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The Impact of Traffic Density on Lane-Changing Frequency

2020-12 , Jiang, Qian

Fluctuations on roadways are widely considered as an effect of lane-changing activity. Lane-changing has been recognized as microscopic behaviors and elements in lane-changing models are considered to be mostly dynamic. But lane-changing decisions can still be influenced by some traffic conditions reflected as macroscopic factors. This paper attempts to correlate microscopic models with macroscopic models by exploring the relationship between lane-changing frequency and density. A descriptive analysis is generalized to explain lane-changing behaviors as a reaction to traffic density. It is observed that the lane-changing frequency increases in the low-density region and reaches a peak around a certain density. Five simple regression models are constructed to fit the NGSIM (Next Generation SIMulation) data. Based on three statistical indicators, the cubic model is selected as the best fit for the relationship between lane-changing frequency and density.

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Staying Afloat in Affordable Housing Production: An Initial Examination and Framework of Cost Savings for Mercy Housing Southeast

2020-05 , Dervarics, Kelly

As income disparities continue to increase nationally, finding and constructing housing that is affordable and provides a stable environment to those in the lowest-income brackets has become extremely difficult across the nation. Financing residential projects that are affordable to families earning less than 60% of the area median income (AMI) involves creative layers of financing as construction costs are seen as fixed whether the units are priced at or below fair market rent. In this paper, I will focus on affordable housing in terms of residential developments with a portion of their units serving households that earn less than 60% AMI but there are many types, methods and definitions of affordable housing. Due to my familiarity with the federal and state programs of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) through my internship with a nonprofit affordable housing developer, this paper will center on LIHTC’s efforts (one moving pie ce in the puzzle) to combat affordability. As the LIHTC program is complicated, this paper aims to provide the framework for a development and construction manual to be used by affordable housing developers like Mercy Housing Southeast. For this paper, Mercy’s recent projects in Georgia will serve as case studies and provide insight into cost savings at different stages of the development and construction process. This manual can serve as institutional memory and re-evaluation for Mercy Housing Southeast in addition to providing guidelines for cost-effective projects. In this way, affordable housing developers can be better prepared and resilient when unexpected costs are incurred on a tight budget with a variety of funding sources.

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Making Cataño Count

2020 , Apollon, Celine , As-Salaam, Kamau , Braun, Jonathan , Ferreira, Andrea , Hart, Haley , Highfield, Robert , Lim, Matthew , Jones-Bynes, Jasmine , Prendergast, Kyla

The School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech hosted its second iteration of its Planning Studio master’s requirement in Puerto Rico in Spring of 2020. This year’s studio focused on the United States Decennial Census efforts for 2020. Puerto Rico, as an underrepresented territory within the United States, was a driving motivator for this project. The studio was assigned to Cataño, a small municipality just across the bay from the capital, San Juan. Cataño faces disproportionate levels of hard-to-count and underrepresented populations within the greater metropolitan area. Both the Cataño government and Puerto Rican Planning Board were assigned as the studio’s clients.

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Covid-19 Vulnerability Index for United States Counties

2020 , Nair, Shruthy

COVID-19 is a highly infective virus with a rapid transmission rate. It has led to a pandemic that has impacted millions of people all around the world. In the United States alone, over 3 million people have being directly affected by COVID-19 as they tested positive and millions more have been affected indirectly due to the virus. The purpose of this study is to determine if a COVID-19 Vulnerability Index can be created using GIS, that would enable one to identify high risk counties within the United States. A Vulnerability Index measures how vulnerable a population or region is to a particular illness. Multiple socio-economic, demographic, transportation and health related factors were utilized in the development of the Vulnerability Index. Principal Component Analysis were applied to analyze the distribution and correlation in the factors and create the index values. The COVID-19 case rates, death rates and the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index values were compared using spatial clustering and then their actual results were compared to see if the Vulnerability Index is a good measure for COVID-19 case rates and death rates. Results indicated that the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index is a good measure to identify counties that are at risk of increasing their case rate, but not death rates. Furthermore, ordinary least squares regression and spatial lag model were run to evaluate the effectivity of the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index in identifying counties with increasing risk of COVID-19 cases. The regression models indicated that the Vulnerability Index is a relatively good measure determining high risk counties.

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A Text-Mining and GIS Approach to Understanding Transit Customer Satisfaction

2020-07-24 , Yap, Soo Huey

Performance evaluation is a concept that most can understand. Examples of performance evaluation include evaluating the performance of students in schools via assignments and exams, and corporations and boards evaluating departmental and corporation-wide performance. In many of these instances, the objectives of performance evaluation are clear. In our first example, the aim of schools may be the education of students, and therefore performance evaluation is conducted to measure students’ understanding and learning of the syllabi. In our second example, the aim of corporations may be to improve efficiency (reduce costs) and increase income. Performance measures used by private sector corporations may include number of sales, customer satisfaction ratings, and number of clicks on advertisements.

