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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

Understanding Group/Party Affiliation Using Social Networks and Agent-Based Modeling

The dynamics of group affiliation and group dispersion is a concept that is most often studied in order for political candidates to better understand the most efficient way to conduct their campaigns. While political campaigning in the United States is a very hot topic that most politicians analyze and study, the concept of group/party affiliation presents its own area of study that producers very interesting results. One tool for examining party affiliation on a large scale is agent-based modeling (ABM), a paradigm in the modeling and simulation (M&S) field perfectly suited for aggregating individual behaviors to observe large swaths of a population. For this study agent based modeling was used in order to look at a community of agents and determine what factors can affect the group/party affiliation patterns that are present. In the agent-based model that was used for this experiment many factors were present but two main factors were used to determine the results. The results of this study show that it is possible to use agent-based modeling to explore group/party affiliation and construct a model that can mimic real world events. More importantly, the model in the study allows for the results found in a smaller community to be translated into larger experiments to determine if the results will remain present on a much larger scale.

Campbell, Kenyth↗
NASA NTRS2018

Marrying Social Media Approaches and Space Flight Control - Eight Years at SpaceOps

This paper shows how Marshall Space Flight Center's (MSFC) ISS Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) is realizing the above goals via a) enhancements to the Console Log Tool (CoLT) first deployed in 2012 and b) the Communications Dashboard (CommDash) software suite deployed in 2017. In addition to technical discussion, the paper chronicles CommDash's role in emergence of an Agile development process and a Human Factors community of practice within MSFC's Payload Mission Operations Division (PMOD).

Scott, D. W.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Independent Analyses of Galveston QSF18 Social Survey

A set of independent analyses was performed of the findings of NASA’s QSF18 data collection exercise in Galveston, TX. These analyses included development of regression-based and other dosage-response relationships between the prevalence of annoyance with low-amplitude sonic booms and Perceived Level measures of single event and cumulative exposure. They also included detailed analyses of the effects of panelist attrition; of participation reminder messages sent to panelists; the ability to determine panelist locations at the time of exposure; and the effects of rattle and vibration on annoyance judgments, among other topics. The report summarizes the implications of its findings for the design of studies of community response to carpet booms created during future deployments of NASA’s X-59 aircraft, and recommends several design measures to improve the efficiency of data collection.

sonic boom↗
NASA NTRS2020

NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) and Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) Social Network and Community of Practice

The NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) and Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) have been planned and funded by the NASA Earth Science Division. Both programs have a focus on engaging stakeholders and developing science useful for decision making. The resulting programs have funded significant scientific output and advancements in understanding how satellite remote sensing observations can be used to not just study how the Earth is changing, but also create data products that are of high utility to stakeholders and decisions makers. In this paper we focus on documenting thematic diversity of research themes and methods used, and how the CMS and ABoVE themes are related. We do this through developing a Correlated Topic Model on the 521 papers produced by the two programs and plotting the results in a network diagram. Through analysis of the themes in these papers, we document the relationships between researchers and institutions participating in CMS and ABoVE programs and the benefits from sustained engagement with stakeholders due to recurring funding. We note an absence of policy engagement in the papers and conclude that funded researchers need to be more ambitious and explicit in drawing the connection between their research and carbon policy implications in order to meet the stated goals of the CMS and ABoVE programs.

Molly E Brown↗
NASA NTRS2021

Yonkers Urban Development: Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Identify Environmental and Social Drivers of Urban Heat Vulnerability and Model Urban Cooling Interventions in Yonkers, New York

The City of Yonkers, New York, is located directly north of the Bronx in Westchester County and currently hosts a population of nearly 200,000. In response to increasing hot-weather episodes, the risk of heat-related illnesses and mortality is disproportionately affecting neighborhoods in Yonkers historically subjected to race-based housing segregation. NASA DEVELOP collaborated with Groundwork Hudson Valley to determine regions within Yonkers that are experiencing the most intense urban heat island effects, identify and rank sociodemographic and environmental determinants of increasing community-level vulnerability, map these vulnerabilities as a combined vulnerability index, complete a proximity analysis of walkability to local cooling centers and health facility locations, and model potential cooling strategies. The study area consisted of Yonkers, NY and the analyses used data from 2015-2020 (June through August). The project utilized NASA Earth observation products including Landsat 4 and 5 Thematic Mapper (TM), Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), and ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS). We assessed the benefits of different heat-mitigation scenarios by utilizing the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) urban cooling model. Results from these analyses can be used by Groundwork Hudson Valley, supporting the New York State’s Climate Safe Communities Certifiable Planning Actions, expanding knowledge on the relationship between historic redlining and environmental equity, and informing their Climate Safe Neighborhoods initiative to identify and prioritize mitigation efforts to abate the worst impacts of extreme heat.

