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Traditional methods of teaching (i.e., didactic reading and lecture) remain the primary way instruction is delivered in construction management (CM) classrooms. This is true despite a growing body of literature promoting more contemporary, student-centered pedagogies that offer improvements over traditional teaching models. One of these is object-based learning (OBL), a student-centered approach that uses digital learning objects (LOs), such as videos, images, animations, mobile apps, and educational games, to facilitate deep and engaging learning experiences. One of the most common types of LO is instructional videos. Over the past quarter century, abundant research has been conducted in the field of computer science to advance the quality and reach of instructional video LOs. In contrast, a relatively small amount of research has been dedicated to understanding them in terms of their pedagogical efficacy. This is especially true for the field of CM. Very little empirical research currently exists at the intersection of CM and OBL. This dissertation examines the ability of supplemental instructional videos (SIVs) — a specific type of instructional video that complements other forms of instruction, including in-person teaching, readings, and group work, to deliver a full learning experience — to improve both the performance and the quality of the learning experience for undergraduate CM students. The first chapter of the dissertation is introductory, providing information about the major themes of the dissertation including construction management education, OBL, SIVs, and flipped classrooms. The second chapter explores the foundational learning theories that support OBL in a flipped CM classroom. A theoretical framework is proposed that can be used by teachers to guide them as they tailor their own approach for using instructional videos. The third chapter presents an interdisciplinary synthesis of best practices for the design and development of SIVs. Using these best practices, I document the production process of SIVs for an undergraduate CM course called Residential Construction Technologies. The fourth and fifth chapters cover a study in which the SIVs I developed were used as teaching aids for pre-class readings in Residential Construction Technologies. Chapter Four centers on a repeated measures experiment that was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the SIVs at improving student performance. Chapter Five uses surveys and interviews to understand student perceptions of the SIVs. Overall, I found that the SIVs had little measurable effect on improving the student's grades. However, overwhelmingly, the students reported that they valued having the videos, and felt that they helped with their understanding of unfamiliar or complicated course topics. Chapter Six concludes the dissertation with a short synthesis of all chapters and summary of their major themes and findings. / Doctor of Philosophy / Increasingly, teacher-made instructional videos are being used as educational tools in university classrooms. Unfortunately, not much guidance is available to help teachers with this task, and many of the videos being produced today are both low quality and ineffective. This dissertation's purpose is to help teachers find an efficient way to produce effective and appealing instructional videos for their specific learning audiences. Although this work was executed in a construction management (CM) context, teachers in many fields can benefit from the research. The first major accomplishment of the dissertation is an educational framework that teachers can use to incorporate instructional videos in their own curriculums. Next, a collection of the current best-practice guidelines for the design and development of instructional videos was assembled and explained. Using the guidelines for ourselves, I produced twelve short videos on various construction topics to be used in an undergraduate CM course called Residential Construction Technologies. The videos were designed to accompany readings that the students were assigned to complete before coming to class. To understand if the videos were effective teaching aids, I conducted an experiment to measure whether the videos made a difference to the students' grades. Additionally, I asked the students with a survey and interviews to describe how they felt about the videos. Overall, I found that the videos had little impact in improving the student's scores. However, overwhelmingly, the students reported that they valued and appreciated having the videos and they felt that they helped with the reading topics.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / J. M. Shawn Hutchinson / Windbreaks are a valuable resource in conserving soils and providing crop protection in western Kansas and other Great Plains states. Currently, Kansas has neither an up-to-date inventory of windbreak locations nor an assessment of their condition. The objective of this study is to develop remote sensing and geographic information system methods that rapidly identify and assess the condition of windbreaks in Ford County, Kansas. Ford County serves as a pilot study area for method development with the intent of transferring those methods to other counties/regions in Kansas and the Great Plains. A remote sensing technique known as object-based classification was used to classify windbreaks using color aerial photography acquired through the 2008 National Agricultural Imagery Program. Object-based classification works by segmenting imagery where areas with similar spectral, shape, and textural properties are grouped into vectors (i.e., objects) that are later used as the basis for image classification. Using this technique, 355 windbreaks, totaling nearly 1,012 acres (410 hectares), were identified in Ford County. When compared to a spatial data set of confirmed windbreak locations generated via a heads-up digitizing process, the location of windbreaks identified using object-based classification results agreed approximately 81% of the time. Mean textural and spectral values were then combined and used to place identified windbreaks into three condition categories (good, fair, and poor) using a manual classification approach. Analysis showed the area of windbreaks in good condition to be 170 hectares, with the remaining 171 hectares of windbreaks falling in the fair or poor classes. Methods detailed in this study proved successful at rapidly identifying windbreak location and for providing useful condition class results for windbreak renovation and restoration planning.

