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Decision making theory with geographic information systems support
Decisions are made with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency and are influenced by a myriad of internal and external forces. Decision Support Systems (DSS) software can effectively aid decision making through processing the facts and producing meaningful outputs for use by the person or team in making the final choice. Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a form of DSS, are very effective when locational data are present. This thesis talks about using GIS software in decision making procedures
It’s about time:Essays on temporal anchoring devices
This thesis seeks to shed light on the ubiquitous, yet rarely studied, phenomenon temporal anchoring devices (TADs). TADs are short references to time often accompanied by a descriptor, such as “since year”. They are used, for instance, on organizations’ buildings, products, logos, etc. In the introduction, chapter 1, TADs are explored conceptually, both their meanings and origins. Chapter 2 shows that TADs cross organizational field boundaries and are used by varying organizations. Chapter 3 focuses on the use of TADs over 200-years by three chocolate producers. Not only do the studied organizations vary in their use of TADs, from almost no use to very extensive use, the use of TADs over time by these organizations is not stable. Chapter 4 focuses on how TADs affect audience perception of the organization, with the use of two experiments. The results of the first experiment that TAD are noticed and capture the attention of observers. The results of the second experiment show that each TAD, whether referring to the past, present, or future, affects audience members’ perception of an organization. Overall this thesis contributes to the literatures on organizational symbolism, history, and temporality
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Shifting the Perspectival Landscape: Methods for Encoding, Identifying, and Selecting Perspectives
This dissertation explores the semantics and pragmatics of perspectival expressions. Perspective, or point-of-view, encompasses an individual’s thoughts, perceptions, and location. Many expressions in natural language have components of their meanings that shift depending on whose perspective they are evaluated against. In this dissertation, I explore two sets of questions relating to perspective sensitivity. The first set of questions relate to how perspective is encoded in the semantics of perspectival expressions. The second set of questions relate to how conversation participants treat perspectival expressions: the speaker’s selection of a perspective and the listener’s identification of the speaker’s perspective.
In Part I, I explore the landscape of perspectival expressions by exploring different semantic mechanisms for encoding the perspective holder. In Chapter 2, I introduce key properties of perspectival expressions through a discussion of one canonical perspectival expression: the motion verb come. In Chapter 3, I discuss the various ways of encoding the perspective holder in the semantics of perspectival expressions. I contrast the predictions of these approaches and lay out a set of diagnostics to guide the analysis of perspectival expressions.
I present two case studies using this set of diagnostics. In Chapter 3, I probe the semantics of the well-studied perspectival expression come in American English, and argue in favor of a perspective-anaphoric analysis. In Chapter 4, I focus on an expression that has not previously been recognized as perspectival, the temporal adverbial tomorrow. Through a series of experimental studies, I make the case that tomorrow is perspective-sensitive for some American English speakers, and narrow the hypothesis space for a perspectival account of tomorrow. I sketch a perspective-anaphoric semantics for tomorrow, while leaving open the possibility of a logophoric analysis. I conclude Part I with a discussion of how perspectival expressions fit into the broader landscape of context sensitivity.
In Part II, I turn to a fresh set of questions about perspective: how do conversation participants select and identify perspectives? In Chapter 6, I discuss previous models of perspective production and comprehension, and factors that affect these processes, such as a bias towards the perspective of the speaker. I argue that although the selection and identification of perspective holders may be guided by simple heuristics some of the time, certain cases require a more involved reasoning system. In Chapters 7 and 8, I develop models of perspectival reasoning in comprehension and production rooted in a leading framework for pragmatic reasoning: the Rational Speech Acts framework.
In Chapter 7, I propose and implement a computational model of perspective identification. I posit that listeners reason jointly about the speaker’s intended message and their adopted perspective using a mental model of the speaker’s production process. I present two comprehension studies that support a key assumption of the proposed Perspectival Rational Speech Acts model: that listeners reason simultaneously over multiple perspectives to better understand the speaker’s intended meaning.
In Chapter 8, I propose a model of perspective selection that mirrors the Perspectival Rational Speech Acts comprehension model. I posit that speakers reason about the listener’s comprehension process in order to pick a perspective and an utterance that will maximize their chance of being understood. However, the results of the production study do not match the model’s predictions. I conclude with a discussion of the challenges that the attested asymmetry between speaker and listeners poses for the Rational Speech Acts framework.
