<p>The research effort addressed important gaps in the modeling to simulate Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations and couple optimization analyses for vehicle design, fleet allocations, and operational choices for next generation urban travel. Urban Air Mobility is expected to be a \$1 trillion dollar industry by 2040, but operators and designers have limited models and tools to estimate fleet performance, cost metrics, emissions performance, and profit for a given concept under future concepts of operations. A review of the literature reveals 14 modeling gaps related to infrastructure, operations, airspace, vehicles, and customers. In addition, the UAM industry requires better understanding of how operational choices may impact vehicle design and fleet allocations in a market with significant economic barriers and infrastructure needs. To address those needs, this effort proposed alternatives to address modeling challenges and develop studies to evaluate UAM vehicle concepts and concepts of operations in ways once not possible using the enhanced modeling tools. The research findings revealed that modeling coupled design/fleet and operational choices can affect daily profitability potential by 2-4\times\, for piloted and autonomous operations and affect the fleet size from between 12-50 vehicles across small, medium, and large metropolitan areas. The modeling capability provided by the improvements in UAM operations simulations and accessing vehicle and fleet metrics enables future studies to address UAM in a holistic manner. The increased capability could benefit the UAM community and inform future operations and concepts of operations in preparation for ubiquitous operations.</p>

Patient-focused research systems have been developed to monitor and inform therapists of patients' treatment progress in psychotherapy as a method to enhance patient outcome. The current study examined the effects of providing treatment progress information and problem-solving tools to both patients and therapists during the course of psychotherapy. Three hundred seventy patients at a hospital-based outpatient psychotherapy clinic were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups: treatment-as-usual, or an experimental condition based on the use of patient/therapist feedback and clinical decision-support tools. Patients in the feedback condition were significantly more improved at termination than the patients in the treatment as usual condition. These findings are consistent with past research on these approaches although the effect size was smaller in this study. Treatment effects were not a consequence of different amounts of psychotherapy received by experimental and control clients. Not all therapists were aided by the feedback intervention.

The numerous buildings that currently require thermal rehabilitation in Romania means that substantial resources and a large number of competent people are required to carry out surveys and energy audits. However, commercial energy balance software is mostly unaffordable for those organisations involved in this process. This paper describes an energy balance programme – ENEFControl – developed to be a rapid, low cost, local tool able to assist in the choice of energy efficient solutions for buildings. To test the software, thermal and energy analyses were carried out on a 1970s built apartment block in Transylvania. Based on these analyses, three constructive scenarios were proposed for thermal rehabilitation. Compared to the performance of the analysed building, the thermal and energy performance of the retrofitted building in all three scenarios significantly improved. Since European Union accession in 2007, rapidly rising energy costs have affected the Romanian population. ENEFControl offers Romanian engineers and architects an opportunity to speed up the rehabilitation programme of buildings without the need for more expensive expertise and tools.

This thesis project explores and investigates the potential benefits of implementing AR as an educational support tool for dyslexic students in higher education. This was conducted through three design explorations which investigate if the characteristic of AR holds any potential benefits for the participants while reading academic papers. These design explorations were created in the form of prototypes which explore and investigate how well AR could increase the readability in comparison to already existing technology, applications, and physical tools which is currently being used by dyslexic students. Main findings from the user-testings, indicate that augmented reality could allow the students to maneuver easily through multiple papers, increase readability of different texts, and that AR holds multiple benefits compared to traditional more commonly used educational support tools.