Silk-weaving in Sweden during the 19th century. Textiles and texts - An evaluation of the source material. With the rich material available, 19th century silk-weaving invites to studies on industrialisation processes. The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to present and discuss an empirical material regarding silk production in Sweden in the 19th century, to examine the possibilities and problems of different kinds of materials when used as source materials, and to describe how this material can be systematized and analysed in relation to the perspective of a textile scientific interpretation. The introductory sections of the thesis provide a background to textile research and the subject of textile science. This is followed by an overview of previous research on silk-weaving in Sweden and a historical overview of silk-weaving in Sweden, the Jacquard machine, and the K.A. Almgren Sidenväveri, where large parts of the source material have been preserved. After these overviews, the research material is described and systematized: first the main materials, textiles, machines and other objects, and then the various written sources. By way of conclusion, the empirical material is summarized in a critical discussion where the various groups of materials are evaluated in comparison to one another. A discussion on theory and methodology regarding objects as sources and the use of experience-based knowledge in academic research is developed in connection to the critical discussion. Finally, the potential of the material is demonstrated through a textile example. The presentation is an introduction to the cultural-historical analysis that will follow in the PhD thesis. Here, the empirical material will be analysed through the use of knowledge in handicrafts, which may create new dimensions of silk production in Sweden and the complexity of the industrialisation process.

O crescimento descontrolado ocorrido nas atuais metrópoles de países em desenvolvimento requer intensos mapeamentos para a atualização da base de dados geográfica. O intenso processo de urbanização vivido na cidade de São Paulo desde os anos 70 ilustra bem esse cenário. Apesar de existirem levantamentos aéreos e, mais recentemente, imagens de satélite com alta resolução espacial, a necessidade de informações geográficas precisas, rápidas e menos onerosas é, mais do que nunca, um fato. Nesse sentido, a classificação automatizada de imagens de alta resolução espacial tem demonstrado resultados insatisfatórios ao utilizar classificadores pixel a pixel, em especial para áreas urbanas. O crescente sucesso da classificação de imagens baseada em objetos tem estimulado pesquisadores a criar novos meios de superar a limitação das tradicionais técnicas de classificação de imagens. A idéia central da classificação de imagens orientada a objetos é extrair objetos primitivos a partir das imagens e utilizar suas informações para a composição de regras e estratégias a serem aplicadas no processo classificatório. Além da análise espectral, a classificação de imagens baseada em objetos permite envolver análises geométricas e contextuais. Este trabalho reporta o uso da classificação baseada em objetos para detecção da malha viária, aplicado na periferia urbana da cidade de São Paulo. Áreas de ocupação irregular compõem a maior parte da área selecionada para o estudo, sendo que a malha viária reflete bem o padrão de ocupação não planejada dessa região. As ruas são em geral geometricamente irregulares e com diferentes tipos de pavimentação. Detectar a malha viária com base nessas características foi o desafio maior deste trabalho, que teve, como hipótese, a viabilidade do emprego da classificação orientada a objetos para essa finalidade. A metodologia apresentada utiliza uma imagem multiespectral do satélite IKONOS II. Como primeiros passos, processou-se a segmentação e calcularam-se as componentes principais. Classes auxiliares como áreas impermeabilizadas e áreas de solo exposto foram computadas utilizando funções apropriadas. Em suma, a partir das informações geométricas dos objetos, como largura, comprimento, coeficiente de assimetria, área, entre outros, alguns objetos foram selecionados como representantes da malha viária, e então analisados perante a informação contextual, para que fossem classificados como vias pavimentadas e vias não pavimentadas. Os resultados foram analisados mediante três diferentes métodos: 1) inspeção visual, na qual foi analisada qualitativamente a aderência entre as vias extraídas e as vias reais; 2) acurácia da classificação, através de comparações entre a malha viária detectada e a de referência, que forneceu parâmetros estatísticos de qualidade da classificação, como os erros de comissão e omissão ; 3) análise linear comparativa, a qual forneceu parâmetros como integridade (ou completeza) e precisão da malha viária detectada utilizando linhas referenciais e linhas extraídas dos polígonos das vias detectadas, obtidos por morfologia matemática. Considerando o alto grau de heterogeneidade das feições presentes na área de estudo, a acurácia geral alcançada foi boa. Embora a metodologia não tenha produzido um mapa viário, no sentido próprio da palavra, o uso combinado de imagens multispectrais de alta resolução espacial e da classificação baseada em objetos mostrou que a metodologia pode ser utilizada para minerar dados relativos a malha viária