Scipedia: Documents published in 2012

A study of the Hong Kong government's transport policy : the formulation of a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach to solving traffic congestion in Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:21:13 +0100

The policy role of administrative tribunals : a study of the Air Transport Licensing Authority

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:20:06 +0100

Bus to bus interchange : solution for traffic congestion in Hong Kong Island

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:19:46 +0100

Internet inter-domain traffic engineering and optimizatioon

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:03:59 +0100

Hong Kong : the air transport hub of Asia beyond 1997

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:03:22 +0100

Towards Truly Sustainable Books

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:02:52 +0100

This project examines the impact of environmentalism as it operates in presidential rhetoric after Earth Day 1970. Specifically, I look at how environmentalism is constructed and then utilized in the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush, and William Jefferson Clinton. I argue that U.S. presidents use the rhetoric of environmentalism as a rhetorical tool to define their ideal citizen, interpret complex rhetorical situations for the American people, and introduce policies. Environmental vocabularies, I argue, are crucial to understanding presidential communication, as they enable presidents to move policy discussions away from technical discourse and frame ideas using accessible and familiar terms. This project, in many ways, highlights the discursive identity of the American people and the role of structuring vocabularies in presidential power. In each post-Earth Day administration, the citizenry is invited to participate in a version of environmentalism that also reflects the chief executive’s political vision for the country. Through a Burkean cluster and agon analysis, each of the three case studies reveals the unique way each presidency defines environmentalism and the strategic function of each definition. Chapter 3 uses a cluster-agon analysis to demonstrate how environmental rhetoric helps Ronald Reagan construct his economic policy. Chapter 4 argues that H.W. Bush’s unique definition of environmentalism functions as a strategic communication tool that helps shape his domestic and international policies. It was also an important step in breaking down binaries between economic development and environmentalism that had shaped present-day understandings of environmentalism. A

Air transport hubs and networks serving China : a comparative analysis

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:02:39 +0100

Studying the feasibilities of electronic road pricing and bus rapid transit to solve traffic congestion in Guangzhou city proper

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:02:19 +0100

"Streets for people" : towards green transportation in urban Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:01:51 +0100

Sustainable transport of the third generation new towns in Hong Kong with the development of rail infrastructure

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:01:28 +0100

The evaluation of Hong Kong's performance in sustainable transport by international indicators

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:00:08 +0100

Developing a sustainable transport system in Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:59:56 +0100

Logistics development : a way towards a sustainable transport system in Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:58:29 +0100

A feasibility study of switching from the diesel to petrol light road transport to improve the urban air quality in Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:57:51 +0100

A study of the traffic congestion problem in Hong Kong : a case study of Wanchai district

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:57:09 +0100

An alternative strategy of sustainable transport system in Hong Kong : restraint of private car

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:56:51 +0100

Hong Kong's performance in relation to international sustainable transport

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:56:39 +0100

A study of safety in road transport in Hong Kong

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:56:15 +0100

Hong Kong's environmentally sustainable transport : rail-based or road-based?

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:55:48 +0100

A study of the impact of SARS on air transport demand in Hong Kong : the case of Cathay Pacific Airways

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:55:20 +0100

Bicycle use and sustainable transport in Hong Kong : a case study of Shatin

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:55:03 +0100

Cross border freight traffic congestion : the Hong Kong-Shenzhen case

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:54:51 +0100

Evaluation of traffic congestion relieving options with using cost-benefit analysis : case study of Central-Wan Chai

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:53:55 +0100

A sustainable transportation system in Hong Kong? : towards an Era of Ecological Modernisation

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:53:20 +0100

Developing a sustainable transport system in Hong Kong : the nature and impacts of planning and policy constraints

Scipedia content — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:52:58 +0100

A method for estimating traffic fuel consumption and vehicle emissions: an application to the Community Energy Plan of Salerno

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 12:36:01 +0100

This paper proposes a method to estimate traffic fuel consumption and emissions at urban scale. The aim is threefold: (i) to propose a methodology which, pursuing a disaggregate approach, integrate transportation models with fuel consumption and emission models; (ii) to apply the methodology to the CEP of Salerno (Italy); (iii) to carry out a sensitivity analysis with respect to different input variables (vehicle types, modal split, vehicle flow density) allowing to evaluate the effects of travel demand management strategies. The methodology is based on consolidated methods/models of transportation system analysis, and it pursues the European approach based on Computer Programme to Calculate Emissions from Road Transport (COPERT) for estimating fuel consumptions and emissions.

Assessing liability with argumentation maps : an application in aviation law

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 12:33:06 +0100

In this paper we present an application of argument maps for assessing liability in the field of Air Traffic Management (ATM), developed within the ALIAS (Addressing the Liability Impact of Automated Systems) project. Such maps are used for presenting legal concepts and norms to lawyers and non lawyers (engineers, software developers and other technical personnel), within the cooperative design and assessment of new technologies for ATM.

Transport Policy Instruments

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 12:30:09 +0100

Liability and automation : issues and challenges for socio-technical systems

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 12:26:05 +0100

Who is responsible for accidents in highly automated systems? How do we apportion liability among the various participants in complex socio-technical organisations? How can different liability regulations at different levels (supranational, national, local) be harmonized? How do we provide for accountability, while promoting safety? These and other questions are being addressed by the ALIAS (Addressing Liability Impact of Automated Systems) project. In this paper we present the outline framework of the project, its objectives, and some preliminary results: in particular, we present a framework for liability in aviation, an analysis of real accidents and of a hypothetical case involving UAS according to a methodology developed in the project, and finally, we introduce the Legal Case, that is a methodological tool (currently under development) aimed at identifying and addressing liability issues of automated ATM systems."br

Business Models and Network Design in Hinterland Transport

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 12:13:38 +0100

International Series in Operations Research & Management ScienceInternational container transport is the backbone of global supply chains. Hinterland transport, the transport from the port to the final destination and vice versa, is an important component of international container transport. However, academic attention to hinterland transport has emerged only recently. This chapter discusses business models and network design in hinterland transport. Understanding business models is relevant, as many different types of companies (e.g., shipping lines, terminal operating companies and forwarders) play a role in hinterland transport. Their business models influence how they position themselves in the market, their stance concerning cooperation and coordination in hinterland transport, and their scope in network design. Network design is a core issue in hinterland transport. New services need to be designed—and in such a way that they are expected to be profitable. Furthermore, current service patterns only change through deliberate redesign. So competition through the (re)design of transport services is a very important—perhaps the most important—form of competition in intermodal freight transport. One potentially promising innovation in this respect is the extended gate concept, where an inland hub becomes the ‘virtual gate’ of the deep sea terminal.

Minimizing delay in shared pipelines

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:24:32 +0100

Pipelines are widely used to increase throughput in multi-core chips by parallelizing packet processing. Typically, each packet type is serviced by a dedicated pipeline. However, with the increase in the number of packet types and their number of required services, there are not enough cores for pipelines. In this paper, we study pipeline sharing, such that a single pipeline can be used to serve several packet types. Pipeline sharing decreases the needed total number of cores, but typically increases pipeline lengths and therefore packet delays. We consider the optimization problem of allocating cores between different packet types such that the average delay is minimized. We suggest a polynomial-time algorithm that finds the optimal solution when the packet types preserve a specific property. We also present a greedy algorithm for the general case. Last, we examine our solutions on synthetic examples, on packet-processing applications, and on real-life H.264 standard requirements.

