Orthographic Projection and the Elaboration of the Imaginary

With the development of digital technologies, orthographic projection has been slowly removed from the process of architectural design. Instead, orthographic projection drawings are increasingly utilised purely post-design in the form of technical construction documents. Yet, according to Robin Evans orthographic projection is an active agency in the formation of images, and an effective agency for the elaboration of imaginary objects. Furthermore, for Iain Fraser and Rod Henmi orthographic projection produces conceptually sophisticated constructs whose abstract representation of space allows certain aspects and relationship to be seen which may not otherwise be visible. This thesis argues that the reduced role of orthographic projection in the process of design has affected architects' ability to elaborate the imaginary. To investigate the potential of orthographic projection in the elaboration of the imaginary, this thesis expands upon Marco Frascari's written theory of technological images as a palimpsest displaying three overlapping relationships: (1) between a real artefact and the reflected or projected image of it, (2) between a real artefact and its instrumental image, and (3) between the instrumental image and its symbolic image. To expand upon this theory graphically this thesis employs a methodology of architectural drawing as research. Outlined by Clemens Steenbergen, this framework proposes three distinct forms of architectural drawing that constitute research. This thesis couples these three forms with Frascari's three overlapping relationships of a technological image: (1) The Reproduction Drawings aim to register more accurately how something is made up through a process which interprets the object of observation and incorporates it into memory. These drawings embody the first overlapping relationship of Frascari's, technological image, between a real artefact and the projected image of it. (2) Analytical Drawings reveal abstract qualities and potentials by reducing the complex compositions of the first series to their elementary geometric forms, lines and grids. These drawings embody the second overlapping relationship, between a real artefact and its instrumental image. (3) Experimental Drawings project the reproduction and analytical drawings into an existing context to expand upon or reinforce the relationships and conceptual connections formed in relation to the site in the preceding two series. The effects of these interventions are assessed and altered, ultimately leading to new concepts and new compositions. These drawings aim to elaborate imaginative relationships between buildings and architectural ideas, through a process Frascari terms a mutual measure derived from a familiar nature. These drawings embody the third and final overlapping relationship between the instrumental and its symbolic image. By extending upon Frascari's theory graphically, this thesis argues that orthographic projection remains a valuable tool in the process of design. The real artefact chosen to demonstrate the continued value of orthographic projection is Wellington's Civic Square. This site was selected as the buildings located around its formal rectilinear domain offer a heterogeneous mix of civic architecture, ranging from the strictly orthogonal Town Hall and City Gallery to the curvilinear Public Library and City Administration Building. This site offers the opportunity to test both the advantages and disadvantages of orthographic projection, for the reading of architecture and the elaboration of the imaginary, within a formally diverse existing urban environment

Arabic/Latin and Machine-printed/Handwritten Word Discrimination using HOG-based Shape Descriptor

In this paper, we present an approach for Arabic and Latin script and its type identification based onHistogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) descriptors. HOGs are first applied at word level based on writingorientation analysis. Then, they are extended to word image partitions to capture fine and discriminativedetails. Pyramid HOG are also used to study their effects on different observation levels of the image.Finally, co-occurrence matrices of HOG are performed to consider spatial information between pairs ofpixels which is not taken into account in basic HOG. A genetic algorithm is applied to select the potentialinformative features combinations which maximizes the classification accuracy. The output is a relativelyshort descriptor that provides an effective input to a Bayes-based classifier. Experimental results on a set ofwords, extracted from standard databases, show that our identification system is robust and provides goodword script and type identification: 99.07% of words are correctly classified

TweeProfiles4: a weighted multidimensional stream clustering algorithm

O aparecimento das redes sociais abriu aos utilizadores a possibilidade de facilmente partilharem as suas ideias a respeito de diferentes temas, o que constitui uma fonte de informação enriquecedora para diversos campos. As plataformas de microblogging sofreram um grande crescimento e de forma constante nos últimos anos. O Twitter é o site de microblogging mais popular, tornando-se uma fonte de dados interessante para extração de conhecimento. Um dos principais desafios na análise de dados provenientes de redes sociais é o seu fluxo, o que dificulta a aplicação de processos tradicionais de data mining. Neste sentido, a extração de conhecimento sobre fluxos de dados tem recebido um foco significativo recentemente. O TweeProfiles é a uma ferramenta de data mining para análise e visualização de dados do Twitter sobre quatro dimensões: espacial (a localização geográfica do tweet), temporal (a data de publicação do tweet), de conteúdo (o texto do tweet) e social (o grafo dos relacionamentos). Este é um projeto em desenvolvimento que ainda possui muitos aspetos que podem ser melhorados. Uma das recentes melhorias inclui a substituição do algoritmo de clustering original, o qual não suportava o fluxo contínuo dos dados, por um método de streaming. O objetivo desta dissertação passa pela continuação do desenvolvimento do TweeProfiles. Em primeiro lugar, será proposto um novo algoritmo de clustering para fluxos de dados com o objetivo de melhorar o existente. Para esse efeito será desenvolvido um algoritmo incremental com suporte para fluxos de dados multi-dimensionais. Esta abordagem deve permitir ao utilizador alterar dinamicamente a importância relativa de cada dimensão do processo de clustering. Adicionalmente, a avaliação empírica dos resultados será alvo de melhoramento através da identificação e implementação de medidas adequadas de avaliação dos padrões extraídos. O estudo empírico será realizado através de tweets georreferenciados obtidos pelo SocialBus.The emergence of social media made it possible for users to easily share their thoughts on different topics, which constitutes a rich source of information for many fields. Microblogging platforms experienced a large and steady growth over the last few years. Twitter is the most popular microblogging site, making it an interesting source of data for pattern extraction. One of the main challenges of analyzing social media data is its continuous nature, which makes it hard to use traditional data mining. Therefore, mining stream data has also received a lot of attention recently.TweeProfiles is a data mining tool for analyzing and visualizing Twitter data over four dimensions: spatial (the location of the tweet), temporal (the timestamp of the tweet), content (the text of the tweet) and social (relationship graph). This is an ongoing project which still has many aspects that can be improved. For instance, it was recently improved by replacing the original clustering algorithm which could not handle the continuous flow of data with a streaming method. The goal of this dissertation is to continue the development of TweeProfiles. First, the stream clustering process will be improved by proposing a new algorithm. This will be achieved by developing an incremental algorithm with support for multi-dimensional streaming data. Moreover, it should make it possible for the user to dynamically change the relative importance of each dimension in the clustering. Additionally, the empirical evaluation of the results will also be improved.Suitable measures to evaluate the extracted patterns will be identified and implemented. An empirical study will be done using data consisting of georeferenced tweets from SocialBus

