identifier: Ghamarilangroudi, Azam  (2020) Detection of Replay Attack in Control Systems Using Multi-Sine Watermarking.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) consist of networks of sensors, computers and actuators. This
research studies a control system within a CPS in which the plant and controller are separated
geographically but connected through communication links. The links could be subject to security
attacks. Recently, the research focus on attack detection has been growing rapidly. This thesis
aims to develop methods based on the dynamic models of CPS for detecting attacks.
This research focuses on detection of ”replay attacks”. First, it proposes a watermarking
scheme based on injecting a sequence of multi-sine waves. The watermarking is designed in such
a way that the transient response to watermarking is suppressed. A design process is proposed to
reach a compromise between (i) the ease of detection of watermarking effects in the output and (ii)
the limiting of output fluctuations due to watermarking (and loss of control quality). One of the
benefits of this method is that it only requires frequency response of the closed loop system at a set
of frequencies; a model of system is not required.
Power spectral density estimates based on periodograms of the plant output (received by the
controller) are used to trace watermarking. Furthermore, replay attack detection by tracing watermarking
effects in the residual of Kalman filters is also explored.
A case study involving a laboratory water tank is used to explore the proposed method. The
results of linear and non-linear model simulations are presented and is shown that replay attacks
can be detected successfully.


identifier: Kim, Helene  (2020) Effect of bi-weekly supervised training sessions and prepared meals on the body weight and body composition of breast cancer survivors.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: Breast cancer is ranked the most common cancer among Canadian women, with statistics showing that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. While advanced treatments contribute to higher survival rates, the quality of life to which the breast cancer survivors live is negatively affected. The psychological and physical impact of breast cancer is a challenge during and after treatment, as treatment leave sequalae for breast cancer survivors including fatigue, fear of cancer recurrence, body image issue, depression, all of which lead to a sedentary lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle is associated with weight gain, which contributes to accumulation of fat tissue. An excess amount of weight that contributes to a high body mass index greater or equal to 25 kg/m2 is associated with negative health outcomes including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and co-morbidities. Particularly in breast cancer survivors, fat tissue contains properties that produce estrogen, a hormone that promotes the development of breast cancer, hence increasing the risk of recurrence of breast cancer. The inflammatory properties of fat tissue also promote the development of breast cancer. Therefore, while the survival rates of breast cancer increase, emphasis to the management of body weight should be addressed. The combination of physical activity and healthy nutrition is widely known to manage body weight in breast cancer survivors. However, the level physical activity achieved by breast cancer survivors are low, particularly women with obesity.


identifier: Kando, Asako M.  (2020) An Open-Group Music Therapy Program Design for Asylum-Seeking Prenatal Women.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Asylum-seeking prenatal women (ASPW) are an emerging vulnerable population worldwide, facing unique physiological and psychological challenges within a dual context of being asylum-seekers who are pregnant. Given their multifaceted needs during precarious resettlement periods, a broader context-based approach, rather than the current medical approach, could provide much more comprehensive support. While the literature indicates that music therapy can be used to promote health and wellbeing, no research has been conducted to date on how music therapy may help ASPW. Using an adapted intervention research methodology, this study examined how an open-group music therapy program can be designed to address the needs of ASPW during their resettlement period. A directed qualitative content analysis of related literature in music therapy and other relevant fields revealed that the main challenges of ASPW during their resettlement were poor health and absence of perceived feelings of wellbeing. Poor health was described as a lack of three dimensions of health: (a) absence of disease, (b) positive personal experience in one’s life, and (c) quality in the relationship between a person and their surroundings. The analysis also revealed multiple risk and protective factors, as well as potential malleable mediators inherent to the wellbeing of ASPW during the period of their resettlement. These findings combined with relevant music therapy literature and the researcher’s perspectives (based on her clinical experience), resulted in a proposed action strategy and theory of change that informed the development of an open-group music therapy program design for ASPW that was conceptualized within a Community Music Therapy approach. Limitations of the research are presented along with implications for practice and future research.


identifier: Fazel, Ehsan  (2020) Assessing the informational Content and Network Structure of Financial Assets with an Application to Pricing.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis consists of three essays. Essay one adds to Chinn and Coibion (2014) by suggesting an alternative measure to investigate the informational content of futures. The paper utilizes the causality measure introduced by Dufour and Renault (1998) and Dufour and Taamouti (2010) to investigate the informational content of the futures’ basis in predicting the price changes. Fourteen commodities and their corresponding prices are examined in three different time horizons and for each, the causality measure and its percentile bootstrap confidence interval are obtained. Results show that in general for energy and agricultural products, the contemporaneous basis of the futures has information to predict the price change in the market, whereas base and precious metals fail in this respect.
Essay two designs a network of realized volatility for the equity market consisted of firms and their customers collected from Compustat customer segment data covering from 1980 to 2017. In the same spirit as Herskovic (2018), two factors are derived from the network. The first is concentration which portrays the node characteristics of the network; whereas the second, sparsity, describes the evolution of the edges. Clustering is used to group the weekly volatility series into nodes and then calculate the concentration factor as the negative entropy of market shares. To complete the network, the causality measure of Dufour and Taamouti (2010) is employed to acquire the spillovers and sparsity. Factors are shown to reduce average pricing errors significantly in the APT setup. To explore further the asset pricing implications, sorted portfolios are created. In tercile portfolios, assets with low-concentration-beta have a 2.15 percent higher return than their counterpart in high-concentration beta annually. For sparsity, the spread between high and low is 0.83 percent. While both high-minus-low investment strategies for two factors show significant returns, results for concentration are more robust to various control variables.
Finally, essay three accommodates the concentration and sparsity factors previously used in analyzing the equity market to address the network of 25 commodity return volatilities for 2000-2017. Similar to previous studies, I document clustering among commodities with a noticeable difference compared to industry categorization. I investigate four commodity-based factors by creating portfolios of futures assets to investigate concentration and sparsity along with the hedging pressure and the basis. The spreads in all long-short strategies are insignificant. Following the law of one price and market integration, I estimate the price of risk of a wide set of equity-based and commodity-based factors. None of the risk premia are significant which appears to be in line with segmented features of the commodity market. Time-series regressions of betas for each commodity and each factor highlights the heterogeneous nature of commodities.


identifier: Gangavarapu, Sivanagaraju ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2509-7163 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2509-7163>  (2020) Analysis and Design of Discontinuous Conduction Mode AC-DC Power Factor Correction Converters.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In more electric aircrafts (MEAs), the synchronous generators are connected directly to the turbo-engine to develop constant voltage variable frequency (CVVF) AC supply bus. In addition, the MEA has adopted high voltage DC bus in its power system to cater the various categories of load used by aircraft. Therefore, the MEA requires AC-DC power converters to convert CVVF AC to constant DC. Existing diode-bridge based passive multi-pulse AC-DC converters are suffering from heavy and bulky low frequency 350 Hz transformers, poor input power quality, low efficiency and unregulated output voltage. To overcome these drawbacks, this thesis work proposes and studies several new active switched-mode AC-DC converters (isolated and non-isolated) strictly satisfying the enhanced requirements of the aircraft application. The vital constituent in active AC-DC power conversion is the power factor correction (PFC). Understanding the certain limitations of the continuous conduction mode (CCM) operation for CVVF AC supply, the proposed converters are designed to operate in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) to make use of its obvious benefits such as inherent PFC, reduced number of sensors, simple control, inherent zero current turn-on of the switches, and inherent zero diode reverse recovery losses. A single sensor based simple voltage control loop is only used to obtain the tightly regulated output voltage, which makes it economical, and improves the system reliability and robustness to high-frequency noise.
At first, a three-phase modular single-stage-isolated Cuk converter is proposed on considering Cuk converter merits such as inrush current limitation, no input filter requirement, and easy implementation of high frequency transformer isolation. The phase-modular converters are easy to implement, can be paralleled easily for high power design, operational with two-phase loss, and provide quick repair and maintenance. However, they employ more number of components and suffering from higher conduction losses. To overcome these issues, a new direct three-phase non-isolated Cuk-derived PFC converter with reduced number of components and conduction losses is proposed. With this new topology, the conduction losses are significantly reduced, and efficiency is improved by 4 % compared to the previously analyzed phase-modular converter. However, this converter needs two DC-link capacitors for its operation at DC output that added extra capacitive losses. Further to reduce the capacitive losses, a new direct three-phase non-isolated buck-boost-derived PFC converter with one DC-link capacitor and reduced capacitive losses, along with retention of all the benefits of Cuk-derived PFC converter is proposed. For high power operations, interleaved topology of the three-phase buck-boost-derived PFC converter with reduced filter size, reduced losses, and improved efficiency is proposed. Finally, an isolated topology of the three-phase buck-boost-derived PFC converter with a novel clamping circuit to capture and utilize the transformers leakage inductance energy in order to improve the converter efficiency is proposed. The converters steady-state operation, DCM condition, and design equations are reported in detail. The small-signal models for all the proposed topologies using average current injected equivalent circuit approach are developed, and a detailed closed-loop controller design is illustrated. The simulation results from PSIM 11.1 software and the experimental results from proof-of-concept laboratory hardware prototypes are provided in order to validate the report analysis, design, and performance.