Climate change-related hazards negatively impact ecosystems, economies, and quality of life. Significant resources have been invested in data collection and research with the goal of enhanced understanding and capacity to predict future conditions in order to mitigate or adapt to intensifying hazard risk. The expansive production of climate science has generated a necessary complimentary enterprise dedicated to enhancing decision-makers’ understanding of and access to climate science as it is essential for future societal and ecological well-being. Though the aim of these many tools is to support resilient decision-making in the face of climate change, professionals report an underutilization of climate resilience tools. It has been suggested that stakeholder engagement during climate resilience tool development will improve the rates of use; however, there have been no studies to explore if the findings from tool diffusion and adoption studies in other sectors translate to climate resilience tools. An end-user engagement process for the development of a climate resilience tool was established and implemented. The process itself and the outcomes of the process, in this case an online climate decision-support tool called Gulf TREE (www.GulfTREE.org), were studied. Findings included documenting that end-user engagement during climate resilience tool development, while more costly and time intensive, does lead to increased rates of diffusion and adoption of a climate resilience tool through both direct and indirect means. This work demonstrated that pre-development engagement to scope tool development is critical for maximizing relative benefit of a climate resilience tool. Additionally, all phases of engagement are necessary for both a useable and useful tool because each phase contributes to different attributes of the tool. Further research areas identified include understanding how much and what kind of stakeholder engagement is necessary to support continued diffusion and adoption after a tool is released, the role that mandates in climate resilience has on the adoption and diffusion of climate resilience tools, and how to define if a climate resilience tool has been successful.

This research study focused on learning lessons from the experience of designing a comprehensive case-based reasoning (CBR) tool for support of complex thinking skills. Theorists have historically identified, analyzed, and classified different thinking processes and skills. Thinking skills have been increasingly emphasized in national standards, state testing, curricula, teaching and learning resources, and research agendas. Complex thinking is the core of higher-order thinking. Complex thinking is engaged when different types of thinking and action converge to resolve a real-world, ill-structured issue such as solving a problem, designing an artifact, or making a decision. By integrating reasoning, memory, and learning in a model of cognition for learning from concrete problem-solving experience, CBR can be used to engage complex thinking. In similar and different ways, CBR theory and the related theories of constructivism and constructionism promote learning from concrete, ill-structured problem-solving experience. Seven factors or characteristics, and by extension, design requirements, that should be incorporated in a comprehensive CBR tool were extracted from theory. These requirements were consistent with five theory-, research-based facilitators of learning from concrete experience. Subsequent application of the Dick, Carey, and Carey model to these design requirements generated twenty-nine specifications for design of the tool. This research study was carried out using developmental research methodology and a standard development model. The design process included front-end analysis, creating a prototype of the tool, and evaluating the prototype. / Ph. D.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Environmental Design and Planning Program / Lee R. Skabelund / Despite the growing number of urban adaptation planning initiatives to climate change hazards, there exist significant barriers related to implementation uncertainties that hinder translation of adaptation plans into actions, resulting in a widely recognized ‘planning-implementation gap’ across scales and regions. Bridging the planning-implementation gap will require overcoming implementation uncertainties by better understanding the relationships between the primary factors driving adaptation planning initiatives and emerging adaptation options across spatial scales. The modified Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response model published by Rounsevell, Dawson, and Harrison in 2010 provided a robust framework for identifying the primary factors driving adaptation planning initiatives and the emerging adaptation options related to risk of changing climate and flooding events in the urban context. Drawing on evidence from the systematic review of 121 adaptation planning case studies across North America, this research derived qualitative and quantitative data, which was subsequently analyzed using binary logistic regression to generate objective and generalizable findings. The findings of binary logistic regression models suggest that the choice of specific adaptation options (namely enhancing adaptive capacity; management and conservation; and improving urban infrastructure, planning, and development) may be predicted based on the assessment of primary factors driving adaptation planning initiatives (namely, anticipation of economic benefits; perceived threats to management and conservation of urban natural resources; support of human and social systems; and improvement of policy and regulations) in relation to the risk of changing climate and urban flooding events. This does not imply that other primary factors (namely information and knowledge; perceived funding and economic opportunities; evidence of climate change effects; and general concerns) have no or insignificant relationships with the selection of adaptation options, only that the review did not find evidence to support such claims. These study findings may offer useful guidance to the design and further development of planning and decision support tools that could be used for assessment of adaptation plans and selection of robust adaptation options that take account of uncertainties surrounding implementation of effective climate adaptation actions. Study findings can also inform evidence-based policy and investment decision making, especially in regions where urban adaptation plans are weak or absent.