Digital interventions for sustainable urban mobility

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:21:31 +0100

This paper presents results from a pilot study aimed to explore the design of behavior change interventions for sustainable urban mobility. Eight participants were provided with a mobile app deploying a novel combination of goal-setting, self-monitoring, rewards and sharing features in order to observe, over a month period, relevant changes in their transport choices and habits. The digital intervention produced an increase of sustainable transport choices of 14% and contributed to raise participants' environmental awareness, particularly regarding the

Provenance for seismological processing pipelines in a distributed streaming workflow

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:21:20 +0100

Harvesting provenance for streaming workflows presents challenges related to the high rate of the updates and a large distribution of the execution, which can be spread across several institutional infrastructures. Moreover, the typically large volume of data produced by each transformation step can not be always stored and preserved efficiently. This can represent an obstacle for the evaluation of the results, for instance, in real-time, suggesting the importance of customisable metadata extraction procedures. In this paper we present our approach to the aforementioned provenance challenges within a use-case driven scenario in the field of seismology, which requires the execution of processing pipelines over a large datastream. In particular, we will discuss the current implementation and the upcoming challenges for an in-worfklow programmatic approach to provenance tracing, building on composite functions, selective recording and domain specific metadata production.

Parallel Macro Pipelining on the Intel SCC Many-Core Computer

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:19:42 +0100

In this paper we present how Intel's Single-Chip-Cloud processor behaves for parallel macro pipeline applications. Subsets of the SCC's available cores can be arranged as a pipeline where each core processes one stage of the overall workload. Each of the independent cores processes a small part of a larger task and feeds the following core with new data after it finishes its work. Our case-study is a parallel rendering system which renders successive images and applies different filters on them. On normal graphics adapters this is usually done in multiple cycles, we do this in a single pipeline pass. We show that we can achieve a significant speedup by using multiple parallel pipelines on the SCC. We show that we can further improve performance by using SCC's controlling PC in conjunction with the SCC. We also identify aspects of the SCC that hinder the overall performance, mainly the lack of local memory banks for each core on the SCC. The results presented in this paper are not limited to only image processing, but users could expect similar experiences where macro pipelining is used in other applications on the SCC.

Design of virtual reality based HMIs (Human Machine Interfaces) of complex systems

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:19:30 +0100

onautical transport system is rapidly growing and more demanding. It has become a total system of complex systems in which the human is recognized as the decisional point that is asked to act quickly and safely. In this context, innovative technologies provide the challenge to design revolutionary Human Machine Interfaces for the people involved.In this paper a report of recent works in Human Machine Interfaces in aeronautics developed at the University of Bologna is presented. Synthetic visualization and task automation are the main commonalities in these projects. What we can expect from the future is then explored through an insight into technological aspects. © 2013 IEEE.

The Legal Case

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:19:17 +0100

This paper presents the first release of the Legal Case, recently developed by the ALIAS Project and still under refinement. The Legal Case is a methodological tool intended to address liability issues of automated ATM systems: it provides for a legal risk management process that can be applied either proactively or retroactively. Used in a proactive way, the Legal Case aims to address the liability issues that may emerge in the design of new technologies. Used in a retroactive way, it is meant to assess liability issues pertaining to an existing piece of technology that has already reached the deployment stage. The Legal Case is mainly designed to be used by a Legal Analyst who is a member of an interdisciplinary project team dealing with the development of new automated technologies (in the case of the proactive approach) or with the accident investigation (in the case of the retroactive approach). Although not yet finalized, the Legal Case methodology is gathering great interest from the ATM community.

Electromobility and carsharing/carpooling services at the University of Deusto: A preliminary exploratory survey

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:18:39 +0100

The widespread deployment of electric vehicles is typically viewed as an approach that could help decarbonize the transportation sector, which is becoming increasingly linked not only to environmental problems, but also to social issues that contribute to the degradation of the quality of life. Alternative modes of transport with the aim to increase the occupancy of private cars are emerging as a means of alleviating the problems from traffic congestion, mainly in urban areas. At the same time, the university members are often considered to be more receptive to alternative transportation services such as carsharing, compared to the general population. Considering that academic communities offer fertile ground for the promotion of innovative actions, this paper presents a preliminary survey conducted at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, that aims to explore the potential interest and willingness to adopt the use of carsharing/carpooling services and electric vehicles. The results of this exploratory study provide the indication that the population under study maintains a positive attitude towards the transition to electromobility and use of alternative modes of transportation.

Classification and Argumentation Maps as support tools for liability assessment in ATM

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:16:52 +0100

In this paper we present an application of argument maps for assessing the liability impact of ATM systems. Such application has been recently developed within the ALIAS Project (Addressing the Liability Impact of Automated Systems). Such maps are used for presenting legal concepts and norms to lawyers and non lawyers (engineers, software developers, human factors specialists and other technical personnel), within the cooperative design and assessment of new technologies for ATM.

Current Harmonics of EV Chargers and Effects of Diversity to Charging Load Current Distortions in Distribution Networks

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:13:19 +0100

The Use and Usefulness of Threats in Goal-Oriented Modelling

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:12:35 +0100

Both goal and threat modelling are well-known activities related to high-level requirements engineering. While goals express why a system is needed, threats tell us why security for our system is needed. Still, you will often find that goals and threats are treated in separate modelling processes, perhaps not being influenced by each other at all. The research question we try to address in here is to what extent should we include threats in goal-oriented modelling? There is for instance a trade-off between expressiveness, usability and usefulness that must be considered. To improve this situation we believe that a well-defined methodology with good tool support will make the modelling process easier, and give a more useful result. In this paper we first give an overview of previous work on the use of threats within goal-modelling. We explain the use of threats within a goal-oriented socio-technical security modelling language and how tool support enables reuse of threats and automatic analysis of threat propagation in the models. This is exemplified with a case study from Air Traffic Management (ATM) from which we extract some of the the practical challenges that we have. We are able to conclude that threats provide a useful foundation and justification for the security requirements we derive from goal modelling, but this should not be considered to be a replacement for risk assessment methods. Having goals and threats before thinking of the technical solutions of a system allows us to raise awareness on situations that are not just exceptions from regular execution flow.

Risk-based optimization of the design of on-shore pipelines shutdown systems

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:11:16 +0100

Crude oil and other liquid materials are transported in large quantities through pipelines. Pipelines are an efficient and safe transport way as compared to both rail and road transportation, both from the economical and environmental points of view. Nevertheless, loss of containment accidents can occur due to external action ea mechanical impact, for examplee or to corrosion, aging, etc. Even though the frequency of such events is certainly very low, the effects and consequences on environment can be very important. The consequences of accidents in pipelines can be efficiently reduced through a suitable design of the whole system. One of the points which must be decided in the design is the installation of blocking valves at appropriate distances, so that emergency shutdowns can interrupt the flow of substance and isolate the section where the loss of containment has taken place. In the case of pipe rupture the amount released is therefore limited to the content between two consecutive valves, usually placed according to heuristic criteria. However, if too many valves are used, the capital cost of equipment increases excessively, and if too few are used, the risk of serious accidents increases. In this paper we consider the possibility of improving the design of such systems by applying riskbased optimization criteria. We propose an optimization methodology to solve this conflict by means of an objective function that analyzes the variations in overall costs, including the cost of the investment (with specific reference to blocking valves) and the cost of accidents. The result is an optimum situation in which costs are kept to a minimum. As an example, we apply the methodology to the transportation of gasoline by pipeline. Peer Reviewed

Reducing traffic congestion in ZigBee networks: Experimental results

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:06:12 +0100

In this paper we propose and test, through experimentation on the field, a novel routing protocol for Zigbee networks. The proposed solution aims at reducing traffic congestion, causing delays, packets losses and unfair use of the energy resources of nodes in the network. The protocol exploits, at the network layer, the information related to medium access control losses, therefore collisions, to select the best path to reach the destination, accounting for both, connectivity and congestion on links. The protocol has been implemented on the MC1322x platform produced by Freescale and a comparison between the proposed protocol and Zigbee has been performed. Results demonstrate the significant improvement achieved in terms of packet loss rate and of nodes usage balance, the latter resulting in longer network lifetime.