Designing Sustainable Landscapes: Modeling Urban Growth

1. Urban growth [update under development] -- This document describes how we model urban growth

Self adapting smart electrical grid

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on July 30, 2014Thesis advisor: Vijay KumarVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 55-56)Thesis (M. S.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2014Following the invention of electricity the electrical grid system was one of the biggest achievements of the twentieth century. It has been responsible for delivering power to millions of homes and businesses. As the demand for power increases due to the continued modernization of our society the strain on the current power grid is increasing at a steady pace. Since 1982 the demand for electricity has surpassed transmission growth by 25% each year, in essence we are using up more resource then we are generating, [15]. This has led to the system showing signs of weakness in the form of Blackouts. There have been 5 blackouts in the past 40 years out of which 3 of them have occurred in the last 9 years, [15]. At the same time requirements of more environmentally friendly power sources is supplying additional engineering challenges. Case in point, the population of US just accounts for 4% of the world's population but it is responsible for generating 25% of the greenhouse gasses that are currently emitted with the electrical grid system being one of the biggest contributors. In its present state the electrical grid system is also highly inefficient and wastes precious natural resources used to generate this power. If only the grid efficiency is increased by 5% that would be equivalent to removing greenhouse gas emission from 53 million cars, [15]. Ultimately the thing that directly affects consumers is the dollar amount that they pay for this electricity, which has also doubled over the past couple of decades. The present process that uses a centralized control center to balance the grid seems to be inadequate and ageing at a rapid pace. This way of power delivery is now more than 50 years old, it may have been the best that technology had to offer during that time but in today's world of rapid information exchange and distributed parallel processing its seems antiquated. This thesis proposes a solution that is dependent on a more distributed manner in which the grid can be balanced rather than relying on a single control center. This paper puts forward a communication protocol and a communication algorithm that makes the system self-adapting to changing power demands in real-time. The algorithm is designed to prioritize distribution of power locally hence cutting down on the need to transmit power over long distances while reducing the demands on the remote power generation unitsAbstract -- Illustrations -- List of abbreviations -- Acknowledgements - Introductions -- Research Problems -- Solution and Scheme -- Simulation and results -- Future Enhancements -- Conclusion -- Bibliograph

Data Analytics and Wide-Area Visualization Associated with Power Systems Using Phasor Measurements

As power system research becomes more data-driven, this study presents a framework for the analysis and visualization of phasor measurement unit (PMU) data obtained from large, interconnected systems. The proposed framework has been implemented in three steps: (a) large-scale, synthetic PMU data generation: conducted to generate research-based measurements with the inclusion of features associated with industry-grade PMU data; (b) error and event detection: conducted to assess risk levels and data accuracy of phasor measurements, and furthermore search for system events or disturbances; (c) oscillation mode visualization: conducted to present wide-area, modal information associated with large-scale power grids. To address the challenges due to real data confidentiality, the creation of realistic, synthetic PMU measurements is proposed for research use. First, data error propagation models are generated after a study of some of the issues associated with the unique time-synchronization feature of PMUs. An analysis of some of the features of real PMU data is performed to extract some of the statistics associated with data errors. Afterwards, an approach which leverages on existing, large-scale, synthetic networks to model the constantly-changing dynamics often observed in real measurements is used to generate an initial synthetic dataset. Further inclusion of PMU-related data anomalies ensures the production of realistic, synthetic measurements fit for research purposes. An application of different techniques based on a moving-window approach is suggested for use in the detection of events in real and synthetic PMU measurements. These fast methods rely on smaller time-windows to assess fewer measurement samples for events, classify disturbances into global or local events, and detect unreliable measurement sources. For large-scale power grids with complex dynamics, a distributed error analysis is proposed for the isolation of local dynamics prior any reliability assessment of PMU-obtained measurements. Finally, fundamental system dynamics which are inherent in complex, interconnected power systems are made apparent through a wide-area visualization of large-scale, electric grid oscillation modes. The approach ensures a holistic interpretation of modal information given that large amounts of modal data are often generated in these complex systems irrespective of the technique that is used