{"359621":{"#nid":"359621","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Ph.D. Thesis Defense by Zhongming Lu","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESchool of Civil and Environmental Engineering\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EPh.D.\u0026nbsp;Thesis\u0026nbsp;Defense\u0026nbsp;Announcement\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMANAGING THE COMPLEXITY OF SUSTAINABE CITIES: THE INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEM AND SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003Eby:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EZhongming Lu\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAdvisor:\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003EDr. John Crittenden(CEE)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECommittee Members:\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003EDr. Yongsheng Chen (CEE), Dr. Ellen Dunham-Jones (COA), Dr. Richard Fujimoto (CSE), \u0026amp; Dr. Frank Southworth (CEE)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EDate \u0026amp; Time:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003EWednesday,\u0026nbsp;January 7, 2:00 PM\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003ELocation:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003EBBISS Conference Room C, 828 W. Peachtree St. NW\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EABSTRACT\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs a critical component of the city, urban infrastructures emerge through the interactions with socioeconomic environment. Managing the complexity behind\u003Cbr \/\u003Ethe interactions can make the city more sustainable. Complexity involves the two aspects: 1) understanding social preference and adoption of green\u003Cbr \/\u003Einfrastructure designs (e.g., low-impact development (LID) to control storm water, transit-oriented development (TOD) to reduce car dependence and\u003Cbr \/\u003Eincentivize denser land use); 2) developing an urban model that accounts for the complexity of the urban system to predict the emergent property of the city\u003Cbr \/\u003E(e.g., land use, water consumption, tax revenues and carbon emissions). These two aspects constitute the research content of this dissertation.\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis dissertation consists of four sections. In the first section, I developed an agent-based model (ABM) to predict the land use pattern. The ABM is an\u003Cbr \/\u003Eapproach suited to simulating and understanding the dynamics of the complex system. To reduce the complexity and uncertainty of the ABM, the model\u003Cbr \/\u003Esimulated the decisions and interaction of agents (i.e., home buyer, the developer and the local government) at the neighborhood scale. The output of the\u003Cbr \/\u003EABM serves as the baseline scenario of land use pattern for evaluating the effect of tax investment and fees on the adoption of green infrastructure designs\u003Cbr \/\u003Eand more compact land use pattern. Second, with the help of the ABM, I evaluated and compared the policies (i.e., impact fees, subsidy) on the adoption of\u003Cbr \/\u003Egreen infrastructure designs and more compact land use pattern. I developed a more sustainable development (MSD) scenario that introduces an impact fee\u003Cbr \/\u003Ethat developers must pay if they choose not to use LID (i.e., rainwater harvesting, porous pavement) to build houses or apartment homes. Model simulations\u003Cbr \/\u003Eshow homeowners selecting apartment homes 60% of the time after 30 years of development in MSD. In contrast, only 35% homeowners selected apartment\u003Cbr \/\u003Ehomes after 30 years of development in business as usual (BAU) scenario where there is no impact fee for LID. The increased adoption of apartment homes\u003Cbr \/\u003Eresults from the lower cost of using LID (i.e., rain garden, native vegetations and porous pavement) in public spaces and improved quality of life for\u003Cbr \/\u003Eapartment homes relative to single-family homes. The MSD scenario generates more tax revenues and water savings than does BAU. Third, as an initial\u003Cbr \/\u003Eeffort to calibrate the home buyer\u0027s preference for community design in the ABM, I developed an analytic modeling based on the existing community\u003Cbr \/\u003Epreference survey. The data available for this effort is from National Association of Realtors\u0027 2011 community preference survey. I applied a latent class\u003Cbr \/\u003Echoice model and discovered four classes of individuals that reveal distinctive behaviors when choosing smart growth neighborhoods, based on the interplay\u003Cbr \/\u003Ebetween aspects of community design, socioeconomic characteristics, and personal attitudes. Linking the results of the latent class choice to an agent-based\u003Cbr \/\u003Emarket diffusion model enables planners to evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed smart growth neighborhood design in inducing less sprawling\u003Cbr \/\u003Edevelopment. In the fourth section, I developed a survey that focuses on preferences of metro Atlanta residents for LID and TOD. With the responses\u003Cbr \/\u003Ecollected on Mechanical Turk, I developed a latent-class residential community choice model of four distinctive classes that reveal heterogeneous\u003Cbr \/\u003Epreferences for community designs. Spatial distribution of the four classes was mapped out to visualize the locations of the demand for different community\u003Cbr \/\u003Edesigns in the metro Atlanta. The analysis of the impact of increase in housing price on the adoption of LID and TOD shows a low risk of investing LID and\u003Cbr \/\u003ETOD in the metro Atlanta. Residents are willing to adopt the community with LID and TOD as compared to the corresponding one without LID and TOD.\u003Cbr \/\u003EFurther, I demonstrated an integrated framework of managing the complexity of urban sustainability which feeds the bottom-level calibrated decision making\u003Cbr \/\u003Esimulation into an agent-based model to predict the emergent land use pattern with the intervention of policies. Results show that more compact development\u003Cbr \/\u003Ecan be achieved with a proper design of LID requirement on low-density communities. Lastly, a simple environmental impact assessment on land use\u003Cbr \/\u003Epatterns provides a rough estimation of 28% carbon emission reduction from more compact development.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp align=\u0022center\u0022\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"MANAGING THE COMPLEXITY OF SUSTAINABE CITIES: THE INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEM AND SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT"}],"uid":"28077","created_gmt":"2014-12-31 13:31:29","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 02:10:54","author":"Danielle Ramirez","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2015-01-07T13:00:00-05:00","event_time_end":"2015-01-07T15:00:00-05:00","event_time_end_last":"2015-01-07T15:00:00-05:00","gmt_time_start":"2015-01-07 18:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2015-01-07 20:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2015-01-07 20:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"1808","name":"graduate students"},{"id":"100811","name":"Phd Defense"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78771","name":"Public"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}