4D trajectory planning in ATM with ananytime stochastic approach

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:05:14 +0100

This paper presents the Anytime Stochastic Conflict Detection and Resolution system (ASCDR), which automatically identifies conflicts between multiple aircraft and proposes the most effective solution 4D trajectory considering the available computation time. The system detects conflicts using an algorithm based on axis-aligned minimum bounding box and resolves them cooperatively using a collision-free 4D trajectory planning algorithm based on a roundabout fast initial solution and a stochastic optimization technique named Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to modify the 4D initial trajectories of the aircraft with an overall minimum cost. Moreover, an anytime approach using PSO is applied because determining optimal trajectories with short time intervals in the flight phase is not feasible. Thus, trajectories whose quality improves when available computation time increases are yielded. The method could be applied to Medium-Term and even Short-Term Conflict Detection and Resolution depending on the look-ahead times. The method has been validated with simulations in scenarios with multiple aerial vehicles in a common airspace.

Are change strategies affecting users' transportation choices?

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:01:31 +0100

This paper presents results from an in situ user study aimed to explore the effect of a mobile app on supporting eco transport choices by citizens of an urban area. We provided eight participants with a mobile app deploying a novel combination of goal-setting, self-monitoring, rewards and sharing features in order to observe, over a month period, relevant changes in their transport choices and habits. Overall, we observed that the digital intervention produced an increase of sustainable transport choices of 14% and contributed to raise participants' environmental awareness, particularly regarding the consequences of their daily transportation choices.

A Review of the Harmonic and Unbalance Effects in Electrical Distribution Networks due to EV Charging

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 10:01:18 +0100

Discovering Traffic Congestion along Routes of Interest using VANETs

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:57:32 +0100

One of the most interesting challenges for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) consists of the traffic congestion problem. Congestion is a big obstacle for transportation since it reduces efficiency of the infrastructure and increases travel time, air pollution and fuel consumption. Nowadays, the most promising technology in support of ITS are Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). In this paper, we propose three protocols able to transmit traffic information for routes of interest on VANETs without any Road Side Unit (RSU) support. The protocols make a comparison between a reactive and a proactive approach and present strategies to improve the routing of the packets based on density and location of the vehicles. The objective is to keep high values of delivery ratio and accuracy using the smallest number of transmissions in order to guarantee scalability and to not saturate the bandwidth with only this type of packets. © 2013 IEEE.

Accurate Behavior Prediction on Highways Based on a Systematic Combination of Classifiers

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:56:20 +0100

To drive safely, a good driver observes his surroundings, anticipates the actions of other traffic participants and then decides for a maneuver. But if a driver is inattentive or overloaded he may fail to include some relevant information. This can then lead to wrong decisions and potentially result in an accident. In order to assist a driver in his decision making, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are becoming more and more popular in commercial cars. The quality of these existing systems compared to an experienced driver is weak, because they rely purely on physical observation and thus react shortly before an accident. For an earlier warning of the driver behavior prediction is used. We classify existing research in this area with respect to two aspects: quality and scope. Quality means the ability to warn a driver early before a dangerous situation. Scope means the diversity of scenes in which the approach can work. In general we see two tendencies, methods targeting for broad scope but having low quality and those targeting for narrow scope but high quality. Our goal is to have a system with high quality and wide scope. To achieve this, we propose a system that combines classifiers to predict behaviors for many scenarios. To show that a combination of general and specific classifiers is a solution to improve quality and scope, this paper will introduce the generic concept of our system followed by a concrete implementation for lane change prediction for highway scenarios.

Exposing energy-aware capabilities in next generation network devices

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:56:06 +0100

Dynamic power management techniques have been proposed in a number of recent approaches to reduce the energy consumption of telecommunication networks and devices. These techniques aimed at finding an optimal trade off between network performance and energy requirements. Control policies using energy-aware routing and traffic engineering can be used in order to extend these techniques to the whole network. However, the deployment of the energy-aware capabilities of heterogeneous networking is still unsystematic and impractical, as a standardized representation is still missing. To overcome such an issue, we introduce a novel framework, the Green Abstraction Layer (GAL), whose goal is to define a multi-layered abstraction interface for the hardware and physical resources. Within the GAL, energy management actions are directly performed. The GAL can be thus exposed to the platform-independent logical representation commonly used in network control protocols. Given the internal architectural complexity and heterogeneity of many network devices, the GAL approach is based on a hierarchical decomposition, where each level provides an abstract and aggregated representation of internal components. The general GAL architecture is currently under consideration for standardization in ETSI.

Circular traffic sign recognition empowered by circle detection algorithm

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:55:31 +0100

21st Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU) -- APR 24-26, 2013 -- CYPRUS WOS: 000325005300272 Automatic traffic sign detection and recognition is one of the most important components of advanced driver assistance systems. In this paper, a novel method utilizing histograms of oriented gradients based features together with a recently developed and successful circle detection algorithm is proposed for circular traffic sign recognition. In the proposed method, irrelevant backgrounds of traffic signs, whose locations on images are identified within rectangular boundaries, are filtered by detecting their actual circular boundaries. In this way, features representing the traffic signs better can be extracted. The results of the experimental study conducted on a considerably large database demonstrate that the proposed method offers a higher classification performance than the case in which the circle detection is not applied.

Visual Ego-Vehicle Lane Assignment using Spatial Ray Features

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:55:05 +0100

gning the ego-vehicle to a lane is not only beneficial for navigation but will be an essential element in future Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. This paper describes an approach for ego-lane index estimation using only a monocular camera and no additional sensing equipment like, e.g., the typically employed GPS and Inertial Measurement Unit. Key aspect of the approach are SPatial RAY (SPRAY) features which represent the spatial layout of the road in the visual scene. The proposed method perceives a variety of local visual properties of the scene by means of base classifiers operating on patches extracted from camera images. The spatial arrangement of these local visual properties are captured using SPRAY features. With a boosting classifier trained on these features the ego-lane index is obtained. The system is evaluated on low traffic density and complementary to an object-based approach suitable for heavy traffic. In the conducted experiments, the proposed approach reaches recognition rates of 93% to 97% on individual highway images without applying any kind of temporal filtering.

Traffic Aggregation Techniques for Environmental Monitoring in M2M Capillary Networks

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:52:19 +0100

In this paper, we address the problem of traffic aggregation in capillary M2M networks. In particular, we focus on monitoring application where sensor nodes gather information from the environment (e.g. temperature, humidity, concentration of pollutants, etc) and send it to the gateway (GW). The GW then processes and retransmits the data through a cellular network to a distant application server. In an attempt to reduce the traffic congestion in the cellular network, we propose a data compression strategy at the GW that effectively exploits the temporal and spatial correlation in the sensors observations. The data compression strategy is composed of two building blocks: an estimation block and a compression block. In the estimation block, the data streams are jointly processed by means of a multidimensional linear filter. Next, the output streams of the estimation block are compressed by resorting to a truncated version its Karhunen-Loeve expansion.

Battery/UC hybridization for electric vehicles via a novel double input DC/DC power converter

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:46:48 +0100

3rd International Conference on Electric Power and Energy Conversion Systems (EPECS) -- OCT 02-04, 2013 -- Yildiz Tech Univ, Davutpasa Campus, Istanbul, TURKEY WOS: 000345894400098 In this work, for electric vehicles (EVs), a novel double input DC-DC power converter, that enables utilization of a battery and ultra-capacitor (UC) in parallel while increasing the overall performance of electric vehicles and recovering regenerative breaking energy, is introduced. Since UCs have higher power density when compared to batteries, by the use of a UC as a power input, DC bus voltage regulation at transients and peak loads is achieved easily, thus the life of the battery and efficiency of the system are increased. The average value model of the proposed converter is created in MA TLAB (R), Simulink (R) and SimPowerSystems (R) environment, then its dynamic performance is tested under the load determined from the ECE-15 drive cycle.

