Being able to keep track of ones assets is a very useful thing, from avoiding losing ones keys or phone to being able to find the needed equipment in a busy hospital or on a construction site. The area of localization is actively evolving to find the best ways to accurately track objects and devices in an energy efficient manner, at any range, and in any type of environment. This thesis focuses on the last aspect of maintaining accurate localization regardless of environment. For radio frequency based systems, challenging environments containing many obstacles, e.g., indoor or urban areas, have a detrimental effect on the measurements used for positioning, making them deceptive. In this work, a method for correcting range measurements is proposed for a narrowband sub-GHz radio frequency based localization system using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Time-of-Flight (ToF) measurements for positioning. Three different machine learning models were implemented: a linear regressor, a least squares support vector machine regressor and a gaussian process regressor. They were compared in their ability to predict the true range between devices based on raw range measurements. Achieved was a 69.96 % increase in accuracy compared to uncorrected ToF estimates and a 88.74 % increase in accuracy compared to RSSI estimates. When the corrected range estimates were used for positioning with a trilateration algorithm using least squares estimation, a 67.84 % increase in accuracy was attained compared to positioning with uncorrected range estimates. This shows that this is an effective method of improving range estimates to facilitate more accurate positioning. / Att kunna hålla reda på var ens tillgångar befinner sig kan vara mycket användbart, från att undvika att ens nycklar eller telefon tappas bort till att kunna hitta utrustningen man behöver i ett myllrande sjukhus eller på en byggarbetsplats. Området av lokalisering utvecklas aktivt för att hitta de bästa metoderna och teknologierna för att med precision kunna spåra fysiska objekt på ett energieffektivt sätt, på vilken räckvidd som helst, och i vilken miljö som helst. Detta arbete fokuserar på den sista aspekten av att uppnå precis positionering oavsett miljö. För radiofrekvensbaserade system har utmanande miljöer med många fysiska hinder som till exempel inomhus och stadsområden en negativ effekt på de mätningar som används för positionering, vilket gör dem vilseledande. I detta arbete föreslås en metod för att korrigera avståndsmätningar i ett narrowband sub-GHz radiofrekvensbaserat lokaliseringssystem som använder Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)- och Time-of-Flight (ToF)-mätningar för positionering. Tre olika maskininlärningsmodeller har implementerats: en linear regressor, en least squares support vector machine regressor och en gaussian process regressor. Dessa jämfördes i sin förmåga att förutspå det sanna avståndet mellan enheter baserat på råa avståndsmätningar. De korrigerade avståndsmätningarna uppnådde 69.96 % högre nogrannhet jämfört med okorrigerade ToF-uppskattningar och 88.74 % högre nogrannhet jämfört med RSSI-uppskattningar. Avståndsuppskattningarna användes för positionering med trilateration och minsta kvadratmetoden. De korrigerade uppskattningarna gav 67.84 % mer precis positionering jämfört med de okorrigerde uppskattningarna. Detta visar att detta är en effektiv metod förbättra avståndsuppskattningarna för att i sin tur bidra till mer exakt positionering.

In the Canadian Prairies recurring droughts are one of the realities which can have significant economical, environmental, and social impacts. For example, droughts in 1997 and 2001 cost over $100 million on different sectors. Drought frequency analysis is a technique for analyzing how frequently a drought event of a given magnitude may be expected to occur. In this study the state of the science related to frequency analysis of droughts is reviewed and studied. The main contributions of this thesis include development of a model in Matlab which uses the qualities of Fuzzy C-Means (FCMs) clustering and corrects the formed regions to meet the criteria of effective hydrological regions. In FCM each site has a degree of membership in each of the clusters. The algorithm developed is flexible to get number of regions and return period as inputs and show the final corrected clusters as output for most case scenarios. While drought is considered a bivariate phenomena with two statistical variables of duration and severity to be analyzed simultaneously, an important step in this study is increasing the complexity of the initial model in Matlab to correct regions based on L-comoments statistics (as apposed to L-moments). Implementing a reasonably straightforward approach for bivariate drought frequency analysis using bivariate L-comoments and copula is another contribution of this study. Quantile estimation at ungauged sites for return periods of interest is studied by introducing two new classes of neural network and machine learning: Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Support Vector Machine Regression (SVM-R). These two techniques are selected based on their good reviews in literature in function estimation and nonparametric regression. The functionalities of RBF and SVM-R are compared with traditional nonlinear regression (NLR) method. As well, a nonlinear regression with regionalization method in which catchments are first regionalized using FCMs is applied and its results are compared with the other three models. Drought data from 36 natural catchments in the Canadian Prairies are used in this study. This study provides a methodology for bivariate drought frequency analysis that can be practiced in any part of the world.

In the Canadian Prairies recurring droughts are one of the realities which can have significant economical, environmental, and social impacts. For example, droughts in 1997 and 2001 cost over $100 million on different sectors. Drought frequency analysis is a technique for analyzing how frequently a drought event of a given magnitude may be expected to occur. In this study the state of the science related to frequency analysis of droughts is reviewed and studied. The main contributions of this thesis include development of a model in Matlab which uses the qualities of Fuzzy C-Means (FCMs) clustering and corrects the formed regions to meet the criteria of effective hydrological regions. In FCM each site has a degree of membership in each of the clusters. The algorithm developed is flexible to get number of regions and return period as inputs and show the final corrected clusters as output for most case scenarios. While drought is considered a bivariate phenomena with two statistical variables of duration and severity to be analyzed simultaneously, an important step in this study is increasing the complexity of the initial model in Matlab to correct regions based on L-comoments statistics (as apposed to L-moments). Implementing a reasonably straightforward approach for bivariate drought frequency analysis using bivariate L-comoments and copula is another contribution of this study. Quantile estimation at ungauged sites for return periods of interest is studied by introducing two new classes of neural network and machine learning: Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Support Vector Machine Regression (SVM-R). These two techniques are selected based on their good reviews in literature in function estimation and nonparametric regression. The functionalities of RBF and SVM-R are compared with traditional nonlinear regression (NLR) method. As well, a nonlinear regression with regionalization method in which catchments are first regionalized using FCMs is applied and its results are compared with the other three models. Drought data from 36 natural catchments in the Canadian Prairies are used in this study. This study provides a methodology for bivariate drought frequency analysis that can be practiced in any part of the world.

Human activities have increased the concentration of CO2 into the atmosphere, thus it has caused global warming. Construction equipment are semi-stationary machines and spend at least 30% of its life time during idling. The majority of the construction equipment is diesel powered and emits toxic emission into the environment. In this work, the idling will be investigated through adopting several statistical regressions models to quantify the fuel consumption of construction equipment during idling. The regression models which are studied in this work: Multivariate Linear Regression (ML-R), Support Vector Machine Regression (SVM-R), Gaussian Process regression (GP-R), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Partial Least Square Regression (PLS-R) and Principal Components Regression (PC-R). Findings show that pre-processing has a significant impact on the goodness of the prediction of the explanatory data analysis in this field. Moreover, through mean centering and application of the max-min scaling feature, the accuracy of models increased remarkably. ANN and GP-R had the highest accuracy (99%), PLS-R was the third accurate model (98% accuracy), ML-R was the fourth-best model (97% accuracy), SVM-R was the fifth-best (73% accuracy) and the lowest accuracy was recorded for PC-R (83% accuracy). The second part of this project estimated the CO2 emission based on the fuel used and by adopting the NONROAD2008 model.  Keywords: