This essay examines community narratives around Keep Virginia Beautiful's Green
Grants initiative. Green Grants is a signature annual program that awards grants to organizations
throughout Virginia in support of projects aligned with one of Keep Virginia Beautiful’s three
pillars: recycling, litter prevention, and community beautification. The primary research
questions are...
Mountain search and rescue is a vital form of emergency response to assist people in austere environments (e.g., extreme terrain, poor weather). Volunteer mountain search and rescue teams in the United States have begun adopting consumer- grade unmanned aerial vehicles to assist a variety of tasks (e.g., search, resource delivery);...
There is a growing need for individualized instructional designs in 4-year institutions due to: 1) growing undergraduate enrollment trends across the U.S., 2) broader diversity in students backgrounds, and 3) the growing prevalence of asynchronous remote learning. With the growth in computer technology in education, tools such as adaptive intelligent...
The enactment of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 marked a critical moment in American healthcare history. The ACA introduced Medicaid expansion, a policy designed to extend healthcare coverage to a larger population of low-income Americans. This policy quickly became a topic of debate and led to...
The agricultural sector is one of the largest contributors to global climate change but is also one of the most vulnerable to its impacts. Farmers are at increasing risk of livelihood loss, which produces risks for their physical and emotional wellbeing on a global scale. Swift and effective adaptation is...
In the past two decades, the advancement in data collection and storage have led to the accumulation of complex datasets. Consequently, various industries have sought data-driven solutions to predict and detect anomalies. Temporal patterns have emerged as potential features in prediction models that could improve the performance of the identification...
To facilitate the design of Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) for flood protection, this thesis expands an existing engineering design methodology to NNBF systems. The existing approach is a Level III reliability method for the performance-based design of traditional coastal engineering systems. The expanded methodology incorporates uncertainties inherent to both...
The electric power grids of countries across the globe rely on load and generation forecasting to know when, where, and how much resources need to be dispatched to sustain proper grid operation. Because of this, forecasting needs to be highly accurate to avoid unnecessary resource dispatch which can be costly....
In 2021, Oregon’s legislature passed House Bill 2021 with relative ease. House Bill 2021 is a mandate for the state’s two largest utilities to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation on a decreasing scale, reaching 100% below baseline levels by 2040. This ambitious piece of legislation, meant to reduce the...
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to significant transformations in global mobility patterns, primarily driven by stay-at-home orders and economic shutdowns. These measures resulted in a substantial decline in travel activities worldwide. In the United States, there was a notable reduction in travel demand, with a corresponding decrease in...