Abstract

This chapter discusses man-machine interface. PLC has to “connect” to human operators, accepting commands from them and displaying the status of the plant in a form that can readily and easily be understood. A digital display driven in BCD normally uses one of the unused binary codes, 1010 to 1111, to generate a blank display. Simple digital inputs (pushbuttons, joysticks, switches) are normally allocated one input per motion and do not require anything particularly special. Concerning PLC with analog signals, flows, temperatures, pressures, etc., these will usually be displayed to the operator. A graphics terminal has just two connections to the outside world, a serial link connection and a power supply. The Allen Bradley Panelview family was designed to replace switches, pushbuttons, numeric displays, and similar devices. The Panelview built up a graphics screen with semigraphic characters placed on a screen with a “pick and place” menu approach. Siemens provides a vast range of operator terminals from simple text-only message displays to complete computer-based Scada systems. One major advantage of graphical displays is that mistakes can be rectified without leaving scars, albeit at some cost. The operator will need to input data and initiate actions. Where a simple text message is to be displayed, possibly with embedded data, message displays driven by a simple serial link carrying ASCII coded characters can be used. PCs have much better graphics capability than the average PLC, so it is not surprising that PCs are increasingly being used as the link between humans and PLC systems. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Since the introduction of mental disorders as networks of causally interacting symptoms, this novel framework has received considerable attention. The past years have resulted in over 40 scientific publications and numerous conference symposia and workshops. Now is an excellent moment to take stock of the network approach: What are its most fundamental challenges, and what are potential ways forward in addressing them? After a brief conceptual introduction, we first discuss challenges to network theory: (1) What is the validity of the network approach beyond some commonly investigated disorders such as major depression? (2) How do we best define psychopathological networks and their constituent elements? And (3) how can we gain a better understanding of the causal nature and real-life underpinnings of associations among symptoms? Next, after a short technical introduction to network modeling, we discuss challenges to network methodology: (4) heterogeneity of samples studied with network analytic models, and (5) a lurking replicability crisis in this strongly data-driven and exploratory field. Addressing these challenges may propel the network approach from its adolescence into adulthood and promises advances in understanding psychopathology both at the nomothetic and idiographic level. Keywords: clinical psychology; dynamic systems; mental disorders; networks; personalized medicine; psychiatry; reproducibility Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Over recent decades, research on antecedents of safety in High Reliability Organizations (HROs) has shifted from focusing mostly on technical issues to placing greater emphasis on human factors. Although an abundance of research suggests that human factors seem to play an important part in most accidents and near misses, there is still a shortage of research on the underlying mechanisms and processes involved in unsafe acts and safety critical behavior. Thus, many research questions regarding the impact of human factors still remain relatively unexplored. The fairly new direction of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) has presented a fertile theoretical and methodological foundation for examining safety issues in HROs. One promising new POB perspective is Psychological Capital (PsyCap), a higher order construct that consists of the sub-dimensions: efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between PsyCap and safety in HROs."/p" "p"The current study examines diverse empirical evidence to assess whether PsyCap could represent a potential antecedent to psychological safety climate and loss prevention across three different HROs (i.e., the aviation, shipping and offshore oil and gas industries). More specifically, possible mediators (i.e., positive/negative emotions and job satisfaction) and possible moderators (i.e., work role) of this relationship were examined in Papers 1 and 2. The influence of impression management and self-deception is controlled for in Paper 2, while the potential buffering effect of PsyCap on the relationship between worries about workplace risks and sleepiness is examined in Paper 3."/p" "p"The first study examined whether PsyCap is related to individual perceptions of safety climate in Air Traffic Control (ATC). The results from an all-Norwegian sample of about 25% of the population of Norwegian air traffic controllers showed that PsyCap was positively correlated with and explained almost 1/3 of the variance in perceived safety climate. In the second part of the study, the mediating effects of positive and negative emotions were controlled for, to see whether the respondents were “wearing rose tinted glasses” and answered the questions in an overly positive way. The results showed that neither positive nor negative emotions mediated the relationship between PsyCap and safety climate."/p" "p"The aim of the second study was to replicate and extend the findings from the ATC study in a new sample from a different type of HRO. Thus, the second study was conducted among maritime workers of different nationalities working for three Norwegian shipping companies. Again, the results showed that PsyCap was positively related to perceptions of safety climate. PsyCap contributed to the variance in perceived safety climate, even after adjusting for socially desirable responding. Officers with high scores on PsyCap were found to have a more positive perception of the safety climate than the non-officers with high PsyCap scores. In the second part of the study, a positive relation between perceived safety climate and job satisfaction was established, as well as between PsyCap and job satisfaction. A crossnational difference was discovered in the sample. An indirect effect of PsyCap with perceived safety climate through job satisfaction was valid only for European workers and not for Filipinos. Altogether, PsyCap and job satisfaction explained more than 20% of the variance in perceived safety climate."/p" "p"The third study shed light on PsyCap as a protective factor in a safety critical work environment. The relationship between worries about accidents and sleepiness was examined in a sample of offshore workers from different nationalities, in order to investigate whether PsyCap could represent a protective factor. The findings indicated a reverse buffering effect in that PsyCap only had a protective impact on sleepiness when worries about accidents were low. The established associations remained consistent after controlling for workers’ years of experience as seafarers and their ratings of perceived safety climate."/p" "p"In conclusion, this thesis extends the previous research by investigating the role of POB in safety. More precisely, it establishes empirical evidence suggesting that the behavioral dispositions of PsyCap are related to perceived safety climate across HROs from the aviation, offshore, and shipping industries. Thus, an increased emphasis on POB may present a new approach to increasing safety focus and loss prevention in these organizations. Future research should also investigate other HROs. Including PsyCap in the safety research could help create a better understanding of how people make work decisions based on their outlook on work and life in general. Although these results seem promising, more research is still needed, and this dissertation also addresses future research needs and the potential practical implications of these findings. Hopefully, there will be more research on PsyCap and safety aimed at preventing accidents in HROs.