identifier: Powers, Lianna  (2020) An Interdisciplinary, Neuroscience-Informed Music Therapy Early Intervention Research Program for Gait Atypicalities in Autistic Children.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The purpose of this study was to develop an interdisciplinary, neuroscience-informed music therapy intervention program targeting gait atypicalities in preschool aged children, 3-5 years old, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While not currently a diagnostic feature of ASD, recent research is showing that gait atypicalities are present in 60 to 100% of autistic children. Given the significant impact of gait atypicalities on quality of life, including joint pain and fatigue, it is an important area to be targeted for early intervention, and given that music processing abilities remain intact, it seems that music therapy intervention may be an ideal approach. Some research on the gait atypicalities in ASD is beginning to come out in the fields of physical and occupational therapies but remains to be explored in the context of music therapy. This study, following the initial steps of intervention research design as outlined by Fraser, Richman, Galinsky, and Day (2009), provides guidelines for implementing a music therapy intervention program targeting gait atypicalities in autistic children, including important considerations to accommodate a younger age group. The intervention program is organized into four phases: Assessment and evaluation, deconstruction of gait and relearning of independent movements, reintegration into standard walking pattern, as well as reassessment and maintenance. Potential implications for practice and areas for future research are also discussed.


identifier: Liu, Qingqing  (2020) The Roles Metacognitive Experience Can Play in the Processing Models: The Effects on Indirect Comparative Ads Evaluation Considering Individual Differences.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Previous literature available related to ICA (indirect comparative advertising) is limited due to the better effectiveness of DCA (direct comparative advertising), while competing against a specific competitor on specific featured attributes. However, recent studies, which point out the superiority of ICA in positioning a brand against overall competitors in the entire market, urge the theoretical and managerial exploration of it.
This research step to fill the gap on how ICA could function well based on popular persuasion models: Resource-matching theory and Dual-process models theories, considering individuals' differences – Need for Cognition. What's more, metacognitive difficulty, a concept ignored in persuasion models before but now getting increasing attention, was also taken into consideration as a factor to find how it could interact with other factors to have effects on ad evaluations under ICA situation.


identifier: Ohira, Masaaki  (2020) Effects of Connections Detailing and Friction Dissipation Devices on the Seismic Response of a Hospital Steel Braced Frame Building.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Hospitals are post-disaster buildings designed to withstand seismic forces that are amplified with an importance factor of IE= 1.5. Their seismic force-resisting system (SFRS) should be designed with Rd> 2.0, while the interstorey drift at each floor is limited to 1.0%hs. Herein, Rd is the ductility-related force modification factor and hs is the storey height. Although the non-structural components and the hospital contents are not part of this research, they constitute a larger loss in the event of an earthquake. As such, both interstorey drifts and floor accelerations should be within the required limits.

Concentrically braced frames (CBFs) are frequently employed as earthquake-resistant systems due to their high stiffness and moderate ductility. However, this system has shown several drawbacks such as the concentration of damage within a floor and high floor accelerations, which may be critical for acceleration-sensitive non-structural components. Recent experimental studies revealed that even moderately ductile concentrically braced frames (MD-CBF) may undergo unintended failure modes due to the limited deformation capacity of brace-to-frame connections. To overcome this drawback, it is proposed to provide an 8tg elliptical clearance band in the brace-to-frame gusset plate instead of a linear 2tg clearance, which is recommended by the code. Herein, tg is the thickness of the gusset plate. The results pointed out that gusset plates with 8tg elliptical clearance require less thickness than that with 2tg linear clearance and provide larger rotation capacity. In consequence, the ductility of MD-CBF with brace-to-frame gusset plates detailed with 8tg elliptical clearance is improved. Furthermore, in order to mitigate the floor acceleration, braces of CBFs can be replaced with sliding friction braces (SF), where each SF brace is made of a friction damper installed in-line with an HSS brace. The proposed sliding friction braced frame (SF-BF) system behaves elastically as a traditional CBF before friction devices are activated and experience nonlinear response after that. Thus, in the case of SF-BF system, the input energy is dissipated by friction devices and all adjacent members such as braces, connections, beams, and columns of the CBF system are designed to remain in the elastic range. It is noted that SF-BF systems are prone to residual interstorey drift, which can be mitigated by: (i) using braced frame’s columns continuous over all floors or (ii) adding back-up moment-resisting frames designed to provide the elastic frame action. The main objective of this thesis was three folds:  (i) to investigate the inelastic behaviour of MD-CBF systems with 8tg elliptical clearance gusset plate versus 2tg linear clearance band; (ii) to develop an accurate numerical model for braces equipped with friction dampers using the OpenSees software and (iii) to examine the seismic response of SF-BF systems.

To carry out this research, a detailed model of a 4-storey hospital located in Victoria, BC on Site Class C was developed in OpenSees and subjected to 10 historical ground motions for nonlinear time-history analysis. In this manner, a model replicating the MD-CBF with 2tg linear clearance band gusset plates for brace-to-frame connections and a model replicating the MD-CBF with 8tg elliptical clearance band for brace-to-frame gusset plate detail were developed and the nonlinear time-history responses expressed in terms of interstorey drift, residual interstorey drift and floor acceleration were compared. A force-based design method was applied to design the SF-BF system. By optimizing the slip length and slip force in the damper, the slip-lock phase exhibited due to the bearing of the pretensioned bolts can be postponed while maintaining the drift below the code limits. Dynamic instability may become an issue when dampers with large slip lengths are installed.

From this research it was found that small difference was observed in the response of MD-CBFs when brace-to-frame gusset plates with 8tg elliptical clearance was selected instead of 2tg linear band detail. When the SF-BF system was designed using the force based design method, the HSS brace was proportioned such that the compression resistance of brace to be equal or greater than 130% slip force. Then, capacity design was employed to design the beams and columns of braced frames. An OpenSees model was developed to simulate the behaviour of Pall friction damper and brace assembly. From nonlinear dynamic analysis, it was found that large residual interstorey drift was observed when columns of braced frame were continuous over two storeys, although the interstorey drift is within the code limit, which is 1.0%hs for a hospital building. To mitigate the residual drift, continuous columns over the building height were considered. However, it was concluded that SF-BFs are not recommended for hospitals located in high risk seismic zones unless back-up moment-resisting frames designed for 25% base shear are provided.


identifier: Hoyos Vivas, Luz Marina  (2020) Honouring Cultural Differences in Early Childhood Education and Care: Participatory Research with a Colombian Embera Chamí Indigenous Community.  PhD thesis, 225408.

type: Thesis PeerReviewed

abstract:
Cultural diversity is largely accepted as something that enriches societies, and it is often identified as a government priority in national programs. Nevertheless, there is institutional resistance to transforming education practices in order to ensure their cultural responsiveness. This study explores participatory research with parents and other community members in the development of an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programming framework as a way to create room for a meaningful inclusion of local knowledge, language, and traditions in education practice. We used a de-colonial conversational research methodology based on Mingas de Pensamiento, which is a way to collectively construct and transmit knowledge in some Colombian and Latin American Indigenous communities. Through this participatory and de-colonial  process, we planned with the Wasiruma, a Colombian Indigenous community, a pedagogical program based on local traditions, such as respect for Mother Earth, spiritual life, Jaibanismo (local customs based on a form of Shamanism), and the Embera Chamí Language.
In this manner, we found that a participatory de-colonial research approach is an effective way to propose an ECEC program that is culturally responsive, inspired by the local conception of childhood, and preserves the local language and social organization, as well as local ways of knowing. The recognition of ways of knowing and dialogue among different kinds of knowledges created room for the co-construction of a new ECEC program. In this sense, the research makes a theoretical contribution, in terms of the necessity to embrace local knowledge through conversation. This process involves a decolonizing perspective that allows the dialogue among different knowledges to exist. In this way, the research overcomes perspectives based on the simple addition of some local features to a predesigned program.


identifier: Hong, ChangKi  (2020) Fundamental Movement Skills Assessment Tool: A Validation Study of Balance Skills Using the Modified Delphi Method.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Abstract

Fundamental Movement Skills Assessment Tool: A Validation Study of Balance Skills Using the Modified Delphi Method

ChangKi Hong

Background: Physical activity (PA) has a number of health benefits such as weight-control and prevention of lifestyle diseases. Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) are important since they provide a base for PA participation. Injury prevention should be considered within a movement assessment because injuries are inevitable consequences of PA participation. However, current movement assessment tools do not account for injury prevention aspects. Practitioners often have a limited evaluation of movement patterns that is related to musculoskeletal injuries. There is a need for a more robust movement assessment tool that includes an injury prevention component. Balance should be incorporated into the assessment tool since it has been found to support the development of movement competence and has been linked to musculoskeletal injury prevention.

Objective: To establish face and content validity of balance skills (BSs) and the associated evaluation criteria, to create a FMS assessment tool to identify movement deficits while considering modifiable musculoskeletal injury risk factors.

Method: Using the modified Delphi method, a panel of experts completed three rounds of surveys to evaluate the suitability of the item using a 5-point Likert scale. Consensus on the acceptance of an item required 75% in agreement among the panel members. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

Results: Twenty-two of seventy invited experts (31.4%) participated. Twelve skills were initially proposed and the expert panel reached consensus on including three BSs (Single-leg side hop and hold, Two to one foot and hold, and 90-degree jump and hold) and twelve associated criteria.