e produzir informações significantes para auxiliar a tomada de decisões. / Uncontrolled sprawl occurring in large cities of developing countries requires intensive mapping efforts to update geodatabases. The intense urbanization process experienced since the 70\'s in Sao Paulo city illustrates very well the reported scenario. Despite aerial data and, more recent, high spatial resolution satellite data which have been employed as basis for mapping, the need for precise, faster and cheaper mapping efforts is real. In this sense, automated classification of high resolution imagery has demonstrated unsatisfactory results when traditional per-pixel classifiers are used, especially for urban areas. The increasing success of object-based classification has stimulated researchers to create new methodologies to overcome this shortcoming of traditional approaches. The object-based image classification\'s idea is extract object-primitives from images and then use their information to compose rules and strategies to be applied on the classification process. Beyond the spectral analysis, geometric, and contextual analysis are also addressed on object-based classification. This work reports the use of object-based image classification applied on road detection over the suburban area of Sao Paulo city. Informal settlements compose the most part of the study area and the transportation network reflects the unplanned occupation. Roads are geometrically irregular and with different kind of pavements. Detecting roads based on these characteristics was the biggest challenge faced here, and this work hypothesizes object-based classification can be used to. The methodology presented employs an IKONOS II data. At first, principal components and segmentation were computed and then auxiliary data for impervious surface and bare soil areas were previously calculated from customized features. In short, based on geometric information as width, length, asymmetry, area, and more, objects were elected as road and then analyzed through contextual information as paved road or unpaved road. Results were analyzed under three different ways: 1) visual inspection, where the adherence between extracted road and real ones provided a good indicator for qualitative analysis ; 2) classification accuracy, by comparing detected road areas and referential ones, which provided statistical parameters for quality as omission and commission error ; 3) linear comparative analysis, which provided parameters as correctness and completeness using referential lines and lines arose from extracted areas based on mathematical morphology tools. Regarding the high degree of heterogeneity of features present on study area, the overall accuracy reached is good. Despite the methodology did not produce a road map, the results shown the combined use of high resolution multi-spectral imagery and object-based classification can effectively mine road features, producing significant information to support decision makers.

O crescimento acelerado das cidades e os reflexos desse aumento das populações urbanas é preocupação constante na atualidade. Nesse processo, o surgimento de ocupações precárias, especialmente nas regiões metropolitanas, torna-se uma das características mais explicitas, caracterizando a própria lógica de ocupação, uso e direito desigual ao território. O monitoramento dessas áreas, sua formação e expansão, são uma necessidade crescente, em diversos locais no mundo, visto que a inclusão dessas áreas à cidade formal é tido como gatilho para a melhoria das condições de vida de mais de 100 milhões de pessoas que vivem em favelas no mundo todo, como colocam as Metas de Desenvolvimento do Milênio propostas pela Organização das Nações Unidas. Contudo, para que os habitantes das favelas sejam atendidos em seu direito a uma vida digna, faz-se necessário seu conhecimento e principalmente quantas são e onde estão. Um importante instrumento, com relação benéfica entre tempo de aquisição, custo de aplicação e possibilidade de replicabilidade e transferência de conhecimento é o uso de dados de Sensoriamento Remoto. Estes possibilitam o estabelecimento de metodologias através de procedimentos de detecção de feições e classificação do uso do solo, para identificação dessas áreas. Não obstante, os métodos de classificação clássicos quando aplicados a imagens de altíssima resolução espacial não conseguem extrair de forma satisfatória, em determinados casos, informações para uso intraurbano. Nesse ínterim surgem novos paradigmas de classificação de imagens como a Análise Orientada a Objeto, onde o processo de classificação parte do objeto geográfico definido a partir da segmentação da imagem, aproximando o objeto de feições do mundo real. Sobre estes objetos é possível a aplicação de regras de pertinência e de contexto através de linguagens e softwares específicos que permitem a transposição do conhecimento humano de fotointerpretação relação contextual para o meio computacional. Este trabalho objetivou avaliar o uso desta técnica de classificação para a detecção e mapeamento de favelas no município de Taboão da Serra/SP, utilizando dados auxiliares para a caracterização destas áreas e seus graus e tipos de precariedade. Os resultados demonstram a validade da aplicação da técnica. / The accelerated growth of the cities and the reflections of the increase of the urban population has been a constant