ETDs

This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.

In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.

Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.

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Implementing rapid assessment of the trail environments of arid regions: indicator development and implementation scenarios

Description
As part of the effort to streamline management efforts in protected areas worldwide and assist accountability reporting, new techniques to help guide conservation goals and monitor progress are needed. Rapid assessment is recognized as a field-level data collection technique, but each rapid assessment index is limited to only the ecoregion…

As part of the effort to streamline management efforts in protected areas worldwide and assist accountability reporting, new techniques to help guide conservation goals and monitor progress are needed. Rapid assessment is recognized as a field-level data collection technique, but each rapid assessment index is limited to only the ecoregion for which it is designed. This dissertation contributes to the existing bodies of conservation monitoring and tourism management literature in four ways: (i.) Indicators are developed for rapid assessment in arid and semi-arid regions, and the processes by which new indicators should be developed is explained; (ii.) Interpolation of surveyed data is explored as a step in the analysis process of a dataset collected through rapid assessment; (iii.) Viewshed is used to explore differences in impacts at two study sites and its underutilization in this context of conservation management is explored; and (iv.) A crowdsourcing tool to distribute the effort of monitoring trail areas is developed and deployed, and the results are used to explore this data collection's usefulness as a management tool.
ContributorsGutbrod, Elyssa (Author) / Dorn, Ronald I. (Thesis advisor) / Cerveny, Niccole (Committee member) / Whitley, David (Committee member) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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An exploratory toolkit for examining residential movement patterns at a micro scale

Description
Change of residence is a commonly occurring event in urban areas. It reflects how people interact with the social or physical environment. Thus, by exploring the movement patterns of residential changes, geographers and other scholars hope to learn more about the reasons and impacts associated with residential mobility, and to…

Change of residence is a commonly occurring event in urban areas. It reflects how people interact with the social or physical environment. Thus, by exploring the movement patterns of residential changes, geographers and other scholars hope to learn more about the reasons and impacts associated with residential mobility, and to better understand how humans and the environment mutually interact. This is especially meaningful if exploration is based on micro scale movements, since residential changes within a city or a county reflect how the urban structure and community composition interact. Local differentiation, as an inevitable feature among movements at different places, can best be examined based on data at the micro scale. Such work is meaningful, but there have not been appropriate approaches for assessment and evaluation. The majority of traditional methods concentrate more on aggregate movement data at a national scale. So, in order to facilitate research examining movement patterns from a mass of individual residential changes at a micro scale, a toolkit, implemented by computational programming, is introduced in this dissertation to integrate both exploratory as well as confirmatory methods. This toolkit also employs a creative method to explore the spatial autocorrelation of residential movements, reflecting the local effects involved in this social event. The effectiveness and efficiency of this toolkit is examined through a concrete application involving 2,363 residential movements in Franklin County, Ohio.
ContributorsLiu, Yin (Author) / Murray, Alan (Thesis advisor) / Rey, Sergio (Committee member) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Location of refueling stations for alternative fuel vehicles considering driver deviation behavior and uneven consumer demand: model, heuristics, and GIS

Description

Concerns about Peak Oil, political instability in the Middle East, health hazards, and greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels have stimulated interests in alternative fuels such as biofuels, natural gas, electricity, and hydrogen. Alternative fuels are expected to play an important role in a transition to a sustainable transportation system.…

