This thesis seeks to experiment with the culmination of social, natural and built paradigms of sustainability using digital generation as an architectural process. Specifically, this thesis will explore cellular automaton and modular design approaches in the context of multifamily housing, asking if we can quantify the qualities of equitable housing and guide digital algorithms to generate efficient, flexible, human centered designs. Cellular automaton is a term used to describe a phenomenon in which the growth of one cell in a plant or animal is entirely dependent upon the already existing adjacent cell. Digital cellular automaton is a mathematical, rule based tool used to generate patterns or to map complex systems; similarly, the generation of new cells is entirely dependent on the environment it is being born into. The aim of this work is to translate human centered parameters and local architectural guidelines into an algorithm with rules which can be easily manipulated to produce comparable digitally generated forms. The parameters will be based on an architectural program consisting of a multi-unit mixed income residential building located in, and designed for the residents of, Northampton, Massachusetts. Northampton is an exemplary small-scale city; a historic New England town with housing problems reminiscent of a larger urban area. The selected site allows for investigations of density, growth, adaptation and modular design in a way that could be applied to not only similarly sized cities, but regions of varying density based on their own local parameters. For a relevant output, the parameters and data put into the algorithm must be humanized, individualized, or in the case of this work, curated to reflect and serve a specific community. Cellular automaton allows for varied pattern generation and for the exploration of repeating modules as well as allow for future adaptations to evolving housing needs and sustainability targets. The goal is to create a supportive system of habitat that allows for growth potential and flexibility without sacrificing quality of life for the inhabitants.

Die Arbeit bildet einen Einstieg in das Themengebiet der prozeduralen Karten Generierung mit Cellular Automata und verweist auf fortführende Möglichkeiten. Es wird gezeigt, wie eine zwei-dimensionale und hexagonale Terrain-Karte für Strategiespiele mit Cellular Automata erzeugt werden kann. Dazu wird eine allgemeine Einführung zu zellulären Automaten gegeben. Zusätzlich werden Fashion-based Cellular Automata und Cellular Automata mit mehreren aktiven Zellen erklärt. Es werden die Anforderungen an eine Karte des Strategie-Genres bestimmt, wobei der Fokus, auf dem durch Civilisation definierten Sub-Genre liegt. Anschließend wird gezeigt, wie die verschiedenen Bestandteile der Karte jeweils mit einem Cellular Automaton generiert werden können. Zu diesen werden Vorteile und Nachteile dargestellt und dabei auf die Performance eingegangen. Es zeigt sich das zelluläre Automaten in der Lage sind eine geeignete Karte zu erzeugen.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Videospiele im Trend 1.2 Produktionsaufwand 1.3 Prozedurale Content Generierung 1.4 Cellular Automata 1.5 Kartengenerierung 1.6 Aufbau der Arbeit 1.7 Verwendete Werkzeuge 2 Hintergrund 2.1 Cellular Automata 2.1.1 Grundsätze 2.1.2 Initiale globale Konfiguration eines CA 2.1.3 CA-Ansätze 2.1.3.1 Lattice Gases 2.1.3.2 CA mit mehreren aktiven Zellen 2.1.3.3 Fashion-based 3 Anforderungsanalyse 3.1 Eingrenzung der Karte 3.2 Betrachtete Spiele 3.3 Analyse der Karten 3.4 Anforderungen 4 Implementierung 4.1 Schichtenmodell 4.1.1 Regionen 4.1.1.1 Ansatz 4.1.1.2 Resultat 4.1.2 Höhenstufen 4.1.2.1 Ansatz 4.1.2.2 Resultat 4.1.3 Flüsse 4.1.3.1 Initiale Konfiguration 4.1.3.2 Flussrichtung 4.1.3.3 Resultat 4.1.4 Ressourcen 4.1.4.1 Wälder 4.1.4.2 Allgemeine Ressourcen 4.1.4.3 Siedlungen 4.1.5 Dynamische Veränderungen 4.1.6 Performance 5 Fazit 5.1 Ausblick 6 Verzeichnisse 6.1 Literaturverzeichnis 6.2 Abbildungsverzeichnis 6.3 Tabellenverzeichnis

