Society is heavily dependent on a reliable electric supply; all infrastructure systems depend on electricity to operate. When the electric system fails, the impacts can be catastrophic (food spoilage, inoperable medical devices, lack of access to water, etc.). The social impacts, defined as the direct and indirect impacts on people, of power outages must be explored as the likelihood of power outages and blackouts are increasing. However, compared to other hazards, such as heat and flooding, the knowledge base on the impacts of power outages is relatively small. The purpose of this thesis is to identify what is currently known about the social impacts of power outages, identify where gaps in the literature exist, and deploy a survey to explore power outage experiences at the household level. This thesis is comprised of two chapters, a systematic literature review on the current knowledge of the social impacts of power outages and a multi-city survey focused on power outage experiences.

The first chapter comprised of a systematic literature review using a combined search of in Scopus which returned 762 candidate articles were identified that potentially explored the social impacts of power outages. However, after multiple filtering criteria were applied, only 45 articles met all criteria. Four themes were used to classify the literature, not exclusively, including modeling, social, technical, and other. Only papers that were classified as “social” - meaning they observed how people were affected by a power outage - or in combination with other categories were used within the review.

From the literature, populations of concern were identified, including minority demographics - specifically Blacks or African Americans, children, elderly, and rural populations. The most commonly reported health concerns were from those that rely on medical devices for chronic conditions and unsafe generator practices. Criminal activity was also reported to increase during prolonged power outages and can be mitigated by consistent messaging on where to receive assistance and when power will be restored. Providing financial assistance and resources such as food and water can reduce the crime rate temporarily, but the crime rate can be expected to increase once the relief expires. Authorities should expect looting to occur, especially in poorer areas, during prolonged power outages. Gaps in the literature were identified and future directions for research were provided.

The second chapter consists of a multi-city survey that targeted three major cities across the United States (Detroit, MI; Miami, FL; and Phoenix, AZ). The survey was disseminated through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and hosted by Qualtrics. 896 participants from the three cities qualified to complete the full version of the survey. Three criteria had to be met for participants to complete the full survey including residing in one of the three target cities, living at their primary address for a majority of the year, and indicate they had experienced a power outage within the last five years.

Participants were asked questions regarding the number of outages experienced in the last five years, the length of their most recent and longest outage experienced, if they owned a generator, how they managed their longest power outage, if participants or anyone in their household relies on a medical device, the financial burden their power outage caused, and standard demographic- and income-related questions. Race was a significant variable that influenced the outage duration length but not frequency in Phoenix and Detroit. Income was not a significant variable associated with experiencing greater economic impacts, such as having thrown food away because of an outage and not receiving help during the longest outage. Additional assessments similar to this survey are needed to better understand household power outage experiences.

Findings from this thesis demonstrate traditional metrics used in vulnerability indices were not indicative of who experienced the greatest effects of power outages. Additionally, other factors that are not included in these indices, such as owning adaptive resources including medical devices and generators in Phoenix and Detroit, are factors in reducing negative outcomes. More research is needed on this topic to indicate which populations are more likely to experience factors that can influence positive or negative outage outcomes.

Affective computing allows computers to monitor and influence people’s affects, in other words emotions. Currently, there is a lot of research exploring what can be done with this technology. There are many fields, such as education, healthcare, and marketing, that this technology can transform. However, it is important to question what should be done. There are unique ethical considerations in regards to affective computing that haven't been explored. The purpose of this study is to understand the user’s perspective of affective computing in regards to the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics, to ultimately start developing a better understanding of these ethical concerns. For this study, participants were required to watch three different videos and answer a questionnaire, all while wearing an Emotiv EPOC+ EEG headset that measures their emotions. Using the information gathered, the study explores the ethics of affective computing through the user’s perspective.

Cryptojacking is a process in which a program utilizes a user’s CPU to mine cryptocurrencies unknown to the user. Since cryptojacking is a relatively new problem and its impact is still limited, very little has been done to combat it. Multiple studies have been conducted where a cryptojacking detection system is implemented, but none of these systems have truly solved the problem. This thesis surveys existing studies and provides a classification and evaluation of each detection system with the aim of determining their pros and cons. The result of the evaluation indicates that it might be possible to bypass detection of existing systems by modifying the cryptojacking code. In addition to this classification, I developed an automatic code instrumentation program that replaces specific instructions with functionally similar sequences as a way to show how easy it is to implement simple obfuscation to bypass detection by existing systems.

