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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Engineering 2019 / Successful adoption of new technologies is critical for the improvement of efficiency and the enhancement of health and safety in South African mining industry operations. However, the process of new digital technology adoption in the South African mining industry has been slow and difficult. This research is aimed at addressing some of the problems associated with the process. As part of this research, a new blueprint has been developed to guide the commissioning entity through the entire process of new digital technology adoption and installation. The new blueprint will provide capability to monitor the quality of the work during adoption, as well as assessment of the outcome of the adoption by measuring the level of compliance for every activity performed by the commissioning entity during the adoption. The reliability of the new blueprint was verified by assessing the performance of the Wits Mining Institute (WMI) in its installation project of the Schauenburg system. The outcome of the new blueprint verification reveals poor planning and inadequate preparation during the installation of this project. The outcome also indicates that application of the new blueprint will reduce the problems associated with the adoption and speed up new digital technology adoption and its installation for better functionality. / NG (2020)

Writing underlies a vast landscape of cultural artifacts, from poetry to journalism to scientific papers. While technology has been used to reduce the cognitive load of writing with accurate next word prediction, recent developments in natural language generation may prove able to go beyond predicting what we were going to write anyway, and give us new ideas relevant to a particular writing task. This proposal, of computers giving writers valuable ideas, is quite new in the history of writing tools, and has so far proven illusory. Existing systems that address story continuation, which present writers with options for the next sentence in their story, has continually found that suggested sentences are nonsensical, inconsistent with what's already written, or a deviation from the writer's intended direction. Thus, it's not understood if---and if so, how---generative language technologies can support writers with complex writing tasks. I address this challenge by focusing on more specific goals than story continuation, and demonstrate that the methods I develop generate coherent, cogent suggestions that writers are able to use in a variety of settings and writing tasks. In this thesis, I consider writing tasks that are constrained by some external expectation, such as the logic of a metaphor or the details of a technical topic, but also require creativity to write a sentence or paragraph that is novel, surprising, and engaging to read. I introduce a design space, based on the cognitive process model of writing, that reveals how constrained, creative writing tasks are not supported by current writing support tools. I then present methods, embedded in systems, to support two challenging constrained, creative writing tasks. With `Metaphoria', I present a method to aid in metaphor writing by generating metaphorical connections between two concepts. With `Sparks', I present a method to aid in science writing by generating sentences that make a connection between a technical topic and typical reader interests. These systems demonstrate that computation has the power to support constrained, creative tasks, and outline how they aid in inspiration, translation, and perspective. Finally, through a qualitative study with a range of creative writers, I uncover the social dynamics that modulate how writers respond to such generative writing support. Collectively, this work demonstrates new methods for using technology to support creative writers, and presents theoretical results that describe both how and why writers make use of such technologies.

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The concern of this thesis is the role technology plays in organizational change. The specific issue addressed is the introduction of personal computers (PCs) into work organizations. A review of the literature suggested that both sociological and technological factors must be taken into account when discussing technological change. PC Week magazine contains strategies which various companies used in introducing personal computers. A thematic content analysis of PC Week was carried out to test certain hypotheses. The articles were also treated as contemporary historical documents. Questions addressed included whether PCs contribute to centralization or decentralization in organizations, whether PCs differ in their organizational effects to mainframes, whether PCs are more successful in some types of organizations than in others, and whether an "opinion leader" plays a significant role in the introduction of PCs. From the content analysis and the texts, it was concluded that technology did not determine organizational change. While technology determined the limits of certain tools (PCs), organizational goals determined how PCs were implemented. Limited support was drawn for the suggestion that an opinion leader played a role in PC introduction. Little support was gained for the remaining hypotheses. / Master of Science

This dissertation describes a geometrical optics model to predict propagation in buildings for personal communication system (PCS) design. Background on the growth of wireless communications is given, and the importance of accurate propagation models is discussed. The peculiarities of propagation in mobile and portable radio environments, particularly multipath propagation and its effects on transmitted signals, are described. Current in-building propagation models are presented and the progression from statistical in the presence of scattering bodies are merged with a site-specific description of the propagation environment to improve upon the accuracy of existing propagation models. A geometrical optics ray tracing model for predicting propagation based on a building blueprint representation is developed for a transmitter and receiver located on the same floor inside a building. The measured and predicted propagation data are presented as power delay profiles that contain the amplitude and arrival time of individual multipath components. Measured and predicted power delay profiles are compared on a location-by-location basis to provide both a qualitative and a quantitative measure of the model accuracy. The concept of effective building material properties is developed.and the effective building material properties are derived for two dissimilar buildings based upon comparing measured and predicted power delay profiles. Time delay comparison shows that the amplitudes of many significant multipath components are accurately predicted by this model. Path loss between a transmitter and receiver is predicted-with a standard deviation of less than 5 dB. Ideas for improving the accuracy and expanding the applicability of the models applied here to wireless in-building propagation prediction are suggested. / Ph. D.