Jillian Walechka↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Evaluating the Effects of Urban Expansion on Social and Environmental Vulnerability in Guatemala and Panama

Central America is one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the world, with the urban population expected to double by 2050. This growth is driving multiple societal issues, including infrastructure inequities, lack of accessible housing, and environmental degradation. This project partnered with NASA SERVIR, Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and Centro de Coordinación para la Prevención de los Desastres en América Central y República Dominicana (CEPRENEDAC) to examine changes in urban extent and vulnerability in Guatemala City, Guatemala and Panama City, Panama. The team identified urban extent using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), and Landsat 9 OLI-2 within Google Earth Engine’s LandTrendr algorithm. Next, they assessed urban vulnerability between formal and informal settlements by classifying different types of roof material using high-resolution Maxar Worldview 2 and 3 imagery and comparing it to socioeconomic and environmental risks. While both cities have expanded outward and become denser since 2000, Guatemala City has grown at a faster rate. The most vulnerable communities of both cities were located in the northwestern regions. These case studies can be used to inform similar methodologies in other Central American cities and help leaders identify the most vulnerable communities within their areas.

Aaron Whittemore↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Coronado Ecological Conservation: Assessing Vegetation Change Due to Border Wall Construction and Shifting Social Trails

We are the Coronado Ecological Conservation team at the GA, Athens Node. We have been Utilizing NASA Earth observations to assess invasive species spread and change in vegetation health in southeastern Arizona due to the construction of the US-Mexico border wall. The NPS at Coronado National Memorial will use our end products to bolster their plans and funding requests for restoration work in the disturbed areas.

Carson Schuetze↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Coronado Ecological Conservation: Assessing Vegetation Change Due to Border Wall Construction and Shifting Social Trails

Species monitoring is essential in mitigating the impacts of plant invasion, such as radical changes in an area’s ecosystem, degraded soil health, increased wildfire severity, landslides, and increased flooding. NASA DEVELOP partnered with the National Park Service (NPS) to investigate invasive species in disturbed lands: specifically, areas affected by off-trail walking and US-Mexico border construction activities. The team assessed how construction has impacted the distribution of Lehmann’s lovegrass and Russian thistle invasives throughout Coronado National Memorial, AZ from 1986 to 2022. Using data from Landsat 5 and 8, Sentinel-2, the National Agriculture Imagery Program, and PlanetScope, the team computed vegetation indices including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Moisture Index, Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index 2, Enhanced Vegetation Index, and Tasseled Cap Wetness, Brightness, and Greenness transformations as vegetation health indicators to input into various machine learning algorithms. To minimize noise, the team conducted Principal Component Analysis on the vegetation indices and spectral bands before running k-means++ clustering and random forest classification algorithms. Between all datasets, we found the median area fully overtaken by invasive plants was 5.37% of the park’s total area in 2022. The NPS will use the end products to help increase restoration efforts in disturbed areas with high concentrations of invasive plants. The NPS’s collection of ground data for 2022–2023, in conjunction with future data collection, will notably improve the accuracy of classification models, leading to more precise monitoring of invasive spread over time.

Carson Schuetze↗
NASA NTRS2023

Exploring Natural and Social Drivers of Forest Degradation in Post-Soviet Georgia

The Caucasus Mountains harbor high concentrations of endemic species and provide an abundance of ecosystem services yet are significantly understudied compared to other ecosystems in Eurasia. In the country of Georgia, at the heart of the Caucasus region, forest degradation has been the largest land change process over the last thirty years. The prevailing narrative is that legal and illegal cutting of trees for fuelwood is primarily responsible for this process. Yet, since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has undergone rapid socioeconomic and institutional changes which have not been explored as drivers of forest change. We combine newly available land-cover change estimates, Georgian statistical data, and historical institutional change data to examine socioeconomic drivers of forest degradation. Our analysis controls for concurrent changes in climate that would affect degradation and examines variation at the regional (state) level from 2011 to 2019, as well as at the national level from 1987 to 2019. We find that higher winter temperature and drought are associated with higher degradation at the regional scale, while major institutional changes and drought are associated with higher forest degradation at the national level. Access to natural gas, the major energy alternative to fuelwood, had no significant association with degradation. Our results challenge the narrative that poverty and a lack of alternative energy infrastructure drive forest degradation and suggest that government policies banning household fuelwood cutting, including the new Forest Code of 2020, may not reduce forest degradation. Given these results, improved data on wood harvesting and more research on the commercial drivers of degradation and their links to economic and political reforms is needed to better inform forest policy in the region, especially given ongoing risks from climate change.

Institutions↗