The purpose of this study was to determine the planning, installation, and maintenance necessary for school buildings to support technology initiatives in two rural school divisions in Virginia. The research questions guiding this study were: (1) What short-term and/or long-term plans are put in place for building and maintaining facilities infrastructure to support technology initiatives? (2) What physical components, equipment, and personnel are necessary for adequate facilities infrastructure to support technology initiatives? (3) What are the perceived infrastructure barriers to effective integration of technology in a school building? This qualitative study used purposeful sampling. The interview participants selected for this study were division-level technology leaders and their technology staff. The participants taking part in this study were at various stages of their profession, and at differing years of service, within their respective school divisions. The findings of this study may help division superintendents and division-wide technology leaders make more informed decisions regarding school building needs to support technology initiatives. The findings from this study indicate there is no agreement for how to build and maintain school buildings to support technology initiatives. However, there are several barriers to successful implementation of technology initiatives. Findings also uncovered common themes for best practice in how to plan and implement for school buildings to support technology initiatives. / Ed. D.

A typology of urban vacant land was developed using Roanoke, Virginia, as the study area. Because of its industrial past, topography and climate, Roanoke provides a range of vacant land types typical of those in many areas of the Mid-Atlantic, Eastern and Midwestern United States. A comprehensive literature review, field measurements and observations analysis and aerial photo interpretation and ground-truthing methods were utilized to identify and catalog vacant parcels of land and the results were mapped using i-Tree Canopy to identify the following types of urban vacant land: post-industrial (3.34 km2), derelict (4.01 km2), unattended with vegetation (17.3 km2), natural (2.78 km2), and transportation-related (5.01 km2). Unattended with vegetation sites are important resources as the health biodiversity found in natural sites benefits urban populations and they represent the highest plantable space. The redesign of post-industrial sites builds a city's image and transportation-related sites can contribute a green infrastructure network of open spaces. This typological study has significant implications for policy development, and for planners and designers seeking the best use for vacant urban land. The analysis of Roanoke's urban forest revealed around 210,000 trees on vacant land, a tree cover of 30.6%. These trees store about 107,000 tons of carbon (worth $7.65 million) and remove about 2,300 tons of carbon ($164,000), and about 91 tons of air pollution ($916,000) every year, which is high relative to other land uses. Trees on vacant land are estimated to reduce annual residential energy costs by $211,000 for the city's 97,000 residents and their structural value is estimated at $169 million. The methodology applied to assess ecosystem services in this study can also be used to assess ecosystem services of vacant land in other urban contexts and improve urban forest policies, planning, and the management of vacant land. The study findings support the inclusion of trees on vacant land providing a new vision of vacant urban land as a valuable ecological resource by demonstrating how green infrastructure can be used to enhance ecosystem health and promote a better quality of life for city residents. / Ph. D.

Urbanization is the process of limitless expansion of that which is urban, the built essentials that constitutes a civilization, beyond the limits of what can be recognized as the city. Infrastructure is the method by which urbanization is possible. Certain infrastructure has created residual spaces where urbanization does not occur. There is an opportunity for architecture to employ elements of the specific city as well as elements of the local urbanized area as a means to separate from and confront the infrastructural and urban conditions surrounding these residual sites. / Master of Architecture

Detta examensarbete bygger upp en 3D modell av damm I vid Ryllshyttemagasinet i Garpenberg, i programmet OpenRoads designer. Modellen består av inmätningar av undergrunden samt dammens delar från 2007 till 2022. Den inmätta modellen är ofullständig och har kompletterats via korridormodellering i programmet, kompletteringarna har utgått från relationsritningar från varje år, utföranderapporter, flygscanningar, samt via sektioner från damm A och I2. De inmätta och kompletterade ytorna motsvarar väl relationsritningarna och ger en god bild över dammens konstruktion längs hela damm I sträckning. Arbetet kommer ligga till grund för en 3D modell över hela Ryllshyttemagasinet och dess omkringliggande magasin och dammar som sträcker sig ända tillbaka till 60-talet. Den kompletta modellen kommer användas i beräkningssyften för att utvärdera stabiliteten när magasinets konstruktion ändras från en uppströmsdamm till en centrumlinjesdamm.

