The emergence of electronic healthcare have caused numerous changes in both substantive and procedural aspects of healthcare processes. Such changes have introduced new risks to patient privacy and information confidentiality. Traditional privacy policies fall too short to respond to privacy needs of patients in electronic healthcare. Structured and enforceable policies are needed in order to protect patient privacy in modern healthcare with its cross organizational information sharing and decision making. Structured Patient Privacy Policy (S3P) is a framework for a formalized and enforceable privacy policy in healthcare. S3P contains a prototype implementation of a structured and enforceable privacy policy based on eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). By simulating healthcare scenarios, S3P provides a means for experts from different professional backgrounds to assess the effect of policies on healthcare processes and to reach ethically sound privacy policies suitable for electronic healthcare.

While the concept of regional organization (regionalization) of perinatal care aimed at reducing perinatal mortality has remained at the agenda of developed countries since 1970&rsquo / s, Turkey is one of the countries that does not have such a system yet. In this study, a three-level hierarchical location-allocation model is developed for the regionalization of perinatal care in an attempt to have a better distribution of maternal and perinatal health care services in Turkey. Since the mathematical model developed is difficult to solve in a reasonable time, we propose three heuristic approaches: top-down, modified top-down and Lagrangean relaxation based heuristics. These heuristics are computationally tested on a set of problem instances for networks ranging from 10 to 737 vertices. A significant result is that Lagrangean relaxation based heuristic outperforms the other two heuristics in terms of solution quality. In most of the test problems, the modified top-down heuristic outperforms the top-down heuristic in terms of solution quality. Using the proposed approaches, we solve a real life problem corresponding to the Eastern and South Eastern Anatolian Regions (the East Region) of Turkey.

Order-picking operations constitute the costliest activities in a warehouse. The order-picking problem (OPP) aims to determine the route of the picker(s) in such a way that the total order-picking time, hence the order-picking costs are minimized. In this study, a warehouse that consists of parallel pick aisles is assumed, and various versions of the OPP are considered. Although the single-picker version of the problem has been well studied in the literature, the multiple-picker version has not received much attention in terms of algorithmic approaches. The literature also does not take into account the time taken by the number of turns during the picking route. In this thesis, a detailed discussion is made regarding the computational complexity of the OPP with a single picker. A heuristic procedure, which makes use of the exact algorithm for the OPP with no middle aisles, is proposed for the single-picker OPP with middle aisles, and computational results on randomly generated problems are given. Additionally, an evolutionary algorithm that makes use of the cluster-first, route-second and route-first, cluster-second heuristics for the VRP is provided. The parameters of the algorithm are determined based on preliminary runs and the algorithm is also tested on randomly generated problems, with different weights given to the cluster-first, route-second and route-first, cluster-second approaches. Lastly, a polynomial time algorithm is proposed for the problem of minimizing the number of turns in a parallel-aisle warehouse.

The major damage to bridges occurs due to scour of the bed materials around piers and abutments during severe floods. This study involves the experimental investigations of the various scour patterns forming around abutment models tested with and without collars as scour countermeasures. The experiments were conducted in a rectangular channel under clear-water scour conditions. In the first part of this study, 34 experiments were conducted with semi-circular end abutment models with and without a collar for a period of 3 hours. Collars of various sizes were placed at different elevations on the abutment models, and the scour reduction efficiencies of collars were investigated for the different flow depths. Based on the results of the experimental studies, the optimum locations of collars on the abutments, which result in minimum scour depth around the abutments, are obtained at the bed level and below the bed level depending on the flow intensity values. In the second part of this study, the effects of flow depth and abutment length on the temporal development of local scour at bridge abutments were studied. 20 experiments were performed without collars for a time period of 8 hours. It was observed that at the upstream of the abutment, the depth of the local scour increases rapidly within the first three hours of the experiment for the different flow depths.

Contemporary cities challenge with complex problems. Different aspects of problems can be listed like ecological, demographical, economical or spatial. These problems require smart solutions. Increasing population and urbanization also force us to develop intelligent approaches to create economically, socially and environmentally sustainable cities. It&rsquo / s important that local authorities and planners have to have precise data to take actions against day to day urban problems. Collecting data and turning them in a knowledge are valuable for taking decisions and formulating urban policies. ICT technologies help spatial planners and decision-makers for collecting data and using them for taking agile and smart decisions. These smart solutions can be applied to different domains of cities. This thesis aims at elaborating the smart city concept and its potentials for solving complex urban challenges. A general analysis of world examples and a more profound analysis of a case study, namely Singapore Intelligent Island, have helped understanding the principles and criteria for attaining smartness in cities. The inferences from these analyses can provide a basis for the Turkish context. There are certain policies driven by Ministry of Environment and Urbanism in Turkey. Strategic action plans and legislative regulations can be a base for smart solutions for Turkish context.

In this study Jarrow Turnbull (1995) Model, which is a reduced form approach for credit risk models, is employed to estimate the default intensity of US corporate bonds conditionally based on a fixed recovery rate. The estimations are performed with respect to the ratings of the bonds and the results were consistent with the ratings. US Treasury Bills are also used to since zero coupon default free prices, modeled by Svensson (1994) are necessary for pricing the default risky coupon bonds.