Abstract

mospheric emissions from road transport have increased all around the world during the last decades more rapidly than from other pollution sources. For instance, they contribute to more than 25% of total CO, CO2, NOx, and fine particle emissions in most of the European countries. This situation shows the importance of road transport when complying with emission ceilings and air quality standards applied to these pollutants. This paper presents a modelling system to perform atmospheric emission projections (simultaneously both air quality pollutants and greenhouse gases) from road transport including the development of a tailored software tool (EmiTRANS) as a planning tool. The methodology has been developed with two purposes: 1) to obtain outputs used as inputs to the COPERT4 software to calculate emission projections and 2) to summarize outputs for policy making evaluating the effect of emission abatement measures for a vehicle fleet. This methodology has been applied to the calculation of emission projections in Spain up to 2020 under several scenarios, including a sensitivity analysis useful for a better interpretation and confidence building on the results. This case study demonstrates the EmiTRANS applicability to a country, and points out the need for combining both technical and non-technical measures (such as behavioural changes or demand management) to reduce emissions, indirectly improving air quality and contributing to mitigate climate change. Document type: Article

Abstract

The transition toward a sustainable transportation system in the Netherlands takes place in the context of the Dutch “Transition management policy framework”. We study four tech¬nological routes that the “Platform Sustainable Mobility” has selected for this goal: (1) hybridization of vehicles, (2) liquid biofuels, (3) natural gas as a transportation fuel and (4) hydrogen as a transportation fuel. These technological routes all envision large-scale changes in vehicle propulsion technology and fuel infrastructure. Furthermore, they compete for the scarce resources available to invest in new (fuel) infrastructures, which implicates that these ‘transition paths’ are also interdependent at the level of the mobility system. The main outcome of the analysis is the identification of barriers that are currently blocking the transition toward sustainable mobility. Barriers are classified as being related to (1) technology and vehicle development, (2) the availability of (fuel) infrastructures, and (3) elements of the institutional infrastructure. The transition management framework currently misses guidelines for coping with (competing) technologies that each requires large infrastructural investments. We further argue that avoiding undesired lock-ins and creating a beneficial institutional context for sustainable mobility cannot be pursued at the transition path level. Therefore, we recommend that a more systemic approach should be taken to the tran¬si¬tion to sustainable mobility, in which the inter¬dependencies between the transition paths are critically assessed and in which the possibilities to legitimize sustainable mobility as a whole should be used.

