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Recent Submissions
Home Safe Home: A Comprehensive Design Guideline to Retrofit Toronto’s Post-War Apartment Towers to be Healthier
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-10) Shah, Oshin
The concept of ‘home’ goes beyond the simple responsibility of providing shelter. In today’s dynamic socio-economic landscape, homes do not only provide physical safety but should also promote mental and social well-being. As defined by the World Health Organization, a healthy house should support and promote complete physical, mental and social well-being. Therefore, it is important to extend the focus beyond personal health and include the health of inhabited buildings as they have a direct impact on well-being.
The COVID-19 pandemic started important discussions about architecture and its profound impact on health. The focus of this research lies at the intersection of emerging health trends and the soaring housing crisis in Canada. As urbanization surges, the challenges of creating livable spaces that are both healthy and affordable become increasingly complex. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has a stock of post-war residential towers that once were symbolic of modernist urban planning. Today, this aging housing stock suffers from neglect, disinvestment and isolation, however, it is home to nearly one million people. These towers have become long-term and permanent housing options for many low-income residents and new immigrants, despite the unhealthy living conditions, lack of maintenance and outdated building standards.
The Tower Renewal Partnership is a non-profit initiative that has researched, advocated and developed guidelines to transform these towers and their neighbourhoods to be healthier and connected to their neighbourhood. Delving into the critical elements that define spaces within a home, — lighting, acoustics, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, materials, and spatial design— this thesis develops a guideline for best practices to retrofit this housing stock for a better quality of life. Using the Humberwood Place Tower as a case study for exploring these elements, this thesis aims to build upon the strong foundation of work developed by the Tower Renewal Partnership and improve the health and well-being of residents within the building.
Uncertainty-aware motion planning for ground vehicle in unstructured uneven off-road terrain
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-08) Hamouda, Ahmed
Navigating large, unstructured, and uneven off-road environments, such as those encountered in search and rescue missions or planetary exploration, presents significant challenges. These environments are characterized by varying terrain semantics and complex geometries. Furthermore, initial map representations are often uncertain, as they are typically generated from aerial scans or other remote sensing techniques that may provide incomplete or outdated data. Existing algorithms that focus on planning a single path through the environment frequently overlook the opportunity to incorporate future information gathered during navigation, which can be used to reduce the expected traversal cost.
In this thesis, we propose an uncertainty-aware motion planning framework. The framework starts by integrating both geometric and semantic terrain data to assess terrain traversability. We then utilize an unsupervised region clustering algorithm to segment uncertain regions and group grids with similar visual and spatial features. Following this, our approach is structured into three stages: generating a network of pathways, constructing a stochastic graph, and developing an optimal navigation policy. A multi-query sampling-based planner is used to create a comprehensive network of pathways between the start and goal points, efficiently exploring multiple potential routes. These pathways are then converted into a topological stochastic graph representation of the environment, capturing uncertainty through probabilistic edge representations. The stochastic graph is modeled as a Canadian Traveler Problem (CTP), which is a decision-making framework designed for navigating graphs where some edges have a probability of being blocked. To minimize the expected traversal cost, we extend the state-of-the-art CTP solver CAO*, introducing Complete CAO* (CCAO*), which guarantees to produce a navigation policy that minimizes the expected traversal cost, even when no deterministic path exists.
We validate our framework through extensive simulations using real-world off-road data, testing both small and large environments to assess scalability. Results demonstrate that our approach consistently generates compact graph representations, unaffected by uncertain regions that do not impact the robot's movement. These findings highlight the framework's computational efficiency, robustness, and ability to reduce expected traversal costs when compared to traditional baseline methods.
Droplet capture and water transport on thin fibers for water harvesting
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-08) Huang, Yunqiao
Water harvesting is a potential solution to the challenge of water scarcity. Among all harvesting techniques, fog harvesting is a promising option, which uses permeable collectors to capture droplets from fog streams. The structure of the collector is the key to achieving high water collection efficiency. The fast-growing demand for efficient collectors requires research into the structural design of fog collectors.
