journal article preprint

Used Oil Policies to Protect the Environment: An Overview of Canadian Experiences

Publication Date

September 1, 2003

Author(s)

Hilary Nixon, Jean-Daniel Saphores

Areas of Expertise

Other Zero-Emission Vehicles & Low-Carbon Fuels

View journal article preprint

Abstract

We examine some consequences of dumping used oil in the environment and review some policies to foster used oil recycling. We then contrast policies adopted in the Canadian Prairie Provinces for managing used oil, used oil filters, and containers, with those put in place in the rest of Canada. Our analysis proposes that public-private partnerships relying on economic instruments and public education can be more effective for recycling used oil than public agencies relying mostly on regulations.

Phd Dissertation

Human-centered computing and the future of work : lessons from mechanical turk and turkopticon, 2008-2015

Publication Date

June 30, 2015

Author(s)

Michael (Six) Silberman

Areas of Expertise

Other

View Phd Dissertation

Abstract

Online labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), Uber, and TaskRabbit are contributing to rapid changes in the nature of work for hundreds of thousands of workers. These markets create significant new economic opportunities, but most currently treat workers as second-class citizens. Take-home pay is often low compared to similar work in traditional employment arrangements, and workers have limited means of influencing market design or management practice. This makes it hard for workers to create reliable livelihoods from the opportunities these markets present. This dissertation uses AMT, an online labor market for small information tasks, as a case through which to examine the consequences of treating workers as second-class citizens, to argue that future platform designs and management practices should treat workers as central stakeholders, and to develop theory and method for doing so. The central argument of the dissertation is that workers’ concerns should be more substantively and systematically addressed in the design and operation of online labor markets. Five messages elaborate this argument. First, in online labor markets, some workers are casual or transient, while others are professionals, providing significant and reliable value to customers and relying on income earned in the market to meet basic needs. Second, workers who rely on income earned through online labor markets should be considered first-class stakeholders, alongside customers and shareholders. Third, workers in online labor markets are rarely the narrowly self-interested profit maximizers of classical economic theory. Workers can be better understood as “situatedly rational” actors: human beings with incomplete information and finite cognitive capabilities whose actions and preferences are shaped by many factors, including rules, norms, and expectations. Fourth, online labor markets are not monolithic, perfectly competitive markets but parts of polycentric economic systems composed of complexly interlinked action situations characterized by imperfect competition and incomplete information. Fifth, institutions supporting crowd work research should develop an interdisciplinary practice-oriented agenda to understand the consequences of current online labor market designs and practices, and to develop new designs and practices that incorporate workers who rely on market income as central stakeholders.

Suggested Citation

MICHAEL SILBERMAN (2015) Human-centered computing and the future of work : lessons from mechanical turk and turkopticon, 2008-2015. PhD Dissertation. UC Irvine. Available at: https://uci.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CDL_IRV_INST/17uq3m8/alma991017757829704701.

conference paper

Bridging the Binary Analysis Gap: A Cross-Compiler Dataset and Neural Framework for Industrial Control Systems

Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining V.2

Publication Date

August 3, 2025

Author(s)

Yonatan G. Achamyeleh, Shih-Yuan Yu, Gustavo Q. Araya, Mohammad Al Faruque

Areas of Expertise

Other

View conference paper

Abstract

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) rely heavily on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) to manage critical infrastructure, yet analyzing PLC executables remains challenging due to diverse proprietary compilers and limited access to source code.To bridge this gap, we introduce PLC-BEAD, a comprehensive dataset containing 2431 compiled binaries from 700+ PLC programs across four major industrial compilers (CoDeSys, GEB, OpenPLC-V2, OpenPLC-V3). This novel dataset uniquely pairs each binary with its original Structured Text source code and standardized functionality labels, enabling both binary-level and source-level analysis. We demonstrate the dataset’s utility through PLCEmbed, a transformer-based framework for binary code analysis that achieves 93% accuracy in compiler provenance identification and 42% accuracy in fine-grained functionality classification across 22 industrial control categories. Through comprehensive ablation studies, we analyze how compiler optimization levels, code patterns, and class distributions influence model performance. We provide detailed documentation of the dataset creation process, labeling taxonomy, and benchmark protocols to ensure reproducibility. Both PLC-BEAD and PLCEmbed are released as open-source resources to foster research in PLC security, reverse engineering, and ICS forensics, establishing new baselines for data-driven approaches to industrial cybersecurity.