concern nowadays. In this process, the occurrence of precarious occupancies, mainly in the metropolitan regions, has become one of the most explicit characteristics, describing the logic of occupancy itself, unequal use and right to the territory. The monitoring of these areas, their lineup and expansion, are an increasing need in several places in the world, as the inclusion of these areas in the formal city is considered a trigger for the living conditions improvement of over 100 million people who live in slums all over the world, as the Developments Goals of the Millennium proposed by the United Nations Organization. However, in order to meet the rights to a dignified life of the slums inhabitants, it is necessary to know about them mainly their number and where they are. An important tool related to the beneficial relation among the acquisition time, application cost and possibility of applying again, and transference of knowledge is the use of data from Remote Sensing. These data make it possible to establish the methodologies through the detection of features procedures and classification of the land use for these areas identification. Nevertheless the classical methods of classification cannot obtain, in certain cases, information on the interurban use, in a satisfactory way. In the interim, new paradigms of images classification appear like the Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) which goes from the defined geographic object to the image segmentation, approaching the object to features of the real world. The application of pertinent rules and context over these objects is possible through specific languages and softwares that allow the transference of human knowledge of photo interpretation and contextual relation to the computing environment. This work aimed at evaluating the use of this classification technique for detection and zoning of slums in Taboão da Serra/SP town using supporting data for the areas characterization, its grades and kinds of precarious conditions. The results show the validity of the technique application.

A variedade de dispositivos eletrônicos capazes de gravar e reproduzir vídeos digitais vem crescendo rapidamente, aumentando com isso a disponibilidade deste tipo de informação nas mais diferentes plataformas. Com isso, se torna cada vez mais importante o desenvolvimento de formas eficientes de armazenamento, transmissão, e acesso a estes dados. Nesse contexto, a codificação de vídeos tem um papel fundamental ao compactar informação, otimizando o uso de recursos aplicados no armazenamento e na transmissão de vídeos digitais. Não obstante, tarefas que envolvem a análise de vídeos, manipulação e busca baseada em conteúdo também se tornam cada vez mais relevantes, formando uma base para diversas aplicações que exploram a riqueza da informação contida em vídeos digitais. Muitas vezes a solução destes problemas passa pela segmentação de vídeos, que consiste da divisão de um vídeo em regiões que apresentam homogeneidade segundo determinadas características, como por exemplo cor, textura, movimento ou algum aspecto semântico. Nesta tese é proposto um novo método para segmentação de vídeos em objetos constituintes com base na coerência de movimento de regiões. O método de segmentação proposto inicialmente identifica as correspondências entre pontos esparsamente amostrados ao longo de diferentes quadros do vídeo. Logo após, agrupa conjuntos de pontos que apresentam trajetórias semelhantes. Finalmente, uma classificação pixel a pixel é obtida a partir destes grupos de pontos amostrados. O método proposto não assume nenhum modelo de câmera ou de movimento global para a cena e/ou objetos, e possibilita que múltiplos objetos sejam identificados, sem que o número de objetos seja conhecido a priori. Para validar o método de segmentação proposto, foi desenvolvida uma abordagem para a codificação de vídeos baseada em objetos. Segundo esta abordagem, o movimento de um objeto é representado através de transformações afins, enquanto a textura e a forma dos objetos são codificadas simultaneamente, de modo progressivo. O método de codificação de vídeos desenvolvido fornece funcionalidades tais como a transmissão progressiva e a escalabilidade a nível de objeto. Resultados experimentais dos métodos de segmentação e codificação de vídeos desenvolvidos são apresentados, e comparados a outros métodos da literatura. Vídeos codificados segundo o método proposto são comparados em termos de PSNR a vídeos codificados pelo software de referência JM H.264/AVC, versão 16.0, mostrando a que distância o método proposto está do estado da arte em termos de eficiência de codificação, ao mesmo tempo que provê funcionalidades da codificação baseada em objetos. O método de segmentação proposto no presente trabalho resultou em duas publicações, uma nos anais do SIBGRAPI de 2007 e outra no períodico IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. / The variety of electronic devices for digital video recording and playback is growing rapidly, thus increasing the availability of such information in many different platforms. So, the development of efficient ways of storing, transmitting and accessing such data becomes increasingly important. In this context, video coding plays a key role in compressing data, optimizing resource usage for storing and transmitting digital video. Nevertheless, tasks involving video