The main contributions of this dissertation are as follows: (1) a comparison of four approaches to encoding the semantics of perspective, leading to a diagnostic toolkit for perspectival expressions; (2) an experimental case study that employs the diagnostics to identify a novel perspectival expression; (3) an implemented computational model of perspective identification, supported by experimental evidence; and (4) an implemented computational model of perspective selection, which reveals further challenges in perspective production
Scattered Governance: A Typology for Toronto’s Business Improvement Areas
Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) - or Business Improvement Districts as they are known in the United States - are self-taxing local bodies that play an important role in urban governance. Toronto, which was the location of the first BIA in the world, has one of the highest number of BIAs in North America, yet little is known about how these bodies differ across the city. Using a mixed methodological approach that includes geographic information systems mapping, quantitative analysis, and semi-structured interview data, this chapter addresses this gap in knowledge by offering a typology of Toronto BIAs, looking at the metrics of size, walkability/transit score, budgets, and year of formation. The study concludes that there are four kinds of BIAs in Toronto scattered unevenly across the city: Big City Builders, Old Local Stewards, Big Industrial Powerhouses, and Emerging Small Centres. The paper sets out the unique attributes of each kind of BIA, some preliminary conclusions as to how Toronto’s BIA types differ from those in other jurisdictions, and points at the explosive creation of Emerging Small Centres BIAs following Toronto\u27s amalgamation
Design with forms as well as patterns
The research investigates How can the morphological approach in combination with the pattern language approach assist urban designers to achieve historical continuity in urban design both on theory and application levels.
This research overviews the developments and applications of the two approaches worldwide with a special emphasis on the Dutch school. The Dutch morphological reduction technique and the Dutch interpretation of a pattern language are used in the case study—Wuhan, a Chinese city—to study the transformation of urban form and lifestyle. The multi-scalar historical morphological analysis results in an atlas that consists of four series of analytical maps on three levels of scale as well as 13 spatial structuring elements of the city; whereas the public life study results in a pattern book consisting of 20 individual patterns and three pattern languages. The practical implications and relevance for -- the design of -- the future of the city are discussed.
The research is set up in a systematic and symmetrical manner for comparison of and reflection on the two approaches. It concludes that:
The morphological approach can be used to interpret first space (perceived space) and convey its information into second space (conceived space), whereas the pattern language approach can be used to interpret third space (lived space) and convey its information into second space (conceived space).
The morphological approach has a tendency to work from large scale to small scale and the pattern language approach tends to be built up from small scale to large scale, whereas urban design works with multiple scales at the same time.
The morphological approach and the pattern language approach provide means for urban designers to systematically recognize historical layers so as to distil the meaning in the physical and non-physical contexts respectively. Consirately adding another layer that contains the contemporary meaning (design intervention) to these recognized layers is the way to pass down and simultaneously generate incremental change in the tradition of the context. This results in historical continuity and thus in permanence in urban design.
The morphological approach, the pattern language approach, and urban design are processes in themselves and can be combined into one integrated process.
The morphological approach, the pattern language approach and urban design are characterized by reduction, abstraction, interpretation, and communication.
Some properties of the two approaches can be seen as counterparts because the roles these properties play in the design process tend to be similar:
Individual homogeneous areas vs Individual patterns;
Structural homogeneous areas vs Anchoring points/ Structuring patterns;
Secondary connections in homogeneous areas vs Linkages between patterns;
? / Typology of homogeneous areas vs Clusters of patterns
Design with forms as well as patterns
The research investigates How can the morphological approach in combination with the pattern language approach assist urban designers to achieve historical continuity in urban design both on theory and application levels.
This research overviews the developments and applications of the two approaches worldwide with a special emphasis on the Dutch school. The Dutch morphological reduction technique and the Dutch interpretation of a pattern language are used in the case study—Wuhan, a Chinese city—to study the transformation of urban form and life style. The multi-scalar historical morphological analysis results in an atlas that consists of four series of analytical maps on three levels of scale as well as 13 spatial structuring elements of the city; whereas the public life study results in a pattern book consisting of 20 individual patterns and three pattern languages. The practical implications and relevance for -- the design of -- the future of the city are discussed.
The research is set up in a systematic and symmetrical manner for comparison of and reflection on the two approaches. It concludes that:
The morphological approach can be used to interpret first space (perceived space) and convey its information into second space (conceived space), whereas the pattern language approach can be used to interpret third space (lived space) and convey its information into second space (conceived space).
The morphological approach has a tendency to work from large scale to small scale and the pattern language approach tends to be built up from small scale to large scale, whereas urban design works with multiple scales at the same time.
The morphological approach and the pattern language approach provide means for urban designers to systematically recognize historical layers so as to distill the meaning in the physical and non-physical contexts respectively. Consirately adding another layer that contains the contemporary meaning (design intervention) to these recognized layers is the way to pass down and simultaneously generate incremental change in the tradition of the context. This results in historical continuity and thus in permanence in urban design.
The morphological approach, the pattern language approach, and urban design are processes in themselves and can be combined into one integrated process.
The morphological approach, the pattern language approach and urban design are characterized by reduction, abstraction, interpretation, and communication.
