Copula Based Population Synthesis and Big Data Driven Performance Measurement

Transportation agencies all over the country are facing fiscal shortages due to the increasing costs of management and maintenance of facilities. The political reluctance to increase gas taxes, the primary source of revenue for many government transportation agencies, along with the improving fuel efficiency of automobiles sold to consumers, only exacerbate the financial dire straits. The adoption of electric vehicles threatens to completely stop the inflow of money into federal, state and regional agencies. Consequently, expansion of the network and infrastructure is slowly being replaced by a more proactive approach to managing the use of existing facilities. The required insights to manage the network more efficiently is also partly due to a massive increase in the type and volume of available data. These data are paving the way for network-wide Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which promises to maximize utilization of current facilities. The waves of revolutions overtaking the usual business affairs of transportation agencies have prompted the development and application of various analytical tools, models and and procedures to transportation. Contributions to this growth of analysis techniques are documented in this dissertation. There are two main domains of transportation: demand and supply, which need to be simultaneously managed to effectively push towards optimal use of resources, facilities, and to minimize negative impacts like time wasted in delays, environmental pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. The two domains are quite distinct and require specialized solutions to the problems. This dissertation documents the developed techniques in two sections, addressing the two domains of demand and supply. In the first section, a copula based approach is demonstrated to produce a reliable and accurate synthetic population which is essential to estimate the demand correctly. The second section deals with big data analytics using simple models and fast algorithms to produce results in real-time. The techniques developed target short-term traffic forecasting, linking of multiple disparate datasets to power niche analytics, and quickly computing accurate measures of highway network performance to inform decisions made by facility operators in real-time. The analyses presented in this dissertation target many core aspects of transportation science, and enable the shared goal of providing safe, efficient and equitable service to travelers. Synthetic population in transportation is used primarily to estimate transportation demand from Activity Based Modeling (ABM) framework containing well-fitted behavioral and choice models. It allows accurate verification of the impacts of policies on the travel behavior of people, enabling confident implementation of policies, like setting transit fares or tolls, designed for the common benefit of many. Further accurate demand models allow for resilient and resourceful planning of new or repurposing existing infrastructure and assets. On the other hand, short-term traffic speed predictions and speed based reliable performance measures are key in providing advanced ITS, like real-time route guidance, traveler awareness, and others, geared towards minimizing time, energy and resource wastage, and maximizing user satisfaction. Merging of datasets allow transfer of data such as traffic volumes and speeds between them, allowing computation of the global and network-wide impacts and externalities of transportation, like greenhouse gas emissions, time, energy and resources consumed and wasted in traffic jams, etc

Molecular phylogeny of horseshoe crab using mitochondrial Cox1 gene as a benchmark sequence

An effort to assess the utility of 650 bp Cytochrome C oxidase subunit I (DNA barcode) gene in delineating the members horseshoe crabs (Family: xiphosura) with closely related sister taxa was made. A total of 33 sequences were extracted from National Center for Biotechnological Information (NCBI) which include horseshoe crabs, beetles, common crabs and scorpion sequences. Constructed phylogram showed beetles are closely related with horseshoe crabs than common crabs. Scorpion spp were distantly related to xiphosurans. Phylogram and observed genetic distance (GD) date were also revealed that Limulus polyphemus was closely related with Tachypleus tridentatus than with T.gigas. Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda was distantly related with L.polyphemus. The observed mean Genetic Distance (GD) value was higher in 3rd codon position in all the selected group of organisms. Among the horseshoe crabs high GC content was observed in L.polyphemus (38.32%) and lowest was observed in T.tridentatus (32.35%). We conclude that COI sequencing (barcoding) could be used in identifying and delineating evolutionary relatedness with closely related specie

Crab and cockle shells as heterogeneous catalysts in the production of biodiesel

In the present study, the waste crab and cockle shells were utilized as source of calcium oxide to transesterify palm olein into methyl esters (biodiesel). Characterization results revealed that the main component of the shells are calcium carbonate which transformed into calcium oxide upon activated above 700 °C for 2 h. Parametric studies have been investigated and optimal conditions were found to be catalyst amount, 5 wt.% and methanol/oil mass ratio, 0.5:1. The waste catalysts perform equally well as laboratory CaO, thus creating another low-cost catalyst source for producing biodiesel. Reusability results confirmed that the prepared catalyst is able to be reemployed up to five times. Statistical analysis has been performed using a Central Composite Design to evaluate the contribution and performance of the parameters on biodiesel purity

Management of Technological Innovation in Developing and Developed Countries

It is widely accepted that technology is one of the forces driving economic growth. Although more and more new technologies have emerged, various evidence shows that their performances were not as high as expected. In both academia and practice, there are still many questions about what technologies to adopt and how to manage these technologies. The 15 articles in this book aim to look into these questions. There are quite many features in this book. Firstly, the articles are from both developed countries and developing countries in Asia, Africa and South and Middle America. Secondly, the articles cover a wide range of industries including telecommunication, sanitation, healthcare, entertainment, education, manufacturing, and financial. Thirdly, the analytical approaches are multi-disciplinary, ranging from mathematical, economic, analytical, empirical and strategic. Finally, the articles study both public and private organizations, including the service industry, manufacturing industry, and governmental organizations. Given its wide coverage and multi-disciplines, the book may be useful for both academic research and practical management

Proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems: Professional Development Consortium

Collection of position statements of doctoral students and junior faculty in the Professional Development Consortium at the the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems, Tel Aviv - Yafo

Kalman filtering as a performance monitoring technique for a propensity scorecard

Propensity scorecards allow forecasting, which bank customers would like to be granted new credits in the near future, through assessing their willingness to apply for new loans. Kalman filtering can help to monitor scorecard performance. Data from successive months are used to update the baseline model. The updated scorecard is the output of the Kalman filter. There is no assumption concerning the scoring model specification and no specific estimation method is presupposed. Thus, the estimator covariance is derived from the bootstrap. The focus is on a relationship between the score and the natural logarithm of the odds for that score, which is used to determine a customer’s propensity level. The propensity levels corresponding to the baseline and updated scores are compared. That comparison allows for monitoring whether the scorecard is still up-to-date in terms of assigning the odds. The presented technique is illustrated with an example of a propensity scorecard developed on the basis of credit bureau data

Compilation of Abstracts, December 2013

NPS Class of December 2013This publication, Compilation of Abstracts, contains abstracts of unrestricted dissertations, theses, and capstone project reports submitted for the doctor of philosophy, astronautical engineer, master of arts, master of business administration, and master of science degrees for the Naval Postgraduate School’s December 2013 graduating class.http://archive.org/details/compilationofabs109456086