Welcome to ROS
The ROS Theses Repository contains full-text copies of all Heriot-Watt University PhD theses awarded from 2009 onwards.
It is mandatory for any student who completes a doctoral thesis to submit a digital copy for inclusion in ROS. In addition, the metadata-only records of older theses (previously held in the University Library catalogue) are included in ROS, with full text digital copies being sought on a voluntary basis. If you have a digital copy of your thesis and you wish to store it in ROS, please contact us.
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Recent Submissions
Marine mammals in the Anthropocene : informing management, planning and conservation
(Heriot-Watt University, 2025-04) Hague, Emily Lois; McWhinnie, Assistant Professor Lauren
Anthropogenic activities are ubiquitous in the world’s oceans. Understanding the scale and
occurrence of threats, and their associated impact(s), is challenging, given many threats are
mobile (e.g. maritime vessels), have a heterogenous distribution, and marine species differ in
their vulnerability to each particular threat and stressor. Further, marine species, such as
marine mammals, are often mobile and inherently cryptic, with heterogenous abundance
across their range. The inherent challenges related to studying marine mammals and their
threats has limited our understanding of anthropogenic threats to whales, dolphins and seals,
and may ultimately result in conservation and mitigation efforts being insufficient or
inappropriate.
To contribute new understanding on this topic, this first chapter of this thesis develops an
evidence base, via a systematic mapping process, to collate currently available knowledge
relating to how anthropogenic threats affect nineteen marine mammal species. The resulting
outputs highlight a disparity in the volume of records between species, geographic areas, and
threats. The potential reasons and implications of such heterogeneity are discussed, and
recommendations are provided for filling such gaps.
The next chapter evaluated how multiple stressors to marine mammals are considered within
the UK’s environmental assessment process. Many maritime industries (such as harbour or
renewable energy developments) are legally required to conduct cumulative effects
assessments (CEAs) in order to gain consent to carry out certain potentially impactful activities.
However, comparison of CEAs found disparity in practice between sectors, despite them
occupying broadly the same ocean space and potentially impacting the same marine mammal
species. Again, I provide recommendations that will help to standardise practice when it comes
to predicting cumulative impacts to marine mammals.
Vessels are evidenced to pose multiple potential risks to marine megafauna, including
underwater noise, disturbance and fatal or injurious collision. However, the data available to
understand this risk is limited. Lack of data can preclude threats from being sufficiently
considered within risk or impact assessments and consequently, management efforts. To this
end, the remainder of this thesis focuses on exploring approaches to capture data on vessel
presence and movement, to later allow for a more holistic evaluation of the occurrence of
vessels, and the associated threat this poses to the marine environment. In these chapters, I
explore whether the most commonly used vessel data (automatic identification system (AIS)) is
reflective of real-world traffic, and thus sufficient for assessment and monitoring. Data
gathered between 2019 and 2024 by trained volunteers under the ‘Scottish Vessel Project’
show that AIS data only represented 43% of vessel traffic in coastal areas, 41% of vessel traffic
co-occurring with marine mammals, and 36% of vessel traffic in Marine Protected Areas. This
new understanding of the volume and occurrence of all vessel traffic can support the more
robust quantification of threats associated with vessels in Scotland’s coastal seas, including
strike risk, disturbance and noise exposure.
Together, this thesis identifies a number of knowledge gaps with regard to our current
understanding of threats posed to marine mammals and the wider marine environment,
particularly with in regard to evidence of threats from anthropogenic activities (Chapter 2), the
way threats to marine mammals are considered by impactful maritime sectors (Chapter 3), and
the data available to characterise threats (Chapters 4-6). Throughout, tailored
recommendations are provided to address the evidence gaps identified, which, if implemented,
could ultimately support the development of more effective threat mitigation measures.
From formal specification to full proof : a stepwise method
(Heriot-Watt University, 2020-07) Burski, Lavinia; Kamareddine, Professor Fairouz D.; Ireland, Professor Andrew
High integrity system specifications are very difficult to analyse and check for correctness, whether they are written formally, informally, or are on the way to being
formalised. Such specifications are often written by many different stakeholders and
therefore it is a laborious task bringing all the components together. This thesis
introduces and new and stepwise toolkit to assist the translation of formal specifications into theorem provers based on the MathLang Framework. Each step comes
with it’s own correctness checks, some of which can be done on informal as well
as formal specifications. Steps can be performed in isolation or all together in a
sequence in order to translate a formal specification into a formal proof in Isabelle -
even by someone who is not necessarily proficient in theorem proving. The ZMath-Lang toolkit allows users to bring their specifications together and helps to manage
all the components.
Aspects of braided field theories from homotopy algebras and the double copy of noncommutative gauge theories
(Heriot-Watt University, 2025-04) Trojani, Guillaume; Szabo, Professor Richard Joseph
The quantum Batalin–Vilkovisky (BV) formalism and its connection to homotopy
Lie algebras is reviewed. The Drinfel’d twist deformation procedure is used to define
braided homotopy Lie algebras, leading us to perform a detailed study of the braided
cubic scalar and the braided quantum electrodynamics model in the first part of
this thesis. The braided BV formalism is used to compute correlation functions
for these models and we show the absence of UV/IR mixing up to one-loop order
and three-point multiplicity. New homological techniques are presented to study
the Schwinger–Dyson equation and the Ward–Takahashi identities of these braided
theories respectively. In the later theory, the braided gauge symmetry is verified to
be non-anomalous.
We next study how conventional noncommutative field theories fit into the ho motopy double copy paradigm whose central idea is the factorisation of homotopy
algebras. To perform this operation, a new twisted colour-kinematics duality is
identified. This twist captures the (conventional) noncommutativity of the theory,
hence the double copied theories are shown to match with their commutative coun terparts; a result that is expected from open-closed string duality in the presence
of a background B-field. We conjecture that performing the homotopy double copy
within the category of braided L∞-algebras is the correct way to probe twisted
noncommutative gravity.
Accelerating offshore wind development in Indonesia : a case study of South Sulawesi
(Heriot-Watt University, 2025-03) Susilawati, Dyah Ika; Porter, Professor Joanne S.; Fruh, Doctor Wolf-Gerrit; Hull, Doctor Mark
Abstract and full text unavailable. Restricted access until 29.11.2027. Please refer to PDF.
Underwater visual acoustic SLAM with sensor calibration
(Heriot-Watt University, 2025-03) Xu, Shida; Wang, Doctor Sen
Underwater environments present significant challenges for visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems due to limited visibility, poor illumination,
and the sporadic loss of structural features in images. To address these issues, this
thesis focuses on underwater SLAM by fusing data from a Doppler Velocity Log
(DVL), stereo cameras, and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) within a graph optimization framework. Additionally, we propose an extrinsic and DVL transducer
calibration algorithm that estimates the extrinsic parameters and DVL transducer
orientation without requiring additional setups. Furthermore, a novel observability-aware, entropy-based active calibration method is introduced to actively search
for the next optimal poses for reliable calibration. Extensive experimental results
demonstrate that our proposed SLAM system surpasses state-of-the-art underwater
and visual-inertial SLAM systems in terms of localization accuracy and robustness,
and highlight the precision of our calibration algorithm.