In 2016 the Panama Canal expansion is set to open, allowing a new class of ships to call on east coast ports. The dredging involved in deepening navigation channels to ensure safe passage of these vessels will place an increased amount of pressure on containment facilities up and down the coast. With limited disposal space, and increasing volumes, many ports have begun to rethink the treatment of this excess material. This thesis explores the prospect of dredge material being more than engineered fill. It suggests that dredge processing can become the basis for a new form of productive recreational landscape, one that can engage the public in a conversation of the spatial and material operations that sustain our lives. It works blur and dissolve the boundaries that have been erected between working landscapes and the public realm, and seeks to create a landscape that establishes a new sense of place prepared to mark the future of the new working urban waterfront; one where industrial operations generate new ecological substrates, and where productive frameworks become recreation networks. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The highway, its promise of freedom and mobility, stands as a source of intrigue in American culture. Yet, the asphalt and dashed lines that cut across the country conceal the contentious history that accompanied interstate highway construction. This dissertation examines the social and spatial meanings of interstate highway plans in the United States at different historical and geographic scales. This account begins in the late 1930's and travels through the mid 1940's where I discuss Norman Bel Geddes's 1939 Worlds Fair Exhibit, "Futurama" and Robert Moses's 1944 Baltimore Arterial Report. This analysis demonstrates how each man inscribed social values into proposed developments within geographic space. From here I move to Baltimore where from 1944 until about 1979, countless proposals called for the construction of an arterial highway that would cut into the heart of the city. By drawing from the archival records left by Movement Against Destruction (MAD), Relocation Action Movement (RAM), and other groups in that fought against roadway plans in Baltimore, I explore how activists lived, understood, and challenged the new social arrangements embedded in the proposed highway system. I introduce the term infrastructural imaginaries to account for how the proposal or construction of spatially embedded systems seeks to transform lived material and geographic arrangements. The concept of infrastructural imaginaries expands upon Sheila Jasanoff and San-Hyun Kim's "sociotechnical imaginaries" to address how proposed futures appropriate spatial environments and how people lived, understood, and conceptualize themselves within these emergent spaces. The framework of infrastructural imaginaries utilizes Henri Lefebvre's conceptual triad of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space to analyze the dynamic interactions between infrastructure planning, lived experience, and articulations of possible futures. To study the infrastructural imaginary, the immaterial form, provides a fertile space from which to isolate places where systems fail to take hold, where alternative understanding emerge, and where new forms social interaction takes place. / Ph. D. / The interstate highway, its promise of freedom and mobility, stands as a source of intrigue in American culture. Yet, the asphalt and dashed lines that cut across the country conceal the contentious history that accompanied interstate highway construction. Following the passage of the 1956 Federal Aid Interstate Highway Act movements called ‘freeway revolts’ began in cities across the United States. These protests resisted the construction of highways in urban areas. Additionally, these social movements called attention to the planning practices that condemned the houses of low income and minority populations, clear-cut park land, and disrupted the urban fabric. This dissertation examines Baltimore’s ‘freeway revolt’ using archival documents left by the many activist groups who participated in attempting to stop the highway. Rather than presenting a comprehensive history of these events, this dissertation pays attention to how social understandings of geographic space contributed to highway plans, organized activism, and the practices of those who lived under the threat of impending infrastructure.