Abstract

In this paper, we will study a typical problem in inland container shipping, concerning the barge transportation of maritime containers between a dry port and a set of seaport terminals. The barges depart from the dry port and visit a set of sea terminals, where containers need either to be dropped off or picked up. The goal is to achieve economies of scale with barges and avoid trucking as much as possible. The decision thus involves finding the best allocation of containers to barges in order to guarantee on-time delivery and meet capacity restrictions. The problem will be modeled as a variant of the split vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries coupled with time features. The model includes parameters that can be tuned to improve barge utilization and travelling distance. A hybrid local search meta-heuristic algorithm, combined with a branch-and-cut solver, will be developed to solve the model. Numerical experiments have been conducted to test the performance of the algorithm and provide solution analysis for practical insights. Real-world data has been collected from a local barge operator based in the Port of Rotterdam region and will be used as input for the experiments. This will result in an in-depth analysis into current planning practices. The proposed framework complements existing models in the literature and contributes to the development of a comprehensive set of decision support tools, which help in the decision-making process for inland terminals.

Abstract

Policy makers have proposed various incentive programs to curb consumption-related problems, such as traffic congestion and carbon emissions. While experts consider such programs effective in reducing those problems, consumers are more skeptical. Although this "effectiveness skepticism" is currently viewed as an important cause of public opposition, the authors argue that it may also arise as a consequence of opposition. Specifically, consumers oppose policies they consider personally unattractive or unfair. This opposition motivates them to also be skeptical about the potential effectiveness of such policies. Three studies that include a variety of methods, policies, and samples provide empirical support for this reasoning: perceptions of expected effects can be biased by consumers' perceptions of personal attractiveness and fairness. In line with this causal ordering, the authors find that offering optimistic effectiveness estimates, although successful in reducing effectiveness skepticism, did not boost policy support. Policy makers aiming to boost support prior to implementation should thus not only communicate a policy's effectiveness, but also address other causes of opposition.

Abstract

We investigate whether alternative city- or airport pairs are viable substitutes and the extent to which they impact airline competition between the United Kingdom and continental Europe. To this end, we employ and measure airlines’ best responses in equilibrium. Using monthly airline-route seat capacity levels and two stage least-squares dummy-variables regression models, we estimate airlines’ strategic reaction to the competitors’ capacity levels, including competitors on other routes. We show that airlines’ relevant market extends beyond the airport-pair level. Strategic reactions depend on airline type, but all airline types have a similar strategic reaction towards high speed rail.

Abstract

The pre-marshalling problem has been extensively studied in recent years with the aim of minimizing the number of movements needed to rearrange a bay of containers. Time is a more realistic objective for measuring process efficiency, and we show that it does not correlate with the number of movements. As a result, we study the problem of minimizing crane times and develop two exact approaches to solve it: an integer linear model, and a branch and bound algorithm, with new upper and lower bounds, dominance criteria, and a heuristic procedure, to provide optimal solutions for problems of practical size.

Abstract

Multimodal transport systems connect seaports to their hinterland and have potential economic, social and environmental advantages over road transport. However, currently this potential is realised only to a limited extent, and road transport still dominates the market. We have conducted in-depth interviews with practitioners to explore possible reasons. We find that lack of coordination at the operational level between the parties involved in transport systems leads to inefficiencies in hinterland transport systems and compromises the advantages of multimodal transport. Although academic research recognises the significance of coordination, it generally employs an economic perspective at a strategic level, but does not say much about actual implementation at an operational level. To fill this gap, we develop a framework to model coordination challenges in hinterland transport, with an emphasis on the operational level. The framework is inspired by the modelling approaches in earlier literature, and tailored based on the common characteristics of coordination challenges observed during our interviews. Further, we propose a method to analyse such models in depth and reveal specific insights such as inadequacy of contracts to facilitate coordination, the dynamics of consequential planning decisions, and shortcomings in information exchange. To demonstrate the applicability of our framework, we use it to model and analyse the particularly tenacious coordination challenge of barge congestion in the Port of Rotterdam.