inevitable integration into the national airspace systems of countries. A large array of emergency situations will need to be dealt with autonomously by contingency management systems to prevent potentially deadly incidences. One such emergency situation that will need autonomous intervention, is the total loss of thrust from engine failure. The complex multi faceted task of landing the stricken aircraft at a potentially unprepared site is called a forced landing. This thesis presents methods to address a number of critical parts of a forced landing system for use by an unmanned aerial system. In order for an emergency landing site to be considered, it needs to be within glide range. In order to find a landing site s reachability from the point of engine failure the aircraft s glide performance and a glide path must be known. A method by which to calculate the glide performance, both from aircraft parameters or experiments is shown. These are based on a number of steady state assumptions to make them generic and quick to compute. Despite the assumptions, these are shown to have reasonable accuracy. A minimum height loss path to the landing site is defined, which takes account of a steady uniform wind. While this path is not the path to be flown it enables a measure of how reachable a landing site is, as any extra height the aircraft has once it gets to the site makes a site more reachable. It is shown that this method is fast enough to be run online and is generic enough for use on a range of aircraft. Based on identified factors that make a landing site more suitable, a multi criteria decision making Bayesian network is developed to decide upon which site a unmanned aircraft should land in. It can handle uncertainty and non-complete information while guaranteeing a fast reasonable decision, which is critical in this time sensitive situation. A high fidelity simulation environment and flight test platform are developed in order to test the performance of the developed algorithms. The test environments developed enable rapid prototyping of algorithms not just within the scope of this thesis, but on a range of vehicle types. In simulation the minimum height loss paths show good accuracy, for two completely different types of aircraft. The decision making algorithms show that they are capable of being ran online in a flight test. They make a reasonable decision and are capable of quickly reacting to changing conditions, enabling redirection to a more suitable landing site.