The nature of electrical power requires specific infrastructure in order to operate adequately. Currently, the United States electricity grid contains a number of bottlenecking inefficiencies that arise from the aging infrastructure of the system. This paper examines the current state of the United States electricity grid, how potential changes in weather variables can affect the electricity consumption of residential consumers, and how implementation of Smart Grid technology can potentially mitigate these issues. It is determined through regression analysis that each weather variable that was tested proves significant for at least one of the consumers compared. This indicates that there is an enormous magnitude of individual variables that factor into residential electricity consumption and that more efficient and integrated electricity practices are necessary to optimize efficiency.

Sensor network web services have recently emerged as promising tools to provide remote management, data collection and querying capabilities for sensor networks. They can be utilized in a large number of elds among which Demand-Side Energy Management (DSEM) is an important application area that has become possible with the smart electrical power grid. DSEM applications generally aim to reduce the cost and the amount of power consumption. In the traditional power grid, DSEM has not been implemented widely due to the large number of households and lack of ne-grained automation tools. However by employing intelligent devices and implementing communication infrastructure among these devices, the smart grid will renovate the existing power grid and it will enable a wide variety of DSEM applications. In this thesis, we analyze various DSEM scenarios that become available with sensor network web services. We assume a smart home with a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) where the sensors are mounted on the appliances and they are able to run web services. The web server retrieves data from the appliances via the web services running on the sensor nodes. These data can be stored in a database after processing, where the database can be accessed by the utility, as well as the inhabitants of the smart home. We showthat our implementation is e cient in terms of running time. Moreover, the message sizes and the implementation code is quite small which makes it suitable for the memory-limited sensor nodes. Furthermore, we show the application scenarios introduced in the thesis provide energy saving for the smart home.

Affective haptic research is a rapidly growing field. Today, more smart haptic clothes are being studied and implemented which are aimed to effect its users emotionally. However, they have some limitations. This research intends to improve the existing literature and contribute by involving consumers directly in the design of a smart haptic jacket by adding heat, vibration actuators, and by enhancing portability. In this thesis, we are interested in six basic emotions: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. An online survey was designed and conducted on 92 respondents that gave feedback of what it is expected from an affective haptic jacket. The results of this survey assisted in the general design, and the feedback helped to build a prototype. 86% of the respondents expressed interest in the system and are willing to try it when it is ready. A detailed design architecture is provided along with details on the hardware and software used for the implementation. Finally, the prototype was evaluated on 14 participants using the actual prototype haptic jacket based on a QoE comparison between the absence and the presence of haptic actuation. The proposed system showed improvement over a similar system that is designed for the same purpose.

We present a fabrication process to create bifunctional microparticles displaying two different proteins have been spatially segregated onto hemispheres. Silica and polystyrene microparticles with 2.0 m, 4.08 m, and 4.74 m diameters are processed with metal deposition to form two chemically distinct and segregated hemispheres. The surface of each hemisphere is then separately derivatized with proteins using different chemical conjugation strategies. These bifunctional Janus particles possess biologically relevant, native conformation proteins attached to a biologically-unreactive and safe substrate. They also display high densities of two types of spatially segregated proteins which may enable a range of capabilities that monofunctional particles cannot, such as improved targeting of drug carriers and bioimaging agents.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is Canada's largest metropolitan area and principal destination for international migration and investment. Over the next 25 years, the GTA is anticipated to grow by approximately 2. 5 million people to a population of almost 8 million. While many view this growth as a symbol of economic prosperity, others see it as a threat to Toronto's economic, environmental and social well-being due to the dispersed, automobile-oriented way in which the city has accommodated its growth since the 1950s. <br /><br /> Over the last two decades, planners have focused much energy on ameliorating the shortcomings of post World War II urbanization by developing policy measures such as Smart Growth, Growth Management, and New Urbanism that aim to alter the way in which cities are built and thereby effect change in the lifestyles that have precipitated from this landscape. In Ontario, the Provincial Government recently launched a Growth Management campaign for the Toronto area called <em>Places to Grow</em>. Although many have attempted to define this relationship between environment and behaviour, little attention has been given to attitudes, preferences, and behavioural tendencies of those who will be most directly affected by such policies: the general public. <br /><br /> This study surveys residents from six GTA neighbourhoods in order to understand their attitudes and preferences toward urban living and accommodating urban growth and thereby shed light on where support may be found for implementing <em>Places to Grow</em>. Academic literature suggests that residents generally oppose changes to the physical landscape that do not conform to prevailing cultural values and attitudes. The results of this work indicate that people generally support development that is in keeping with the landscape to which they are habituated. Given that most Torontonians live a suburban lifestyle and that most of Toronto's growth occurs in the suburbs, municipalities may be challenged to implement <em>Places to Grow</em> which stands to impact the suburban landscape more than other areas of the region. If <em>Places to Grow</em> is to be successful, planners must have a better understanding of residents' preferences and motivations in order to attract and maintain their interest in community development throughout the entire planning process.