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Yes / This paper represents a significant advance on the issue of testing for implementations specified by P systems with transformation and communicating rules. Using the X-machine framework and the concept of cover automaton, it devises a testing approach for such systems, that, under well defined conditions, it ensures that the implementation conforms to the specification. It also investigates the issue of identifiability for P systems, that is an essential prerequisite for testing implementations based on such specifications and establishes a fundamental set of properties for identifiable P systems. / Marian Gheorghe and Savas Konur acknowledge the support from EPSRC (EP/I031812/1). Marian Gheorghe’s and Florentin Ipate’s work is partially supported by CNCS-UEFISCDI (PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0688).

Many who study complex systems believe that the complexity we observe in the world around us is frequently the product of a large number of interactions between components following a simple rule. However, the task of discerning the rule governing the evolution of any given system is often quite difficult, requiring intuition, guesswork, and a great deal of expertise in that domain. To circumvent this issue, researchers have considered the inverse problem where one searches among many candidate rules to reveal those producing interesting behavior. This approach has its own challenges because the search space grows exponentially and interesting behavior is rare and difficult to rigorously define. Therefore, the contribution of this work includes tools and techniques for searching for dimer automaton rules that exhibit self-organization (the transformation of disorder into structure in the absence of centralized control). Dimer automata are simple, discrete, asynchronous rewriting systems that operate over the edges of an arbitrary graph. Specifically, these contributions include a number of novel, surprising, and useful applications of dimer automata, practical methods for measuring self-organization, advanced techniques for searching for dimer automaton rules, and two efficient GPU parallelizations of dimer automata to make searching and simulation more tractable. / Ph. D.

Traditional parallel methods for structural design do not scale well. This thesis discusses the application of massively scalable cellular automata (CA) techniques to structural design. There are two sets of CA rules, one used to propagate stresses and strains, and one to perform design analysis. These rules can be applied serially, periodically, or concurrently, and Jacobi or Gauss-Seidel style updating can be done. These options are compared with respect to convergence, speed, and stability. / Master of Science

Because of perceived deficiencies in the state of the practice of designing escalators and moving walkways, a microsimulation-based model of pedestrian behavior in these moving belt systems was created. In addition to implementing walking and stair climbing capabilities from existing pedestrian flow literature, the model utilized following behavior and lane change decision logic taken form studies performed in the field of automotive traffic flow theory. By combining research from these two normally independent fields with moving belt operational characteristics, a solid framework for the simulation was created. The model was then validated by comparing its operation to real world behaviors and performance metrics found in the literature in order to verify that the simulation matched the choices made by actual pedestrians. Once this crucial function had been completed, the model could finally be used in its original purpose of determining the capacity of a belt under region-specific input parameters. This paper also discusses other applications for which the model is suitable, including performing sensitivity analysis of both existing and proposed belt systems, analyzing the impacts of operational rule sets on the performance of escalators and moving walkways, and analyzing the effect of queue growth on the storage area needed for pedestrians in an ambulatory facility. Through the use of this model and the logic contained within it, engineers and planners will be able to gain a more accurate understanding of pedestrian flow on moving belts. The result of this increased understanding will be more effective and more efficient transportation systems. / Master of Science

Every year three million deaths are attributed to malaria, of which one-third are of children. Malaria is a vector-borne disease, where a mosquito acts as the vector that transmits the disease. In the last few years, computer simulation based models have been used effectively to study the vector population dynamics and control strategies of vector-borne diseases. Typically, these models use ordinary differential equations to simulate the spread of malaria. Although these models provide a powerful mechanism to study the spread of malaria, they have several shortcomings. The research in this thesis focuses on creating a simulation model based on the framework of cellular automata, which addresses many shortcomings of previous models. Cellular automata are dynamical systems, which are discrete in time and space. The implementation of the model proposed can easily be integrated with EpiSims/TRANSIMS. EpiSims is an epidemiological modeling tool for studying the spread of infectious diseases; it uses social contact network from TRANSIMS (A Transport Analysis and Simulation System). Simulation results from the prototype implementation showed qualitatively correct results for vector densities, diffusion and epidemiological curves. / Master of Science