Fiber-based collectors have received considerable attention among all the structures of fog collectors. Generally, fibers can be woven into flexible grids or meshes, which are naturally permeable to serve as fog collectors. In addition, thin fibers that benefit droplet capture can be easily fabricated via multiple mature spinning techniques. Furthermore, functional structures can be created on fibers, enhancing water transport for efficient fog harvesting. However, gaps exist in the design of fiber-based collectors in terms of the effects of grid structure and waterdrop clogging on water collection efficiency. In addition, existing fiber-based collectors with water-transport ability rely on the creation of complex fiber morphologies, which hinders the large-scale application due to difficult fabrication.
This thesis study aims to fill the gaps in fiber-based collector design by obtaining knowledge in terms of droplet capture and water transport on thin fibers. The thesis starts with developing a multi-scale numerical model for fog harvesting to understand the effect of fiber grid structure on water collection efficiency. The numerical model can simulate fog harvesting at two extreme length scales that are comparable to collector scale at the large end and fiber scale at the small end. The results confirm two important effects of fiber grid geometries on water collection efficiency. First, dense thin-fiber grids negatively influence the collection efficiency because of the wall effect caused by viscous boundary layers. Second, the sparse thin-fiber grids can benefit from isolated clogging waterdrops and maintain relatively high efficiency when clogging blocks multiple grid openings. The two identified effects are then included to develop a new performance map for fog collectors, thereby shaping new design rubrics for fog harvesting.
Then, the experimental study of droplet capture on microfiber grids is carried out to understand the positive clogging effect. Microfiber grids are fabricated by NFES with the structural design guided by the obtained performance map. The results show that waterdrops clog the grid openings with a pattern that small waterdrops satellite large ones. Due to the small fiber diameter, the waterdrops are "visible" to incoming airflow and strongly affect droplet capture. The large waterdrops deflect incoming fog flow towards the small ones, and the small waterdrops efficiently capture the fog droplets. Consequently, the fog collectors based on microfiber grids demonstrated an exceptional water collection efficiency of up to 21.4%. The micro-fiber grids require minimal material usage and no special surface treatment, highlighting a potential in fog harvesting.
Last, this thesis study discovers the water transport on ribbon-like fibers due to the long-wave Plateau-Rayleigh instability. The experimental study reveals that the deposited fog water is aggregated on the broad side of the fiber, where the low surface curvature triggers Plateau-Rayleigh instability with long wavelengths. The resulting drops are connected by a flowing film, which continuously transports water over centimeter-scale distances without the presence of external driving forces. A particle-image velocimetry analysis reveals that a pair of opposing flow exists in the film and forms organized vortices within the shear layer, which are explained by capillary effects on film-wise flow. Based on the long-wave Plateau-Rayleigh instability, a rivulets-on-fiber structure is developed using liquid bridges as artificial drops to continuously transport liquid over a 10 square centimeter fiber grid. The unique characteristics of water transport on the ribbon-like fibers and fiber grids provide new prospects for efficient collector design with simple fabrication methods.
The Human Factors in the Adoption of Ambient Artificial Intelligence Scribe Technology: Towards Informed and User-centered Implementation of AI in Healthcare
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-08) Basha, Iman
The landscape of healthcare documentation has undergone substantial transformations over the past few decades, evolving in parallel with technological advancements and shifts in healthcare delivery models. Central to these changes is the electronic medical record (EMR), a digital iteration of patients' paper charts that has become standard in healthcare settings. While EMRs are instrumental in streamlining data management and accessibility, they have introduced new challenges, particularly in terms of administrative burden on healthcare providers.
This thesis explores the integration of ambient artificial Intelligence (AI) scribe technology, a solution leveraging advancements in automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP), into physicians' workflows. AI scribes semi-automate the documentation process by capturing and synthesizing physician-patient interactions in real time, potentially alleviating the administrative workload on clinicians and improving the quality of care. The potential benefits of this technology are vast, and its adoption raises significant questions regarding privacy, consent, and trust, especially given its capability to record sensitive interactions in detail.