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Tokyo Smart City Design at Shinagawa

2020-05 , Barnum, Christopher L. , Bolden, Willie M. , Colburn, Ryan L. , O-charoen, Natcha , Pedrick, David J. , Starbuck, Zachary W. , Zhen, Shuhui , Baldwin, Ashley S. , Bernard, Violet F. , Blumenthal, Danielle L. , Dhurkunde, Akhilesh V. , Doyle, George P. , Dunham, Andrew , Kokitkar, Bhaswini B. , Kroi, Eleni , Peng, Cynthia , Sisson, Danielle M. , Slep, Hannah L. , Wang, Jun , Watson, Alexandra D. , Zahin, Sanjana , Yang, Perry Pei-Ju

The Tokyo smart city project is an international collaboration from 2016 to 2020 between the Eco Urban Lab of School of City and Regional Planning and School of Architecture at Georgia Tech, Global Carbon Project (GCP), the National Institute for Environmental Studies of Japan, and the Department of Urban Engineering of the University of Tokyo. Tokyo provides a living urban laboratory for designing complex urban settings, agglomerations of physical, cultural and technological systems. The Tokyo Smart City Studio in Spring 2020 investigates Shinagawa and its surroundings at the Tokyo Bay waterfront area in the context of new maglev high speed rail station area development, one of the biggest urban development projects in the City of Tokyo of the next decade. The operation of the new high-speed maglev rail station from 2030 will make Shinagawa a 70-70 new gateway, 70 minutes from Tokyo to Osaka for a region with 70 million population. The new infrastructure will compress the concept of space and time, and will change the inter-cities relation. Its future city vision will have profound impact to the urban forms, functions and experiences of the city. The project aims to develop a test bed of urban systems design to demonstrate how a smart community is designed, evaluated, and implemented in Japan by incorporating governmental agencies, stakeholders and communities, with focuses on urban design and modeling, urban analytics of big data, Internet of Things (IoT), smart mobility and eco urban performance evaluation.

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Combating Food Insecurity within Universities: Defining an Integrated and Adaptive Method

2020 , Hart, Haley

Defining an integrated and adaptive method for universities to measure their level of programming on food insecurity. Georgia Tech is used as a case study for the application of the scoring method followed by policy recommendations to improve scoring and further support for food insecure students.

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A Tale of Two (Modern) Cities: A Comparison of the Attempts to Regulate Airbnb in San Francisco and Boston

2020-05-03 , Ferreira, Andrea

This paper provides an overview of the history of Airbnb and its challenges within the city, including some of the studied impacts that Airbnb has had on both the residential and tourism sectors. Next, the paper evaluates the steps some cities have taken to regulate or ban the platform, through case studies in two comparable cities—San Francisco, California, and Boston, Massachusetts. Through these case studies, guidelines for other cities looking to regulate short-term rentals are established.

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Reallocating Food Waste: Evaluating Food Waste Management Options for Atlanta

2020-01-12 , McCoy, Trevor

This paper recommends efficient ways for city officials to mitigate Atlanta’s food waste. Redirecting food waste will provide the city with three significant benefits: (1) Equity – The reallocation of excess, edible food will improve food security amongst thousands of Atlanta residents now classified as food insecure, (2) Environment – Redirecting food waste away from disposal reduces the need for landfills and mitigates greenhouse gas emissions, and (3) Economy – The reuse of food waste provides a valuable resource for the provision of food, the production of biofuels, and the generation of electricity, amongst other uses. Therefore, an evaluation of Atlanta’s food waste management options is necessary for city officials to fully define and explore the problem, set priorities, leverage strengths, build coalition groups, attract private investment, and begin to implement a plan, which will reduce the amount of food going to land fills and redirect food towards its best uses. This paper will present the case for an improved food waste management plan in eight sections. In sections 1 through 5, the paper explores why food waste diversion is important, examines food reallocation currently in Atlanta, sets up a process for evaluating Atlanta’s need for reducing food waste and presents data to that effect, and presents a series of recommendations for improving Atlanta’s food reallocation. Section 6 provides a deeper analysis of Anaerobic Digestion, a particularly promising option. Finally, in Sections 7 and 8, the report presents concluding remarks and References.

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Tide to Town: Rapid Health Impact Assessment of Savannah’s Tide to Town Urban Trail System

2020 , Zhu, Kevin , Igietseme, Nene , Jones-Bynes, Jasmine

The Tide to Town Rapid Health Impact Assessment (HIA) was conducted as part of a studio assignment at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). The purpose of the HIA is to evaluate the potential health and social impacts of the proposed Tide to Town trail in Savannah, Georgia.

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