Data Distribution Service (DDS): A performance comparison of OpenSplice and RTI implementations

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:45:24 +0100

Data distributions systems with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) levels, such as the data-centric Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard specification, have gained more and more success in the last decade. These systems represent suitable solutions for effective and high-performance data communication for challenging application scenarios with real-time requirements, such as air traffic management, industrial automation, smart grids, and, more recently, financial applications. Notwithstanding the last decade has witnessed the diffusion and consolidation of some major implementations, only a very few, in some sense obsolete, performance analysis studies are available in the literature. To fill that gap and to facilitate future IT decision processes, we propose a thorough analysis of the DDS implementations proposed by the two main stakeholders in the DDS market, namely, PrismTech and Real-Time Innovations (RTI). The reported experimental results point out the pros and cons of both solutions in terms of data delivery performance, also by precisely evaluating bottlenecks and overhead, for instance in terms of CPU and memory resource usage.

Constrained capacity management and cost minimisation of EV-charging in a parking garage

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:43:39 +0100

rt from the optimal real-time electricity price to buy the electricity, the optimal, time dependent, capacity contracted with the DSO is of crucial importance for concerted charging of electric vehicles in a parking garage. The battery management system, on its turn, imposes constraints on the sequence of steps in which power is transmitted. Maximum power in individual charging steps has to vary as a function of the state-of-charge to keep an optimal state-of-health of the battery. Finally, the mobility wishes of the car user, given by the desired departure time and SOC will vary. In the PowerMatchingCity Smart Grid living lab [1] a strategy has been developed to optimize the charging strategies of a collection of cars by using a combination of agent-based optimization, using the PowerMatcher [2], and constrained, combinatorial optimization. In this article, this solution approach, the algorithms and the configuration are described. Furthermore, the implementation in the PowerMatchingCity [3,4] virtual power plant configuration with a fleet of 10 vehicles is discussed. First simulation results of constrained optimization for forecasting are analysed.

SIMPATO - the Safety Impact Assessment Tool of interactIVe

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:42:52 +0100

One step in the development of safety oriented Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) is an ex ante assessment of the expected safety impacts. This requires a careful analysis combining models and data from various sources. This paper describes the Safety IMPact Assessment Tool, called SIMPATO, that was developed in the interactIVe project. This tool performs "what if" analysis for accident scenarios to determine the effect of an ADAS on the outcome. The unique quality of the tool is that it requires very little data on the ADAS itself, and uses in-depth accident data to obtain a representative result.

Empirical evaluation of energy saving margins in backbone networks

Scipedia content — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 09:42:39 +0100

Fueled by concern over the energy consumption of backbone networks, lot's of work has recently gone into proposals for energy-aware traffic engineering and routing. Local and network-wide policies have been developed for switching off network interfaces and concentrating traffic in as few links as allowed by SLA constraints. In this work we examine empirically the energy saving margins of such policies using extensive data from a national and a pan-European research and academic network. We analyze the dependence of such margins on several parameters, including the level of energy proportionality, QoS constraints and the geographic span of a network. Our findings reveal that with existing devices, smart powering-off can save more than 50% of currently consumed energy, and that energy-aware traffic engineering has still quite away to go before it can be made redundant by improvements in the energy proportionality of devices.

Real-time aggregate monitoring with differential privacy

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 22:02:29 +0100

Sharing real-time aggregate statistics of private data has given much benefit to the public to perform data mining for understanding important phenomena, such as Influenza outbreaks and traffic congestion. However, releasing time-series data with standard differential privacy mechanism has limited utility due to high correlation between data values. We propose FAST, an adaptive system to release real-time aggregate statistics under differential privacy with improved utility. To minimize overall privacy cost, FAST adaptively samples long time-series according to detected data dynamics. To improve the accuracy of data release per time stamp, filtering is used to predict data values at non-sampling points and to estimate true values from noisy observations at sampling points. Our experiments with three real data sets confirm that FAST improves the accuracy of time-series release and has excellent performance even under very small privacy cost.

Performance Evaluation and Optimal Decision-making for Strategic Air Traffic Management under Weather Uncertainty

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 22:00:28 +0100

An Integrated Collaborative Decision Making and Tactical Advisory Concept for Airport Surface Operations Management

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:57:00 +0100

Surface operations at airports in the US are based on tactical operations, where departure aircraft primarily queue up and wait at the departure runways. There have been attempts to address the resulting inefficiencies with both strategic and tactical tools for metering departure aircraft. This paper presents Spot And Runway Departure Advisor with Collaborative Decision Making (SARDA-CDM): an integrated strategic and tactical system for improving surface operations by metering departure aircraft. SARDA-CDM is the augmentation of ground and local controller advisories through sharing of flight movement and related operations information between airport operators, flight operators and air traffic control at the airport. The goal is to enhance the efficiency of airport surface operations by exchanging information between air traffic control and airline operators, while minimizing adverse effects on stakeholders and passengers. The paper presents the concept of operations for SARDA-CDM, describing both the strategic and tactical components. Then the preliminary results from testing the concept in a real-time automated simulation environment are described. Results indicate benefits such as reduction in taxiing delay and fuel consumption. Further, the preliminary implementation of SARDA-CDM seems robust for two minutes delay in gate push-back times.

Survey of Air/Ground and Human/Automation Functional Allocation for Separation Assurance

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:56:09 +0100

*Separation assurance is a fundamental requirement for safe operations of air traffic. New paradigms of separation assurance will be required to accommodate the anticipated increase of air traffic in the future. This paper defines a taxonomy for the allocation of separation assurance functions along the air/ground and human/automation axes, and then builds a knowledge base from a comprehensive survey of separation assurance studies conduced over the past 12 years with an emphasis on high-fidelity human-in-the-loop simulations and operational evaluations. The goal of this effort is to identify trends and gaps in the current knowledge base of functional allocation for separation assurance, so that it may serve as a guide for planning future work. One finding is that limited delegation for arrival merging/spacing has been developed to a relatively high level of maturity. Another finding is that various aspects of automated concepts for ground-based and airborne separation assurance have been well studied; the key challenge going forward is system level integration and evaluation.

Layered Moment-Linear Network Models as Tools for Strategic Air Traffic Flow Management

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:49:41 +0100

For strategic traffic flow management, models are needed that allow NAS stakeholders to characterize the joint evolution of weather (and/or its impact on air traffic operating capabilities) in conjunction with the evolution of traffic flows. While queueing models show some promise for permitting meshed analysis of weather and traffic (including flow management initiatives), they are mathematically and computationally unwieldy when either the weather evolution or the airspace topology are modeled at realistic scale. Here, we investigate whether a new class of models known as layered moment-linear networks that approximate queueing-network models can serve as tractable albeit abstracted models for weather and traffic dynamics. As a first step toward constructing layered moment-linear models for traffic/weather, we develop a linear approximation for an M/D/1 queue with variable service rate. We evaluate the accuracy of the approximation using simulations, and then use it to analyze a traffic bottleneck that is modulated by a complex (networked) weather-propagation event.

Suppressing Traffic Flow Instabilities

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:36:27 +0100

While many models of traffic flow predict the instabilities commonly observed-particularly at higher traffic densities-there are few suggestions for suppressing them. A method is described here for suppressing instabilities, thereby reducing gas consumption, accidents, wear and tear on vehicles and roadways as well as travel times while increasing traffic throughput. The method uses information about the following vehicle as well as the leading vehicle. Using information from both sources allows the gain of feedback to be reduced below one, thus eliminating the instability characteristic of “car following.” The needed inputs to the control system can be provided by machine vision (or radar or lidar). Previous proposals for smoothing traffic flow instabilities do not use information about the vehicles behind-“car following” cruise control methods, for example, focus only on the vehicle ahead. The method presented here is based on information flowing both downstream and upstream, in distinction to traditional approaches where information flows only upstream.

