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ETDs in this collection are being checked for completeness and are in the process of being transferred to their respective collections under the FGS ETD collection umbrella.

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Modelling of Polymer Adsorption and Looping
    (2024-03-16) Sperydon Koumarianos; Neal Madras; Ozzy Bergevin
    Understanding the physical adsorption behavior of polymers on surfaces is crucial for advancing materials science and developing smart coatings to enhance the bio-compatibility of implanted devices. Applications, ranging from heart stents to brain-integrated microchips,have been experimentally explored to study the adsorption properties of charged polymers onto diverse surfaces. While experimental observations have indicated the presence of loops in adsorbed polymer chains, there remains a need for a comprehensive theoretical model to consistently predict these phenomena. The proposed self-avoiding walk model aims to elucidate the conformations of polymer chains on a surface lattice, emphasizing the entropic competition between flat adsorption and dangly loops during the adsorption process. Focusing on loops formed by adsorbed polymers, the study aims to determine entropically preferred looping structures. These looping structures are relevant to the biocompatibility of materials. The modeling approach involves relating entropy to partition values generated by different macro-states, with a focus on enumerating micro-states to identify the most entropically preferred behavior of adsorbed polymers.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Evaluating the extent and drivers of dietary specialization in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) across Western Hudson Bay
    (2024-03-16) Kiersten Christina Kelva King; Gregory Thiemann
    Climate warming has caused significant reductions in the extent of annual sea ice. As an ice-dependent species, the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) relies on the ice to hunt, making it susceptible to large-scale changes in sea ice and prey availability. My thesis sought to investigate individual-level foraging habits of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay from 2004-2021. I used fatty acid analyses and the proportional similarity index to investigate the extent and drivers of individual dietary specialization and interindividual differences in foraging habits. My results indicated a significant proportion of specialization, with the degree of specialization differing across age and sex classes. Annual snow depth and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) were strong predictors of specialization, resulting in increased specialization with increasing snow depth and NAO. Continued monitoring efforts are necessary to ensure interindividual variation in foraging is considered when modelling the responses of polar bears to future climatic warming.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Patient Experience and Virtualized Healthcare: Thematic analyses of news, scientific literature, and user experience discourses
    (2024-03-16) Hanako Alexandra Smith; Charles Davis
    This dissertation uses mixed methods to examine three discourses of patient experience of virtualized healthcare. The three discourses examined are: (1) a news discourse, (2) a scientific literature discourse, and (3) a user experience discourse. Virtualized healthcare is defined by this dissertation as healthcare activities specifically conducted via mediated communication. Uptake in virtualized healthcare has accelerated as many Ontario practitioners have recently offered this form of care due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Ministry of Health creating temporary “COVID-19 pandemic allowance” for all physicians to bill for virtual care. As a period of initial unregulated use of virtual care by Ontarians ends, there is now an opportunity to take a closer look at the patient experiences of these healthcare services. By analysing the three distinct discourses (each of which is a form of health communication), this dissertation maps central themes that are consistently brought up in discussions of virtualized healthcare and patient experience. Comparing the themes that come up in the discourse genres of scientific literature and news articles provides an understanding of how patients may come to understand the phenomenon of virtualized healthcare. Adding an analysis of user experience discourse to this understanding provides findings of what themes overlap in both public discourses and accounts of personal experiences of virtualized healthcare. The themes found across the three discourses are ultimately developed into three recommendations the implementation or practicing of virtualized healthcare, which are to be tested and evaluated in future research programs. The three recommendations (engaging patients in healthcare innovation, viewing healthcare as a hybrid patient-centric network, and understanding that virtualization requirements of healthcare interactions vary) are ways of thinking about how healthcare can become virtualized, and what affects the potential virtualization of healthcare. These recommendations are evidenced based, proven to not only be observed in user experience discourse, but also in how researchers and the public discuss issues and concepts of virtualized healthcare. Different and overlapping elements of each recommendation are highlighted by each discourse. Each of the recommendations is discussed in terms of its theoretical and practical implications.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Trans imaging of non-normative homes: the critical geographies of higher education- LGBTQ+ student housing in Delhi and Mumbai, India
    (2024-03-16) Chan Parekh; Alison L Bain