. / This study is about the on-ground implementation of sustainable farm practices supported by policies and directives that form the core of the European Union’s sustainability policy. Its goal is to identify the blockers to effective policy implementation in order to improve the approach to sustainability in the agricultural sector. Exploring ways to engage local stakeholders in farm sustainability has been central to create a holistic understanding about the processes that drive practices in agriculture systems, and the extent to which these processes can be transformed. Sustainability in agriculture is a broad topic, hence this study focuses on one segment of sustainability namely the use and management of water resources in irrigated agriculture. The study’s final recommendations to improve policy design and interventions, however, are general and apply to the implementation of all sustainable farm practices. Practical effectiveness of EU policies and directives for sustainable agriculture is constrained by: a lack of evaluating criteria to measure policy impact and communicate progress; incentives for growers to commit to more than the minimum required, and continuous local renegotiation of proposed measures and programmes which have contributed to a weakening of initial policy proposals. This study demonstrates that policies serve different purposes for different people at different social and political levels. However, sustainability comes into practice on the farm, which is why farmers’ perspective about a sustainable agricultural sector and the proposed voluntary and mandatory policy measures is so important. Farmers’ perspectives are still missing elements in policy design for sustainable agriculture. Co-developing and testing technologies that are meant to deliver sustainability in practice, as well as farm decision support tools, are critical in engaging farmers and other local stakeholders in sustainability and to transform embedded practices and institutions. Collaboration across disciplines is also important to address environmental goals and farmers’ needs in order to extract substantial environmental benefits as well as a long term commitment from land managers in sustainability. This study shows that there are many insights to be gained and learnings to be extracted from scrutinizing policy interventions. It raises awareness about improving policy implementation by providing practical examples from case studies conducted in Spain and in Italy. These insights encourage the use of interdisciplinary approaches, including socio-technical approaches, for an integrated people and technology based perspective on natural resource management to better policy design and interventions and make sustainable agriculture real.

This thesis concentrates on wiki systems as an ICT tool of knowledge management. Thesis is divided into two general parts - the first deals with the theoretical concepts such as: data, information, knowledge or community. Doctoral thesis reflects the way in which these terms are understood in different scientific disciplines, especially knowledge management. The second part deals with wiki systems, which are viewed not just in general and theoretical level, but they are also approached practically. The work provides an analysis of possible uses of wiki as a tool for knowledge management in the organization. At the end of the work there are published case studies of specific wiki system implementations (both local and from abroad) to illustrate the work's conclusions. The work has confirmed that the wiki system can be successfully used as a tool of knowledge management. The output of the work on the theoretical level is author's "circular model of know-ledge"; while on the practical level the output is determination of suitable areas for dep-loyment of wiki systems in the organization. In the end author quotes a number of case studies (both foreign and local) wiki systems implementation.