Methods for Initial Allocation of Points in Flight Prioritization

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:36:15 +0100

Prior research has suggested that the allocation of scarce National Airspace System capacity could be improved if aircraft operators were able to exchange the priority in which their flights will be handled by the air traffic control system to reflect how much they value timeliness for specific aircraft flights. The current priority allocation system is based on a first-come first-served mechanism. FAA and users have made some modifications to firstcome first-served to give operators more control over the priority in which their own flights get served through Collaborative Decision-Making. There are also programs which allow a carrier to give up a flight time slot that it will not use without having to go to the “end of the line,” which is called slot credit substitution. Significant research has been done into ways to further improve demand-capacity balance in the National Airspace System while taking users’ flight priorities into account. Many researchers have proposed market-based allocation systems, which are used when airport slots are bought and sold. Other researchers propose quasi-market systems that could be developed using a points system. This paper illustrates how the initial allocation of priority points among carriers influences how they use these points in establishing the priority for their flights to reduce their delays. The paper then reports the results from the human-in-the-loop simulation of aircraft operators’ decisions that show how the delay reduction differences for each operator vary among the different methods used to allocate the points. In general, the paper finds that a system which uses the number of flights in the allocation tends to benefit operators of smaller aircraft, while systems that use passengers and distance in the allocation favor operators of larger aircraft.

Integrating a Noise Modeling Capability with Simulation Environments

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:35:53 +0100

This paper describes the requirements for integrating a noise modeling capability into air transportation system simulations. In order to address community concerns, noise impact should be analyzed with appropriate models in simulation environments. Coupling a noise modeling capability with these simulators will lead to better understanding of what impact certain flight operations may have on local communities. Described within this paper are the general data requirements that a noise modeling tool must receive from a simulator. At a minimum, the simulator must provide data to the noise model that may be categorized under environmental conditions, flight path information including aircraft and engine performance, and grid set-up in order to analyze noise impact. An application of these requirements to the integration of a noise model with an air traffic control tower simulator is presented. Complexities in obtaining and adapting these data types from the simulator are examined. It is anticipated that the details of these requirements may be used to facilitate the integration of a noise modeling capability into other air transportation system simulation environments. NOMENCLATURE

Rehabilitation of Large Diameter PCCP: Relining and Sliplining with Steel Pipe

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:26:22 +0100

Failures of Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe (PCCP) throughout North American municipal water transmission systems since the 1970’s has led to the development of a myriad of rehabilitation technologies. Besides removing and replacing full sections of distressed pipe with new pipe, the most widely used method of rehabilitation of PCCP is the structurally independent, Type IV relining of the host pipe with steel cylinders. Referred to as Steel Cylinder Relining or Sliplining, both of these semi-trenchless technologies allow a fully structural renewal of long lengths of PCCP in an economical and expeditious manner. The differences between Relining and Sliplining are discussed from the standpoint of manufacture, flow capacities, design, planning, installation and corrosion protection. The paper also provides a description and comparison of other rehab technologies.

Cleveland Center Airspace Redesign Analysis

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:25:33 +0100

The sectors of Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center wereredesigned in 2011 in response to changes in air traffic patterns and volume. This paper presents an analysis of that redesign by contrasting the performance of the old design to the new one using historical traffic from the summer of 2010. Multiple workloadfactors are measured for each sector including one called sector loading, which is the sector’s peak aircraft count over a 15-minute time interval divided by the sector’s capacity, as specified by its Monitor Alert Parameter value. Other factors, like the number of flights near sector boundaries, are used to measure specific controller tasks that contribute to overall workload. Several of the design changes involved splitting busy sectors and combining under-utilized sectors to address traffic load imbalances. By comparing the distributions of these workload factors, the majority of these changes are shown to make the workload in the new sectors more consistent with that of other sectors in the vicinity. Furthermore, many of the changes are shown to improve the balance of workload within areas of specialization.

Scene understanding from a moving camera for object detection and free space estimation

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:16:59 +0100

Modern vehicles are equipped with multiple cameras which are already used in various practical applications. Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are of particular interest because of the safety and comfort features they offer to the driver. Camera based scene understanding is an important scientific problem that has to be addressed in order to provide the information needed for camera based driver assistance systems. While frontal cameras are widely used, there are applications where cameras observing lateral space can deliver better results. Fish eye cameras mounted in the side mirrors are particularly interesting, because they can observe a big area on the side of the vehicle and can be used for several applications for which the traditional front facing cameras are not suitable. We present a general method for scene understanding using 3D reconstruction of the environment around the vehicle. It is based on pixel-wise image labeling using a conditional random field (CRF). Our method is able to create a simple 3D model of the scene and also to provide semantic labels of the different objects and areas in the image, like for example cars, sidewalks, and buildings. We demonstrate how our method can be used for two applications that are of high importance for various driver assistance systems — car detection and free space estimation. We show that our system is able to perform in real time for speeds of up to 63 km/h.

Part based pedestrian detection based on logic inference

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:13:34 +0100

This paper presents an approach on detection of largely occluded pedestrians. From a pair of synchronized cameras in the Visible Light (VL) and Far Infrared (FIR) spectrum individual detections are combined and final confidence is inferred using a small set of logic rules via a Markov Logic Network. Pedestrians not entirely contained in the image or occluded are detected based on the binary classification on subparts of the detection window. The presented method is applied to a pedestrian classification problem in urban environments. The classifier has been tested in an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) platform as part of an Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). This work was supported by the Spanish Government through the Cicyt projects FEDORA (GRANT TRA2010-20225-C03- 01) and Driver Distraction Detector System (GRANT TRA2011-29454-C03-02), and by the Comunidad de Madrid through the project SEGVAUTO (S2009/DPI- 1509).

Optimal Trajectory and Control Generation for Landing of Multiple Aircraft in the Presence of Obstacles

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:06:24 +0100

Due to the large increase in the density of aircraft arrivals at airports in recent years, it has become important to optimize the scheduling of aircraft landings in order to reduce wait time, improve airport efficiency, and minimize fuel consumption while maintaining safety. As the density of aircraft arrivals increases, however, so too does the complexity of trajectory planning and generation. A key aspect of landing multiple aircraft on a single runway is conflict detection and resolution. In the context aircraft landing, a conflict is defined as the situation of loss of minimum safe separation between two aircraft Ref. 1. The conflict detection and resolution process consists of predicting, communicating to the pilot, and resolving the conflict. Typically, evaluating the likelihood of a conflict is based on the current position and velocity of an aircraft. The conflict is then resolved by determining a maneuver required by one or more aircraft to avoid the predicted conflict. The required information is then provided to the air traffic controller who communicates with the pilot to resolve the conflict. A great deal of research has been done on the problem of multiple-aircraft conflict detection and resolution and landing of multiple aircraft. Ref. 2 considers the problem of managing landing sequences for an arbitrary number of aircraft moving in the vicinity of a controlled aerodome. Ref. 3 considers how different airport landing sequencing algorithms affect both the arrival sequence of aircraft and air traffic control. Ref. 4 develops an approach for determining optimal trajectories to bring an unmanned aerial vehicle from a loitering state to a planted landing. Ref. 5 develops a queueing algorithm for routing aircraft on two airport runways. Ref. 6 considers a three-dimensional trajectory optimization algorithm is developed by to obtain a conflict-free flight path using a nonlinear point mass model with realistic operational constraints on individual aircraft. Ref. 7 considers the problem of optimal cooperative three-dimensional conflict resolution involving multiple aircraft, where the the initial and final locations of the aircraft are specified along with detailed point-mass aircraft dynamic models. The infinite-dimensional optimal control problem is then converted into a finite dimensional nonlinear program (NLP) using collocation on finite elements. Finally, Ref. 8

Operational Improvements from the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast In-Trail Procedure in the Pacific Organized Track System

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:05:50 +0100

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Surveillance and Broadcast Services Program has supported implementation of the Automatic Dependant Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) In-Trail Procedure (ITP) on commercial revenue flights. ADS-B ITP is intended to be used in non-radar airspace that is employing procedural separation. Through the use of onboard tools, pilots are able to make a new type of altitude change request to an Air Traffic Service Provider (ATSP). The FAA, in partnership with United Airlines, is conducting flight trials of the ITP in revenue service in the Pacific. To support the expansion of flight trials to the rest of the United States managed Pacific Airspace Region, a computerized batch study was conducted to investigate the operational impacts and potential benefits that can be gained through the use of the ITP in the Pacific Organized Track System (PACOTS). This study, which simulated the Oakland managed portion of the PACOTS, suggests that potential benefits in the PACOTS are significant with a considerable increase in time spent at optimum altitude and associated fuel savings.