    “Student housing” rarely discursively figures in the contemporary urban Indian public imagination because of a deeply rooted cis-heteronormative conflation of marriage, housing, and permanence. This dissertation considers what it means for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ+) postsecondary students to belong in an everyday trans-/homonegative society. Through empirical case studies of on- and off-campus geographies of student housing at North Campus, DU, Delhi and Deonar Campus, TISS, Mumbai, I analyse and visualize the invisibilized lived experiences of Higher Education (HE)-LGBTQ+ students in two of India’s megacities. These two campuses are home to radical student-led gender-based housing activism against the patriarchal and cisnormative codes of student accommodations. Gender, however, cannot be activated in isolation, as it intersects with a range of identity axes such as class, caste, region, religion, and (rarely specified) sexuality. This dissertation is based on two phases of research (August 2020 to April 2021 and June 2022 to October 2022) conducted virtually during the Covid-19 global pandemic. In-depth interactive spatial storytelling with 23 HE-LGBTQ+ students was combined with semi-structured interviews with 12 student housing stakeholders (3 urban planners, 5 brokers, and 4 landowners) and autoethnography. My transdisciplinary training as a geographer-artist-architect was used to develop a “trans imaging” technique to see-through and spatio-visually represent how cis-heteropatriarchy codes normative domestic blueprints in ways that enable queer domicide. I argue that queer-domicidal blueprints exceed the spatial scale of marital family homes shaping student spatialities at university-city edges and student housing and homes in India. This dissertation advocates for unfollowing normative domestic blueprints and learning from HE-LGBTQ+ students’ (un)homings and reimaginings of non-normative home-futures.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Automated Plume Rise Measurement based on Deep Neural Networks using Video Images
    (2024-03-16) Mohammad Koushafar; Mark Gordon; Gunho Sohn
    When a smokestack releases pollutants, the resulting plume cloud dissipates gradually and mixes with the surrounding air; it becomes neutrally buoyant and loses its vertical momentum. It is then carried downwind at a constant height called the Plume Rise or plume rise height. Plume rise affects how far pollutants are carried downwind, their deposition to the environment, and the amount of greenhouse gases mixed into the upper troposphere. Therefore, correctly calculating plume rise for the modelled dispersion of pollutants is of concern in air-quality transport models and local environment assessment cases. Recent studies have shown that the Briggs equations, which are a popular form of parameterization in models, significantly underpredict the plume rise. Modern computer vision methods allow the possibility of measuring plume rise under varied atmospheric conditions using video images. Most existing computer vision methods detect smoke clouds using an estimated bounding box without performing a segmentation down to the pixel level. Our proposed method can accurately detect and segment a plume cloud exiting from a smokestack and consider a hypothetical plume centerline based on an improved Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN). We propose a Mask R-CNN model that can be applied for extracting the region of the plume cloud area of interest. Then, the proposed network is modified with our training dataset and used for detecting the hypothetical centerlines of the plume cloud. Finally, a comparative analysis was performed using meteorological data and smokestack measurements. This analysis involved comparing the plume rise and plume rise distance values estimated by the proposed framework with the obtained values from the Briggs parameterization equations. The outcomes confirmed a considerable underestimation of plume rise by the Briggs plume rise parameterization in the region. Using our model, the conventional plume rise model validation methods can be developed, and scientific grounds are provided for developing new physical models.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Ethics of Cognitive Security
    (2024-03-16) Andrew Ward Buzzell; Regina Rini
    This dissertation concerns ethical and epistemic assessment of the use of state power to defend against information threats and hostile activities, especially in digital information environments, an activity which has been described as the pursuit of cognitive security. I have three main aims. Firstly, to motivate scholarly interest in what I call the ethics of cognitive security - an interdisciplinary effort to provide coordinated empirical, theoretical, and ethical input into this exercise of power, specifically by democratic states. To the extent that these are decide to develop offensive and defensive strategies for the conduct of information warfare, we can ask if there are empirical and ethical considerations that should inform this. I consider at length the literature on epistemic paternalism and the extent to which such efforts might be paternalist and thus objectionable or in need of special justification. Secondly, to articulate an ecological conception of our epistemic interdependence on the information environment that can help to describe the public interest in its responsible stewardship. This helps to generate less-securitized formulations of the aims and constraints of defensive operations that interface better with our ethical interests in the practice of cognitive security. I draw on the social epistemology literature, especially where it concerns testimony and epistemic dependence, and develop a conception of epistemic environmental dependence and trust. I connect this to environmental policy and philosophy scholarship that concerns the ethical relations that arise as a result of interdependencies, and the sorts of policy instruments that can be appropriate for protecting this kind of shared interest. Finally, I apply this conceptual framework to the specific cognitive security problem of hostile disinformation. Drawing on a conceptual analysis of epistemic pollution I argue that we should favour root cause analysis and remediation, even where it might seem to involve more substantial interference, rather than reactive efforts to filter and remove these, for reasons that include both empirical adequacy and respect for relevant ethical interests.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Memory Restoration: Working through Histories in the North American Chinese Diaspora