In this dissertation, I look at the history of cloud computing to demonstrate the entanglement of history, metaphor, and materiality. In telling this story, I argue that metaphors play a powerful role in how we imagine, construct, and maintain our technological futures. The cloud, as a metaphor in computing, works to simplify complexities in distributed networking infrastructures. The language and imagery of the cloud has been used as a tool that helps cloud providers shift public focus away from potentially important regulatory, environmental, and social questions while constructing a new computing marketplace. To address these topics, I contextualize the history of the cloud by looking back at the stories of utility computing (1960s-70s) and ubiquitous computing (1980s-1990s). These visions provide an alternative narrative about the design and regulation of new technological systems. Drawing upon these older metaphors of computing, I describe the early history of the cloud (1990-2008) in order to explore how this new vision of computing was imagined. I suggest that the metaphor of the cloud was not a historical inevitability. Rather, I argue that the social-construction of metaphors in computing can play a significant role in how the public thinks about, develops, and uses new technologies. In this research, I explore how the metaphor of the cloud underplays the impact of emerging large-scale computing infrastructures while at the same time slowly transforming traditional ownership-models in digital communications. Throughout the dissertation, I focus on the role of materiality in shaping digital technologies. I look at how the development of the cloud is tied to the establishment of cloud data centers and the deployment of global submarine data cables. Furthermore, I look at the materiality of the cloud by examining its impact on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper socio-technical complexities. Both the materials and metaphor of the cloud work to make the system invisible. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how these larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation tells the story of cloud computing by looking at the history of the cloud and then discussing the social and political implications of this history. I start by arguing that the cloud is connected to earlier visions of computing (specifically, utility computing and ubiquitous computing). By referencing these older histories, I argue that much of what we currently understand as cloud computing is actually connected to earlier debates and efforts to shape a computing future. Using the history of computing, I demonstrate the role that metaphor plays in the development of a technology. Using these earlier histories, I explain how cloud computing was coined in the 1990s and eventually became a dominant vision of computing in the late 2000s. Much of the research addresses how the metaphor of the cloud is used, the initial reaction to the idea of the cloud, and how the creation of the cloud did (or did not) borrow from older visions of computing. This research looks at which people use the cloud, how the cloud is marketed to different groups, and the challenges of conceptualizing this new distributed computing network. This dissertation gives particular weight to the materiality of the cloud. My research focuses on the cloud's impact on data centers and submarine communication data cables. Additionally, I look at the impact of the cloud on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper complexities. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.

The web has evolved to be the primary carrier of human knowledge during the information age. The ephemeral nature of much web content makes web knowledge preservation vital in preserving human knowledge and memories. Web archives are created to preserve the current web and make it available for future reuse. A growing number of web archive initia- tives are actively engaging in web archiving activities. Web archiving standards like WARC, for formatted storage, have been established to standardize the preservation of web archive data. In addition to its preservation purpose, web archive data is also used as a source for research and for lost information recovery. However, the reuse of web archive data is inherently challenging because of the scale of data size and requirements of big data tools to serve and analyze web archive data efficiently. In this research, we propose to build web archive infrastructure that can support efficient and scalable web archive reuse with big data formats like Parquet, enabling more efficient quantitative data analysis and browsing services. Upon the Hadoop big data processing platform with components like Apache Spark and HBase, we propose to replace the WARC (web archive) data format with a columnar data format Parquet to facilitate more efficient reuse. Such a columnar data format can provide the same features as WARC for long-term preservation. In addition, the columnar data format introduces the potential for better com- putational efficiency and data reuse flexibility. The experiments show that this proposed design can significantly improve quantitative data analysis tasks for common web archive data usage. This design can also serve web archive data for a web browsing service. Unlike the conventional web hosting design for large data, this design primarily works on top of the raw large data in file systems to provide a hybrid environment around web archive reuse. In addition to the standard web archive data, we also integrate Twitter data into our design as part of web archive resources. Twitter is a prominent source of data for researchers in a vari- ety of fields and an integral element of the web's history. However, Twitter data is typically collected through non-standardized tools for different collections. We aggregate the Twitter data from different sources and integrate it into the suggested design for reuse. We are able to greatly increase the processing performance of workloads around social media data by overcoming the data loading bottleneck with a web-archive-like Parquet data format. / Doctor of Philosophy / The web has evolved to be the primary carrier of human knowledge during the information age. The ephemeral nature of much web content makes web knowledge preservation vital in preserving human knowledge and memories. Web archives are created to preserve the current web and make it available for future reuse. In addition to its preservation purpose, web archive data is also used as a source for research and for lost information discovery. However, the reuse of web archive data is inherently challenging because of the scale of data size and requirements of big data tools to serve and analyze web archive data efficiently. In this research, we propose to build a web archive big data processing infrastructure that can support efficient and scalable web archive reuse like quantitative data analysis and browsing services. We adopt industry frameworks and tools to establish a platform that can provide high-performance computation for web archive initiatives and users. We propose to convert the standard web archive data file format to a columnar data format for efficient future reuse. Our experiments show that our proposed design can significantly improve quantitative data analysis tasks for common web archive data usage. Our design can also serve an efficient web browsing service without adopting a sophisticated web hosting architecture. In addition to the standard web archive data, we also integrate Twitter data into our design as a unique web archive resource. Twitter is a prominent source of data for researchers in a variety of fields and an integral element of the web's history. We aggregate the Twitter data from different sources and integrate it into the suggested design for reuse. We are able to greatly increase the processing performance of workloads around social media data by overcoming the data loading bottleneck with a web-archive-like Parquet data format.

