Sustainability is a complex socio-technical challenge that requires new ways of thinking. To help meet this challenge, I have created three case-based modules that teach engineering students how to apply sustainability principles and help them recognize potential cognitive traps, or barriers, that may prevent more consideration for sustainability during design. Each of my three case studies is built into a PowerPoint-guided module for undergraduate engineering classes, which may be taught in 1-3 class days. I have implemented each of the three modules in senior-level classes at Virginia Tech, assessed survey data, and scored student assignments. This work and the underlying literature background is reflected in three journal papers, one for each module. My case study modules, along with all associated teaching materials, are shared in the Center for Sustainable Engineering repository for other instructors to adapt and use. Each module includes a case study about an infrastructure project recognized and awarded by the Envision rating system, demonstrating a case of sustainability done well. Adaptable PowerPoint slides are used to teach about the Envision rating system and credits particularly relevant to the project. Active learning assignments allow students to apply the Envision framework and design criteria to complex and ill-structured problems related to the case study. Slides also cover the relation of three selected behavioral decision science concepts to each case study; these include cognitive biases and barriers which tend to inhibit sustainability outcomes, as well as some potential solutions to mitigate or overcome such barriers. Paired with the decision-making framework of Envision, awareness of these transdisciplinary concepts will allow students to more effectively manage the complex decisions found in real-world projects. Results were assessed through a variety of methods to determine the modules' level of effectiveness in accomplishing defined student learning outcomes. Pre-module and post-module student surveys were employed to measure several indicators: changes in self-assessed confidence levels, perceptions of sustainable design (characteristics and barriers), and accuracy of module concept definitions. Each of several active learning assignments was scored on a simple rubric. Concept maps were also tested as further type of assessment, and scored with both traditional and holistic methods. However, fully integrating the concept mapping approach is left to the future work of others. These modules are a significant contribution to engineering education, as they integrate diverse topics and disciplines into a unified and relevant teaching package. Over 350 students have already been reached through the three modules, and sharing the materials in a peer-reviewed repository allows for expansion, adaptation, and capacity building. Each module's content and pedagogy align with ABET accreditation requirements and ASCE's Body of Knowledge, making them relevant tools for equipping the future generation of engineers. Future development of similar case studies can build partnerships between academia and industry, as well as increase cross-disciplinary collaboration. These efforts will both improve undergraduate education and advance the profession. / Master of Science / Civil infrastructure includes many systems including water and wastewater pipelines and treatment plants, power plants, roads, bridges, and parks, which must provide an adequate level of service to society. Civil engineers must sustain and improve these systems and the people’s quality of life for many generations into the future. For this to happen, engineering students must be taught the immense value of sustainability and how to make effective decisions during design for sustainable infrastructure. My research involves three specific infrastructure projects: (1) the Historic Fourth Ward Park in Atlanta, Georgia, (2) the Tucannon River Wind Farm in Dayton, Washington, and (3) the West Park Equalization Facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Each of these has received an award from the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s rating system called Envision, and serves as a case study of sustainability done well. For each of the three projects, I interviewed members of the engineering design team and gathered information about the project to write a case study, which was used as the basis for a PowerPoint teaching module. The modules connect engineering to the social sciences by discussing relevant cognitive and behavioral barriers in decision making, and then present the Envision rating system as a tool for sustainable design. After conducting a literature review of engineering education, I developed specific learning outcomes, before and after surveys, and a variety of active learning assignments to assess the student learning and effectiveness of each module. This thesis presents results from teaching the modules in classes at Virginia Tech, and v demonstrates their value as transdisciplinary links between engineering, sustainability, and decision making. The modules have been made publicly available at the Center for Sustainable Engineering website for other instructors to use in their own class teaching.

The development of an interactive computer model for managing geologic hazards databases is vital and long overdue. As highway rockslopes continue to age and become more unstable and earthen dams are subjected to ever increasing flood events, a more proactive management system is required in order to provide timely information to planners and emergency personnel on demand. In recent years, deaths have occurred associated with both highway rockslides and earthen dam failures in southwest Virginia. In February 1991, a rockfall event occurred on Route U.S. 11 in the City of Radford, VA, which resulted indirectly in a highway accident and fatality. The incident made all parties aware that rockfalls from aging highway roadcuts within the city limits pose some threat to the motoring public (Watts et al., 1996). Additionally, in June 1995, the Timberlake dam in Lynchburg, VA, failed due to flash flooding from intense summer storms. Two people died on highways downstream of the dam, even though emergency personnel were on the scene. The lack of organized critical information about the dam, its downstream flood inundation zone, and its emergency action plan contributed to the tragedy. The outcome of the ensuing litigation is pending. In the case of the City of Radford, a user-friendly interactive database containing structural stereonet analysis, digital images, hazardous slope conditions, and maintenance records would provide a proactive approach to rockslope maintenance by allowing the slopes to be ranked in terms of geologic and traffic conditions. Appropriate remediation measures can then be taken in the most cost-effective manner. In the case of the Timberlake dam failure, a database containing critical information about the dam, its upstream watershed characteristics, downstream flood inundation zones, and emergency action plan could have been accessed by state geologists and emergency dispatchers. Appropriate measures could have been taken to deal with the event as it was unfolding. / Master of Science