Suggested Citation

Yonatan G. Achamyeleh, Shih-Yuan Yu, Gustavo Q. Araya and Mohammad A. Al Faruque (2025) “Bridging the Binary Analysis Gap: A Cross-Compiler Dataset and Neural Framework for Industrial Control Systems”, in Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining V.2. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (KDD '25), pp. 5260–5269. Available at: 10.1145/3711896.3737373.

research report

CARMEN Project 6: PNT with Signals of Opportunity and Real-World Jammed and Spoofed Environments

Publication Date

November 30, 2023

Author(s)

Zak Kassas

Areas of Expertise

Other

View research report

Suggested Citation

Zak Kassas (2023) CARMEN Project 6: PNT with Signals of Opportunity and Real-World Jammed and Spoofed Environments. Final Report. CARMEN UTC. Available at: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10256685 (Accessed: October 10, 2025).

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Hardware/software co-design methodologies for efficient ai systems and applications

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Cellular signals for navigation 4g, 5g, and beyond

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Exploring novel security vulnerabilities and their safety implications in sensors and perception for autonomous systems

Preprint Journal Article

Priority Queue Formulation of Agent-Based Bathtub Model for Network Trip Flows in the Relative Space

Publication Date

September 5, 2023

Associated Project

Development of New Privacy-preserving Method for Traffic Data Collection and Analysis

Author(s)

Irene Martinez, Wenlong Jin

Areas of Expertise

Other

View Preprint Journal Article

Abstract

Agent-based models have been extensively used to simulate the behavior of travelers in transportation systems because they allow for realistic and versatile modeling of interactions. However, traditional agent-based models suffer from high computational costs and rely on tracking physical locations, raising privacy concerns. This paper proposes an efficient formulation for the agent-based bathtub model (AB2M) in the relative space, where each agent’s trajectory is represented by a time series of the remaining distance to its destination. The AB2M can be understood as a microscopic model that tracks individual trips’ initiation, progression, and completion and is an exact numerical solution of the bathtub model for generic (time-dependent) trip distance distributions. The model can be solved for a deterministic set of trips with a given demand pattern (defined by the start time of each trip and its distance), or it can be used to run Monte Carlo simulations to capture the average behavior and variation stochastic demand patterns, described by probabilistic distributions of trip distances and departure times. To enhance the computational efficiency, we introduce a priority queue formulation, eliminating the need to update trip positions at each time step and allowing us to run large-scale scenarios with millions of individual trips in seconds. We systematically explore the scaling properties and discuss the introduction of biases and numerical errors. The systematic exploration of scaling properties of the modeling of individual agents in the relative space with the AB2M further enhances its applicability to large-scale transportation systems and opens up opportunities for studying travel time reliability, scheduling, and mode choices.

Suggested Citation

Irene Martinez and Wen-long Jin (2023) “Priority Queue Formulation of Agent-Based Bathtub Model for Network Trip Flows in the Relative Space”. arXiv. Available at: 10.48550/arXiv.2309.01970.

Related Publications

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Using a “Bathtub Model” to Analyze Travel Can Protect Privacy While Providing Valuable Insights

working paper

Used Oil Policies to Protect the Environment: An Overview of Canadian Experiences

Publication Date

September 1, 2001

Author(s)

Hilary Nixon, Jean-Daniel Saphores

Working Paper

UCI-ITS-WP-01-5, UCTC 666

Areas of Expertise

Other

View working paper

Abstract

We examine some consequences of dumping used oil in the environment and review some policies to foster used oil recycling. We then contrast policies adopted in the Canadian Prairie Provinces for managing used oil, used oil filters, and containers, with those put in place in the rest of Canada. Our analysis proposes that public-private partnerships relying on economic instruments and public education can be more effective for recycling used oil than public agencies relying mostly on regulations.