analysis, manipulation and content-based search also become increasingly relevant, forming a basis for several applications that exploit the abundance of information in digital video. Often the solution to these problems makes use of video segmentation, which consists of dividing a video into homogeneous regions according to certain characteristics such as color, texture, motion or some semantic aspect. In this thesis, a new method for segmentation of videos in their constituent objects based on motion coherence of regions is proposed. The proposed segmentation method initially identifies the correspondences of sparsely sampled points along different video frames. Then, it performs clustering of point sets that have similar trajectories. Finally, a pixelwise classification is obtained from these sampled point sets. The proposed method does not assume any camera model or global motion model to the scene and/or objects. Still, it allows the identification of multiple objects, without knowing the number of objects a priori. In order to validate the proposed segmentation method, an object-based video coding approach was developed. According to this approach, the motion of an object is represented by affine transformations, while object texture and shape are simultaneously coded, in a progressive way. The developed video coding method yields functionalities such as progressive transmission and object scalability. Experimental results obtained by the proposed segmentation and coding methods are presented, and compared to other methods from the literature. Videos coded by the proposed method are compared in terms of PSNR to videos coded by the reference software JM H.264/AVC, version 16.0, showing the distance of the proposed method from the sate of the art in terms of coding efficiency, while providing functionalities of object-based video coding. The segmentation method proposed in this work resulted in two publications, one in the proceedings of SIBGRAPI 2007 and another in the journal IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

[pt] Correntes de turbidez são correntes gravitacionais turbulentas transportando grãos em alta velocidade e formando uma solução de água e sedimentos esparramados, sendo responsáveis pela formação de um tipo de reservatório petrolífero. O lobo turbidítico é um importante elemento arquitetural nos reservatórios turbidíticos e neste trabalho propomos uma modelagem assistida deste objeto, a partir de dados de pressão medidos durante um teste de formação. Para isto, foi desenvolvido um método de estimar as permeabilidades e parâmetros geométricos dos lobos com auxílio do simulador IMEX da CMG e da interpretação assistida do teste de formação simulado, utilizando como base os dados de pressão extraídos de testes de formação de referência. Na modelagem do lobo turbidítico incluímos a alocação de uma superfície de base. / [en] Turbidite currents are turbulent gravitational currents transporting grains in high speed creating a solution of water and dispersed sedments, being responsable for the formation of an oil reservoir. The turbidite lobe is an important architectural element for the turbidite reservoirs. In this work we propose an assisted modeling of this object based on measured well testing pressures. A method was developed to estimate permeabities and geometric parameters for this lobes using the IMEX fluid flow simulator and an assisted interpretation of the simulated well test comparing simulated pressures to those measured in a reference well test. In the modeling of the turbidite lobe, we allocate a base surface.

<p>In the first part of this thesis, we contribute to the semantics of typed object calculus by giving (a) a category-theoretic denotational semantics using partial maps making use of an algebraic compactness assumption, (b) a notion of "wrappers'' by which algebraic datatypes can be represented as object types, and (c) proofs of computational soundness and adequacy of typed object calculus via Plotkin's FPC (with lazy operational semantics), thus making models of FPC suitable also for first-order typed object calculus (with recursive objects supporting method update, but not subtyping). It follows that a valid equation in the model induces operationally congruent terms in the language, so that program algebras can be studied. For (c), we also develop an extended first-order typed object calculus, and prove subject reduction. The second part of the thesis concerns recursion principles on datatypes including the untyped lambda calculus as a special case. Freyd showed that in certain domain theoretic categories, locally continuous functors have minimal invariants, which possess a structure that he termed dialgebra. This gives rise to a category of dialgebras and homomorphisms, where the minimal invariants are initial, inducing a powerful recursion scheme (direcursion) on a complete partial order. We identify a problem that appears when we translate (co)iterative functions to direcursion, and as a solution to this problem we develop a recursion scheme (primitive direcursion). This immediately gives a number of examples of direcursive functions, improving on the situation in the literature where only a few examples have appeared. By means of a case study, this line of work is connected to object calculus models.</p> / Delarbete II är även publicerad som Teknisk rapport, 2007, Oct, No2.