The high number of working parents in the U.S. means that there are millions of child in need to care during working hours. Research shows that the quality of this care is of high importance in a child's development, both in the short-term and the long-term. States have used a variety of policy tools to regulate child care and to attempt to improve the quality of care. Louisiana has recently implemented a new policy called the Quality Rating System. Directors of centers in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, were interviewed to determine the impact of participation in QRS. Centers are struggling to meet the requirements and feel that changes need to be made for the program to have a better outcome.

Higher education is an idyllically positioned organization from which meaningful dissemination of knowledge and interdisciplinary research is capable of actuating practices that resource consumption. Paradoxically, the construction, maintenance, and operations of the built environment, including the built campus environment, have contributed to the decline of raw resources and degradation of environmental processes. An opportunity exists to bridge the knowledge gap between the design and construction phase and the operations and maintenance phase of the green certified building life cycle, while examining the parts that contributed to the green-certification of the whole building. The purpose of this research was to 1.) identify green-building features and determine their frequency of implementation in new capital (NC) LEED-certified, campus buildings to effectuate operations and maintenance cost savings, indoor wellbeing, and environmental stewardship, and 2.) determine the relationships of greenbuilding feature usage across building, institutional, and LEED characteristics. The study used archival data to document the green efforts of each building with the study’s sample of 195 buildings on the campus of 107 universities and colleges, in the United States, between 2007 and 2017. The study’s findings indicated that the public institutions earned the LEED certification more often than private institutions and the sample was void of two-year community colleges. The sample was restricted for green-building features that (a) reduce economic cost, (b) improve indoor wellbeing, and (c) increase environmental stewardship. The results and implications are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Morningstar is an independent provider of investment research and provide information on approximately 380 000 investment offerings about mutual funds. Morningstar are most known for their “star” rating system, which rates funds from the lowest 1-star to the highest 5-stars. Since investors frequently use fund data provided by Morningstar, we will evaluate whether investing in funds with higher fees and higher ratings would end up with higher returns. Examinations will be made if there is a relationship between mutual fund performance and the management fees within top-rated (5-star) funds and bottom-rated (1-&2-star). The mutual funds which are included in this thesis are United Kingdom (UK) managed and invested in three different markets; Asia-Pacific except-Japan, Europe except UK-Large Cap, and the United States (US) Market. This allows us to compare different markets at different stages of maturity. The results clearly show that the top-rated funds within all three markets outperformed the bottom-rated funds. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the investor in general will earn a higher return by paying a higher management fee (TER) for the top-rated funds in all regions. The results also show that the TER for the bottom-rated funds in Europe and US market is higher compared to the top-rated funds. This means that the investor will pay higher fees for funds that do not perform well.

Financial sector of an economy plays an important role in its economic development and prosperity of the country. Banking industry serves as the backbone of the financial sector that accumulates saving from surplus economic units in the form of deposits and provides it to deficit economic units in the form of advances. Banking industry provides support to economy and industries in specific in the time of recessions and economic crisis. But when banks are at the heart of economic recession or banks are the cause of financial crisis like the recent past financial crisis 2007-09, it makes the situation worst for economic recovery. So it is of great importance to keenly observe the performance of the banks and their compliance with the regulatory requirements.   Performance of the banks is measured at two levels, one is at the management and regulatory level of the banks and another is at external rating agencies. Purpose of regulatory and supervisory rating systems is to measure the bank performance at internal level and its compliance with regulatory requirements to keep the bank on right track. These ratings are highly confidential and are only available to the bank management.  External credit rating agencies examine and evaluate the banks and issue ratings for the general public and investors in particulars. It is of great importance that both these ratings present the same results about the condition of the banks to provide clear information to investors and management. In past several banks suffer from bankruptcy that was the failure of both internal rating systems and credit rating agencies.   CAMELS is the supervisory and regulatory rating system implemented by State Bank of Pakistan. It takes into account six important components of a bank when it evaluates performance of the bank. These components are Capital, Assets, Management, Earning, Liquidity and Sensitivity to market risk. Ratings is assigned to theses components on the scale of 1 to 5 and that is a base for composite rating that also ranged from 1 to 5. PACRA rating agency is the dominant credit rating agency of Pakistan that performs ratings for most banks and industries in the country. In our research we examine the similarities in the results generated by CAMELS rating system and PACRA rating agency. For that purpose we sample seventeen commercial banks of Pakistan Banking industry.   We observed that results generated by sample banks do not show any similarities with each other. This might be an indication of the banks that went on to bankruptcy in past three to four years or a future threat to financial sector of Pakistan.