    (2024-03-16) Jun Lu; Deborah P Britzman
    From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, this dissertation attempts to clarify the way and possibility of working through difficult histories in the Chinese diaspora in North America. Considering the discrete nature, fragmentation, mobility, and prevalence of individual and familial units within the diaspora, psychoanalysis provides an advantageous framework for investigating and addressing historical experiences and their aftermath. I examine the contributions of three prominent psychoanalytic theorists, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott, in order to explore the ways in which their respective theories provide insights into the questions of: what one is working through, what one is working through to, and where one may locate the experiences of working through. Specifically, based on Winnicott’s concepts of ‘use of object’ and ‘transitional space,’ I argue that the use of cultural production, such as fiction, should be considered an integral part of the process of working through histories for the Chinese diaspora. I present three case studies that illustrate the utilization of cultural products from the Chinese diaspora as a means to comprehend their ongoing struggle between the processes of remembrance and forgetting. In my analysis, I consider not only the textual material itself, but also the factors pertaining to the authorship and reception of the text. These factors include situations of diaspora, traumatic experiences, the act of bearing witness, modes of learning, and the diligent endeavours of working through.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Getting Out of Debt Poverty
    (2024-03-16) Philippe Lord; Stephanie Ben-Ishai
    This dissertation advances a novel government program that could remedy inadequate access to credit for unbanked and underbanked individuals – those it defines as the “very poor.” It sets out the socioeconomic circumstances that create singular barriers for the very poor. It analyses the credit needs of the very poor, the unique institutions they interact with to meet these needs, and the ways in which these institutions intertwine extreme poverty, credit, and marginalisation. The dissertation proceeds to examine the role of the state in the provision and regulation of credit, and in the entrenchment of extreme poverty. It provides a sustained historical analysis of the role of the postal service, a public institution, in the provision of banking and credit and discusses a number of analogous programs and proposals that normalise and contextualise its novel government program. The dissertation extends a framework drawn from antitrust law to argue that state intervention in the marketplace is best understood as falling along a spectrum, from the provision of a competing product or service to the monopolisation of an entire industry. This framework elucidates how we justify state intervention with respect to certain essential, “public” products and services. The dissertation closes with a detailed proposal for a government program that would provide credit to the very poor through loans repaid through additional, progressive taxation. Individuals whose income does not reach a certain level would not need to repay the loan, whereas those with a high income would effectively repay a multiple of the loan principal amount. Repayment would depend on income, but only for a limited period of time. The program may have unique potential to alleviate persistently lower social mobility for the very poor.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Intestinal Immunolocalization and Insight on the Role of Tachykinin-Related Peptides in the Yellow Fever Mosquito, Aedes aegypti
    (2024-03-16) Zeynab Kohandel; Jean-Paul Paluzzi
    This study investigates a family of neuropeptides known as tackykinin-related peptides (TKRPs) in the mosquito Ae. aegypti, which is an insect of medical concern owing to its transmission of several arboviruses. As knowledge on TKRPs is limited in this mosquito, this study aimed to create a tk knockout line using CRISPR/Cas9 and characterize the distribution of TKRP immunoreactivity in the midgut over different physiological conditions including starved, sucrose-fed and blood-fed, and across developmental stages. The results demonstrate that TKRP immunoreactivity in the Ae. aegypti midgut is greatest in adult stage mosquitoes. Further, starvation significantly reduced TKRP immunoreactivity in the midgut compared to sugar fed adult mosquitoes, but no change was observed in relation to blood-feeding by females. Overall, this study established the intestinal distribution of TKRPs in Ae. aegypti and identified functional sgRNAs to disrupt the tk gene so that the physiological role of TKRPs can soon be characterized.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Time-evolution of SU(2) lattice gauge theory on a quantum computer
    (2024-03-16) Sarmed A Rahman; Randy Lewis
    Lattice Gauge Theory is a mathematical tool used to study the forces of nature, like Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Chromodynamics. Quantum computers offer an alternative to classical computers in studying these forces. In my thesis, a gate-based quantum computer was used to perform calculations of the propagation of an excitation in real-time. A new error mitigation method was developed to greatly extend the range of comprehensible data over time by using the physics circuits to estimate the accumulated error. I also developed the theoretical foundation for higher energy systems, as well as higher dimensional geometry.
