Master's Projects

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Master's Projects

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

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 86

Towards a Safer Atlanta: Identifying High-Priority Intersections for Leading Pedestrian Intervals

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12) Mase, Heather

This study addresses the critical issue of pedestrian safety and the need to prioritize safety interventions in the City of Atlanta. It specifically focuses on leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs), which adjust signal timing to give pedestrians a head start when crossing the street at intersections. While traditional safety analyses rely primarily on historical collision data, this analysis takes a systemic and proactive approach to safety by incorporating risk factors such as roadway characteristics, the surrounding built environment, and socioeconomic characteristics of nearby residents. The primary objective of this research is to determine where LPIs should be implemented in the City of Atlanta by ranking and identifying high-risk intersections. The methods comprise of six major steps: (1) factor selection; (2) data collection; (3) database construction; (4) calculation of factor weights, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); (5) factor normalization and aggregation, involving scaled scores and weighting; and (6) determination of the final signalized intersection ranking for LPI implementation, based on a rank-order prioritization process. Results from this analysis reveal that many of the highest risk intersections are primarily concentrated around Downtown Atlanta and West Atlanta. The proposed data-driven framework provides a comprehensive and systematic approach to guide decision-makers and safety advocates in directing resources and support to intersections with the greatest need for pedestrian safety intervention. Overall, this research contributes to the advancement of safety, sustainability, and equity in the City of Atlanta.
America’s Gayborhoods: A Study in the Cultural Preservation of LGBTQ+ Communities

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12) Brennan, Laurence

In recent years, Atlanta, GA has seen a boon in development, catapulting housing demand and prices, particularly in its densest and most desirable neighborhoods. The Midtown neighborhood’s Garden District, commonly referred to as the ‘Gayborhood’ is one such place where long-time residents are being pushed out. The exodus of queer trailblazers combined with an influx of new, heteronormative populations in dense new high rises, dilutes the proportion of LGBTQ+ anchor residents who patronized the shops and cafes that served as the backbone of this community. This exploratory effort reviews literature and research from other studies and governmental entities and conducts a comparative analyses of planning interventions that other U.S. cities have used as tools toward cultural preservation. This analysis, identifies policies, ordinances, or other successful practices of stewarding the heritage of identity-based places, to prevent further erasure of Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ enclaves.
Planning for a Climate Driven Implementation of Mobility Hubs on Georgia Tech’s Campus

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12) Murali, Malavika

Mobility hubs are an efficient and effective transportation solution that promotes connectivity and provides last-mile modal options for commuters and residents through integrating multi-modal transportation infrastructure in one convenient transitional space. In addition to encouraging place-making efforts and transforming cities with innovative technologies, mobility hubs are foundationally a strategy for addressing the climate change crisis, which is substantially driven by transportation related carbon and carbon-equivalent emissions. Therefore, a focus on a climate driven implementation of mobility hubs is pertinent to accomplishing the goal of reducing carbon emissions and creating resilient transportation infrastructure. This paper provides a case study analysis of best practice strategies for implementing mobility hubs from three institutions across the United States, which informs a review of Georgia Tech's plans for improving mobility on campus as outlined by the 2023 Comprehensive Campus Plan (CCP). This analysis is used to determine what elements are critical to creating resilient, sustainable, and accessible mobility hubs and to propose a climate driven approach to implementing the mobility plans of the institution. Through this analysis, 14 locations are identified for potential mobility hubs throughout campus that incorporate 11 sustainability and accessibility elements which are detailed in the paper.
Site Suitability Analysis of Mobility Hubs: Determining Suitable Locations for Transit Center Enhancement in Metro Atlanta

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-08) Murali, Malavika

Mobility hubs are an efficient and effective transportation solution that promotes connectivity and last-mile modal options for commuters and residents that integrate multi-modal transportation infrastructure. In addition to encouraging place-making efforts, mobility hubs transform cities with innovative approaches to seamless modal transitions and integrating smart technologies for wayfinding, safety, and accessibility. This study identified three existing transit stations within Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb counties in Georgia that can be turned into regional shared mobility hubs through analyzing origin-destination data of these stations, the surrounding land uses, and the population demographics of these areas. These three counties were selected as they make up the existing Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority (MARTA) passenger rail network. Based on research on the benefits of mobility hubs, the factors of close distance, added connectivity, and proximity to activity centers are proven to improve the implementation of mobility hubs. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the potential for the tri-county area to implement mobility hubs at regional scales to expand the reach of alternative modes of transportation, and to address the issues of inaccessible transportation networks. After analyzing the transit stations using demographic data of the study area and a multi-criteria analysis (MCA), three locations were found to be ideal sites for developing into mobility hubs: the Midtown, Decatur, and Dome/GWCC/Philips/CNN MARTA stations.
Redefining the Food Desert: A Study of Grocery Store Accessibility Within Metropolitan Atlanta (2023)