Strategies for Choosing Descent Flight-Path Angles for Small Jets

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:57:31 +0100

standard descent procedure with a fixed flight-path angle is proposed to improve trajectory predictability for arriving small jets in the transition airspace into congested terminal area. Three candidate strategies for selecting fuel-efficient and flyable descent flight-path angles are proposed. The three strategies vary in operational complexity and fuel-burn merits. To mitigate variation of wind among flights, the two simpler strategies are adapted to airport, directions of arrival, and time. Three major U.S. airports with different degrees of wind variation and disparate arrival traffic flows are analyzed. Results show that, when compared to the simple airport–static adaptation, the finest adaptation of the simpler strategies recover up to 50–75% of the extra fuel burn relative to the minimum-fuel strategy. Wind variation, descent altitude restrictions, arrival directions, and fleet composition all affect the fuel efficiency of the simple strategies. Tradeoffs between fuel burn and planned speed-brak...

Longest Polyurethane Lined and Coated Steel Pipeline in North America : The Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure Project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:52:44 +0100

Polyurethanes have found extensive applications in the pipe coating industry because they exhibit excellent corrosion resistance, abrasion resistance, toughness, and chemical resistance, as well as a wide range of useful mechanical properties. Though the first AWWA standard for polyurethane lining and coating of steel pipe was published in 1999, fast-setting, high-solids polyurethane has been used to line and coat steel pipe since the 1980’s. The Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure Project (PRCEP) is a 21-mile, 126-inch diameter steel pipeline that was placed into service in early May 2012. This $150 million undertaking is saving approximately 8000 acre-ft of water annually from evaporation and seepage, and has the capacity to carry 400 MGD of raw water. Several pipe materials were considered for the construction of this line, with polyurethane lined and coated steel pipe being selected as the most economical solution for the project. The PRCEP line is one of the longest and largest-diameter polyurethane lined and coated steel water transmission pipelines in the world, and certainly the longest in North America. This paper systematically outlines the contents of the AWWA C222 standard for polyurethane coating systems and relates it to the project, in tandem with discussions on the requirements of the project specifications. In-plant coating application and quality control are discussed. Installation and constructability issues are discussed from the Contractor’s perspective.

Benchmarking conflict resolution algorithms

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:45:20 +0100

http://www.icrat.org//icrat/Author/CharlieVanaret669/FINAL-329-cfp-Vanaret.pdf; International audience; Applying a benchmarking approach to conflict resolution problems is a hard task, as the analytical form of the constraints is not simple. This is especially the case when using realistic dynamics and models, considering accelerating aircraft that may follow flight paths that are not direct. Currently, there is a lack of common problems and data that would allow researchers to compare the performances of several conflict resolution algorithms. The present paper introduces a benchmarking approach that can provide researchers with common problems, in order to compare the performances of several conflict resolution algorithms. A comparison between three resolution methods is drawn over several problems and highlights assets and weaknesses for each of them.

Maritime Transport V : Technological, Innovation and Research

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:41:29 +0100

A Virtual Vision Simulator for Camera Networks Research

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:39:40 +0100

Virtual Vision advocates developing visually and behaviorally realistic 3D synthetic environments to serve the needs of computer vision research. Virtual vision, especially, is well-suited for studying large-scale camera networks. A virtual vision simulator capable of generating "realistic" synthetic imagery from real-life scenes, involving pedestrians and other objects, is the sine qua non of carrying out virtual vision research. Here we develop a distributed, customizable virtual vision simulator capable of simulating pedestrian traffic in a variety of 3D environments. Virtual cameras deployed in this synthetic environment generate imagery using state-of-the-art computer graphics techniques, boasting realistic lighting effects, shadows, etc. The synthetic imagery is fed into a visual analysis pipeline that currently supports pedestrian detection and tracking. The results of this analysis can then be used for subsequent processing, such as camera control, coordination, and handoff. It is important to bear in mind that our visual analysis pipeline is designed to handle real world imagery without any modifications. Consequently, it closely mimics the performance of visual analysis routines that one might deploy on physical cameras. Our virtual vision simulator is realized as a collection of modules that communicate with each other over the network. Consequently, we can deploy our simulator over a network of computers, allowing us to simulate much larger camera networks and much more complex scenes then is otherwise possible.

Carbon footprint of apple and pear: orchards, storage and distribution

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:36:51 +0100

le and pear represent 51% of fresh fruit orchards in Portugal. This paper presents a life-cycle (LC) greenhouse gas (GHG) assessment (so-called carbon footprint) of 3 apple and 1 pear Portuguese production systems. An LC model and inventory were implemented, encompassing the farm stage (cultivation of fruit trees in orchards), storage and distribution (transport to retail). The functional unit considered in this study was 1 kg of distributed fruit (at retail). Four different LC inventories for orchards were implemented based on data collected from three farms. Inventory data from two storage companies were also gathered. The main results show that the GHG emissions of apple and pear ranged between 192 and 229 gCO2eq kgfruit-1. The GHG emissions (direct and indirect) from the cultivation phase ranged from 36% to 60% of total emissions. Fruit storage, which lasted for as much as 8-10 months, was also responsible for significant emissions due to high energy requirements. Project ECODEEP (Eco-efficiency and Eco-management in the Agro Industrial sector, FCOMP–05–0128–FEDER–018643) and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation projects: MIT/SET/0014/2009, PTDC/SEN-TRA/117251/2010

A Cooperative Personal Automated Transport System - A CityMobil Demonstration in Rocquencourt

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:36:09 +0100

International audience; This article tackles the problem of the autonomous navigation and coordination of multiple driverless vehicles for the transport of persons or goods in outdoor environments. The system composed of fully automated road vehicles, capable of providing an effective transportation service, was recently tested at the city of La Rochelle. This same system was further improved, and a new demonstration was performed at Inria Rocquencourt, in order to demonstrate the validity of the concepts for a coordinated navigation in the presence of ambiguous and conflictual situations in a mixed environment. The originality of the approach relies on the use of new cooperative concepts and their combination with advanced perception tasks operating simultaneously on several robots. This system was developed in the context of the European project CityMobil.

Optimized Energy Flows and Electric Networks in Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:35:02 +0100

recent European directive enforces that all new buildings are nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEB) by the end of 2020. A research project is described targeting the integration of new technologies in buildings in achieving this goal, such as building integrated photovoltaic systems (BIPV), active demand side management (DSM), electric vehicles (EVs), storage, etc. The focus of this research topic lies on the electrical system. However, both the electrical and thermal energy flows in buildings will be taken into account, as well as the building aspects. This will result in optimized energy flows and optimized electricity networks in buildings, while maximizing the self-consumption of locally generated electricity. A tool for a flexible approach for this integration is under development. This tool allows simultaneous transient simulations of thermal and electrical systems at building level. In this paper, the research topic and models will be explained in depth and the first results will be given. ispartof: 6th IEEE Young Researchers Symposium in Electrical Power Engineering location:Delft, The Netherlands date:16 Apr - 17 Apr 2012 status: published

Effect of radii of exemption on ground delay programs with operating cost based cruise speed reduction

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:31:04 +0100

When a ground delay program (GDP) is defined, a radius of exemption is typically set to exclude from having to realize ground delay aircraft departing from greater distances than the selected radius distance. A trade-off exists when defining this radius: big radii distribute the required delay among more aircraft and reduce the airborne holding delay close to the destination airport, while the probability to realize unnecessary delay increases if the program is canceled before planned. In order to overcome part of this drawback, a cost based cruise speed reduction strategy aiming at realizing airborne delay was suggested by the authors in previous publications. By flying slower, at a specific speed, aircraft that are airborne can recover part of their initially assigned delay without incurring extra cost if the GDP is canceled before planned. In this paper, the effect of the exemption radius is assessed when applying this strategy and a case study is presented by analyzing all the GDPs that took place at Chicago O'Hare International Airport during one year. Results show that by the introduction of this technique, more delay can be saved. Thus, it is possible to define larger radii of exemption, reducing partially the drawbacks associated with smaller radii.

