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If it ain't broke, don't fix it: Optimizing the predictive aircraft maintenance schedule with Remaining Useful Life prognostics

de Pater, I.I. (author)

Predictive aircraft maintenance is a maintenance strategy that aims to reduce the number of failures, the number of inspections, the number of maintenance tasks and the aircraft maintenance costs. Aircraft are equipped with health monitoring systems, where sensors continuously measure the condition of the aircraft components. In predictive...

doctoral thesis 2024

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Brackish Waters: Integrating Justice in Climate Adaptation and Long-Term Water Management

Brackel, A.K.C. (author)

Brackish waters can be found in transition zones between freshwater rivers and saltier seas. These dynamic coastal landscapes harbor multiple functions such as housing, agriculture, nature, and industry. Because of climate change, existing borders between fresh and saline water - and between land and water - are becoming contested. Extreme...

doctoral thesis 2024

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Supporting seat design for Smartphone use during travel

Udomboonyanupap, S. (author)

This study investigates the impact of smartphone use on passengers' comfort during travel, focusing on train trips. The literature review reveals that smartphones have become the primary activity for train passengers, leading to discomfort and potential musculoskeletal issues, particularly in the neck, shoulders, arms, and back. The study aims...

doctoral thesis 2024

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Designing AI systems

Stoimenova, N. (author)

Traditionally, the AI field has focused on providing answers in domains like chess, translation, protein folding, and item recommendations. These AI systems have a clear objectives and outcomes that can be easily classified as correct or incorrect. However, once such systems face the complexity of social contexts, they start to produce...

doctoral thesis 2023

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Improving satellite remote sensing methodologies for analyzing landscape dynamics in arid environments with focus on Egypt

Delgado Blasco, José Manuel (author)

doctoral thesis 2023

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Predictive Aircraft Maintenance: Integrating Remaining-Useful-Life Prognostics into Maintenance Optimization

Lee, J. (author)

Current aircraft maintenance ensures safe and reliable flight operations based on inspections repeated at fixed time intervals. The time interval between inspections is often much shorter than the average life of aircraft components, in an effort to timely detect potential failures. While this approach successfully prevents most potential...

doctoral thesis 2022

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Relations between Land Tenure Security, Farmland Use and Agricultural Productivity: A Spatio-Temporal Comparative Assessment of Farmland Tenure Arrangements and Agriculture Strategizing in Rwanda (2006-2017)

Singirankabo, U.A. (author)

This PhD study aims to assess the relations between land tenure security, farmland use and agricultural productivity. Using a locally-defined research approach, the study explores those relations from a review of the literature to a case study in Rwanda. Therefore, the case study includes four research sites: Gatwe, Nyabubare, Rusebeya and...

doctoral thesis 2022

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Optimising the use of National CORS data in the context of Thailand: policy outlooks from a data ecosystem perspective

Supinajaroen, W. (author)

This research aims to explore policy venues to encourage the use of data from Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) at a national level or National CORS (NCORS). Thailand, among many countries, has established NCORS to observe and process the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals to improve the accuracy of positional data...

doctoral thesis 2022

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High-Mobility TCO-Based Contacting Schemes for c-Si Solar Cells

Han, C. (author)

In the efficiency-driven photovoltaic (PV) industry, the market dominating crystalline silicon (c-Si) technology has been developing towards PV devices with carrier-selective passivating contacts (CSPCs). Especially, the silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell, based on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) contact stacks, and the poly-Si...

doctoral thesis 2022

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Time Use and Travel Behaviour with Automated Vehicles

Pudane, B. (author)

Automated vehicles (AVs) have been a dream for a long time. From science fiction in the 1930s to countless prototypes, extensive road testing, and first use cases at present, the technology has clearly come a long way. So too has the vision of practitioners and academics matured to recognise the various potential benefits (e.g., accessibility,...

doctoral thesis 2021

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Human Use of Flexible Tools for Dynamic Teleoperation

Aiple, M. (author)

