Master's Projects

Series

Master's Projects

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/71003

Series Type

Publication Series

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

The Chattahoochee Brick Company Studio: Envisioning a Commemorative Future

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-05) Abel, Hunter ; Carnell, Phillip ; Coutinho, Pedro ; Hopkins, Alison ; Nyman, Tanning ; Oliverio, Gabrielle ; Roth, Grace ; White, Reginald ; Xie, Ray

Our report aims to function as a vision plan for the development potential of the Chattahoochee Brick Company site and its opportunities for reparative justice. item_description: Our report aims to function as a vision plan for the development potential of the Chattahoochee Brick Company site and its opportunities for reparative justice • Background • Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis • Conversations with various stakeholders in the community and wider surrounding area to determine visions: • Greenspace • Industrial (I-Mix) • Housing/Commercial • Analysis of proposals that includes examples and impacts **Now that the City of Atlanta is starting the process to begin possible acquisition, some of the visions are more likely to occur than others.
GTatrium for Georgia Tech

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12) Hays, Emily L.

In 2018, The Commission for Creating the Next in Education (CNE) at Georgia Tech took a comprehensive look at what higher education might look like in 2040. The resulting document, “Deliberate Innovation, Lifetime Education,” uses strategic foresight to explore the future of education at Georgia Tech and outlines several initiatives for Georgia Tech to provide a more valuable experience to its stakeholders. One of these initiatives is the GTatrium, a scalable gathering place to real and virtual services for Georgia Tech to achieve a distributed global presence. Like the physical atrium of a building, the atrium is a flexible space located near learners. The GTatrium is designed to provide personalized education, career development, advising, and specialized learning experiences to current Georgia Tech students, and to alumni, prospective learners, and the community at large. This master’s project presentation will discuss the research, service design, and overarching strategy of the GTatrium, and aims to address, “How can Georgia Tech serve learners in their communities throughout their liftetimes?” A research goal was to define the GTatrium experience, identify user groups, core services, a conceptual service model, and draw with broad strokes what this could look like for Georgia Tech in the next decade of its development. The presentation will suggest next steps for the development and implementation of the atrium that can be deployed internationally. This project was undertaken in conjunction with the Center for 21st Century Universities, which will continue with the project after the completion of this master’s project.
Maximizing Opportunity in Atlanta's Housing Opportunity Bond

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-08) Thompson, Brock

The affordable housing crisis burdens the nation and America’s largest cities, in particular. In the absence of comprehensive federal action to provide residents adequate housing, local governments (cities and counties) are employing massive general obligation bonds for the purpose of providing residents affordable housing (“municipal housing bonds or MHBs”). From Asheville & Charlotte to Denver, San Francisco, & Portland, governments have pledged hundreds of millions over the last two decades alone to address the issue (see “Other References Not Cited”)1. Direct public provision of housing, site acquisition, gap financing for private development, and owner-occupied rehabs are among the most common uses of funds. To date, cities using housing bonds have taken different approaches to spending with little documentation about the extent to which that approach addresses needs. Some have focused on public housing while others aim to leverage private funding; some have committed funds mainly to assist the lowest-income households while others look to expand higher-AMI workforce housing (see “Other References Not Cited”). In the context of Atlanta’s proposed $100M 2020 housing bond (Pendered, 2020a), this paper is aimed at developing a spending strategy for City of Atlanta housing bonds. Goals include maximizing the number of households served in the near term and prospects of long-term affordability. This paper looks to reconcile the (1) Current and projected demand for affordable housing units in the City of Atlanta (by AMI and household size), with the (2) Costs required to supply affordable units of various types for each of those groups. A pro forma will model the impact of various housing strategies on the existing and projected housing gap relative to their costs. The spending strategies of other cities will serve as a benchmark.
Jobs Justice Climate: Redevelopment Proposals for North Dekalb Mall and The Gallery at South Dekalb

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-06-21) Dunham-Jones, Ellen ; Jassu, Joel ; Alfali, Hala ; Barnum, Chris ; Heidelberger, Erin ; Kama, Prerana ; Goncalves, Vitor ; Nanda, Sakshi ; Patel, Harini ; Pham, Quynh ; Raytchev, Luben ; Rudder, Jennie Lynn ; Yu, Zhexin (Josie) ; Zhao, Haungzhe

Hypothetical redevelopment and reinhabitation urban design proposals are presented for both shopping malls to help the local DeKalb County Commissioners and their constituents envision and discuss options of what change might look like guided by Green New Deal goals.
Electric Bidet Controls for Older Adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-03) Yen Pham, Kim

Bidet controls represent the capabilities of bidet seats. However, current bidet controls are difficult to operate, graphically confusing, and unintuitive. The purpose of this project is find a usable and useful solution to a bidet control design. The aim of this study is to answer research questions: How to organize information to maximize usability? What type(s) of interactions are easy and comfortable to do? What physical form to facilitate ease of use?
Community as a Core Principle: Restoring Urban Headwaters and Implementing Green Infrastructure in the Upper Flint River Basin

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05) Muller, Rachel

This Applied Research Paper presents strategies for incorporating community engagement in green infrastructure projects. More specifically, it will develop strategies for engagement within Finding the Flint, a project seeking to daylight the Flint River and create a Nature Preserve Park in College Park, Georgia. This paper focuses on Finding the Flint because the project exemplifies both the obstacles and opportunities associated with increasing community voice in watershed management issues.
Race and Transit Investment in DeKalb County, Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05) Lapwood, Bonnie

This paper aims to dissect intra-county neighborhood-level attitudes to transit in DeKalb County, Georgia, and the way in which they have fallen along racial and class lines during the five decades that the county has funded MARTA. This paper explores how these attitudes and their expression in neighborhood organizing have affected where transit dollars have been spent, where they have been wasted, and where they have not gone despite general support for them.
Demonstrating greater sustainability while maintaining desirability of plush dog toys through life cycle assessments and dog owner participation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-04-30) Raker, Cheyenne M.