Combining human welder (with intelligence and sensing versatility) and automated welding robots (with precision and consistency) can lead to next generation intelligent welding systems. In this dissertation intelligent welding robots are developed by process modeling / control method and learning the human welder behavior. Weld penetration and 3D weld pool surface are first accurately controlled for an automated Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) machine. Closed-form model predictive control (MPC) algorithm is derived for real-time welding applications. Skilled welder response to 3D weld pool surface by adjusting the welding current is then modeled using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), and compared to the novice welder. Automated welding experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed human response model. A virtualized welding system is then developed that enables transferring the human knowledge into a welding robot. The learning of human welder movement (i.e., welding speed) is first realized with Virtual Reality (VR) enhancement using iterative K-means based local ANFIS modeling. As a separate effort, the learning is performed without VR enhancement utilizing a fuzzy classifier to rank the data and only preserve the high ranking “correct” response. The trained supervised ANFIS model is transferred to the welding robot and the performance of the controller is examined. A fuzzy weighting based data fusion approach to combine multiple machine and human intelligent models is proposed. The data fusion model can outperform individual machine-based control algorithm and welder intelligence-based models (with and without VR enhancement). Finally a data-driven approach is proposed to model human welder adjustments in 3D (including welding speed, arc length, and torch orientations). Teleoperated training experiments are conducted in which a human welder tries to adjust the torch movements in 3D based on his observation on the real-time weld pool image feedback. The data is off-line rated by the welder and a welder rating system is synthesized. ANFIS model is then proposed to correlate the 3D weld pool characteristic parameters and welder’s torch movements. A foundation is thus established to rapidly extract human intelligence and transfer such intelligence into welding robots.

The process of the personnel activity rating, that is one of the most crucial points of the human resources rating was studied in the Master degree working paper. Rating system that is organized properly and applied effectively, help the person and the organization to get the useful information and to make an important managerial decisions on duties and responsibilities distribution, conditions of payment, promotion, needs for qualification raising and for the establishing the potential. Although the rating process instigates many problems that are connected with organizational, administrative and human resource rating aspects. To define possible imperfections and problems of the system, and to find development possibilities, the procedure of the service activity rating of the Lithuanian state service was analyzed in the paper. The Master degree working paper consists of three parts. In the first part of the paper the importance and the relevance of the activity rating was described, as well as the rating importance for both, the organization and for the person rated. The second part was theoretical. In order to clear up main aspects, those ensure effective and reliable rating system implementation and use in organization, the theoretical basics of personnel activity rating was examined. In the third part of the paper the comparison of former and current state service activity rating was made. The current activity rating system was examined to detect possible problems. ... [to full text]