As Canada’s capital, the City of Ottawa has benefited from several comprehensive land use planning exercises since the early 1900s. Early plans carried out by the federal government were led by Prime Ministers who, in wanting to beautify the region, initiated long range plans that spanned both sides of the Ottawa River, providing land use goals and guidance for what are today the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau. The planning context changed through the 1970s, however. The federal government played a lesser role in land use planning as regional and area municipal governments grew and an expanding technically trained staff developed local plans. It was in the absence of a strong regional plan aimed at controlling outward expansion that there was rapid growth of low density suburban communities outside of the National Capital Commission greenbelt. Today, planning policy in Ottawa recognizes the environmental, social, and economic benefits of compact development and encourages by, in part, directing growth to the existing built-up area. Unfortunately, residential intensification efforts in the City have been disappointing. While the City has developed a variety of policies and programs to encourage and support residential intensification, it appears site level constraints have prohibited it to occur in a significant way. This research is concerned with identifying weaknesses in the City of Ottawa’s current growth management strategy. The purpose of this research is to provide recommendations that can be used to strengthen Ottawa’s growth management policies and programs to more effectively achieve the compact urban form desired by the municipality. The findings demonstrate that there is some level of disconnect between what recent literature and key informant interviews identify as the barriers to residential intensification at the site level and the motherhood principles for compact development at the municipal level. More specifically, barriers can be summarized as community and political resistance, regulatory challenges, and policy vs. market realities. It is recommended that the City of Ottawa adopt a strengthened strategy that establishes achievable growth and intensification targets; encourages community support for compact development; considers growth over the longer term and with a regional perspective; and is advocated by strong leaders. Only in this way can the City create an improved strategy that will, like earlier plans, make Ottawa once again a proud leader in urban planning efforts in Canada.

The smarter homes of tomorrow promise to increase comfort, aid elderly and disabled people, and help inhabitants save energy. Unfortunately, smart homes today are far from this vision – people who already live in such a home struggle with complicated user interfaces, inflexible home configurations, and difficult installation procedures. Under these circumstances, smart homes are not ready for mass adoption. This dissertation addresses these issues by proposing two smart assistants for smart homes. The first assistant is a recommender system that suggests useful services (i.e actions that the home can perform for the user). The recommended services are fitted to the user’s current situation, habits, and preferences. With these recommendations it is possible to build much simpler user interfaces that highlight the most interesting choices currently available. Configuration becomes much more flexible: since the recommender system automatically learns user habits, user routines no longer have to be manually described. Evaluations with two smart home datasets show that the correct service is included in the top five recommendations in 90% of all cases. The second assistant addresses the difficult installation procedures. The unique feature of this assistant is that it removes the need for manually describing device functionalities (such descriptions are needed by the recommender system). Instead, users can simply plug in a new device, begin using it, and let the installation assistant identify what the device is doing. The installation assistant has minimal requirements for manufacturers of smart home devices and was successfully integrated with an existing smart home. Evaluations performed with this smart home show that the assistant can quickly and reliably learn device functionalities. / <p>QC 20130924</p>