This paper is centered on the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to convert or generate RGB images from grayscale ones. The primary goal is to create sensible and colorful versions of a set of grayscale images by training a discriminator to recognize failed or generated images and training a generator to attempt to satisfy the discriminator. The network design is described in further detail below; however there are several potential issues that arise including the averaging of a color for certain images such that small details in an image are not assigned unique colors leading to a neutral blend. We attempt to mitigate this issue as much as possible.

This paper is centered on the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to convert or generate RGB images from grayscale ones. The primary goal is to create sensible and colorful versions of a set of grayscale images by training a discriminator to recognize failed or generated images and training a generator to attempt to satisfy the discriminator. The network design is described in further detail below; however there are several potential issues that arise including the averaging of a color for certain images such that small details in an image are not assigned unique colors leading to a neutral blend. We attempt to mitigate this issue as much as possible.

The NCAA is changing the current rules and regulations around a student-athlete’s name, image, and likeness. Previously, student-athletes were not allowed to participate in business activities or noninstitutional promotional activities. With the new rule changes, student-athletes will be able to engage in business activities related to their own name, image, and likeness. The goal of the team was to help “prepare athletes to understand and properly navigate the evolving restrictions and guidelines around athlete name, image, and likeness”. In order to accomplish this, the team had to understand the problems student-athletes face with these changing rules and regulations. The team conducted basic market research to identify the problem. The problem discovered was the lack of communication between student-athletes and businesses. In order to verify this problem, the team conducted several interviews with Arizona State University Athletic Department personnel. From the interviews, the team identified that the user is the student-athletes and the buyer is the brands and businesses. Once the problem was verified and the user and buyer were identified, a solution that would best fit the customers was formulated. The solution is a platform that assists student-athletes navigate the changing rules of the NCAA by providing access to a marketplace optimized to working with student-athletes and offering an ease of maintaining relationships between student-athletes and businesses. The solution was validated through meetings with interested brands. The team used the business model and market potential to pitch the business idea to the brands. Finally, the team gained traction by initiating company partnerships.

A project about developing software for learning turned into a project for learning about software development. The submission here only includes the journal. However, the journal has a link to the public GitHub repository containing the source code for the thesis. The source code implements a program to facilitate self-study by allowing the user to create quizzes. The journal contains my experience working on the project (both successes and failures).

Education has been at the forefront of many issues in Arizona over the past several years with concerns over lack of funding sparking the Red for Ed movement. However, despite the push for educational change, there remain many barriers to education including a lack of visibility for how Arizona schools are performing at a legislative district level. While there are sources of information released at a school district level, many of these are limited and can become obscure to legislators when such school districts lie on the boundary between 2 different legislative districts. Moreover, much of this information is in the form of raw spreadsheets and is often fragmented between government websites and educational organizations. As such, a visualization dashboard that clearly identifies schools and their relative performance within each legislative district would be an extremely valuable tool to legislative bodies and the Arizona public. Although this dashboard and research are rough drafts of a larger concept, they would ideally increase transparency regarding public information about these districts and allow legislators to utilize the dashboard as a tool for greater understanding and more effective policymaking.

University Devils is a Founders Lab Thesis group looking to find a way for post-secondary institutions to increase the number of and diversity of incoming applications through the utilization of gaming and gaming approaches in the recruitment process while staying low-cost. This propelling question guided the group through their work. The team’s work primarily focused on recruitment efforts at Arizona State University, but the concept can be modified and applied at other post-secondary institutions. The initial research showed that Arizona State University’s recruitment focused on visiting the high schools of prospective students and providing campus tours to interested students. A proposed alternative solution to aid in recruitment efforts through the utilization of gaming was to create an online multiplayer game that prospective students could play from their own homes. The basic premise of the game is that one player is selected to be “the Professor” while the other players are part of “the Students.” To complete the game, the Students must complete a set of tasks while the Professor applies various obstacles to prevent the Students from winning. When a Student completes their objectives, they win and the game ends. The game was created using Unity. The group has completed a proof-of-concept of the proposed game and worked to advertise and market the game to students via social media. The team’s efforts have gained traction, and the group continues to work to gain traction and bring the idea to more prospective students.