This thesis explores possibilities and constraints in performing dynamic tasks through teleoperated robots. Teleoperation is commonly used to execute tasks by a human operator guiding a robot remotely through means of a teleoperation system. The teleoperation system bidirectionally mirrors the motions and forces between a handle device held by...

doctoral thesis 2021

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Adaptive prognostics for remaining useful life of composite structures

Eleftheroglou, N. (author)

Prognostics is an emerging field of research that enables the real-time health assessment of an engineering system and the prediction of its future state based on up-to-date information. This field integrates various scientific disciplines including physics/mechanics, computational statistics and probabilistic modeling, machine learning and...

doctoral thesis 2020

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Systematic Design Methodology for Prognostic and Health Management Systems to Support Aircraft Predictive Maintenance

Li, R. (author)

With the rapid development in the past century, the air transport network has become one of the most important infrastructure networks for both the domestic and global economy. Within an airline, the maintenance area is responsible for planning and executing all preventive actions required to meet safety standards including maintenance tasks,...

doctoral thesis 2020

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Mobilizing Young Researchers, Citizen Scientists, and Mobile Technology to Close Water Data Gaps: Methods Development and Initial Results in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Davids, J.C. (author)

Data gaps as educational opportunities - mobilizing young researchers, citizen scientists, and mobile technology in data and resource scarce areas. This dissertation chronicles these themes through the lessons learned along the fledgling journey of SmartPhones4Water (S4W) and S4W-Nepal, from inception through the first few years of...

doctoral thesis 2019

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Estimating the impacts of urban growth on future flood risk: A comparative study

Veerbeek, W. (author)

The unprecedented growth of cities has a significant impact on future flood risk that might exceed the impacts of climate change in many metropolitan areas across the world. Although the effects of urbanisation on flood risk are well understood, assessments that include spatially explicit future growth projections are limited. This comparative...

doctoral thesis 2017

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Root for rain: Towards understanding land-use change impacts on the water cycle

Wang-Erlandsson, L. (author)

We live today on a human-dominated planet under unprecedented pressure on both land and water. The water cycle is intrinsically linked to vegetation and land use, and anticipating the consequences of simultaneous changes in land and water systems requires a thorough understanding of their interactions. This thesis aims to advance our knowledge...

doctoral thesis 2017

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Doublet deployment strategies for geothermal Hot Sedimentary Aquifer exploitation: Application to the Lower Cretaceous Nieuwerkerk Formation in the West Netherlands Basin

Willems, C.J.L. (author)

Huge amounts of heat are stored in sedimentary aquifers in the Dutch subsurface. The amount of heat would be sufficient to provide our national heat demand for decades without any greenhouse gas emissions. Exploitation of this type of resource started some 10 years ago in the Netherlands. In 2016, 16 geothermal doublet systems had been installed...

doctoral thesis 2017

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From Access to Re-use: A user's perspective on public sector availability

Welle Donker, F.M. (author)

Availability of public sector (geo-)information is essential for effective and efficient government policy-making. In addition, it is also associated with realising other ambitions, such as a more transparent and accountable government, more citizens’ participation in democratic processes, (co-)generation of solutions to societal problems, and...

doctoral thesis 2016

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Managing Basin Interdependencies in a Heterogeneous, Highly Utilized and Data Scarce River Basin in Semi-Arid Africa: The case of the Pangani River Basin, Eastern Africa

Kiptala, J.K. (author)

For integrated water resources management both blue and green water resources in a river basin and their spatial and temporal distribution have to be considered. This is because green and blue water uses are interdependent. In sub-Saharan Africa, the upper landscapes are often dominated by rainfed and supplementary irrigated agriculture that...

doctoral thesis 2016

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Policies lost in translation? Unravelling water reform processes in African waterscapes

Kemerink-Seyoum, J.S. (author)

Since the 1980s a major change took place in public policies for water resources management. The role of governments shifted under this reform process from an emphasis on investment in the development, operation and maintenance of water infrastructure to a focus on managing water resources systems by stipulating general frameworks and defining...

doctoral thesis 2015