In wireless communication there is commonly much unnecessary communication made in directions not pointing towards the recipient. Normally omni directional antennas are being used which sends the same amount of energy in all directions equally. This waste of energy reduces the lifetime of battery powered units and causes more traffic collisions than necessary. One way of minimizing this wasted energy and traffic collisions, is to use another type of antenna called “smart antenna”. These antennas can use selectable radiation patterns depending on the situation and thus drastically minimize the unnecessary energy waste. Smart antennas also provide the ability to sense the direction of incoming signals which is favorable for physical layout mapping such as orientation. This thesis presents the prototyping of a new type of smart antenna called the SPIDA smart antenna. This antenna is a cheap to produce smart antenna designed for the 2.4 GHz frequency band. The SPIDA smart antenna can use sixty-four different signal patterns with the control of six separate directional modes, amongst these patterns are six single direction patterns, an omni-directional signal pattern and fifty-six combi-direction patterns. The thesis presents complete building instructions, evaluation data and functional drivers for the SPIDA smart antenna.

Digital technological breakthroughs have brought about a huge change in the way the society interacts, responds to the immediate environment and the way that people live. Furthermore, Ubiquitous Computing and dirt cheap sensors have created a new paradigm in digital technology where human beings could control their environment in a different approach. In a number of paradigms of digital technology, multiple proprietary solutions in industry results in a huge cost for the end users to use the technology and thus a very sluggish penetration of the technology into the society. Moreover, such unorganized and vendor oriented standards create additional burdens on a person concerned in design and implementation.  This thesis presents existing and emerging technologies in relation to smart home environment having an aim to manifest available open standards and platforms. Smart Home Environment Infrastructures have been presented and discussed. Evaluation and integration of a proprietary elderly care sensor system dubbed   C.STATUSTM and the MediaSense overlay network has also been presented. Performance measurement and comparison has been conducted in relation to the proprietary sensor system running on the top of the peer-to-peer MediaSense Platform with the existing C.STATUSTM centralized sensor system. C.STATUSTM User Interface has been designed and implemented for an Android mobile platform. / smart home environment, Internet of things

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is Canada's largest metropolitan area and principal destination for international migration and investment. Over the next 25 years, the GTA is anticipated to grow by approximately 2. 5 million people to a population of almost 8 million. While many view this growth as a symbol of economic prosperity, others see it as a threat to Toronto's economic, environmental and social well-being due to the dispersed, automobile-oriented way in which the city has accommodated its growth since the 1950s. <br /><br /> Over the last two decades, planners have focused much energy on ameliorating the shortcomings of post World War II urbanization by developing policy measures such as Smart Growth, Growth Management, and New Urbanism that aim to alter the way in which cities are built and thereby effect change in the lifestyles that have precipitated from this landscape. In Ontario, the Provincial Government recently launched a Growth Management campaign for the Toronto area called <em>Places to Grow</em>. Although many have attempted to define this relationship between environment and behaviour, little attention has been given to attitudes, preferences, and behavioural tendencies of those who will be most directly affected by such policies: the general public. <br /><br /> This study surveys residents from six GTA neighbourhoods in order to understand their attitudes and preferences toward urban living and accommodating urban growth and thereby shed light on where support may be found for implementing <em>Places to Grow</em>. Academic literature suggests that residents generally oppose changes to the physical landscape that do not conform to prevailing cultural values and attitudes. The results of this work indicate that people generally support development that is in keeping with the landscape to which they are habituated. Given that most Torontonians live a suburban lifestyle and that most of Toronto's growth occurs in the suburbs, municipalities may be challenged to implement <em>Places to Grow</em> which stands to impact the suburban landscape more than other areas of the region. If <em>Places to Grow</em> is to be successful, planners must have a better understanding of residents' preferences and motivations in order to attract and maintain their interest in community development throughout the entire planning process.