Conclusion: This study provided face and content validity evidence for a FMS assessment tool for children 8-12 years of age. The modified Delphi process resulted in the final list of selected BSs which can be used for further research to evaluate the feasibility and reliability of the tool in various settings.

Keywords: Fundamental Movement Skills, Physical Literacy, Movement Competence, Balance, Physical Activity, Movement Assessment, Injury Prevention, Children, Delphi Method.


identifier: Cannon, Noah, Laser  (2020) Performing Indigenous Well-Being: Historical and Political Geographies of Canada’s Community Well-Being Index.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Set against the view that development indices provide objective assessments of the human condition, in this research, I demonstrate that indices are deeply political and emerge from specific and embodied histories and geographies. This study traces the emergence and subsequent politics of the “Community Well Being Index,” hereafter the CWB, an index designed to measure the conditions of Indigenous communities in Canada that was developed in the early 2000s by researchers at the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in collaboration with social scientists at the University of Western Ontario. Drawing theoretical contributions from performativity scholars, as well as postcolonial, settler colonial and critical development literatures, my research explores how the index, as a historically, socially, technologically contingent tool, actually produces the world it sets out to measure. Through analysis of interviews with designers and users of the index, observation of its presentation, and a review of official documents in which the index is elaborated, I trace the multiple and at times contradictory ways in which the CWB has come to matter in shaping development common- sense, constituting Indigenous subjectivities and allocating responsibility surrounding development interventions. I contend that, notwithstanding its use in advocating for the improvement of Indigenous peoples’ socio-economic conditions, the index is part of a settler policy and bureaucratic performance that predominantly serves to narrow the development pathways available to Indigenous communities.


identifier: Davari, MohammadReza  (2020) Neural Network Approaches to Medical Toponym Recognition.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Toponym identification, or place name recognition, within epidemiology articles is a crucial task for phylogeographers, as it allows them to analyze the development, spread, and migration of viruses. Although, public databases, such as GenBank (Benson et al., November 2012), contain the geographical information, this information is typically restricted to country and state levels. In order to identify more fine-grained localization information, epidemiologists need to read relevant scientific articles and manually extract place name mentions.
In this thesis, we investigate the use of various neural network architectures and language representations to automatically segment and label toponyms within biomedical texts. We demonstrate how our language model based toponym recognizer relying on transformer architecture can achieve state-of-the-art performance. This model uses pre-trained BERT as the backbone and fine tunes on two domains of datasets (general articles and medical articles) in order to measure the generalizability of the approach and cross-domain transfer learning.
Using BERT as the backbone of the model, resulted in a large highly parameterized model (340M parameters). In order to obtain a light model architecture we experimented with parameter pruning techniques, specifically we experimented with Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (Frankle and Carbin, May 2019) (LTH), however as indicated by Frankle and Carbin (May 2019), their pruning technique does not scale well to highly parametrized models and loses stability. We proposed a novel technique to augment LTH in order to increase the scalability and stability of this technique to highly parametrized models such as BERT and tested our technique on toponym identification task.
The evaluation of the model was performed using a collection of 105 epidemiology articles from PubMed Central (Weissenbacher et al., June 2015). Our proposed model significantly improves the state-of-the-art model by achieving an F-measure of 90.85% compared to 89.13%.


identifier: Veevers, Jessica  (2020) The Intersection of Materialitiy and Mattering: Acrylic Paint and Montreal Hard-Edge Painting.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Set in Montreal with the advent of Hard-Edge painting and the invention of acrylic paint, this thesis takes a critical look at the relationship between materiality and mattering.  The Hard-Edge painters, Guido Molinari, Claude Tousignant and Yves Gaucher undertook a new medium to express their new way of seeing and encountering the world and they did so in a way that was unique from other contemporaneous abstract painters.  And that new medium, acrylic paint, contributed to their vision and capability to do so. Examining Hard-Edge paint through the vantage of materiality and materialist frameworks, and considering the role of acrylic paint on a new level, takes advantage of the opportunity to confront the presumption of overt statements of authorial completion and destabilizes the assumption of their statement being solely artist-determined.  Unlike some contemporary art, whose materiality is more obviously fluid, Hard-Edge paintings look like they are stable, but they are not.  If object-stability is demonstrated to be untrue of Hard-Edge painting, then we have an opportunity to examine the entirety of art’s history through a new lens.
This thesis proposes a new way of understanding the relationship between making, material, epistemology and ontology and proposes that when we understand Hard-Edge painting as object-fluid, we then understand the breadth of art history as a mattering whose “objects” play less of a primary role and whose materiality is instrumental.  If making cannot be defined by the ideation of the artist then neither can the “object” that is made.  Examining the influence of acrylic paint over this one instance of making in Montreal in the late modern period contributes to an understanding of making and continued mattering that has consequences for Hard-Edge painting, which matters to the late modern epoch of a city and its people and their aspirations, and also to how we classify, sort, narrate, and perpetuate our art.  If we continue to put Hard-Edge painting into a finite category we undermine what it is capable of doing now.  This thesis highlights the consequence of understanding artworks as the products of ideas and thus materially (object-) stable.  I demonstrate that they are object-fluid and that this understanding will help us understand art’s history differently and be better art stewards.


identifier: Smith, Patrick Brian  (2020) Capital, Carcerality, Borders: Documentary Spatiality.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Capital, Carcerality, Borders: Documentary Spatiality examines the political potential of representations of space, place and landscape in experimental documentary film. The driving question for this project is: how do nonfiction engagements with spatiality serve to expose various forms of political and economic violence? More specifically, this thesis traces a connection between a geographically disparate set of experimental nonfiction works that have a shared concern with visualising the spatial machinations of contemporary power relations. This thesis argues that over the past two decades we have seen an increasing number of experimental nonfiction works that are structured around political interrogations of the spatial. It is the contention of this thesis that the adoption of such a critical spatial perspective within contemporary documentary practice still needs to be effectively surveyed and theorised, and it is this crucial work that Documentary Spatiality aims to undertake.

The thesis has three main chapters, each with a different spatial and political focus. “Visualising Late Capitalism’s Landscapes” examines works that aimed to confront the various impacts of late-capitalist economic exploitation, including the exploitative practices of natural resource extraction and transport logistics. “Carceral Geographies: Spaces of Exception and Internment” focuses on works that explore the impacts of the prison industrial complex on material, economic and social space. “Border Regimes: Labour, Ports and the Sea” focuses on works that examine the contemporary reconstitution of borders as heterogeneous, shifting and proliferating regimes of spatial control. By forging connections between these works, the thesis not only highlights the presence of such a spatio-political tendency, but also examines the future aesthetic and political potentialities for such a critical visual praxis. It is the contention of this thesis that moving image practices must become radical tools to fight against the spatial operations of contemporary power relations. This thesis is a crucial intervention into documentary, new media and spatial studies scholarship. By bringing these spatio-political works together, the thesis argues for the establishment of a whole new genre of political nonfiction media practice. Moreover, by mapping out the presence of a spatio-political tendency in experimental nonfiction practice, this thesis highlights the importance of continuing its development by finding new and radical forms of praxis.


identifier: Farahdel, Sarah  (2020) A Visual Performance Management Framework to Improve Decision Making using Lean Six Sigma.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Organizations today understand the need to have an effective performance management system as a necessity to be successful in their business. They still however struggle to be best-in-class and deliver exceptional results due to unstructured measurement processes that are not in line with their key strategic objectives. Effective performance measures allow for an improved evaluation of the health of the business and provides an open and transparent communication between all key stakeholders. This thesis provides an overview of performance management systems (PMS’s), the existing frameworks in literature, common communication strategies and big data analytic practices. A continuous improvement approach, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and its Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) methodology was examined to serve as an implementation plan towards deploying a PMS. To this end, a multi-criteria hierarchical framework called visual performance management (VPM) has been developed to provide an effective approach in deploying PMS’s using the DMAIC methodology and recommends proper communication strategies amongst all levels of the organization. The recommended VPM framework is then applied to a Program Management Office (PMO) of an aerospace company which is responsible for processing product change requests (PCR’s). Factors were identified in defining the right performance metrics for strategic, tactical and operational levels of the team. A time studies analysis was conducted to demonstrate how the VPM framework resulted in significant time and cost savings from a current annual cost of $600,000 to sustain their PMS to an annual cost of around $72,800. This study provides insight on the importance of creating an effective PMS and designs an original approach through a simple and quick way to adopt and sustain the proposed framework for any large organization.


