Edges of Bodies: Camouflage, Correspondence and the Choreography of Alterity

This practice-based research project reconfigures a novel conception of the phenomenon of camouflage to both exercise and theorize new relational models of subjectivity through choreographic practice and writing. Camouflage is here understood as a spatio-temporal act—a process through which bodies are negotiated in correspondence with their surrounding environments, processes that are intrinsic to choreography as well. Camouflage, at heart, rehearses the problem of distinction: between self and environment, subject and object, and being and appearing. It operates at the threshold of a corporeal localization, osculating at the contours of where bodies meet their surroundings, and ultimately surfaces as an interweaving of an interior-exterior, real-virtual, and visible-invisible intersection. Building on this alteric reading of camouflage, this project probes the various ways how the chameleonic term may not only queer the visual sphere by sparking another kind of “here-ness” that is inherently changeable, but also highlight the porosity of boundaries and thus become a technology to embody the material thresholds of multiple possibilities of realities. Both camouflage and choreography are morphological processes that rehearse new formations of figure-ground relationships. Choreography organizes bodies in times and spaces around thresholds of visibilities and offers methods for bringing bodies together in novel ways: both human and nonhuman, as well as bodies of knowledge. These are the very negotiations that are pertinent to camouflage too, and as such the overall objective of this thesis is for them to interlace. Accordingly, this project expands camouflage as somatic knowledge, not in terms of concealment and deception, but rather as a mimetic, interspecific and sensuous potentiality through which a different being-of-the-world, and ultimately new worlds, can be embodied and opened up. It reaches towards multi-natural becomings and phenomenologies of permeability, softening the edges of the subject as a distinct entity acting against the world, and, by shedding light on a new way of being, demonstrates that embodiment is always already an extension of oneself, an accession to an exterior world. Furthermore, this thesis introduces the term correspondence as a relational device animating intra-subjective exchanges between bodies, entities and forces: to corespond is to participate in and be in movement with a much wider animate sociality. The practice component of the thesis develops a series of choreographic works under the title of Correspondance. The wordplay alludes to the notion of correspondence as a dynamic, living and ongoing relationship between things, i.e., the ability to corespond to a world that is always moving. The Correspondance series develops camouflage as a performance strategy to generate a series of choreographic inquiries that engage camouflage choreographically. Alongside the practice, the written component of the thesis constellates the terms camouflage, correspondence and choreography in order to articulate highly multidisciplinary fields of inquiry by weaving together a trans-disciplinary web of fields that bring together minoritarian and marginalized bodies of knowledge including Amazonian indigenous cosmologies, queer and feminist theory, new materialisms and post-humanism, ecology, philosophy, zoology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, critical theory and dance and performance studies. Together, both practice and writing crisscross and interfere with one another to generate new artistic, somatic and discursive forms of knowledge. Both practice and writing demonstrate that it is in movement, that choreography establishes a relational correspondence with the environment, a mobile architecture that allows for an embodied ecology, or inversely, an ecological embodiment, namely to camouflage

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on U.S. electricity demand and supply: an early view from the data

After the onset of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a number of studies reported on possible changes in electricity consumption trends. The overall theme of these reports was that ``electricity use has decreased during the pandemic, but the power grid is still reliable''---mostly due to reduced economic activity. In this paper we analyze electricity data upto end of May 2020, examining both electricity demand and variables that can indicate stress on the power grid, such as peak demand and demand ramp-rate. We limit this study to three states in the USA: New York, California, and Florida. The results indicate that the effect of the pandemic on electricity demand is not a simple reduction from comparable time frames, and there are noticeable differences among regions. The variables that can indicate stress on the grid also conveyed mixed messages: some indicate an increase in stress, some indicate a decrease, and some do not indicate any clear difference. A positive message is that some of the changes that were observed around the time stay-at-home orders were issued appeared to revert back by May 2020. A key challenge in ascribing any observed change to the pandemic is correcting for weather. We provide a weather-correction method, apply it to a small city-wide area, and discuss the implications of the estimated changes in demand. The weather correction exercise underscored that weather-correction is as challenging as it is important

