Fire tornadoes are an extremely rare type of tornado produced by intense wildfires, capable of greatly increasing their destructiveness. Some of the most infamous wildfires in California history have produced fire tornadoes, and as wildfire frequency increases due to climate change, understanding fire tornadoes becomes more important. Fire tornadoes are distinguished from other whirlwinds more commonly induced by wildfires, in that they develop similarly to typical tornadoes; the intense heat of a wildfire induces convection, pyrocumulonimbus formation, and tornadogenesis. I aim to investigate the similarities among and differences between documented fire tornadoes to determine the most important factors behind their development and how they may contrast with typical tornadogenesis. Specifically, I analyze variables critical to typical tornadoes, including CAPE, wind shear, helicity, and atmospheric humidity, in addition to critical variables for wildfire development, including surface-level winds, surface humidity, and fire temperature. Both sets of variables are compared to average ranges during tornadogenesis, and during wildfires of similar size and intensity, respectively. I will analyze wildfires across three broad categories: those without any pyroconvection, those with pyroconvection but no tornado development, and those that produced a fire tornado. This will provide a reasonable estimate of the necessary thresholds for fire tornadogenesis.

Archival records and visual documentation have long been the driving historic resources that have informed site eligibility for registry in the National Register of Historic Places. This approach often leaves significant gaps in recognition and assessment of subsurface structural features and the value they hold in holistically assessing a site's condition and historic importance. This research investigates how remote sensing technologies such as terrestrial LiDAR and ground penetrating radar (GPR) can strengthen and improve upon existing evaluative frameworks. The methodologies described in this paper employ terrestrial LiDAR, ground penetrating radar (GPR), and photogrammetry to document standing architectural features and uncover those hidden beneath the surface to produce a layered digital record that surpasses the documentation and accuracy of any single technique. The standing Mission-era complex of San Juan Bautista, located in Central California will act as a case study, with GPR surveys identifying the site’s invisible foundations, wall alignments and construction history. LiDAR point cloud datum will then provide photogrammetric models that can be used to overlay all features present at the site; ultimately providing an all encompassing spatial understanding of a building and its immediate surrounding environment. Findings are evaluated within the National Register’s criteria for integrity, significance, and information potential to demonstrate how non-invasive archaeological technologies can reduce reliance on invasive testing while improving the identification of contributing resources, positioning essential digital documentation instruments as vital tools for archaeological stewardship, historic preservation, and architectural conservation.

"Autonomous navigation in post-disaster environments requires reliable identification of traversable ground amid debris, damaged structures, and flattened terrain. Aerial Gaussian Splatting reconstructions provide a useful map source, but existing methods often rely on geometric cues such as elevation to distinguish obstacles from safe ground. In top-down disaster reconstructions, roofs and ground surfaces dominate while vertical walls may be sparsely observed, limiting geometry-only cues and motivating semantic labeling. We present an automated semantic safety costmap for aerial Gaussian Splatting reconstructions. The pipeline uses “SegmentAny3DGaussian” to partition the reconstructed scene into 3D Gaussian segments by assigning learned affinity features to each Gaussian, allowing related regions to be grouped at different scales. For each segment, we use CLIP-derived semantic features to compare it with a predefined set of terrain and hazard labels. The best-matching label is assigned to the segment and converted into a navigation safety cost based on the expected traversability of that region. Low-cost labels correspond to safer terrain, while high-cost labels indicate non-traversable areas. These segment-level semantic costs are projected into a 2D costmap, which can then be used by a path planner to generate routes that avoid debris, damaged structures, and unsafe regions while preserving feasible navigation paths. We evaluate the method on a post-disaster aerial reconstruction by comparing the resulting paths against geometry-based costmaps. Compared with geometry-based baselines, the semantic costmap encourages safer routes by limiting traversal through hazardous regions without eliminating valid paths. These results suggest that semantic information can improve disaster-scene traversability estimation."

Side payments are incentives offered during peace agreements and can take diplomatic, military, financial, or humanitarian forms. While these incentives may help sustain peace, they may also be viewed by the public as undemocratic “bribes” that weaken the legitimacy of an agreement. This project examines how different types of side payments affect public evaluations of peace agreements. I hypothesize that military and financial side payments will reduce perceived legitimacy, durability, and effectiveness, with military side payments producing the strongest negative effect. In contrast, I expect humanitarian side payments to increase public support by making agreements appear more legitimate and beneficial. I test these expectations using two pre-registered, between-subjects survey experiments on nationally representative U.S. samples. Respondents evaluate real-world scenarios based on the Sudan–Israel and UAE–Israel accords, which include either no side payment or a diplomatic-recognition, economic-aid, or military-sales side payment. Each side payment is framed either neutrally or in humanitarian terms. The outcome measures assess perceived legitimacy, overall support, effectiveness, and durability. By examining how citizens respond to the incentives used in peace agreements, this study contributes to broader debates about public opinion, foreign policy, and the political feasibility of negotiated peace.