Peer Reviewed

A Less-Is-More Architecture (LIMA) for a Future internet

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:27:28 +0100

new addressing and routing design called the Less-Is-More Architecture (LIMA) is proposed as an inter-domain solution for a future Internet. Unlike recently proposed identifier-locator split solutions, LIMA uses just (topological) location-independent names and location-dependent addresses. The feasibility of using a policy combination of restricting stubs to provider-aggregatable addressing only, and disallowing stub-level reachability from being propagated into the global routing tables, is studied. This policy combination results in significantly smaller global routing tables but creates four challenges of address renum-bering (when stubs change providers), multihoming, mobility, and traffic engineering. Solutions to these challenges include the use of multiaddressing, name based sockets, a LIMA concept of address dismemberment, transport protocols such as SCTP that are capable of dynamic address reconfiguration, and new management-plane and control-plane procedures. Preliminary RIB data analysis quantify the benefit of LIMA in global routing table size reduction (to 6815 entries from today's 335K entries), and a cost of LIMA in terms of number of provider changes made by stubs in the last six months (about 2450 provider changes per month across 33K stubs).

Modeling transport pricing with multiple stakeholders. Working paper

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:22:53 +0100

Pricing measures (e.g., a kilometre charge or cordon toll) are used to improve the external effects of transportation (e.g., congestion or emissions). This working paper presents a planning model for pricing while taking the preferences and interactions of multiple stakeholders (e.g., governments or public transport operators) into account. Because we do not restrict ourselves to a single stakeholder, the model can analyse the interdependencies between measures and, particularly, the positive effects of cooperation between stakeholders. The presented model framework uses game theory for the interaction of stakeholders, who each have an objective function and control some pricing measure. Two concepts are considered, which both result in different pricing strategies. The first is non-cooperation which assumes selfish behaviour; we defined the stakeholder equilibrium to determine the solution strategy. Second, the cooperative solution concept allows coalitions to be formed; we developed a transferable utility game with its corresponding core to determine stable solution strategies. The model is tested on a stylised case study with travellers between three cities in which the government implements a kilometre charge on the road and the railway operator changes the train fares. Analysis of the different concepts showed that cooperation between the government and railway operator results in different and better pricing strategies. So, our model can analyse the benefits of cooperation in a transport system; furthermore, it can identify the coalitions and corresponding pricing strategies needed to achieve these benefits.

Energy Evaluation of Preamble Sampling MAC Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:19:00 +0100

Selective A - Session: MAC and Cross-Layer Design : MAC for mesh, ad hoc, relay, and sensor networks I; International audience; The paper presents a simple probabilistic analysis of the energy consumption in preamble sampling MAC protocols. We validate the analytic results with simulations. We compare the classical MAC protocols (B-MAC and X-MAC) with LA-MAC, a method proposed in a companion paper. Our analysis highlights the energy savings achievable with LA-MAC with respect to B-MAC and X-MAC. It also shows that LA-MAC provides the best performance in the considered case of high density networks under traffic congestion.

Simulation and Planning of Pipeline Emptying Operations

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:07:08 +0100

The pipeline pigging operation for emptying purposes is a common practice in the petroleum and gas transport industry. The emptying operation is employed for removal of the pipeline liquid products and substitution for an inert gas like nitrogen. This operation is necessary before pipeline maintenance or hydrostatic test procedures. The emptying operation applied for oil pipelines usually demands large volumes of nitrogen because of the pressure difference that is necessary to maintain the pig in a velocity that guarantee an efficient and safe operation. The nitrogen that is originally stored inside cryogenic vessels in liquid phase is pumped and vaporized to be injected into the pig launcher, after heating the gas. The gas injection and expansion inside the pipeline propel the pig, delivering the product that was in the pipeline at the receiver station. It is common to cut the nitrogen injection in a certain instant of the operation, before the pig reaches its destination. From then on, the expansion of the gas is able to finish the operation alone."/jats:p" "jats:p"A dynamic simulator called DESLOCAN2 was developed by SIMDUT/PUC-Rio to simulate the pig motion during emptying operations with nitrogen in TRANSPETRO crude oil and refined products pipelines. In the operation planning phase the simulator is used to evaluate the gas mass flow rate, the inlet gas pressure and the nitrogen cut instant that can propel the pig to its destination with a minimum volume of nitrogen. The outlet liquid pressure is calculated using two simultaneous controllers: outlet flow rate based on maximum pig velocity and minimum outlet pressure that avoids slack line condition. The dynamic simulator also can be used as a forecast monitor of the pipeline pigging operation given the current inlet gas and outlet liquid conditions, allowing the visualization of actual and forecasted pipeline pressure profile, the pig velocity and position, the accumulative gas inside the pipeline and the volume of product removed."/jats:p" "jats:p"The main objectives of this paper are: Present the mathematical modeling and considerations built in the simulator; Validate the model’s main hypothesis; Present the gained experience on building the model and planning an emptying operation of an existing pipeline: OSBAT 24.

Architecture issues and challenges for the integration of RPAS in non-segregated airspace

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:04:46 +0100

Despite the evolution of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), the technological development on airframes, autopilots, communications and payload, is still limited by the absence of software standardization. Engineers face the development of UAS systems with the implementation of ad - hoc solutions to satisfy the mission requirements. This is a major limitation with regard to the software maintenance and re-usability that may result in an increment of both project cost and risk. Wellstructured UAS avionics supporting increased levels of automation (and eventually autonomy), together with reconfiguration capabilities and costeffectiveness, are key requirements for UAS to be successful in a global scenario. Additionally the major civil applications require UAS with access to non-segregated airspace. Following Eurocontrol, FAA and ICAO philosophy, the introduction of unmanned traffic should not affect ATM operations, thus UAS should comply with the performance levels required by SESAR and NextGen. Hence, operations with unmanned aircraft should guarantee safe and efficient interaction with the ATM system. In that aspect gaps and issues into unmanned aircraft software architectures are discussed in this paper. Required mechanism for ATM communication, collision avoidance, maneuver automation and SESAR/NextGen integration are discussed to identify possible short-term and long-term software requirements. Moreover, existing standardized software frameworks and proposed software proposed are reviewed to identify the gaps it should deal with to achieve an efficient UAS integration.

Peer Reviewed

Multi-agent simulation of ground aircraft operations at a large airport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:59:39 +0100

How to realize efficient ground aircraft operations at a large airport is a key issue to respond increasing air traffic demands. This study aims at establishing a systematic and concrete method for assessing not only ground facility designs but also operation schemes in terms of aircraft operations on airfields. A multi-agent simulation system was developed for ground aircraft operations based on the simulation model constructed through field visit and observation considering implicit action rules of field experts. An interactive design process of visualizing simulation results, showing them to field experts, getting their opinions, and considering the obtained feedbacks is very effective for brush-up of the simulation model or design plans. The simulation aims directly at assessing efficiency of operations plans, and finally at improving efficiency through interactive process with experts of proposal, simulation, and review. Comparison of simulation results with the field data demonstrated that the simulation system can well predict the actual operation performance and that it is useful to comparatively assess design plans for ground aircraft operations. The method proposed was then applied to a case study to assess the operation plans expected after the scheduled extension of a runway and a terminal building at Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). As a result of simulation, several problems in the present plans could be pointed out, and the findings will be useful to revise them.

Improving infrastructure sustainability in suburban and urban areas: is porous asphalt the right answer? and how?