identifier: Olszanowski, Magdalena  (2020) girl.is.a.four.letter.word The Collective Practices of Amateur Self-Imag(in)ing and Personal Website Production 1996 to 2001.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Scholarship on the practices of young gender-marginalized people online is a burgeoning theme
within internet studies and feminist media studies. Within historical scholarship of the internet,
young women’s practices have been critically neglected. In feminist art history, feminist
practices with emerging technology are abundant but young women making art on and with the
web is not. Given the aforementioned gaps, this dissertation aims to expand the interdisciplinary
fields of internet studies, feminist media studies, and feminist art history through a genealogy of
a conjunctural moment of the world wide web. The thesis title presents the breadth of this
project: the erased and forgotten web-based work, specifically the self-imaging practices, of
young women who used proto-social media forms in the process, creation, and circulation of
production between 1996 and 2001. Demanding a synthesis of critical skills operating within the
fields mentioned above, it aims to do so through a phenomenological and affect theory analysis
of self-images that appeared on personal websites. It argues that these self-imagi(ni)ng practices
serve as (a) tactical methods in reaction to patriarchal regimes of power and s/censorship, (b) a
means of engendering the sociality of trauma as a productive orientation, and (c) communicative
nodes that through wit(h)nessing reshape a feminist intimate public into a new genre of
friendship predicated on the aesthetics and forms of circulation of the work. Most internet
analysis misses the aforementioned politically engaged feminist history and its influence on how
we use and conceptualize the web today. The project’s objective is to provide a philosophical
genealogy of the web, demanding a more politically feminist espousal of it, both in theory and
practice.


identifier: Meyer, Vanessa  (2020) Everybody Gets Sad: An Autoethnographic Research-Creation about A Mother and A Daughter.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

format: text video

abstract: This is a practice-based project that critically and creatively explores the figuration of the mother-daughter dyad through a situated feminist research-creation approach. This project understands research-creation as a knowledge-making practice, which interweaves critical theoretical analysis with creative processes of representation. This mode of knowledge-making enables both the production of an original video work as the centrepiece of the project, as well as a critical reflexive breakdown of the process of creation as part of a written component. Working from the interdisciplinary domain of communication and feminist media studies and drawing from a history of feminist film theory and video making, this thesis project engages with debates related to the writing and reading of gendered experience. This project contributes to a cultural history of representations of the mother-daughter dyad in and through self-reflexive film and video making. Specifically, this examination is put into practice through the production of a situated autoethnographic video of a mother-daughter relationship.


identifier: Amoei, Mohsen  (2020) Utilizing Computer Vision and Data Mining for Predicting Road Traffic Congestion.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Traffic Congestion wastes time and energy, which are the two most valuable commodities of the current century. It happens when too many vehicles try to use a transportation infrastructure without having enough capacity. However, researches indicate that adding extra lane without studying the future consequences does not improve the situation. Our goal is to add another layer of information to the traffic data, find which type of vehicles are contributing to road traffic congestion, and predict future road traffic congestion and demands based on the historical data.

We collected more than 400,000 images from traffic cameras installed in Autoroute 40, in the city of Montreal. The images were collected for five consecutive weeks from different locations from April 14, 2019, up until May 18, 2019. To process these images and extract useful information out of them, we created an object detection and classification model using the Faster RCNN algorithm. Our goal was to be able to detect different types of vehicles and see if we have traffic congestion in an image. In order to improve the accuracy and reduce the error rate, we provided multiple examples with different conditions to the model. By introducing blurry, rainy, and low light images to the model, we managed to build a robust model that could do the detection and classification task with excellent accuracy.

Furthermore, by extracting the information from the collected images, we created a dataset of the number of vehicles in each location. After analyzing and visualizing the data, we find out the most congested areas, the behavior of the traffic flow during the day, peak hours, the contribution of each type of vehicle to the traffic, seasonality of the data, and where we can see each type of vehicle the most.

Finally, we managed to predict the total number of congestion incidents for seven days based on historical data. Besides, we were able to predict the total number of different types of vehicles on the road as well. In order to do this task, we developed multiple Regression, Deep Learning, and Time Series Forecasting models and trained them with our vehicle count dataset. Based on the experimental results, we were able to get the best predictions with the Deep Learning models and succeeded in predicting future road traffic congestion with excellent accuracy.


identifier: Koochemeshkian, Pantea  (2020) Distribution-based Regression for Count and Semi-Bounded Data.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Data mining techniques have been successfully utilized in different applications of significant fields, including pattern recognition, computer vision, medical researches, etc. With the wealth of data generated every day, there is a lack of practical analysis tools to discover hidden relationships and trends. Among all statistical frameworks, regression has been proven to be one of the most strong tools in prediction. The complexity of data that is unfavorable for most models is a considerable challenge in prediction. The ability of a model to perform accurately and efficiently is extremely important. Thus, a model must be selected to fit the data well, such that the learning from previous data is efficient and highly accurate.

This work is motivated by the limited number of regression analysis tools for multivariate count data in the literature. We propose two regression models for count data based on flexible distributions, namely, the multinomial Beta-Liouville and multinomial scaled Dirichlet, and evaluate them in the problem of disease diagnosis. The performance is measured based on the accuracy of the prediction, which depends on the nature and complexity of the dataset. Our results show the efficiency of the two proposed regression models where the prediction performance of both models is competitive to other previously used regression approaches for count data and to the best results in the literature.
Then, we propose three regression models for positive vectors based on flexible distributions for semi-bounded data, namely, inverted Dirichlet, inverted generalize Dirichlet, and inverted Beta-Liouville. The efficiency of these models is tested via real-world applications, including software defects prediction, spam filtering, and disease diagnosis. Our results show that the performance of the three proposed regression models is better than other commonly used regression models.


identifier: Remigio, Maria Luisa (Nisa)  (2020) From the Stillness of Burgundy, Through the Movement of Bayou Blue, To the Embodiment of the Green of Change A Journey to Be(Com)ing a Self-Reflexive Oral History Performer.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In this thesis, I document my journey of transformation from a collector and disseminator of life stories to a self-reflexive oral history performer. The purpose of this study is to find my voice amongst the voices I interview/speak/perform/write, and identify the positioning of my performative-I in relation to others and self, while analyzing how this self-awareness affects my deep listening of interviewees and performance participants.

A feminist, phenomenological and autoethnographic approach will guide me. Performative inquiry, performative writing, storytelling, oral history and oral history performance are my tools. I diarize and examine my journey through the Master of Arts in the form of a research/creation oral history solo/participatory performance, entitled Stories of Courtship, Desire and Marriage.

I also detail my health journey, a brain injury and an autoimmune illness that affect my memory and movement, which is something that is ever present, at times unsettling, others encouraging, both are always a gateway to knowing. I cannot separate these two journeys.


identifier: Dukelow, Alisha  (2020) Pareidolia.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Pareidolia

abstract:
Pareidolia is a poetic cross-genre (creative writing) manuscript in three parts that interrogates techno-colonial-capitalism’s and the medical and wellness industrial complexes’ individualizing constructions of mental health and illness. The first part is comprised of lyric poems that conceptually foreground the mediated and/or dissociated psychology of the speaker in the digital age. The second part draws on the form of the feminist surrealist short story to defamiliarize themes such as nature, medicalization, and neoliberal routine. Finally, the third part hybridizes poetry and the essay in a case study of three monuments from 1962 that I see as co-featuring in creating our dominant societal affective atmosphere: the International Style building, Place Ville Marie, erected as an “archetype of technological know-how” in its “physical, aesthetic, and emotional presence” (Place Ville Marie: Montreal’s Shining Landmark, Vanlaethem, France et al., 9), and the concurrent publication of two psychological texts by major emotion theorists, Silvan Tomkins’s Affect Imagery Consciousness and Magda Arnold’s Story Sequence Analysis.

With references, mainly, to affect theory and various figures of the modernist canon, I plumb the material and ideological origins of our cruelly optimistic state of political and climate crisis. I examine, further, the technological prescriptions and products that have become ubiquitous. How does our dependence on such products and diagnostic and commodifying formulas of thinking shape our emotional and physical dynamics with ourselves, others, and the land? How do our products and formulas alter or distort the way we project ourselves in the past, present, and future? Pareidolia—inspired by contemporary thinkers like Lisa Robertson and Dionne Brand as much as Sianne Ngai and Anna Tsing—attends to the porous and temporally fluid relationship between the body, mind, technology, and environment.


identifier: Farnesi, Biagina-Carla  (2020) Exploring the Perceptions of Bariatric Surgery for Adolescents Living with Severe Obesity.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to provide insights into the treatment and management of youth living with severe obesity within Quebec through the perspective of key stakeholders with a focus on the decision-making process for adolescent bariatric surgery. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pediatricians (n=8), bariatric surgeons (n=5), healthcare administrators (n=4), and adolescents contemplating bariatric surgery (n=7). Adolescents also produced body map collages following the interview. This art-based method involves youth outlining their perceived body shape on a piece of paper (16”x20”) and using drawings and/or magazine images to represent their embodied experience with weight management. Interview results were transcribed and analysed inductively to identify emerging themes. Body maps were analysed using collage in conceptualization which resulted in the creation of an analytical collage by grouping related images from the body maps.
Results are presented as five papers: (1) findings from a pilot study examining the feasibility of using body-map storytelling with adolescents; (2) the perceptions of pediatricians on obesity as a disease and the practice implications; (3) the perceptions of pediatricians on adolescent bariatric surgery; (4) the factors adolescents consider when deciding on bariatric surgery; and (5) a multi-stakeholder perspective on bariatric surgery for adolescents living with severe obesity.
There was a generally positive perception regarding bariatric surgery for adolescents with medically urgent needs across all four stakeholder groups. There were also points of divergence regarding pre-requisites for the surgery, and which factors are considered in the decision to refer, finance, or undergo the procedure. Comparison of the stakeholders demonstrated that the acceptability of bariatric surgery was inherent to a healthcare context that offered no other alternative to primary care management for adolescents struggling with weight.  Thus the pathway to bariatric surgery was perceived as skipping some key steps in the care pathway.  Interestingly, a group of pediatricians and adolescents did not view obesity as a disease.  Implications from this study include the need for improved availability of behavioural interventions with a team of weight management experts to address the gap between primary care counseling and tertiary care surgical intervention.