O número de estrangeiros interessados em aprender o português tem aumentado na última década, em consequência do crescimento da economia brasileira e do aumento da presença de multinacionais no Brasil. Esse fato se mostra pelo aumento do número de inscritos no exame de proficiência de português CELPE-Bras e de estudantes estrangeiros que ingressam nas universidades brasileiras. A maioria destes estudantes são de língua espanhola e precisam escrever seus textos acadêmicos em português. A proximidade das línguas portuguesa e espanhola apresenta-se tanto como um elemento positivo quanto como um obstáculo, pois oculta as diferenças e impede o domínio da língua portuguesa, mantendo, na fala e na escrita em português, interferências do espanhol. O maior número destas interferências acontece no nível lexical. Uma das alternativas para tratar os problemas em textos de aprendizes de uma língua é o emprego de ferramentas computacionais de pós-processamento e de suporte ao processo de escrita. No entanto, o número de recursos e ferramentas disponíveis para auxiliar a escrita de português como língua estrangeira é muito reduzido, diferentemente do cenário para a língua inglesa. Esta pesquisa propôs a criação de recursos e ferramentas de suporte à escrita no nível lexical como primeiro passo para a melhoria da qualidade linguística dos textos em português produzidos pelos nativos do espanhol. A Linguística de Córpus foi utilizada como metodologia para viabilizar a análise de erros de aprendizes. As ferramentas de auxílio utilizam léxicos bilíngues compilados por meio de técnicas de tradução, baseadas em alinhamento de córpus paralelos. Dado o número insuficiente de erros previamente anotados para suportar a detecção automática de erros, esta pesquisa propôs métodos baseados em modelo língua e na geração artificial de erros. A geração de erros artificiais se apresentou como um método eficiente para predizer erros lexicais dos aprendizes. As contribuições obtidas com a metodologia baseada em tradução automática para gerar auxílios à escrita entre línguas próximas, considerando a análise de erros lexicais extraídos de córpus de aprendizes, foco desta pesquisa, são: (i) do ponto de vista teórico, o levantamento e quantificação dos principais problemas causados pelas marcas do espanhol, deixadas nos textos acadêmicos em português escritos por nativos do espanhol; (ii) do ponto de vista de geração automática de recursos linguísticos, léxicos bilíngues de cognatos e falsos cognatos; léxico bilíngue de marcadores discursivos; léxico de expressões formulaicas que aparecem nos textos científicos e léxico bilíngue de verbos relacionados com pesquisa científica em português e, (iii) do ponto de vista da criação de subsídios para a área de auxílio à escrita científica, o projeto e avaliação de auxílios para suportar a escrita científica em português por nativos do espanhol. / In the last decade, as a result of Brazilian economic growth and the increased presence of multinationals in the country, the interest of foreigners in learning Portuguese rose. This fact is also noted by the number of students enrolled in the Portuguese proficiency exam, CELPE-Bras and the number of foreigner students entering at the Brazilian Universities. Most of these students are Spanish speakers and need to write the dissertation or thesis in Portuguese. The similarity between Portuguese and Spanish is considered as a positive element that often becomes an obstacle, because similarity and closeness frequently conceal differences and hinder learners from mastering the Portuguese, keeping interferences from their native Spanish both when speaking and writing in Portuguese. The largest number of this interference occurs at the lexical level. One alternative to deal with errors of second language learners is the use of computational post-edit tools and tools to support the writing process. However, the number of resources and tools available to help improve Portuguese writing as a foreign language is very small, unlike the scenario into English. This research proposed the creation of resources and writing support tools at the lexical level as a first step to improving the linguistic quality of the texts produced by Portuguese native Spanish. Corpus linguistics was used as a methodology to enable the learners error analysis. The writing support tools use bilingual lexicons compiled through translation techniques based on alignment parallel corpus. Given the insufficient number of errors previously annotated to support automatic error detection, this research proposed methods based on language model and artificial generation of errors. The generation of artificial errors introduced himself as an efficient method for predicting lexical errors of learners. The contributions obtained with the methodology based on automatic translation to generate written supports between similar languages, considering lexical error, extracted by the analysis of learners corpus, focus of this research are: (i) the theoretical point of view, the survey and quantification of the main problems caused by the Spanish marks, left in the academic texts written in Portuguese by native Spanish; (ii) the automatic generation of language resources point of view, bilingual lexicons of cognates and false cognates; bilingual lexicon of discourse markers; bilingual lexicon of formulaic expressions that appear in scientific texts and bilingual lexicon of verbs related to scientific research in Portuguese and, (iii) the point of view of creating subsidies for the area of support scientific writing, design and evaluation of aid to support scientific writing in Portuguese by native Spanish speakers.