  • ItemOpen Access
    OPTIMIZATION OF THERMOPHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS USING ONE DIMENSIONAL PHOTONIC CRYSTAL OPTICAL FILTERS WITH A GRADED INDEX OF REFRACTION PROFILE
    (2024-03-16) Mehran Sepah Mansoor; Paul O'Brien
    This thesis investigates the enhancement of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems using one-dimensional photonic crystals (1DPC) with a graded index of refraction as optical filters. It compares three 1DPC configurations: graded index, traditional quarter-wave, and modified quarter-wave stacks, to improve TPV performance. Designed for TPV applications, these filters aim to increase in-band transparency and minimize absorption while ensuring high out-of-band reflection. Graded index 1DPCs, made of porous silicon dioxide and solid zirconium dioxide, exhibit low absorbance across a broad spectrum, offering a novel approach in TPV applications. Significantly, a double-stack graded filter at an emitter temperature of 2000 K achieved 74% in-band transmittance and 55% out-of-band reflectance. Highlighting a design trade-off, the study presents an optimal filter configuration that yields a 24% system efficiency and a power density of 6.9 W/cm^2. The analysis focuses on system efficiency and power output, emphasizing the advancement in TPV efficiency through the application of graded index 1DPC filters.
  • ItemOpen Access
    THE CONTRIBUTION OF CORTICAL FEATURE PROCESSING TO OCULOMOTOR TARGET SELECTION
    (2024-03-16) Devin William Heinze Kehoe; Richard Murray; Mazyar Fallah
    We effortlessly move our eyes to objects with specific features and avoid objects with other features. This feature-guided target selection behavior has been studied extensively in experimental psychology and systems neuroscience. By now, the visual and cognitive factors that mediate target selection and the neural signatures of target selection in oculomotor substrates are clear. For example, neural activation encoding targets and distractors gradually divergences over time therefore signalling stimulus identity, while visual/cognitive factors like bottom-up salience or top-down priority modulate the precise time of this divergence. But despite the extensive research on oculomotor target selection, little research has examined how neural activation in oculomotor substrates encoding potential eye movements vectors is reweighted to indicate stimulus identity. Meanwhile, a parallel branch of systems neuroscience has thoroughly examined the function and anatomy of the visual processing pipeline distributed throughout the neocortex of mammals. Heretofore, however, there has been little if any attempt to characterize the relationship between cortical visual feature processing and oculomotor vector encoding during feature-guided target selection. This dissertation presents a series of behavioral experiments that provide several insights into this relationship. In these experiments, I measure the perturbation of target-directed saccades elicited by competitive remote distractors as a function of (1) the feature-space distance between targets and distractors and/or (2) distractor processing time. Given the close correspondence between saccade perturbation metrics and the underlying physiology of the oculomotor system, this methodology offers a non-invasive analog to examining the time course of oculomotor distractor activation during feature-guided target selection. In one set of experiments, I observed that distractor activation encodes the feature-space distance between targets and distractors in a manner consistent with attentional pruning of visual features observed in cortical feature representations during feature-based attentional deployment. In another set of experiments, I observed that the pattern of visual onset response latencies across distractor features mimics the pattern robustly observed between the cortical modules specialized for processing the respective features. These results indicate a close representational and temporal parity between feature encoding in oculomotor and (cortical) perceptual systems. I therefore propose a broad theory of oculomotor feature encoding whereby eye movement vectors in oculomotor substrates are dynamically and continuously reweighted by the feature-dependent network of cortical modules in the perceptual system necessary for representing the relevant feature set of the potential eye movement target.