Fastighetsmarknaden har visat på ett växande behov av ett hjälpmedel för fastighetsvärderare som underlättar implementeringen av byggnaders gröna egenskaper i värderingsprocessen, samt för att investerare ska kunna se specifika gröna egenskapers effekt på fastighetsvärdet. Användningen av ett flertal olika miljöklassningssystem på marknaden skapar svårigheter vid jämförelse. RICS har tagit fram ett utkast på en hållbarhetschecklista för att komplettera värderingsutlåtandet med en utökad beskrivning av fastigheterna med en systematisk redovisning av egenskaper relevanta ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv. Dess syfte är att tydliggöra skillnader och öka utbudet av tillgänglig transaktionsdata med en påföljande ökad transparens på fastighetsmarknaden. Studien syftar till att undersöka hur en hållbarhetschecklista kan tas fram, se ut och fungera, samt om den kan implementeras i ett projekt för en samhällsfastighet. Genom att använda mig av utkastet från RICS och intervjua aktörer på fastighetsmarknaden har en lista tagits fram som jämförts med miljöklassningssystemen och implementerats på ett specifikt projekt. Utfallet har sedan analyserats och legat till grund för de slutsatser som dragits. Resultatet av studien visar att den lista som utgår från RICS ”Sustainability Checklist” med relevanta hållbarhetsaspekter kan implementeras även på samhällsfastigheter då dessa innehar liknande egenskaper som de kommersiella fastigheterna, med vissa skillnader, som övergripande beror av: budgetrestriktioner, lokala förhållanden samt regleringar från kommunen och övriga parter. Även val av miljöklassningssystem har en viss påverkan på utfallet i fallstudien, då ett nära samband finns mellan parametrarna i hållbarhetschecklistan och miljöcertifieringssystemen, och där de kommersiella fastighetsutvecklarna i högre grad har valt att certifiera sina byggnader med de internationella systemen som är mer komplexa och innehar ett högre antal parametrar. Emellertid bygger en framgångsrik implementering av listan på att värderarens roll ändras till mer informerande, vilket också ställer krav på kunskapsnivå och utbudet av utbildning och vägledning för professionella värderare, en uppgift som ska upptas av professionella värderingsorgan. Slutligen fastställs att listan bör bearbetas ytterligare, med utveckling och förtydligande av vissa aspekter för att underlätta insamling av information samt underlätta för värderare att i praktiken kunna använda den som ett komplement i värderingsarbetet. / The real estate market has shown an increased demand among real estate appraisers for a tool to facilitate the implementation of green building features into the valuation process, and for investors to discern a specific green feature’s impact upon value. The wide range of green building rating systems used on the real estate market today causes difficulties in comparison. To supplement the valuation report with an extended description of the properties including a systematic presentation of relevant features from a sustainability perspective, RICS (2012) has formed a draft of a ”sustainability checklist”, which purpose is to highlight differences, increase the supply of information and enhance transparency in the property market. The study aims to investigate the development, design and function of a sustainability checklist, and whether it can be implemented on public properties. A list was created based on the draft from RICS ”Sustainability Checklist”, and interviewed players in the real estate market, which were implemented on a specific project consisting of a public building. The result of the study was analysed and has formed the basis of the conclusions drawn. The result of the study conducted within this thesis shows that the list based on RICS ”Sustainability Checklist” with sustainability aspects included can be implemented also on public buildings, as these buildings possess similar features as the commercial buildings. Some main differences can be seen, overall resulting from: budget constraints, local conditions and regulations from the municipality and other parties. Also, the choice of a certain green building rating system influence the effect on the outcome, whereas a close relationship can be find between certain aspects within the sustainability checklist and green building rating systems, and the commercial real estate developers increasingly chose to certify their buildings with the international systems, which are more complex and contain a higher number of aspects. However, in order to achieve a successful implementation of the list among appraisers within the real estate market, the role of the valuer must change to more informative, which also make demands on the level of knowledge and the provision of training and guidance for professional appraisers, a task to be undertaken by professional valuators. Furthermore, it is also established within this study that the list should be further processed and modified in order to facilitate the gathering of information and to simplify for the appraiser to use it as a supplement within the valuation process.

網際網路的規範向來具有爭議。監督團體與立法機關往往基於保護兒童及青少年免於受到不當資訊的影響，對於網際網路散佈的內容要求相當程度的管制。然而，此類規範經常導致主張言論自由亦應延伸至網際網路媒體的民權團體多所詬病。在回顧我國先前對於網際網路的規範以及相關案例之後，本研究綜合各界論點探討未來寬頻影音內容服務網站可行的規範之道。 截至目前為止，關於網際網路內容規範相關研究已成篇累牘。現行最適宜的解決之道紛紛指向採用安裝過濾軟體以及實施網站分級制度。民國九十三年四月二十六日行政院新聞局發布「電腦網路內容分級處理辦法」，希冀藉以解決目前規範網際網路缺乏法源以及分級制度採行標準的問題。但亂象叢生的網際網路，似乎無法在朝夕之間產生良善的轉變。例如，影音內容服務業者經營色情影音服務；利用寬頻影音網路視訊交友而進行色情交易的事件；利用影音聊天室散佈性交易訊息；抑或是學術網站的自律不嚴謹，引發種種批評與討論等。同時，該辦法目前僅針對「網站」進行分級，尚未落實至「網頁」分級的程度，對於寬頻影音內容的管理更是付之闕如。 針對網際網路不當資訊以及缺乏法令管制所呈現的困境，本研究目的包括： 一、探討國內寬頻影音內容服務網站各類不當資訊； 二、探討國內對於寬頻影音內容服務網站現行規範法規及其不足之處； 三、探討國際間對於寬頻影音內容服務不當資訊現行管制規範形式； 四、探討國內未來對於寬頻影音內容不當資訊具可行性之管制規範形式； 五、提供國內寬頻影音內容服務業者、公益媒體監督團體及政府行政機關未來規範不當資訊之建議。 為兼顧網際網路的自由與發展，本文綜合文獻分析及深度訪談資料，臚列以下建議：一、業者再改善身份認證系統及收費機制；二、政府妥善拿捏輔佐角色；三、規劃網際網路分級制度實施辦法相關配套法令；四、教育體制配合輔導健全的網路素養；五、落實網際網路舉報不法網站業者熱線。