Concerns about Peak Oil, political instability in the Middle East, health hazards, and greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels have stimulated interests in alternative fuels such as biofuels, natural gas, electricity, and hydrogen. Alternative fuels are expected to play an important role in a transition to a sustainable transportation system. One of the major barriers to the success of alternative-fuel vehicles (AFV) is the lack of infrastructure for producing, distributing, and delivering alternative fuels. Efficient methods that locate alternative-fuel refueling stations are essential in accelerating the advent of a new energy economy. The objectives of this research are to develop a location model and a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) that aims to support the decision of developing initial alternative-fuel stations. The main focus of this research is the development of a location model for siting alt-fuel refueling stations considering not only the limited driving range of AFVs but also the necessary deviations that drivers are likely to make from their shortest paths in order to refuel their AFVs when the refueling station network is sparse. To add reality and applicability of the model, the research is extended to include the development of efficient heuristic algorithms, the development of a method to incorporate AFV demand estimates into OD flow volumes, and the development of a prototype SDSS. The model and methods are tested on real-world road network data from state of Florida. The Deviation-Flow Refueling Location Model (DFRLM) locates facilities to maximize the total flows refueled on deviation paths. The flow volume is assumed to be decreasing as the deviation increases. Test results indicate that the specification of the maximum allowable deviation and specific deviation penalty functional form do have a measurable effect on the optimal locations of facilities and objective function values as well. The heuristics (greedy-adding and greedy-adding with substitution) developed here have been identified efficient in solving the DFRLM while AFV demand has a minor effect on the optimal facility locations. The prototype SDSS identifies strategic station locations by providing flexibility in combining various AFV demand scenarios. This research contributes to the literature by enhancing flow-based location models for locating alternative-fuel stations in four dimensions: (1) drivers' deviations from their shortest paths, (2) efficient solution approaches for the deviation problem, (3) incorporation of geographically uneven alt-fuel vehicle demand estimates into path-based origin-destination flow data, and (4) integration into an SDSS to help decision makers by providing solutions and insights into developing alt-fuel stations.
ContributorsKim, Jong-Geun (Author) / Kuby, Michael J (Thesis advisor) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Murray, Alan T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
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Geodesign Platforms for Node-Based Transportation Facility Location Planning

Description
Transportation infrastructure facilitates humans in moving themselves and material goods, and thereby supports the functioning of human society. Transportation planners, engineers, and decision makers in the 20th century largely excluded local stakeholders from planning processes; the resultant built environment has perpetuated inequity and social division. Transportation system planning has often…

Transportation infrastructure facilitates humans in moving themselves and material goods, and thereby supports the functioning of human society. Transportation planners, engineers, and decision makers in the 20th century largely excluded local stakeholders from planning processes; the resultant built environment has perpetuated inequity and social division. Transportation system planning has often been conducted in specialized departments with little interdisciplinary collaboration. Integration of diverse perspectives and ontologies throughout transportation planning processes can produce robust, resilient, equitable, and sustainable transportation systems. Geodesign is a framework for planning the built environment that necessarily involves voices from multiple perspectives including local stakeholders, design professionals, geographic scientists, and information technology coordinators. Geodesign uses geographic information systems to create designs that reflect stakeholder needs, values, and priorities while addressing the study area’s geographic context. Geodesign has been used primarily for land use planning and has only addressed transportation planning concerns in relation to land use.This dissertation consists of an introduction, three projects that apply the geodesign framework to transportation planning and a concluding chapter. The introduction details the rationale for this research. The first project is a systematic review of geodesign projects that address transportation systems. The review seeks to identify epistemological alignment between the geodesign framework and participatory transportation planning. The results demonstrate that geodesign comports with transportation planners’ existing practices and uses of planning support systems. The combination of geodesign and transportation planning methods for stakeholder engagement could produce a synergistic framework for transportation infrastructure planning. The second project applies geodesign to locating refueling stations for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles around Hartford, Connecticut. Network designs generated by workshop participants were compared to networks generated by optimization models. The third project applies geodesign to locating sites for micromobility hubs in Tempe, Arizona, via short-form workshop series format. Participants considered the format conducive to collaborative public participatory design. These three projects demonstrate the suitability of the geodesign framework for node-based transportation facility planning via communicative rationality. The conclusion summarizes these three projects and highlights the reproducibility of the geodesign method for node-based transportation facility location planning in other study areas.
ContributorsLopez Jaramillo, Oscar (Author) / Kuby, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Ruddell, Darren (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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The transition to alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs): an analysis of early adopters of natural gas vehicles and implications for refueling infrastructure location methods

Description
Alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) have seen increased attention as a way to reduce reliance on petroleum for transportation, but adoption rates lag behind conventional vehicles. One crucial barrier to their proliferation is the lack of a convenient refueling infrastructure, and there is not a consensus on how to locate initial…

Alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) have seen increased attention as a way to reduce reliance on petroleum for transportation, but adoption rates lag behind conventional vehicles. One crucial barrier to their proliferation is the lack of a convenient refueling infrastructure, and there is not a consensus on how to locate initial stations. Some approaches recommend placing stations near where early adopters live. An alternate group of methods places stations along busy travel routes that drivers from across the metropolitan area traverse each day. To assess which theoretical approach is most appropriate, drivers of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles in Southern California were surveyed at stations while they refueled. Through GIS analysis, results demonstrate that respondents refueled on the way between their origins and destinations ten times more often than they refueled near their home, when no station satisfied both criteria. Freeway interchanges, which carry high daily passing traffic volumes in metropolitan areas, can be appropriate locations for initial stations based on these results. Stations cannot actually be built directly at these interchange sites, so suitable locations on nearby street networks must be chosen. A network GIS method is developed to assess street network locations' ability to capture all traffic passing through 72 interchanges in greater Los Angeles, using deviation from a driver's shortest path as the metric to assess a candidate site's suitability. There is variation in the ability of these locations to capture passing traffic both within and across interchanges, but only 7% of sites near interchanges can conveniently capture all travel directions passing through the interchange, indicating that an ad hoc station location strategy is unlikely to succeed. Surveys were then conducted at CNG stations near freeway interchanges to assess how drivers perceive and access refueling stations in these environments. Through comparative analysis of drivers' perceptions of stations, consideration of their choice sets, and the observed frequency of the use of a freeway to both access and leave these stations, results indicate that initial AFV stations near freeway interchanges can play an important role in regional AFV infrastructure.
ContributorsKelley, Scott (Author) / Kuby, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Pendyala, Ram (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Sea, storms, & tourism: a case study of the hazards and vulnerabilities of Cape Cod, MA

Description
Drawing from the fields of coastal geography, political ecology, and institutions, this dissertation uses Cape Cod, MA, as a case study, to investigate how chronic and acute climate-related coastal hazards, socio-economic characteristics, and governance and decision-making interact to produce more resilient or at-risk coastal communities. GIS was used to model…

Drawing from the fields of coastal geography, political ecology, and institutions, this dissertation uses Cape Cod, MA, as a case study, to investigate how chronic and acute climate-related coastal hazards, socio-economic characteristics, and governance and decision-making interact to produce more resilient or at-risk coastal communities. GIS was used to model the impacts of sea level rise (SLR) and hurricane storm surge scenarios on natural and built infrastructure. Social, gentrification, and tourism indices were used to identify communities differentially vulnerable to coastal hazards. Semi-structured interviews with planners and decision-makers were analyzed to examine hazard mitigation planning.

The results of these assessments demonstrate there is considerable variation in coastal hazard impacts across Cape Cod towns. First, biophysical vulnerability is highly variable with the Outer Cape (e.g., Provincetown) at risk for being temporarily and/or permanently isolated from the rest of the county. In most towns, a Category 1 accounts for the majority of inundation with impacts that will be intensified by SLR. Second, gentrification in coastal communities can create new social vulnerabilities by changing economic bases and disrupting communities’ social networks making it harder to cope. Moreover, higher economic dependence on tourism can amplify towns’ vulnerability with reduced capacities to recover. Lastly, low political will is an important barrier to effective coastal hazard mitigation planning and implementation particularly given the power and independence of town government on Cape Cod. Despite this independence, collaboration will be essential for addressing the trans-boundary effects of coastal hazards and provide an opportunity for communities to leverage their limited resources for long-term hazard mitigation planning.

This research contributes to the political ecology of hazards and vulnerability research by drawing from the field of institutions, by examining how decision-making processes shape vulnerabilities and capacities to plan and implement mitigation strategies. While results from this research are specific to Cape Cod, it demonstrates a broader applicability of the “Hazards, Vulnerabilities, and Governance” framework for assessing other hazards (e.g., floods, fires, etc.). Since there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to mitigating coastal hazards, examining vulnerabilities and decision-making at local scales is necessary to make resiliency and mitigation efforts specific to communities’ needs.
ContributorsGentile, Lauren Elyse (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / White, Dave (Committee member) / York, Abigail (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016