identifier: Fessenko, Kirill  (2020) Clitics in Ossetic.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Clitics in Ossetic

abstract: We face many challenges when researching syntax because the syntactic structure of a sentence cannot be determined on the basis of word order alone, whereas word order is often the only evidence a researcher has when advancing the scientific exploration of syntax. This thesis investigates Ossetic, and uses the properties of a small class of lexical items featured in Ossetic with the aim of finding some leads into the language’s clause structure. A general overview clarifies the grammatical categories in terms of which Ossetic clitics are discussed in the literature, a critical analysis is presented for select pieces of previous research on the syntax of Ossetic clitics, and lastly a number of sentences involving clitics are analysed, with some considerations on what they can reveal about the syntactic structure of Ossetic.


identifier: Zhang, Mingyu  (2020) The effect of national culture on corporate policies: evidence from the U.S. corporations.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this paper, we use data from the U.S. multinational corporations to test the relationship between national culture and corporate policies. We find that measures of national culture-such as power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence have a significant decision-making impact on corporate policies such as the level of cash holding, leverage, and dividend payout ratio. Our results indicate that cultural differences matter and offer a fresh social perspective in explaining variations in major corporate policies.


identifier: Kim, Andrea  (2020) Disruptive New Firms in the Sharing Economy: A Process View of Corporate Reputations.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis addresses the formation of corporate reputations for digital platform-based disruptive new firms (DNFs) in the sharing economy. I provide one of the first empirical studies to examine the process by which reputations unfold over time, taken from a socially constructed view. I offer a nuanced understanding into the formation of both market and character reputations. I conduct a longitudinal qualitative analysis of a typical case of DNFs in the sharing economy, Uber Technologies Inc. The findings highlight that DNFs develop rapid market reputations and may sustain it in light of misconduct and wrongdoing. The impact of enduring misconduct, places a negative pressure on DNFs’ character reputations, however limited. I evaluate stakeholder sensemaking in two marketplaces: the marketplace of goods and services and the marketplace of ideas (Mahon & Wartick, 2003). In the former, DNFs are subject to rapid market responses by primary stakeholders, investors, who by rewarding firms on meeting economic imperatives, incite the adoption of precarious practices. In the marketplace of ideas, misconduct and wrongdoing evoke more significant tensions between economic and social values. The nature of DNFs wrongdoing often resides in a grey zone, which drives contested understandings in the marketplace of ideas. Enduring and positive market signals of DNFs’ market reputations also interfere with stakeholder sensemaking. As a result, character reputations take time to form and place limited pressure on market reputations. I also highlight that the embeddedness of a CEO-founder and the firm is a critical mechanism by which DNFs may ward off damage to character reputations.


identifier: Yao, Yumeng  (2020) Development of a methodology for integrated performance analyses of anti-vibration gloves for controlling the hand-transmitted vibration.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Hand-transmitted vibration (HTV) arising from hand-held power tools has been associated with an array of disorders of the hand-arm system, collectively referred to as the hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS). The risk of HAVS among hand-held power tools operators has been related to the nature of HTV exposure and the mechanical coupling of the hand with a tool handle, which is neglected in the current standardized exposure assessment method (ISO 5349, 2001). Anti-vibration (AV) gloves are considered as convenient and effective means to reduce exposure to HTV. The effectiveness of AV gloves is, invariably, assessed on the basis of the handle vibration transmitted to the palm of the hand. The method does not consider the vibration responses of the fingers, which differ significantly from that of the palm. The AV gloves adversely influence the manual dexterity and grip strength of the operators, which are considered as primary factors discouraging the usage of AV gloves. The current standardized method, however, does not consider the loss of dexterity and grip strength caused by wearing these gloves.
This thesis proposes a methodology for evaluating the integrated performance of AV gloves, considering the distributed vibration transmission to the palm and fingers through gloves, manual dexterity and grip strength. In order to establish the methodology, independent experiments were designed to quantify each performance measure. Three series of experiments were designed to evaluate vibration responses distributed over the palm and fingers, manual dexterity and grip strength performance of gloves. Each experiment design involved ten different gloves and 15 adult male subjects. Viscoelastic properties of vibration isolation materials used in the AV gloves were also characterized under a constant preload. In the first series, the fine fingers and hand dexterity were investigated using the Two-Hand Turing & Placing Minnesota and ASTM F2010 methods. Subsequently, the handle vibration transmitted to the palm and mid phalanges of the index and middle fingers of the glove hand were measured along the three translational axes using the palm and fingers’ adapters, respectively. In the final series, the influence of AV gloves on the operator’s grip strength were investigated via direct as well as indirect methods. A flexible thin-film hand sensor was designed and verified for direct measurement of the contact force developed at the rigid as well as flexible hand-handle, and hand-glove interfaces. The activities of four different forearm muscles were also measured via surface electromyography (EMG) under different hand grip forces imposed by the gloved hand.
	The correlations among the individual performance measures of AV gloves and the material properties were analyzed via Pearson’s correlation coefficient, which provided essential knowledge on the roles of design factors and the design guidance. A relationship among the hand grip, push and contact forces imposed on flexible hand-handle was developed via multiple linear regression analysis. The individual measures of AV gloves were also analyzed via two-factor repeated analyses of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to evaluate significance of different independent variables such as glove type, test method, frequency range, and hand grip force. The glove type yielded significant effect on all the measures (p<0.05). Post-Hoc tests were subsequently conducted via Bonferroni and Tukey HSD (honest significant difference) test for discriminating difference among the gloves.
The combination of extensor carpi radialis longus (ECR) and flexor carpi radialis (FCR) muscles activities revealed highest sensitivity to discriminate among gloves and could serve as an effective indirect measure of the grip strength performance. Increasing the glove thickness resulted in improved vibration isolation by the glove but reduced manual dexterity and enhanced muscles activities. Strong correlation was observed between the material stiffness and wh-weighted palm vibration transmissibility in the high frequency range (r>0.90), while a weak correlation was evident between the manual dexterity and the wp-weighted fingers’ vibration transmissibility. Strong positive correlations were observed among the palm vibration isolation, material properties and material thickness in the 25-1250 Hz frequency range.
The results also revealed conflicting glove design requirements imposed by the individual measures. A methodology based on analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed to identify weightings for the conflicting performance measures for the given work condition, classified in accordance with the frequency ranges of predominant vibration (low and high), as defined in ISO-10819 (2013) together with assembly/disassembly tasks. An integrated performance index is identified and applied to rank five different AV gloves with known individual performance measures for identifying the most desirable glove.


identifier: Jong, Carolyn  (2020) Bringing Politics Into It: Organizing at the Intersection of Videogames and Academia.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation explores the structural and ideological roots of GamerGate and the Alt-Right within the game industry and academia. The analysis draws on the author’s personal experiences engaging in feminist community organizing, an examination of online materials associated with GamerGate, as well as various strands of critical theory, to interrogate the material reproduction of liberal ideology and meritocracy within neoliberal capitalism. Using the recent “culture wars” in videogames and academia as an example, the author argues that liberal capitalist institutions pave the way, both materially and ideologically, for the rise of fascist movements during periods of capitalist crisis, creating a social context that is oriented towards scapegoating oppressed people and reinforcing existing hierarchies. While the specific targets, symbols, and strategies used by fascist movements may change to reflect the changing circumstances, there are also many similarities that can be found between early 20th-century fascism, and contemporary neo-fascist movements like the Alt-Right.

The problems marginalized people encounter in both games and academia are a product of capitalism and its historical development, including the international division of labour created by imperialism and patriarchy. Whether we’re talking about targeted harassment, the emergence of reactionary movements like GamerGate, institutionalized discrimination, exclusionary and constrained definitions of play and games, or the culture of overwork, capitalism and the drive for profit lies at the root. Previous attempts to address these issues through corporate diversity initiatives, indie game entrepreneurialism, consumer activism, and merit-based selection processes are limited by the fact that they do not directly challenge capitalist social relations. In order to both expose those limits and move past them, feminist organizers need an anti-capitalist political strategy that leverages the latent power of the international working class to challenge imperialism, colonialism, and patriarchy.