Some properties of the two approaches can be seen as counterparts, because the roles these properties play in the design process tend to be similar:
–– Individual homogeneous areas vs Individual patterns;
–– Structural homogeneous areas vs Anchoring points/ Structuring patterns;
–– Secondary connections in homogeneous areas vs Linkages between patterns;
–– ? / Typology of homogeneous areas vs Clusters of pattern
The Weirdest People in the World?
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers—often implicitly—assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species—frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, selfconcepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior—hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.external validity, population variability, experiments, cross-cultural research, culture, human universals, generalizability, evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology, behavioral economics
The impact of 3D virtual environments with different levels of realism on route learning: a focus on age-based differences
With technological advancements, it has become notably easier to create virtual environments (VEs) depicting the real world with high fidelity and realism. These VEs offer some attractive use cases for navigation studies looking into spatial cognition. However, such photorealistic VEs, while attractive, may complicate the route learning process as they may overwhelm users with the amount of information they contain. Understanding how much and what kind of photorealistic information is relevant to people at which point on their route and while they are learning a route can help define how to design virtual environments that better support spatial learning. Among the users who may be overwhelmed by too much information, older adults represent a special interest group for two key reasons: 1) The number of people over 65 years old is expected to increase to 1.5 billion by 2050 (World Health Organization, 2011); 2) cognitive abilities decline as people age (Park et al., 2002). The ability to independently navigate in the real world is an important aspect of human well-being. This fact has many socio-economic implications, yet age-related cognitive decline creates difficulties for older people in learning their routes in unfamiliar environments, limiting their independence. This thesis takes a user-centered approach to the design of visualizations for assisting all people, and specifically older adults, in learning routes while navigating in a VE. Specifically, the objectives of this thesis are threefold, addressing the basic dimensions of:
❖ Visualization type as expressed by different levels of realism: Evaluate how much and what kind of photorealistic information should be depicted and where it should be represented within a VE in a navigational context. It proposes
visualization design guidelines for the design of VEs that assist users in effectively encoding visuospatial information.
❖ Use context as expressed by route recall in short- and long-term: Identify the implications that different information types (visual, spatial, and visuospatial) have over short- and long-term route recall with the use of 3D VE designs varying in levels of realism.
❖ User characteristics as expressed by group differences related to aging, spatial abilities, and memory capacity: Better understand how visuospatial information is encoded and decoded by people in different age groups, and of
different spatial and memory abilities, particularly while learning a route in 3D VE designs varying in levels of realism.
In this project, the methodology used for investigating the topics outlined above was a set of controlled lab experiments nested within one. Within this experiment, participants’ recall accuracy for various visual, spatial, and visuospatial elements on the route was evaluated using three visualization types that varied in their amount of
photorealism. These included an Abstract, a Realistic, and a Mixed VE (see Figure 2), for a number of route recall tasks relevant to navigation. The Mixed VE is termed “mixed” because it includes elements from both the Abstract and the Realistic VEs, balancing the amount of realism in a deliberate manner (elaborated in Section 3.5.2). This feature is
developed within this thesis. The tested recall tasks were differentiated based on the type of information being assessed: visual, spatial, and visuospatial (elaborated in Section 3.6.1). These tasks were performed by the participants both immediately after experiencing a drive-through of a route in the three VEs and a week after that; thus, addressing short- and long-term memory, respectively. Participants were counterbalanced for their age, gender, and expertise while their spatial abilities and visuospatial memory capacity were controlled with standardized psychological tests. The results of the experiments highlight the importance of all three investigated dimensions for successful route learning with VEs. More specifically, statistically significant differences in participants’ recall accuracy were observed for:
1) the visualization type, highlighting the value of balancing the amount of photorealistic information presented in VEs while also demonstrating the positive and negative effects of abstraction and realism in VEs on route learning;
2) the recall type, highlighting nuances and peculiarities across the recall of visual, spatial, and visuospatial information in the short- and long-term; and,
3) the user characteristics, as expressed by age differences, but also by spatial abilities and visuospatial memory capacity, highlighting the importance of considering the user type, i.e., for whom the visualization is customized.
The original and unique results identified from this work advance the knowledge in GIScience, particularly in geovisualization, from the perspective of the “cognitive design” of visualizations in two distinct ways: (i) understanding the effects that visual realism has—as presented in VEs—on route learning, specifically for people of different age
groups and with different spatial abilities and memory capacity, and (ii) proposing empirically validated visualization design guidelines for the use of photorealism in VEs for efficient recall of visuospatial information during route learning, not only for shortterm but also for long-term recall in younger and older adults
Salford postgraduate annual research conference (SPARC) 2012 proceedings
These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2012 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC). They reflect the breadth and diversity of research interests showcased at the conference, at which over 130 researchers from Salford, the North West and other UK universities presented their work. 21 papers are collated here from the humanities, arts, social sciences, health, engineering, environment and life sciences, built environment and business
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