  • ItemOpen Access
    MACHINE LEARNING-BASED DEFENCES AGAINST ADVANCED 'SESSION-REPLAY' WEB BOTS
    (2024-03-16) Shadi Sadeghpour; Natalija Vlajic
    The widespread adoption of the Internet has brought about significant benefits for modern society, but has also led to an increase in malicious activities, particularly through the use of web bots. While some bots serve useful purposes, the proliferation of malicious web bots poses a significant threat to Internet security, impacting individuals, businesses, governments, and society as a whole. The emergence of AI-powered web bots capable of mimicking human behavior and evading detection has further exacerbated this problem. This dissertation aims to deepen our understanding of advanced web bots and the web bot attacks that often signal fraudulent online activities. In particular, we focus on session-replay web bots, the latest and most advanced type of web bots, which present an especially difficult challenge in online domains where multiple genuine human users frequently exhibit similar behavioral patterns, such as news, banking, or gaming sites. To achieve our research objectives, we have meticulously curated an extensive dataset encompassing both human and bot-generated data. Additionally, we have developed our own prototype of advanced session-replay bot (the so-called ReBot), which has enabled us to accurately simulate the attacks conducted by this particular category of web bots. Moreover, by infusing randomness into the design of ReBot, we have been able to achieve varying degrees of bot and attack evasiveness. From the defenders perspective, and by leveraging state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms, we have proposed several effective strategies for detection of advanced session-replay bot attacks. One of our proposed techniques deploys the concept of moving-target defence in the form of webpage randomization which is particularly challenging for the attacker to overcome. This thesis also explores the utilization of generative machine learning models for the purpose of generating synthetic bots sessions. The ability to synthesize advance session-replay bots - as opposed to looking for real-world instances of these bots or evidence of their activity in real-world logs - is of critical importance if we are to make timely and effective advances in the field of web bot detection and defence.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Key-Frame Based Motion Representations for Pose Sequences
    (2024-03-16) Harrish Patrick Thasarathan; Konstantinos Derpanis
    Modelling human motion is critical for computer vision tasks that aim to perceive human behaviour. Extending current learning-based approaches to successfully model long-term motions remains a challenge. Recent works rely on autoregressive methods, in which motions are modelled sequentially. These methods tend to accumulate errors, and when applied to typical motion modelling tasks, are limited up to only four seconds. We present a non-autoregressive framework to represent motion sequences as a set of learned key-frames without explicit supervision. We explore continuous and discrete generative frameworks for this task and design a key-framing transformer architecture to distill a motion sequence into key-frames and their relative placements in time. We validate our learned key-frame placement approach with a naive uniform placement strategy and further compare key-frame distillation using our transformer architecture with an alternative common sequence modelling approach. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by reconstructing motions up to 12 seconds.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Second-order finite free probability
    (2024-03-16) Curran McConnell; Nantel Bergeron
    Finite free probability is a new field lying at the intersection of random matrix theory and non-commutative probability. It is called “finite” because unlike traditional free probability, which takes the perspective of operators on infinite-dimensional vector spaces, finite free probability focuses on the study of d × d matrices. Both fields study the behaviour of the eigenvalues of random linear transformations under addition. Finite free probability seeks in particular to characterize random matrices in terms of their (random) characteristic polynomials. I studied the covariance between the coefficients of these polynomials, in order to deepen our knowledge of how random characteristic polynomials fluctuate about their expected values. Focusing on a special case related to random unitary matrices, I applied the representation theory of the unitary group to derive a combinatorial summation expression for the covariance.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Secondary Traumatic Stress & Emergency Department Registered Nurses in Ontario: A Cross-Sectional Study
    (2024-03-16) Kelsey Louise Fallis; Claire Mallette