Suggested Citation

Hilary Nixon and Jean-Daniel Saphores (2001) Used Oil Policies to Protect the Environment: An Overview of Canadian Experiences. Working Paper UCI-ITS-WP-01-5, UCTC 666. Institute of Transportation Studies, Irvine. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8x15b0x7.

working paper

Impacts of Motor Vehicle Operation on Water Quality in the United States - Clean-up Costs and Policies

Publication Date

January 1, 2007

Author(s)

Hilary Nixon, Jean-Daniel Saphores

Areas of Expertise

Other Zero-Emission Vehicles & Low-Carbon Fuels

View working paper

Abstract

This paper investigates the costs of controlling some of the environmental impacts of motor vehicle transportation on groundwater and on surface waters. We estimate that annualized costs of cleaning-up leaking underground storage tanks range from $0.8 billion to $2.1 billion per year over ten years. Annualized costs of controlling highway runoff from principal arterials in the US are much larger: they range from $2.9 billion to $15.6 billion per year over 20 years (1.6% to 8.3% of annualized highway transportation expenditures.) Some causes of non-point source pollution were unintentionally created by regulations or could be addressed by simple design changes of motor vehicles. A review of applicable measures suggests that effective policies should combine economic incentives, information campaigns, and enforcement, coupled with preventive environmental measures. In general, preventing water pollution from motor vehicles would be much cheaper than cleaning it up.

Phd Dissertation

Electronic waste management in California : consumer attitudes toward recycling, advanced recycling fees, "green" electronics, and willingness to pay for e-waste recycling

Publication Date

June 30, 2006

Author(s)

Hilary Nixon

Areas of Expertise

Other

View Phd Dissertation

Suggested Citation

Hilary Nixon (2006) Electronic waste management in California : consumer attitudes toward recycling, advanced recycling fees, "green" electronics, and willingness to pay for e-waste recycling. PhD Dissertation. UC Irvine. Available at: https://uci.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CDL_IRV_INST/17uq3m8/alma991034707529704701.

Phd Dissertation

Economic analysis of aircraft and airport noise regulations

Publication Date

January 1, 2006

Author(s)

Raquel Girvin

Areas of Expertise

Other Transportation Economics, Funding, & Finance

View Phd Dissertation

Abstract

The aviation industry has sought to address the negative externality of aircraft noise using a variety of approaches, but there has been little theoretical work to date encompassing both the market implications and the social optimality of air transportation noise policy. This dissertation develops simple theoretical models to analyze the effects of noise regulation on an airline’s scheduling, aircraft ‘quietness’, and airfare choices. Monopolistic and duopolistic airline competition are modelled, and two types of noise limits are considered: maximum cumulative noise from aircraft operations and noise per aircraft operation. As expected, tighter noise limits, which reduce community exposure to noise, also cause airlines to reduce service frequency and raise fares, which hurts consumers. Welfare analysis investigates the social optimality of noise regulation, taking into account the social cost of exposing airport communities to noise damage, as well as consumer surplus and airline profit. Numerical simulations show that the type of noise limit has a significant effect on the magnitude of the first-best and second-best optimal solutions for service frequency, cumulative noise, and aircraft size and level of quietness. Furthermore, the numerical analyses suggest that under the more realistic second-best case, the cumulative noise limit might be a preferable policy instrument over the per-aircraft noise limit. In the monopoly’s parameter space exploration, welfare is found to be slightly higher, cumulative noise is lower, and the fare is slightly lower when the planner controls cumulative noise rather than per-aircraft noise. In the duopoly case, when the per-aircraft limit yields greater welfare than the cumulative limit, the per-aircraft limit offers only modest welfare gains above the levels achieved with the cumulative limit. But when the cumulative limit yields greater welfare than the per-aircraft limit, the cumulative limit offers substantial welfare gains above the levels achieved with the per-aircraft limit. The effects of noise taxation and the optimal level of noise taxes are also investigated with the duopoly model; the analysis shows equivalence between noise taxation and the cumulative noise limit.