Socio-Psychological Effects of Urban Green Areas: Case of Kirklareli City Center

Urban open green spaces have an important role in today's health problems and the necessity for urban health to create green areas that have high accessibility for all citizens.  Acceleration of urbanization in recent decades decays balance of green areas and impervious surfaces in cities because of rent seeking society.  The main problem associated with adequate provision of green area and fair access for residents.  According to the “Spatial Planning Policy Framework” the green area per capita in urban area (10 m²), Kırklareli doesn’t provide green space per capita. The aim of the study is to identify the socio-psychological effects of the green areas in the Kirklareli. The objectives of the study is to determine the correlation between socio-psychological criteria with green space accessibility, per capita and visiting time and to discuss the findings rationale. The following hypothesis was proposed “urban green areas on inhabitants have positive effects on human health, quality of life and stress”. In this context, a survey was conducted to analyze the socio-psychological effects of urban green spaces in Kirklareli. The expected outcome of the study is that green areas are associated with positive emotions, green space per capita and accessibility that can assist to decrease inequalities in health

Role of rain as perception aid in assessing wind speeds and associated personal risks

Extreme event perception drives personal risks and, consequently, dictates household decision-making before, during, and after extreme events. Given this, increasing the extreme event perception accuracy of the public is important to improving decision-making in extreme event scenarios; however, limited research has been done on this subject. Results of a laboratory experiment, in which 76 human participants were exposed to hurricane-strength weather conditions, and asked to estimate their intensities and associated personal risks, is presented in this article. Participants were exposed to a range of identical wind speeds (20, 40, 60 mph) with (8 in/hr) and without rain. They then provided estimates of the perceived wind and rain (when present) speeds, and associated personal risks on a nominal scale of 0 to 10. Improvements in the accuracy of wind-speed perception at higher speeds were observed when rain was present in the wind field (41.5 and 69.1 mph) than when it was not (45.2 and 75.8 mph) for 40 and 60 mph wind speed exposures respectively. In contrast, risk perceptions were similar for both rain and non-rain conditions. This is particularly interesting because participants failed to estimate rain intensities (both horizontal and wind-driven rain) by a significant margin. We discuss the possible implications of rain as a perception aid to wind and the viability of using perception aids to better convey extreme weather risks. The article is concluded with revisiting discussions about the implications of past hurricane experience on wind intensity perception, personal risk assessment, and future directions in extreme weather risk perception research

Forecasting completed cost of highway construction projects using LASSO regularized regression

Finishing highway projects within budget is critical for state highway agencies (SHAs) because budget overruns can result in severe damage to their reputation and credibility. Cost overruns in highway projects have plagued public agencies globally. Hence, this research aims to develop a parametric cost estimation model for SHAs to forecast the completed project cost prior to project execution to take necessary measures to prevent cost escalation. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression has been a commonly used parametric estimation method in the literature. However, OLS regression has certain limitations. It, for instance, requires strict statistical assumptions. This paper proposes an alternative approach—least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)—that has proved in other fields of research to be significantly better than the OLS method in many respects, including automatic feature selection, the ability to handle highly correlated data, ease of interpretability, and numerical stability of the model predictions. Another contribution to the body of knowledge is that this study simultaneously explores project-related variables with some economic factors that have not been used in previous research, but economic conditions are widely considered to be influential on highway construction costs. The data were separated into two groups: one for training the model and the other for validation purposes. Using the same dataset, both LASSO and OLS were used to build models, and then their performance was evaluated based on the mean absolute error, mean absolute percentage error, and root mean square error. The results showed that the LASSO regression model outperformed the OLS regression model based on the criteria

Energy use assessment of educational buildings: Toward a campus-wide sustainable energy policy