The study aims to (1) explore the integration of ambient scribe technology into physicians' workflows and assess its impact on physician-patient interactions, (2) identify and analyze the concerns related to privacy, consent, and trust among patients and physicians regarding the use of the technology, and (3) develop and evaluate a flexible informed consent protocol for patients and physicians. A mixed-method approach was employed, integrating quantitative data from surveys and qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews, providing a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted impact of the technology.
The findings reveal that while AI scribes offer efficiency gains, particularly for complex and lengthy encounters, they are less beneficial for simple cases. Further, the efficiency of documentation with AI scribes compared to without is found to be dependent on individuals, with some physicians reporting negligible improvements due to extensive post-editing and the need for customization, while others noted notable gains. Regarding the impact on interaction, patients and physicians reported enhanced interactions due to reduced distractions but noted instances of self-censorship by patients due to discomfort with the recording process. Patients also expressed worry about self-censorship by physicians due to medicolegal concerns and unintended consequences due to technology over-reliance.
Concerning the second objective, patients and physicians expressed significant privacy concerns due to a lack of understanding and transparency in data handling policies. Patients also expressed concerns regarding the autonomy of private data, unauthorized access, and data breaches. The findings underscore the need for transparent data handling policies and robust security measures. Trust in physicians and pre-established patient-physician relationships also played a notable role in patient consent, with patients more likely to consent to AI scribe use with familiar physicians.
To address these concerns, the thesis proposed a Multi-Tier Granular Informed Consent (MTGIC) framework, integrating tiered and granular consent models to enhance transparency and participant control over personal data. The empirical evaluation of the MTGIC was well-received by both patients and physicians, though it necessitates ongoing refinement to improve usability and ensure it aligns with user needs.
In conclusion, while ambient scribe technology presents a promising tool for enhancing healthcare delivery, its successful implementation is contingent upon careful consideration of its integration into clinical workflows, the management of privacy concerns, and the development of effective consent processes. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the best practices for integrating emerging technologies into healthcare systems, aiming to enhance operational efficiency and patient care quality.
Negotiating Borders:Bharat & Pakistan
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-08) Khandelwal, Harsh Pavan
Often referred to as the “Line of Division,” the India-Pakistan border is a poignant representation of a once-united legacy now partitioned into two separate nations. As the annals of history rolled out, this division has remained a silent observer to the constant socio-political tensions that define the relationship between these countries. The physical markers of the boundary may not have changed significantly over time, but the symbolic divide has notably widened. Political machinations have largely steered the creation of narratives, leading to growing detachment in communities on both ends. The architectural imprints of this border, characterized by watchtowers, barriers, and checkpoints, amplify notions of division, vigilance, and caution. However, this design thesis seeks to reimagine this space, transitioning from an emblem of separation to a beacon of hope, unity, and potential reconciliation. This research undertakes a detailed examination of the architectural facets of the border, revealing the influence of these physical edifices not only in perpetuating division but also in molding perceptions and identities. Aligning the architectural stories of the India-Pakistan border with other global border designs unveils the transformative essence of design, demonstrating its power to turn conflict areas into hubs of mutual respect and cooperation. At the core of this thesis is an innovative architectural concept — a space derived from a blend of historical wisdom, present requirements, and future aspirations. Beyond its tangible presence, this design stands as a symbolic gesture, envisioning a future where borders serve as connectors, celebrating the shared cultural roots and destinies of inhabitants on either side. Recognizing the dynamic nature of the Line of Control’s geology and border, the thesis strategically emphasizes two distinct terrains: Land and Water. Rooted in their indigenous contexts yet influenced by global examples, this design thesis challenges the traditional view of borders as obstructions. Instead, it reinterprets them as facilitators, promoting dialogue, cultural exchanges, and mutual prosperity. Bearing in mind the initial human discord that led to the geographical split, this design aims to invert this dynamic, striving to unite individuals and bridge the gap. In its essence, this project doesn’t only propose an architectural innovation but kindles a broader conversation, advocating a rethinking of our modern relationship, interaction, and design approach to borders.