Suggested Citation

Raquel Girvin (2006) Economic analysis of aircraft and airport noise regulations. Ph.D.. University of California, Irvine. Available at: https://uci.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CDL_IRV_INST/74dcdl/alma991035092979904701 (Accessed: October 14, 2023).

published journal article

Aircraft Navigation in GNSS-Denied Environments via Radio SLAM With Terrestrial Signals of Opportunity

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems

Publication Date

October 1, 2024

Associated Project

Aircraft Navigation via Opportunistic Radio Frequency Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Author(s)

Zaher Kassas, Nadim Khairallah, Joe Khalife, Chiawei Lee, Juan Jurado, Steven Wachtel, Jacob Duede, Zachary Hoeffner, Thomas Hulsey, Rachel Quirarte, RunXuan Tay

Areas of Expertise

Intelligent Transportation Systems, Emerging Technologies, & Big Data Other

View published journal article

Abstract

A radio simultaneous localization and mapping (radio SLAM) framework enabling aircraft navigation with terrestrial signals of opportunity (SOPs) is presented and experimentally validated. The framework does not assume availability of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals. Instead, it assumes the aircraft to have an initial estimate of its own states, after which it navigates by exploiting pseudorange measurements extracted from terrestrial SOPs, while estimating the states of the aircraft simultaneously with the SOPs’ states. Two radio SLAM frameworks are presented: (i) tightly-coupled SOP-aided inertial navigation system (INS) and (ii) utilizing a Wiener process acceleration (WPA) dynamical model for the aircraft’s dynamics instead of the INS. Results from four flight runs on a US Air Force C-12 aircraft, equipped with an altimeter and an industrial-grade inertial measurement unit (IMU), are presented. The flight runs took place over semi-urban (SU), urban (U), and rural (R) regions in California, USA; while exercising different aircraft maneuvers: holding (H), descending (D), and grid (G). Different a priori conditions of the SOPs’ positions were studied: from all unknown, to some known, to all known. In all cases, the SOPs’ clock error states (bias and drift) were unknown and estimated alongside the aircraft’s states. The results consistently demonstrated the promise of real-world aircraft navigation via radio SLAM, yielding bounded errors along trajectories of tens of kilometers. The three-dimensional (3–D) position root-mean squared errors (RMSEs) are summarized next, where N denotes the number of SOPs exploited along the trajectory: (1) SU, H, INS-SOP, N=6
, 56.7 km in 8.5 minutes, maximum altitude of 5,577 ft: 43.27 m with all unknown and 10.14 m with all known; (2) U, H, INS-SOP, N=6
, 72.7 km in 12.9 minutes, maximum altitude of 5,906 ft: 89.82 m with all unknown and 16.97 m with all known; (3) SU, D, WPA-SOP, N=18
, 111.9 km in 20.0 minutes, maximum altitude of 6,234 ft: 36.42 m with all unknown and 18.62 m with all known; and (4) R, G, WPA-SOP, N=32
, 78.4 km in 13.8 minutes, maximum altitude of 7,546 ft: 67.01 m with all unknown and 25.65 m with all known.

Suggested Citation

Zaher M. Kassas, Nadim Khairallah, Joe J. Khalife, Chiawei Lee, Juan Jurado, Steven Wachtel, Jacob Duede, Zachary Hoeffner, Thomas Hulsey, Rachel Quirarte and RunXuan Tay (2024) “Aircraft Navigation in GNSS-Denied Environments via Radio SLAM With Terrestrial Signals of Opportunity”, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 25(10), pp. 14164–14182. Available at: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3405908.