The purpose of this article is to assess the viability of blanket sustainability policies, such as Building Rating Systems in achieving energy efficiency in university campus buildings. We analyzed the energy consumption trends of 10 LEED-certified buildings and 14 non-LEED certified buildings at a major university in the US. Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of the LEED buildings was significantly higher (EUILEED= 331.20 kBtu/sf/yr) than non-LEED buildings (EUInon-LEED=222.70 kBtu/sf/yr); however, the median EUI values were comparable (EUILEED= 172.64 and EUInon-LEED= 178.16). Because the distributions of EUI values were non-symmetrical in this dataset, both measures can be used for energy comparisons—this was also evident when EUI computations exclude outliers, EUILEED=171.82 and EUInon-LEED=195.41. Additional analyses were conducted to further explore the impact of LEED certification on university campus buildings energy performance. No statistically significant differences were observed between certified and non-certified buildings through a range of robust comparison criteria. These findings were then leveraged to devise strategies to achieve sustainable energy policies for university campus buildings and to identify potential issues with portfolio level building energy performance comparisons

Building energy simulation and parallel computing: Opportunities and challenges

Increased focus on energy cost savings and carbon footprint reduction efforts improved the visibility of building energy simulation, which became a mandatory requirement of several building rating systems. Despite developments in building energy simulation algorithms and user interfaces, there are some major challenges associated with building energy simulation; an important one is the computational demands and processing time. In this paper, we analyze the opportunities and challenges associated with this topic while executing a set of 275 parametric energy models simultaneously in EnergyPlus using a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster. Successful parallel computing implementation of building energy simulations will not only improve the time necessary to get the results and enable scenario development for different design considerations, but also might enable Dynamic-Building Information Modeling (BIM) integration and near real-time decision-making. This paper concludes with the discussions on future directions and opportunities associated with building energy modeling simulations

Megaprojects managements in Ecuador: challenges and opportunities

Megaprojects are described as large, complex and expensive construction projects. Recent studies have shown that megaprojects often result in cost overruns, time extensions and undesired outcomes. Regardless, megaprojects are common, particularly in developing countries, as they are a trigger for social and economic development (Li et al., 2010). Since 2007, the Government of Ecuador has begun an unprecedent investment in infrastructure. Through the National Water Secretary, the government has 16 projects in agenda accounting for over $3 billion, with 6 projects currently under construction. These projects are considered flagship infrastructure in the endeavour to enhance the country´s productivity.The Bulubulu-Naranjal-Cañar project, a$406 million multi-purpose hydraulic project for irrigation and flood control, consists of over 1,000 activities and was proposed to be completed by 2015. This novel project for Ecuador, presented as a case study, represents a challenge for project management and financing. The purpose of this preliminary study is to provide an insight to megaproject management in Ecuador, and propose improvements to megaproject management through optimization of stochastic project schedules

Prior storm experience moderates water surge perception and risk

Background How accurately do people perceive extreme water speeds and how does their perception affect perceived risk? Prior research has focused on the characteristics of moving water that can reduce human stability or balance. The current research presents the first experiment on people's perceptions of risk and moving water at different speeds and depths. Methods Using a randomized within-person 2 (water depth: 0.45, 0.90 m) ×3 (water speed: 0.4, 0.8, 1.2 m/s) experiment, we immersed 76 people in moving water and asked them to estimate water speed and the risk they felt. Results Multilevel modeling showed that people increasingly overestimated water speeds as actual water speeds increased or as water depth increased. Water speed perceptions mediated the direct positive relationship between actual water speeds and perceptions of risk; the faster the moving water, the greater the perceived risk. Participants' prior experience with rip currents and tropical cyclones moderated the strength of the actual–perceived water speed relationship; consequently, mediation was stronger for people who had experienced no rip currents or fewer storms. Conclusions These findings provide a clearer understanding of water speed and risk perception, which may help communicate the risks associated with anticipated floods and tropical cyclones