The inclusion of differentially assessed lands in urban growth model calibration: a comparison of two approaches using SLEUTH

This research sought to understand the role that differentially assessed lands (lands in the United States given tax breaks in return for their guarantee to remain in agriculture) play in influencing urban growth. Our method was to calibrate the SLEUTH urban growth model under two different conditions. The first used an excluded layer that ignored such lands, effectively rendering them available for development. The second treated those lands as totally excluded from development. Our hypothesis was that excluding those lands would yield better metrics of fit with past data. Our results validate our hypothesis since two different metrics that evaluate goodness of fit both yielded higher values when differentially assessed lands are treated as excluded. This suggests that, at least in our study area, differential assessment, which protects farm and ranch lands for tenuous periods of time, has indeed allowed farmland to resist urban development. Including differentially assessed lands also yielded very different calibrated coefficients of growth as the model tried to account for the same growth patterns over two very different excluded areas. Excluded layer design can greatly affect model behavior. Since differentially assessed lands are quite common through the United States and are often ignored in urban growth modeling, the findings of this research can assist other urban growth modelers in designing excluded layers that result in more accurate model calibration and thus forecasting.

Campus Design: Locating a new center of international studies

FIU's campus master plan should portray an overall concept of the University's vision. Its design should represent a distinctive sense of institutional purpose. Its architecture should support the campus design in the realization of an ideal academic environment. The present master plan of Florida International University (FIU) offers neither a clear typology of architectural elements nor adequate relationships and connections between buildings. FIU needs to enhance its master plan with an architectural and urban vocabulary that creates a better environment. This thesis will examine FIU's present master plan, explaining the history of its development. Further, it will critically examine the quality of the campus, highlighting the success and failure of its various parts. The unrealized potential of the campus' original vision will be juxtaposed to the built reality. In addition, FlU's planning strategies will be parallel with the planning of several master plans of American universities. Finally, this thesis will propose a set of criteria for the inclusion of a new building in the campus master plan. The Center of International Study will be the catalyst that would bring into focus the university's vision. As a means to prove the validity of these criteria, a new location for the center of international studies will be selected, and a schematic architectural proposal will be made.

The effects of semantic and syntactic instruction on user performance and satisfaction in search user interface design

The design of interfaces to facilitate user search has become critical for search engines, ecommercesites, and intranets. This study investigated the use of targeted instructional hints to improve search by measuring the quantitative effects of users' performance and satisfaction. The effects of syntactic, semantic and exemplar search hints on user behavior were evaluated in an empirical investigation using naturalistic scenarios. Combining the three search hint components, each with two levels of intensity, in a factorial design generated eight search engine interfaces. Eighty participants participated in the study and each completed six realistic search tasks. Results revealed that the inclusion of search hints improved user effectiveness, efficiency and confidence when using the search interfaces, but with complex interactions that require specific guidelines for search interface designers. These design guidelines will allow search designers to create more effective interfaces for a variety of searchapplications.