Understanding ways of improving the safety of food is an important area of research. In this project, I explore the history of the food safety systems in the United States and the Republic of Zambia. Focusing on the traceability of meat (as a form of risk management), I reveal the factors shaping each of these systems, with an eye towards their similarities and differences. I argue that food safety systems come to look different due to how these regulatory systems differently define risk, some of which traceability has brought to light. In both countries, what influences risk cultures is trust in institutions, political leaders and in science and technology. For the Zambian public, trust is in local political leaders, in individuals and in brands. For the US public, trust is in information and knowledge of producers, which is found on labels. While the Zambian public generally trusts institutions, the US public, due to its history of institutional failures, does not. / Master of Science / Tracing where food comes from can be an important aspect of our food system. In this project, I show why food safety systems in the United States and Zambia look the way they that they do today. I do this by specifically focusing on how the two nations trace beef throughout the food supply chain. I show the different factors that have led to the food systems to look the way they do. My argument is that in the US and Zambia, there are non-scientific reasons why these food systems to look the way that they do today and why these countries address risk differently.

Impervious surfaces are the greatest contributors to degradation of water quality and large volumes of stormwater runoff. Green infrastructure is the holistic solution to this problem which not only reduces flooding but also actively moves towards achievement of larger environmental goals. Green infrastructure has the co-benefits of reducing the heat island effect, traffic calming, beautifying the neighbourhood, improving the canopy within the city, the creation of parks and even supports economic development. The City of Falls Church is deeply concerned with the pressing matter of flood control due to the threats to human life and property in recent flooding events. The polluted waters of Falls Church also contribute to a highly impaired watershed- the Chesapeake Bay. This thesis recognizes the environmental crisis caused by polluted runoff and places equal emphasis upon reducing runoff as well as improving water quality. In order to mitigate the effects of inundation, it is most critical to intervene at the source of locations which create the most runoff and pollution. The thesis provides a systematic methodology of identifying such areas and intervening in them. The watershed which contains the downtown area of Falls Church has the greatest amount of impervious surfaces and the highest rate of stormwater runoff. The two intersecting streets of S. Maple Avenue and Annandale Road are identified as the location of intervention after tabulating a confluence of stormwater and public realm factors. S. Maple Avenue is a part of the Falls Church bike network and is also designated to become a civic great street. Meanwhile, Annandale Road has the potential to play an active role in collection and management of stormwater. Annandale Road runs along the watershed boundary as well as crosses several tributaries which are low points in the watershed. Furthermore, there is a dynamic urban character to the street as it transitions from a residential zone to the commercial zone. Both streets present excellent possibilities for road diets, pedestrianization and traffic calming which bolsters the implementation of stormwater management in the public realm. / Master of Science / Impervious surfaces are the greatest contributors to degradation of water quality and large volumes of stormwater runoff. Green infrastructure is the holistic solution to this problem which not only reduces flooding but also actively moves towards achievement of larger environmental goals. There is a growing recognition that gray stormwater infrastructure has no benefits other than the conveyance of water away from the site. Green infrastructure has the co-benefits of reducing the heat island effect, traffic calming, beautifying the neighbourhood, improving the canopy within the city, the creation of parks and even supports economic development. There are many cities today which have had positive results by implementing a green approach towards the management of runoff. The City of Falls Church is deeply concerned with the pressing matter of flood control due to the threats to human life and property in recent flooding events. This thesis recognizes the environmental crisis caused by polluted runoff and places equal emphasis upon reducing runoff as well as improving water quality. In order to mitigate the effects of inundation, it is most critical to intervene at the source of locations which create the most runoff and pollution.The two intersecting streets of S. Maple Avenue and Annandale Road are identified as the location of intervention after tabulating a confluence of stormwater and public realm factors. Both streets present excellent possibilities for road diets, pedestrianization and traffic calming which bolsters the implementation of stormwater management in the public realm.