Every year, an estimated 634 million dog toys end up in our landfills, which is equivalent to 40,500 tons of waste. These numbers are a result of planned obsolescence due to their short life cycles. Pet businesses induce consumerism by offering dog toys with a limited useful life and therefore creating repeat purchases. Which then leads to millions of toys ending up in landfills every year. This book details the design of a dog plush toy that aims to divert millions of dog toys from the landfill while also decreasing their environmental impact through a life cycle assessment. Additionally, understanding what motivates consumer behavior and how to bring about change was thus seen as key to efforts and strategies to promote more sustainable patterns of consumption of dog plush toys. The project answers the following question: through the lens of a life cycle assessment (LCA), is it possible to design a sustainable dog toy that dog owners are willing to buy? Information gathered from a literature review and several interviews with experts in both the pet and sustainability industry were conducted to understand the problem space in three key areas: • current pet industry market • current sustainability market • target demographic and their habits and desires. From here, the ethnographic research below helped to understand dog owner’s desires and purchasing habits in the forms of: • 1 online survey completed by 300+ dog owners • 8 online interviews • 6 exploratory visits to dog toy stores. This research highlighted that plush squeaker dog toys were the favorite amongst dogs and dog owners. This insight led to an initial LCA calculation using Okala Impact Factors to establish a baseline of their current environmental impacts and an overall understanding of their entire product life cycles. The calculation revealed a significant finding that the extraction of the raw materials in the design of dog plush toys had the highest environmental impact. After collecting all the data, affinity and systems mapping were then used to develop the design criteria. One insight came through regarding the usage of a single material. If a dog toy consists only of a single material, it minimizes raw material extraction. Therefore, requiring no disassembly and consequently being easily recyclable. This insight was an important aspect of the design. Many rounds of concept development and ideation got conducted as new insights and information came regarding the recyclability of dog toys. To minimize the materials collected for manufacturing inspiration came from a previous design project. The project used upcycled t-shirts to create a braided rope dog tug toy. Instead of using the t-shirts as rope, an idea came to use them as stuffing for the toy. Which consequently included the added benefits of reducing separation anxiety in dogs from several articles found online. This idea had several challenges associated with the durability, safety, and recyclability of the dog toy. After several rounds of testing to assess and mitigate these issues, one final concept got narrowed down after meeting the following: solution viability, all design criteria, and all three needs of desirability, profitability, and sustainability. The final prototype came to be a dog plush squeaker toy. It flips inside out to reveal a printed business reply mail label and, therefore, can easily be placed in the mailbox to send to a textile recycling facility. The final prototype was tested and evaluated with seven female millennial dog owners (to match the target demographic) to understand levels of desirability and suggestions for improvement. Once the feedback was collected and addressed into the final design, an LCA calculated and determined its overall environmental impact versus a standard plush toy found at current pet stores. The calculation showed that the new design had a significantly lesser impact. Also, 100% of dog owners stated they would be willing to purchase the dog toy in the evaluation assessment. Therefore, meeting the needs of desirability. In conclusion, it is possible to design a sustainable plush dog toy that dog owners are willing to buy.
Evacuation with Efficiency: An Inland and Coastal Flood Based Emergency Evacuation Planning Scorecard Proposal

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-04) Newman, Ian

This paper focuses on the need for flood-based natural hazard resilience planning. It also addresses how having a quantifiable and practical scorecard for communities to asses their current statuses, in relation to their levels of preparedness for evacuation plans and programs, is a current need in emergency management planning. This paper offers a transferable, pragmatic, and implementable scorecard, the Flood Emergency Evacuation Scorecard (FEES). The FEES is this paper's proposal and can be used to help address necessary economic and policy directions towards helping to develop further structured and pragmatic flood emergency evacuation programs for communities that face chronic flooding.
An Analysis of COVID-19, Air Quality, Race and Socioeconomic Status in Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-04) Chatman, Olivia E.

In the United States, the existence of air pollutants, which may have adverse effects on respiratory health, have disproportionately impacted communities of color and of lower socioeconomic statuses, an issue described as environmental injustice. Following the spread of the COVID-19 respiratory virus in late 2019 that resulted in a global pandemic, and has also disproportionately impacted vulnerable populations, identifying the correlations between the air quality and COVID-19 occurrences among BIPOC groups, also known as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, is essential to moving forward in addressing issues related to environmental injustice and health disparities among vulnerable groups. This study examines the question of whether Black populations in Georgia at the county level are more likely to experience disproportionality higher levels of air pollution and COVID-19 infection rates beginning with the conduction of literature review that identifies current knowledge and research gaps related to COVID-19, air quality and environmental justice. A spatial analysis of the relationship between PM2.5 air pollution, COVID-19 cases and deaths, race demographics, as well as socioeconomic factors in Georgia counties reveals any disparities related to health and air among Black populations.