    This thesis explores the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) among nurses working in Ontario emergency departments. Nurses can develop STS via exposure to traumatic events, such as death, injury, or critical illness (Badger, 2001). Emergency department (ED) nurses are especially susceptible to STS due to frequent exposure to traumatic events (Ratrout & Hamdan-Mansour, 2017). This study aimed to (a) determine the prevalence of STS amongst registered nurses (RNs) working in Ontario emergency departments; and (b) to determine factors influencing STS development. Results showed 91.6% of ED nurses in this study experienced STS. Resilience and COVID-19 fear were both significantly associated with STS development in simple linear regression, though only resilience was a significant factor in multiple linear regression. This study provides insight regarding the prevalence of STS among Ontario ED nurses, which was previously unknown. Additionally, this study identified resilience as a significant protective factor against STS development.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Structure and Local Properties of Dark Matter Halos
    (2024-03-16) Adam Jacob Ross Smith-Orlik; Sean Tulin; Nassim Bozorgnia
    The structure and local properties of dark matter (DM) are important input variables for both direct and indirect detection experiments. Common assumptions about DM, such as, its particle nature being cold and collisionless–CDM–and its distribution in halos being isothermal and spherical, and well-modeled by an isotopic Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution–the Standard Halo Model (SHM)–prove to be at odds with astrophysical observations. In this thesis I present work towards elucidating two areas of refinement to the above-mentioned assumptions regarding DM: 1) allowing moderate self-interactions between DM particles (SIDM), extending the semi-analytic Jeans modeling technique for SIDM halos to multiple dimensions and including baryons and nonspherical effects to study the resulting change in the DM halo structure; 2) quantifying the departure from the SHM by analyzing hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way (MW) like halos to characterize the impact on local properties of DM induced by satellite galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and their implications for direct detection experiments.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Relevance of Policy, Practices and Other Dynamics in the Lives of People Facing Mental Health and Addictions Challenges and Homelessness
    (2024-03-16) Jacqueline Arlene Harris; Claire Mallette
    Limited research explicitly addresses the diverse experiences of people who face mental health and addictions challenges and homelessness (MHACH) in rural Canada, although it is well documented that they face significant health inequities. This critical ethnography, exploring how policies and dynamics affect the lived experience of adults facing MHACH in rural Southwestern Ontario, aimed to enhance responsive policy and supports. Using purposive convenience sampling, semi-structured interviews were completed with four people with lived experience (PWLE) and three key informants. Using conventional content analysis and critical social theory, themes emerging from the narratives illustrated the complexity of PWLE’s lives, survival strategies and resourcefulness. PWLE were contradictorily visible and invisible, encountering profound barriers to care such as stigma and discrimination that resulted in their feeling “less than human”. Nursing implications include the importance of giving voice to PWLE, so we can understand how policy and practice decisions impact their everyday lives.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The epidemiology of burn injuries in a Canadian population during the COVID-19 pandemic
    (2024-03-16) Alexander John Michelberger; Michael Rotondi
    Purpose: To investigate the changes in the epidemiology of burn injuries in a Canadian population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information were used to evaluate differences in burn ED visits from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Logistic regression models estimated the odds of a severe burn occurrence. Results: During the pandemic, there were significant decreases in ED visits for burns. Distributions of factors associated with burns had little to no change. Period, age, gender, income, month, and daytime were significantly associated with severe burns during the pandemic. Conclusions: The study found large reductions in the number of ED visits during the pandemic, but no evidence of changes in the epidemiology of burns or patterns in the patient populations.
  • ItemOpen Access
    OPTIMIZING TRUCK PARKING FACILITIES WITH MAJOR DISTRIBUTION CENTRES IN PANDEMIC CONDITIONS
    (2024-03-16) Elanakayon Annalingam; Peter Park; Kevin Gingerich
    The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on truck drivers facing inadequate rest space availability due to exacerbated by pandemic conditions. GPS data is used in this thesis to understand trends of freight parking and the critical locations in which freight activity is occurring. The data is also used to compare pre-pandemic patterns in 2019 with pandemic conditions in 2020. An optimization scheme is developed using a P-median approach to optimize travel from rest areas to major distribution centres. This scheme identifies the best locations where truck drivers can park and rest before accessing distribution centres. It is also proposed to be used to identify top locations for potential expansion for rest areas. The Region of Peel is used as the study area for this analysis as a major freight centre and documented impact from the Covid-19 pandemic.