identifier: Ali, Mohamed Mamdouh Mahmoud Ali ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4003-2851 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4003-2851>  (2020) Millimeter-Wave Components and Antennas for Spatial and Polarization Diversity using PRGW Technology.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The evolution of the wireless communication systems to the future generation is accompanied by a huge improvement in the system performance through providing a high data rate with low latency. These systems require access to millimeter wave (mmWave) bands, which offer several advantages such as physically smaller components and much wider bandwidthcomparedtomicrowavefrequencies. However, mmWavecomponentsstillneed a significant improvement to follow the rapid variations in future technologies. Although mmWave frequencies can carry more data, they are limited in terms of their penetration capabilities and their coverage range. Moreover, these frequencies avoid deploying traditional guiding technologies such as microstrip lines due to high radiation and material losses. Hence, utilizing new guiding structure techniques such as Printed Ridge Gap Waveguide (PRGW) is essential in future mmWave systems implementation. ThemainpurposeofthisthesisistodesignmmWavecomponents,antennasubsystems and utilize both in beam switching systems. The major mmWave components addressed in this thesis are hybrid coupler, crossover, and differential power divider where the host guidingstructureisthePRGW.Inaddition,variousdesignsfordifferentialfeedingPRGW antennas and antenna arrays are presented featuring wide bandwidth and high gain in mmWave band. Moreover, the integration of both the proposed components and the featured antennas is introduced. This can be considered as a significant step toward the requirements fulfillment of today's advanced communication systems enabling both space and polarization diversity. The proposed components are designed to meet the future ever-increasing consumer experience and technical requirements such as low loss, compact size, and low-cost fabrication. This directed the presented research to have a contribution into three major parts. The first part highlights the feeding structures, where mmWave PRGW directional couplers and differential feeding power divider are designed and validated. These components are among the most important passive elements of microwave circuits used in antennabeam-switchingnetworks. Different3-dBquadraturehybridcouplersandcrossover prototypes are proposed, featured with a compact size and a wide bandwidth beyond 10 % at 30 GHz. In the second part, a beam switching network implemented using hybrid couplers is presented. The proposed beam switching network is a 4 × 4 PRGW Butler matrix that used to feed a Magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna array. As a result, a 2-D scanning antenna array with a compact size, wide bandwidth, and high radiation efficiency larger than84%isachieved. Furthergainenhancementof5dBiisachievedthroughdeployinga hybridgainenhancementtechniqueincludingAMCmushroomshapesaroundtheantenna array with a dielectric superstrate located in the broadside direction. The proposed scanning antenna array can be considered as a step toward the desired improvement in the data rate and coverage through enabling the space diversity for the communication link. The final activity is related to the development of high-gain wide-band mmWave antenna arrays for potential use in future mmWave applications. The first proposed configuration is a differential feeding circular polarized aperture antenna array implemented with PRGW technology. Differential feeding antenna designs offer more advantages than single- ended antennas for mmWave communications as they are easy to be integrated with differential mmWave monolithic ICs that have high common-mode rejection ratio providing an immunity of the environmental noise. The proposed differential feeding antenna array is designed and fabricated, which featured with a stable high gain and a high radiation efficiency over a wide bandwidth. Another proposed configuration is a dualpolarized ME-dipole PRGW antenna array for mmWave wireless communication. Dual polarizationisconsideredoneofthemostimportantantennasolutionsthatcansavecosts and space for modern communication systems. In addition, it is an effective strategy for multiple-input and multiple-output systems that can reduce the size of multiple antennas systems by utilizing extra orthogonal polarization. The proposed dual- polarized antenna array is designed to achieve a stable gain of 15 ± 1 dBi with low cross- polarization less than -30 dB over a wide frequency range of 20 % at 30 GHz.


identifier: Lao, Qicheng  (2019) Learning Through Text-Image Pairs and Image Sequences.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Many machine learning systems for artificial intelligence are biologically inspired, for example, the artificial neural networks (ANNs) have similar architecture as human brains, and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are inspired by the observations from early study on animal's visual cortex system. The above two examples (ANNs and CNNs) are inspirations at the level of creating fundamental tools (e.g., neural networks) for a machine learning system. Another level of inspirations can come from the way human learn or respond that builds on top of the existing powerful learning tools, i.e., brains. In this thesis, we will focus on another type of inspiration that also belongs to the second level. It is based on the common practice that for an efficient learning or an optimal decision, human integrate all sources of available information in multiple views and leverage the reasoning of the underlying connections among them, i.e., multi-view learning. We address several problems in both medical and non-medical domains, including text-to-image synthesis, cell phenotype classification, histopathological malignancy diagnosis and disease progression learning, from the perspective of multi-view learning with an emphasis on learning the underlying connections among the multiple distinct feature sets representing the given multi-view data (i.e., image sequences in a unimodal setting and text-image pairs in a multi-modal setting).


identifier: Gagné, Claudia  (2020) La composition de chansons: un parcours vers la musicothérapie. Une recherche basée sur les arts.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Cette recherche basée sur les arts explore les compositions de chansons de l’auteure en tant qu'auteure-compositrice-interprète, réalisées entre 2013 et 2017, afin de faire ressortir les éléments qui ont contribué au développement de son identité comme musicothérapeute en devenir. La recension des écrits examine des théories de l’identité dans le contexte de l’adolescence et de l’âge adulte, en lien avec la société ainsi que la musique. Ensuite, la composition de chansons et son impact sur l’identité sont explorés dans le contexte de la musicothérapie, pour finir avec un survol de la définition de l’identité professionnelle chez les musicothérapeutes. L’analyse de données s’est déroulée en deux étapes: la première consistait en quatre écoutes des chansons ayant chacune une intention spécifique. La deuxième étape fait une synthèse du matériel qui a émergé des écoutes pour en faire une analyse thématique inductive. Les résultats démontrent que les chansons de l’auteure ont contribué à mieux se connaître, à développer un sentiment du pouvoir d'agir et à approfondir sa quête de sens. Cette recherche lui a permis d'identifier six composantes fortes et inhérentes à l'acte de créer des chansons qui résonnent avec la quête d’identité, soit le rapport au temps, à la parole, à la musique, à la liberté, au sentiment de contrôle ainsi qu'au phénomène du flow. Ces éléments l’ont amenée à porter un regard nouveau sur elle-même, son environnement et vers le bien-être des individus et des collectivités. Cette recherche lui a également permis d’approfondir son approche comme musicothérapeute en associant des valeurs dont elle a hérité dans ces expériences de composition de chansons à des théories en musicothérapie. Des recommandations pour des recherches futures sont finalement présentées.


identifier: Delisle, Nadia  (2020) Musicothérapie et intégration scolaire : un programme d’intervention pour des élèves issus de l’immigration.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Cette recherche propose un programme d’intervention en musicothérapie auprès d’élèves immigrants et réfugiés en classe d’accueil au Québec (Canada). La crise migratoire et les déplacements de population amènent une croissance de la proportion d’élèves issus de l’immigration dans le réseau scolaire. La recherche met en lumière à la fois l’importance du rôle de l’école dans la promotion de la santé mentale et le manque de ressources, notamment pour des interventions psychosociales adaptées. Bien qu’un grand nombre d’élèves réfugiés soient résilients, ils sont à risque de développer des troubles psychosociaux, et beaucoup d’entre eux développent des difficultés d’adaptation scolaire. Un programme d’intervention en musicothérapie est proposé ici, considérant que ces élèves rencontrent plus de défis dans leur cheminement scolaire que ceux nés au Canada et que les barrières de la langue freinent l’accès à des services de soutien psychosocial. Ce programme vise à soutenir ces jeunes à une étape cruciale de leur développement, en favorisant leur bien-être, leur sentiment d’appartenance à la classe d’accueil, leur capacité d’adaptation et, enfin, leur intégration scolaire et sociale. Ce programme s’appuie sur les valeurs d’inclusion et de justice sociale de la musicothérapie communautaire, cette dernière privilégiant une approche systémique, prenant en compte le rapport entre l’individu et son environnement. Cette recherche théorique se limite aux deux premières étapes d’un modèle de recherche-intervention, malgré l’importance évidente des trois autres étapes qui pourraient être complétées dans une future démarche.


identifier: Golkaramnay, Artmiz ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-9199 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-9199>  (2020) Application of Reinforcement Learning in 5G Millimeter-Wave Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The increasingly growing number of mobile communications users and smart devices have attracted researchers and industry pioneers to the largely under-utilized spectrum in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands for the 5th generation of wireless networks. This could provide hundreds of times more capacity as compared to 4G cellular networks. The main reason for ignoring the mmWave spectrum until now, has been its vulnerability to signal blockages and possible disconnection or interruption in service. Considering that today’s mobile users expect high reliability and throughput connections, the mmWave signal sensitivity to blockages must be addressed. This research proposes to predict base stations that can service a user without disconnections, given the user’s path or destination in the network.
In modern networks, reinforcement learning has been effectively utilized to obtain optimal decisions (or actions being taken) in small state-action spaces. Deep reinforcement learning has been able find optimal policies in larger network spaces. In this work, similar techniques are employed to find ways to serve the user without service disconnection or interruption. First, using dynamic programming for a fixed user path, the exact optimal serving base stations are listed. Then, using Q-learning, the network will learn to predict the optimal user path and serving base stations listed, given a fixed destination for the user. Lastly, deep Q-learning is used to approximate optimal user paths and base station lists along that path, similar to the Q-learning results, which can also be applied to networks with more sophisticated state spaces.


identifier: L.Valade, Maxence  (2020) Le soin du politique.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Le soin du politique

abstract: Ce texte s’inscrit au sein de ce qui a été qualifié de tournant existentiel du mouvement révolutionnaire. Les réflexions qui y sont dépliées s’inspirent d’expériences vécues au sein de diverses luttes, d’histoires qui m’ont renversé, de rencontres qui m’ont transformé, de concepts qui me servent d’outils, d’amitiés qui me nourrissent et d’un aspect clinique naissant. Une place centrale est accordée à certains concepts créés autour de la pratique du soin à la Clinique de La Borde, un lieu-dit qui a changé ma vie. L’objectif était d'hybrider soin et politique afin d'inquiéter leur oubli mutuel. En d'autres mots, l'objectif était d’informer une pratique au sein de laquelle une politique du soin se trouve également à être un soin du politique. J'espère ainsi contribuer à quelque chose comme l’expérience émergente et soignante d’une joie de la révolution.