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-28) Moss, David

“Food deserts” are areas of an urban environment that are judged to have no accessibility to a nearby grocery store. Traditionally, this accessibility is based on a simple measure of Euclidean distance, i.e. a circle of a given radius drawn around the nearest grocery store, thus ignoring the actual road network used to travel to said store. This paper proposes a methodology for constructing isochrones, polygons which both incorporate the actual distance travelled to reach a given grocery store, as well as the time it takes to traverse said distance via a variety of different modes. Doing so dramatically reduces the estimated coverage area of a given grocery store, and helps visualize the inequities inherent in using distance-based measures of accessibility without accounting for the mode taken to travel that distance, which particularly harms individuals without access to cars or bikes.
Microtransit and Microclimate-Oriented Redevelopment for Car-lite/Carfree Lifestyles

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-05) Dunham-Jones, Ellen ; Rakha, Tarek ; Jassu, Joel ; Wang, Jun ; Almaian, Maryam ; Jimenez Chavez, Jose Miguel ; Doersam, Max ; Kadam, Anuradha ; Maharjan, Anu ; Mantripragada, Akansha ; Mamallan, Dhanya ; McDonald, Matthew ; Mohammadi, Negar ; Rajan, Subash Raj ; Rangel, Patricia ; Smith, Madalyn ; Wilson, Isaiah

This report documents the Spring 2023 studio class proposals to redevelop aging, car-oriented parts of Scottdale, GA to enable affordable, thermally comfortable, car-lite and carfree living. In partnership with DeKalb County Commissioners Terry and Bradshaw, the DeKalb County Planning Department, the Microlife Institute, MARTA and Via Transportation, the MS Urban Design, M.Architecture, and MS High Performance Building students four proposals illustrate various ways of integrating mobility hubs, microtransit, trails, mixed-uses, missing middle and workforce housing, to meet stormwater, energy, and social goals.
Commercial property undervaluation in Fulton County, Georgia: Determinants of appraisal error using ANOVA testing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05) Knight-Scott, Ethan

Property taxation forms a pillar in the U.S. system of public spending, but policymakers in Georgia have expressed increasing concern that commercial properties are being under appraised. Underappraisal would lead to a loss of government revenue to spend on public projects and social well-being. To analyze the extent of underappraisal, I use a dataset collected by Georgia Tech’s Urban Research Group from CoStar of 2,015 properties appraised in Fulton County, Georgia between 2015 – 2020. I find that the median commercial property is appraised for nearly half – 57% – of what the property eventually sells for. After running a series of one way ANOVA tests, I conclude that property use and property value are significant potential determinants of commercial property underappraisal. Time-related variables are also significant, suggesting a need to better control for underlying economic and financial changes in a future regression model.
Exploring Urban Agroforestry as Multifunctional Green Infrastructure in Atlanta, Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05)

Flooding, increasingly less isolated to riverine or coastal cities, has become an increasingly daunting challenge for urban areas in recent years. Additionally, residents in economically distressed areas face food insecurity because of a lack of access to fresh, nutritious produce or similar groceries. While superficially unrelated, both flooding and food insecurity pose critical threats to the stability and wellbeing of urban communities. For city planners and policy makers alike, these “wicked problems” require an equally wicked, novel solution in the form of urban agroforestry (UAF). UAF has recently emerged as a unique tool for tackling these urban problems while serving as a bridge between food systems and hazard mitigation planning. Integrating “working trees” into existing green infrastructure or developing new sites with forms of edible green infrastructure can become a crucial step in creating multifunctional landscapes in urban environments. This paper explores agroforestry as a novel, multifunctional green infrastructure solution in urban environments by determining the stormwater absorption, filtering, and interception capacities of different agroforestry practices, assessing their food production potential, and then identifying suitable sites for pilot projects through Atlanta, Georgia.
How to improve collaboration with Lego-style bricks

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05) Vieira, Pedro Henrique de Medeiros

Collaboration can be defined as the act of working together with one or more individuals or groups towards a common goal, with the aim of achieving a shared result. At its core, collaboration is about leveraging the strengths and abilities of all team members to achieve a better outcome than any individual could on their own. Bloc Co-op is a game designed to incorporate Lego bricks and a companion app to improve collaboration within teams in a seamless and playful way. Teams will get together and compete in weekly building challenges, upload pictures of their structures and rate others builds, while exercising their communication, trust, creativity, and accountability muscles.
Exploring the Gig Economy to Create a Connected College Ecosystem through Service Exchange

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05) Holmes, Cam

This project direction is directed towards improving student’s transition into their careers by leveraging the gig economy to create connection and cash flow with an intent of finding a scalable product market fit on the Georgia Institute of Technology's campus. This project utilizes a common startup practice by condensing the design process to more of an iterative approach to problem solving. The design cycles start broad and become more defined as the project progresses based on feedback received from students and eventually local businesses around campus. The three main themes around each design cycle are as follows: 1. A Student to Student Gig Exchange, 2. A Text-based Freelance Marketplace for Students, 3. A Scalable Platform and Ecosystem designed to help build small business, Student Experience and Expand the University Community. This iterative process of “failing fast” has enabled Gigsurf to strengthen it’s product market fit through the entirety of the project. Gigsurf is a marketplace for top talent students to provide contract work to start-ups while expanding the start-up presence on campus and within local communities.