Sharif Digital Repository

We study networks of facilities that must provide coverage under conditions of uncertainty with respect to travel times and customer demand. We model this uncertainty through a set of scenarios. Since opening new facilities and/or closing existing ones is often quite expensive, we focus on optimal re-configuration of the network, that is finding a facility set that achieves desired thresholds with respect to expected and minimal coverage, while retaining as many of the existing facilities as possible. We illustrate our model with an example of Toronto Fire Service. We demonstrate that relocating just a few facilities can have the same effect as opening a similar number of new ones. We... 

Background: Real-time crash prediction models are often structured as general log-linear categorical models which must be calibrated using an extensive database. However, there is no method to optimally select the number of categories and the values that define the boundaries between categories when representing continuous measures as categorical variables within the log-linear model. This raises the question of how important the calibration is to the safety impacts estimated when using the crash prediction model. In this paper, we examined the impact that the process used to calibrate the crash prediction model has on estimates of safety impacts of a variable speed limit system. Methods:... 

In this study, a three-factor, three-level Box-Behnken design with response surface methodology were used to maximize the TOC removal and minimize the H2O2 residual in the effluent of the combined UV-C/H2O2-VUV system for the treatment of an actual slaughterhouse wastewater (SWW) collected from one of the meat processing plants in Ontario, Canada. The irradiation time and the initial concentrations of total organic carbon (TOCo) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2o) were the three predictors, as independent variables, studied in the design of experiments. The multiple response approach was used to obtain desirability response surfaces at the optimum factor settings. Subsequently, the optimum... 

Various aspects of land use regression (LUR) models for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were systematically reviewed. Sixteen studies were identified published between 2002 and 2017. Of these, six were conducted in Canada, five in the USA, two in Spain, and one each in Germany, Italy, and Iran. They were developed for 14 different individual VOCs or groupings: benzene; toluene; ethylbenzene; m-xylene; p-xylene; (m/p)-xylene; o-xylene; total BTEX; 1,3-butadiene; formaldehyde; n-hexane; total hydro carbons; styrene; and acrolein. The models were based on measurements ranging from 22 sites in El Paso (USA) to 179 sites in Tehran (Iran). Only four studies in Rome (Italy), Sabadell (Spain),...