identifier: Guermah, Idir  (2019) L’intégration linguistique et sociale des immigrants d’origine algérienne à Montréal.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
My thesis deals with the integration of Algerian immigrants in Montreal in relation to their linguistic practices and attitudes. More concretely, it intends to raise the following main issue: Algerian immigrants are francophones, and Quebec builds its integration policy on the French language; however, these immigrants seem to be the least integrated in the province. This leads one to ask an important question: is mastering the host country’s language a sufficient condition for the integration of immigrants?
I approach this issue under the angles of two disciplines which are Linguistic Anthropology and Immigration studies. Through a methodology based on a deep and continuous immersion, the aim of my study is to report on the mode and the degree of adaptation of Algerian immigrants to the Quebecois society. In this way, I plan to contribute in shedding light on the problematic of cultural diversity and coexistence of different communities. Moreover, my study is interesting because it deals with a theme that is not yet much researched as Algerian immigration to Quebec is quite recent.
My study shows that both the Quebec government and the Algerian immigrants are making efforts towards the integration of these migrants. Although the latter still face problems of unemployment, discrimination and cultural adaptation, their activities in different domains attest that they have come to Quebec with a will to stay. The success of their integration requires the overcoming of the prejudices that they and the host society have towards each other.


identifier: Ma, Clayton  (2020) A Liberal Partisan? A Study on Canadian Visible Minorities’ Partisan Preferences.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Using survey data drawn from the 2014 Provincial Diversity Project, this thesis provides a more comprehensive look at visible minority (VM) Canadians’ federal partisan preferences compared to other Canadians. My findings show that even in 2014, VMs are more likely than other Canadians to identify with the Liberal party instead of other parties.

	Additionally, this thesis explores the factors explaining VMs’ partisan attitudes by examining social, attitudinal, and ethnic factors’ influence on partisan preferences. In particular, I assess the idea of Liberal issue ownership over topics of diversity by testing the effects of opinions on multiculturalism and ethnic consciousness, or one’s attachment to their ethnic community, in influencing Liberal support. My findings show that while the symbolic effects of multiculturalism could not explain VMs’ preferences, ethnic consciousness is key to understanding VMs’ partisan attitudes. Moreover, I conclude that while VMs’ Liberal attitudes are shaped by distinct factors, those shaping VMs’ Conservative attitudes are characterised by considerable convergence with the existing dynamics found among other Canadians.

	Lastly, this thesis goes beyond the monolithic limitations of the VM category and examines the heterogeneity found within that category by looking at the cases of Chinese-Canadians and VMs of Muslim faith.


identifier: Pan, Ming Hui  (2020) The Harbin Jewish Community and the Regional Conflicts of Northeast China, 1903-1963.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This study examines the historical development of the Harbin Jewish community in Northeast China from its beginning in the early 1900s to its end in the 1960s. Scholars seldom pay enough attention to the Harbin Jewish community, the largest and most influential Jewish community in Asia. This study aims to fill this significant geopolitical gap of the history of Jews in the East.
I develop two major narrative strategies in locating the Harbin Jewish Community in its historical map: (1) chronologically intertwining the development of the Harbin Jewish community within the local history of Harbin, by examining the relations between the Harbin Jewish community and its changing governors, namely, the Russian, Chinese, and Japanese policies towards the Jews; (2) investigating in parallel the contacts between the Harbin Jewish community with its contemporary Jewish communities in Shanghai, Europe and the United States, especially during the globally influential World War I and World War II period.
This study challenges the argument that the Chinese and the Jews did not cross paths in these important historical events mentioned above. By tracing the history of the Harbin Jewish community, this study demonstrates that Jewish experience in China must be perceived as a whole and the survival of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the Holocaust in WWII should be put into its historical context rather than a single historical accident. The Harbin Jewish community thereby has an enduring legacy in the reconstruction of postmodern historiography and international relationships.


identifier: Wang, Miao  (2020) Speech Enhancement using Fiber Acoustic Sensor.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
With the development of IoT (Internet of Things) services and devices, the voice command becomes a more and more important tool for human computer interaction. However, the audio signal recorded by the conventional omni-directional microphone is easy to be corrupted by the environmental noise like interference speech. Although the conventional beamforming techniques are able to point the main lobe of beam pattern at the desired speaker, it requires several omni microphones to form a microphone array, which will occupy large space on an IoT device. Many researchers are devoting their efforts to inventing a microphone of small size that can create directional beam pattern. Recently, researchers get inspirations from the spider’s way to sense the acoustic wave. They invented a new small-size acoustic sensor made of spider silks. This acoustic sensor has a frequency-independent dipole beam pattern for wideband audio signal. Utilizing this fiber acoustic sensor, two compact microphone arrays and corresponding speech enhancement systems can be constructed. The first microphone array consists of one omni-microphone collocated with one fiber acoustic sensor. And the second one consists of two collocated fiber acoustic sensors with orthogonal dipole beam patterns.
By using the first microphone array, a first-order adaptive beamformer is designed in this thesis to reduce speech interference effects and separate speeches. In this design, an adaptive first-order beam pattern is formed by means of normalized least mean square method. Considering a scenario where the desired speech and interference speech are present at the same time, this adaptive beamformer is able to point the null angle of beam pattern at the undesired speaker to achieve speech interference reduction. In order to verify this idea, numerical simulations are conducted in an ideal condition (clean speech without reverberation) and real scenario (clean speech corrupted by white noise and reverberation). The results show that this design is able to improve speech quality significantly in ideal case. Under the condition suffering from white noise and reverberation, the improvement is achieved as well but at a much smaller scale.

By using the second collocated microphone array, a speech enhancement system is proposed to make the collocated fiber acoustic sensors be able to capture speech from any directions. This system includes three main parts. The first part conducts DOA (direction of arrival) estimation empowered by a machine learning method. Here the inter-channel acoustic intensity difference is employed to compute raw DOA estimates with the presence of white noise and reverberation. After obtaining the raw DOA estimates, the machine learning method (wrapped Gaussian mixture model) is used to give a more accurate DOA estimation. This proposed method is robust to both white noise and reverberation with a low computational complexity and solves the phase ambiguity problem (0 and π are identical). In the second part, by using the orthogonality of the dipoles of the two collocated fiber acoustic sensors (one is sinθ and the other is cosθ), along with the DOA (θ) estimated by the wrapped Gaussian mixture model, a steerable dipole beam pattern is generated to point the main lobe at the speaker. In the third part, a noise reduction procedure is applied to the output signal of the steerable beamformer. The proposed method is based on a time-frequency mask, which is used to filter out time-frequency bins of white noise and keep those of speech signal. In order to verify the effectiveness of the designed system, numerical simulations are conducted in the existence of both white noise and reverberation. The result shows that the proposed DOA estimation method is robust to both white noise and reverberation. It implies that this type of microphone array is able to obtain precise speaker spatial information. Meanwhile, the audio quality of the output signal of this system is improved by at least 50%.


identifier: Zaalouk, Ahmed  (2020) A Parameterized Design Optimization Framework for Worker-Friendly Workplaces in Modular Construction.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Workers in modular construction suffer frequent exposure to ergonomic risks that lead to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). Addressing ergonomic risk factors is thus critical to enhance the productivity of production lines and reduce social expenses for workers’ recovery. Towards this goal, an ergonomic-driven workplace design approach is essential to not only prevent risks through design changes proactively but also accommodate medical restrictions for workers getting back on the job during the health recovery period. However, a lack of methods to identify root causes of ergonomic risks among various workplace design parameters (WDPs) and design optimal workplace settings for complex and multiple tasks leads to difficulties in adopting this twofold design approach. To address this limitation, this thesis proposes a parameterized workplace design optimization framework that involves four procedures: (i) performing design initiation to identify WDPs and accordingly create design alternatives using the definitive screening design (DSD) method; (ii) building interactive worker-workplace simulation models to acquire workers’ body posture data and assess ergonomic risks among the different design alternatives; (iii) developing predictive surrogate models of the tasks using DSD statistical analysis; and (iv) optimizing workplace settings using the genetic algorithm to minimize ergonomic risk scores. The proposed framework is demonstrated through a case study to design a drywall preparation workplace in a real modular construction plant.


identifier: Bhalala, Jaydeep  (2020) Prototyping a Novel Core Loss Tester for Assembled Stator Lamination Stacks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In the modern industrial world, electrical machines have become the backbone of the industry. Electrical machines account for nearly 60% of the total electricity consumption in the industrialized countries, hence a huge energy saving can be achieved even by a small increment in electrical machine efficiency. This improvement starts right at the machine design stage. Improving the machine design requires accurate quantification of the machine losses. A significant portion of the losses in the electrical machines is due to the core loss in the magnetic material. The core loss measurement in the stators and rotors is still an open problem. Most of the available techniques and testers for core loss estimation do not take into account the effect of the various mechanical processes and shape of the magnetic material under test. In addition, most of the current standardized core loss estimation techniques and testers are based on pulsating magnetic field only, whereas all the rotating electrical machines have a rotational magnetic field.
	In this research work, a new core loss tester to measure core loss in assembled stator lamination stacks is analysed, simulated and prototyped with successful result validation between simulation and experimental tests. The new tester is suitable for the measurement of rotational core loss, and is capable of measuring loss with different number of pole combinations and excitation frequencies. Measurements were carried out using an induction machine stator.
	This work describes the influence of different flux patterns generated based on the number of poles in the excitation winding. Experimental tests were carried out and the core loss data were recorded for various test cases. The developed tester accounts for the effect of mechanical processes like punching, laser cutting, stack pressing, etc. Experimental results are obtained from the tester are compared with the simulated results and the percentage difference in the core loss is presented. The core losses measured by the standardized pulsating core loss testers like Epstein frame are compared with that measured from the new tester to study the effect of rotational excitation on the core loss measurement. This work also presents the shortcomings of using commercially available pulsating loss data for core loss simulation by comparing the simulated results with the experimentally measured core loss.


identifier: Aloyayri, Abdulrahman  (2020) Breast Cancer Classification from Histopathological Images Using Transfer Learning and Deep Neural Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Early diagnosis of breast cancer is the most reliable and practical approach to managing cancer. Computer-aided detection or computer-aided diagnosis is one of the software technology designed to assist doctors in detecting or diagnose cancer and reduce mortality via using the medical image analysis with less time. Recently, medical image analysis used Convolution Neural Networks to evaluate a vast number of data to detect cancer cells or image classification. In this thesis, we implemented transfer learning from pre-trained deep neural networks ResNet18, Inception-V3Net, and ShuffleNet in terms of binary classification and multiclass classification for breast cancer from histopathological images. We use transfer learning with the fine-tuned network results in much faster and less complicated training than a training network with randomly initialized weights from scratch. Our approach is applied to image-based breast cancer classification using histopathological images from public dataset BreakHis. The highest average accuracy achieved for binary classification of benign or malignant cases was 97.11% for ResNet 18, followed by 96.78% for ShuffleNet and 95.65% for Inception-V3Net. In terms of the multiclass classification of eight cancer classes, the average accuracies for pre-trained networks are as follows. ResNet18 achieved 94.17%, Inception-V3Net 92.76% and ShuffleNet 92.27%.


identifier: Kabir, Waziha ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-6645 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-6645>  (2020) New Multimodal Biometric Systems with Feature-Level and Score-Level Fusions.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In recent years, biometric-based authentication systems have become very important in view of their ability to prevent identity theft by identifying an individual with high accuracy and reliability. Multimodal biometric systems have now drawn some attention in view of their ability to provide a performance superior to that provided by the corresponding unimodal biometric systems by utilizing more than one biometric modality. The existing multimodal biometric systems fuse multiple modalities at a single level, such as sensor, feature, score, rank or decision, and no study to fuse the modalities at more than one level that may lead to a further improvement in the performance of multimodal biometric systems, has been hitherto undertaken. In this thesis, multimodal biometric systems, wherein fusions of the modalities are carried out at more than one level, are investigated.

In order to improve the performance of multimodal biometric systems over unimodal biometric systems, normalization and weighting of scores from multiple matchers are essential tasks. In view of this, in the first part of the thesis, a number of normalization and weighting techniques under the score level fusion are investigated. Unlike the existing normalization techniques that are based only on the genuine scores, four new techniques based on both the genuine and impostor scores, are proposed. Two weighting techniques that are based on confidence of the scores, are proposed. Extensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the multimodal biometric system under the score-level fusion (MBS-SL) using the proposed normalization and weighting techniques.

The focus of the second part of this thesis is on the development of multimodal biometric systems, wherein fusions of the modalities are carried out at multiple levels. Specifically, two multimodal biometric systems, in which three modalities are used for their fusion both at the feature level and the score level, are proposed. In the first multimodal biometric system, referred to as the multimodal biometric system with feature level and score level (MBS-FSL) fusions, the features of the three modalities are encoded using the binary hash encoding technique. Unlike the existing techniques for feature level fusion that use unencoded features, this encoding technique allows the neighbourhood feature information to be taken into account. The score-level fusion is carried out on the score obtained from the feature-level fusion and the score from the matching module of the modality that has the lowest equal error rate.

In the proposed MBS-FSL, the border values of raw features could not participate in the encoding in view 4-connected neighbors not being available. In order to take both the border and non-border information as well as the neighbourhood information into consideration, a second multimodal biometric system, referred to as the multimodal biometric system with modified feature level and score level (MBS-MFSL) fusions, is proposed, wherein both the raw and encoded features are taken into account. In this system, the feature-level fusion is carried out in a manner similar to that for the MBS-FSL system. The score-level fusion is then carried out between the score obtained from the feature-level fusion, the score from the matching module of the modality that was not utilized in the feature-level fusion, and the scores from individual modalities by using their raw features.

Extensive experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the two proposed multimodal biometric systems. The results of these experiments demonstrate that both of the proposed multimodal biometric systems provide performance superior to that provided by the existing multimodal biometric systems in which fusion of modalities is carried out at a single level, namely, the score level. Experimental results also show that, in view of both the border and neighbourhood feature information being considered in the proposed MBS-MFSL system, it provides a performance superior to that provided by MBS-FSL system.

The investigation undertaken in this thesis is aimed at advancing the present knowledge in the field of human biometric identification by considering, for the first time, the fusion of the modalities at two levels, namely, the feature and score levels, and it is hoped that the findings of this study would pave the way for further research in the development of new multimodal biometric systems employing fusion of modalities at multiple levels.


identifier: Gaudelli, Miriam  (2020) Effectiveness of Vodder manual lymphatic drainage massage in adolescents with post-concussion symptoms.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Fourteen to thirty-five percent of people with concussions develop post-concussion symptoms that last 30 days or more; a condition termed Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS).  Symptoms include headaches, vestibular, visual emotional and psychological changes.  Rehabilitation includes physical and eye exercises, manual pharmacological therapies. We propose an additional treatment called Vodder Manual Lymphatic Drainage Massage (VMLD) that treats inflammation and lymphedema.  It is hypothesized that a VMLD protocol will decrease PCS symptoms compared to a touch control treatment.  Twenty-three adolescents were recruited and nineteen were randomly divided into VMLD (n=10; 16.1 ± 1.4 years) and touch control (n=9; 16.1 ± 1.3 years) groups.  Time from the last concussion was 590.2± 476.7 days for the VMLD group and 468.9 ± 542.9 days for the touch control group. Participants received 15 x 1-hour interventions over 54 ± 14.8 days.   On appointments 1, 7 and 15, participants were evaluated using the Rivermead Post-Concussion Syndrome Questionnaire (RPQ) and the SCAT-5 5-word and 10-word recall, Number Concentration Test, Months in Reverse and Delayed Word Recall Test.  A 2x3 ANOVA (GenStat statistical software) was used to test for treatment and time effect.  There was no statistical difference between the groups. Both groups showed a significant time effect (p<0.05) for the RPQ, SCAT5 Number Concentration, and Delayed Word Recall Tests.  VMLD and touch-control treatments exhibited symptom improvements in both groups based upon questionnaire scores.  These treatments may be beneficial in post-concussion syndrome rehabilitation.  More research needs to be conducted to assess the effectiveness of these treatments.


identifier: Orenga Panizza, Rafaela  (2020) Correlation and sensitivity of building economy and energy consumption to design parameters.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
With the growth in the criticality of buildings’ lifecycle performance, building performance simulation (BPS) is becoming a more prominent step in the building design process.  BPS’s ability to approximate the performance of a building in the real world enables BPS to be used for ensuring compliance and trade-off of design parameters at a late period of design. The quantitative information provided by BPS, if applied at an earlier period of design, has the potential to assist in more impactful decisions (which are currently being based on rules of thumb). The problem, however, is that the lack of details set at such early design translates to a very large number of scenarios to be simulated, requiring extensive time and computational power that is not available to designers during that phase.
To try limiting the number of scenarios to be simulated, the main goal of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of the impact caused by building design parameters and building characteristics. To accomplish that, data analyses were performed on a database of representative building models to investigate the sensitivity of outputs (Energy use intensity – EUI and net present worth of cost – NPW) to design parameters (architectural, electrical and mechanical systems) and the sensitivity of parameters’ impact to building models. For each building model, energy simulations were performed based on a one-parameter-at-a-time (OAT) sampling, and the costs were evaluated through developed cost models.
The results of this study show that wall and roof insulation, window type, window-to-wall ratio, and lighting efficiency parameters are sensitive to the analyzed model. When analyzing different building groups (e.g. low- and high-rise) separately, it was found that parameters’ significance is correlated to building characteristics (e.g. building height). This can be particularly of extreme importance for limiting design alternatives at the early stage of design when the multiplicity of design scenarios is currently limiting the applicability of BPS in the early-stage decision-making for building designs. In the future, the use of more advanced data analysis tools will help improve the accuracy of the observed results as well as provide an inclusive classification for the level of impact of various design parameters in different building types.