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:59:27 +0100

The goal of this paper is to investigate transportation infrastructure sustainability from a wider standpoint. A sustainable transportation infrastructure can be defined as a safe, efficient, economic, environmentally friendly infrastructure meeting the needs of presentday users without compromising those of future generations. This concept involves environmental, economic and societal aspects. In more detail, as for a road, a sustainable infrastructure or pavement must comply with environmental, economic and social requirements. Unfortunately, even if a definition of a sustainable pavement for urban or suburban areas can be easily proposed, the proposal of practical strategies to really pursue sustainability goals is sometimes disregarded in favour of emphatic announces of not well defined sustainable solutions. In the light of the above facts, the sustainability of a transportation infrastructure based on the actual environmental, social and economic characteristics is discussed in this paper. Once the main factors which can influence infrastructure sustainability are assessed, an analysis is performed in order to set out practical strategies for pursuing the main objective. Finally an experimental investigation is designed and carried out in order to assess porous asphalt value in terms of pavement sustainability. The tests carried out are promising about the possibility of achieving suitable levels of overall performance. Practical applications and perspectives in rehabilitation, maintenance, and research are outlined.

Fault detection and isolation of inland navigation channel: application to the Cuinchy-Fontinettes reach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:54:53 +0100

Inland navigation networks are mainly used for transport with economic and environmental benefits. In a climate change context which leads to the scarcity of the water resource, the control of navigation levels and the supervision of these networks become crucial. Thus, this paper is focused on the sensors Fault Detection and Isolation of inland navigation reaches. A modeling method based on the identification technique is proposed. Then, based on residuals, the dynamic classification algorithm AUDyC leads to the detection and diagnosis of sensors faults. Setting errors and slow drifts are considered. The proposed methods are applied on the Cuinchy- Fontinettes reach benchmark.

Peer Reviewed

Document type: Conference object

An active approach to measuring routing dynamics induced by autonomous systems

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:27:25 +0100

We present an active measurement study of the routing dynamics induced by AS-path prepending, a common method for controlling the inbound traffic of a multi-homed ISP. Unlike other inter-domain inbound traffic engineering methods, AS-path prepending not only provides network resilience but does not increase routing table size. Unfortunately, ISPs often perform prepending on a trail-and-error basis, which can lead to suboptimal results and to a large amount of network churn. We study these effects by actively injecting prepended routes into the Internet routing system using the RIPE NCC RIS route collectors and observing the resulting changes from almost 200 publicly-accessible sources of BGP information. Our results show that our prepending methods are simple and effective and that a small number of ASes is often responsible for large amounts of the route changes caused by prepending. Furthermore, we show that our methods are able to reveal hidden prepending policies to prepending and tie-breaking decisions made by ASes; this is useful for further predicting the behavior of prepending.1

Evaluating the Effects of Ovality on the Integrity of Pipe Bends

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:26:25 +0100

This paper provides details on a study performed for a liquids pipeline operator to evaluate the effects of ovality on the mechanical integrity of pipe bends in their 16-inch pipe system. Prior to this study, a caliper tool was run that indicated unacceptable ovality was present in the bends relative to the requirements set forth in ASME B31.4. An engineering investigation was performed based on the methodology of API 579 Fitness for Service. This standard provides guidance on evaluating defects using a multi-level assessment approach (Levels 1, 2, and 3) that rewards rigorous evaluation efforts by reducing the required design margins. Therefore, an extensive evaluation was performed that involved making field measurements of the bends in the ditch. Using these ovality measurements, calculations were performed using the closed-form equations in API 579 for Level 2 assessment. The ovality of several of the bends in the field was deemed unacceptable based on in-field measurements. Consequently, a Level 3 assessment was completed using finite element analysis (FEA). The results of this more rigorous analysis, coupled with more favorable design margins, resulted in this particular bend being acceptable. A tool was developed to permit a general assessment of pipe bends having ovality and was validated by performing a full-scale burst test.Copyright © 2012 by ASME

PARCEL DELIVERY AND URBAN LOGISTICS- CHANGES IN URBAN COURIER, EXPRESS AND PARCEL SERVICES: THE FRENCH CASE

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:23:55 +0100

Urban freight transport takes an increasingly important place in the urban mobility strategy. Experiments to optimize the movement of goods inside the city do not miss. Many relate to traditional goods, without being concerned with an activity in particular, others on the contrary target a precise sector i.e. fresh products, spare parts, etc. Since few years, new actors based on innovative scheme of distribution for the last-miles are merging, in the urban parcel distribution in particular. The whole actors and theirs strategies are changing to be nearer to the customer demand, shaping new logistic organisations. The purpose of this paper is to give an updated overview of the urban parcel delivery sector in France and some elements to discuss about the changes and new opportunities in this particular sector.

Low Speed Automation, a French Initiative

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:23:29 +0100

Nowadays, vehicle safety is constantly increasing thanks to the improvement of vehicle passive and active safety. However, on a daily usage of the car, traffic jams remains a problem. With limited space for road infrastructure, automation of the driving task on specific situation seems to be a possible solution. The French project ABV, which stands for low speed automation, tries to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept and to prove the benefits. In this article, we describe the scientific background of the project and expected outputs.

Comment: TRA (2012)

Document type: Conference object

Mechanical Behavior of Steel Pipes With Local Wall Distortions Under Cyclic Loading

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:19:18 +0100

Evaluating the severity of pipe wall distortions is a crucial step towards safeguarding the structural integrity of aging hydrocarbon pipeline infrastructure. The present research refers to the remaining life of oil and gas transmission steel pipelines with local wall distortions (i.e. dents and buckles) under repeated loading. The research described in this paper constitutes the first part of a large numerical/experimental research project, aimed at developing methodologies and relevant design guidelines towards assessing and repairing structural pipeline damages in the form of local wall distortions. The paper describes numerical research aimed at investigating the residual structural integrity of smooth dented and buckled steel pipes, with respect to repeated loading that causes fatigue, with the purpose of designing large-scale experiments. Finite element models are developed to simulate the formation of dents and buckles on the pipe wall at various sizes (depths). The deformed steel pipes are further subjected to cyclic pressure or cyclic bending loading in order to estimate the remaining fatigue life of the deformed pipe. The local stress and strain variations due to cyclic loading application are calculated numerically at the deformed area of the pipe wall. In addition, the local strain variations are expressed in terms of strain concentration factors (SNCF) at the critical region of the pipe.

Meeting the Challenge of Pipeline Emergency Repair

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:18:43 +0100

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) is the nation's largest provider of treated drinking water. Each day during a normal year, MWD moves more than 1.5 billion gallons of water through its distribution system. Since nearly 19 million Southern Californians rely on Metropolitan for up to half of their water supply, it is important to make the system as reliable as possible. To maintain the system, each year MWD schedules shutdowns to perform inspection, maintenance and repair on various pipelines and facilities throughout the system. However, when unanticipated problems arise that puts the water delivery system or public at risk, an emergency pipeline repair is required. Close cooperation among MWD's in-house engineering, fabrication and construction workforce makes it possible to have the pipeline repaired and returned to service in a short time. There are also times when a pipeline shutdown is not feasible, requiring an emergency repair without service disruption. This paper provides an overview on the various emergency repair methods MWD uses to repair Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe (PCCP), precast or cast-in-place reinforced concrete pipe and steel pipe. For structural repairs of PCCP and precast concrete pipe, the repair methods include removing the distressed pipe and replacing it with steel pipe, inserting a steel liner inside the pipe, or installing carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) liner. For water leaks in precast or cast-in-place reinforced concrete pipe, the repair methods include installing internal EPDM rubber seals, installing fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) lining, or external crack injection. For steel pipe, the repair methods include welding on steel patch plates, installing a steel outlet, or installing internal or external steel bands.

A Decision Framework for Investment in Supply Chain Driven Intermodal Systems.

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:51:25 +0100

research study identifying the role of ports, a forward timeframe of 30 years in servicing national supply chains is being undertaken. A paradigm shift to 'water based' freight solutions by barges and other forms of Short Sea Shipping (SSS proposed in Hallock 1,2 as well as investigating stakeholder commitment to reducing their carbon footprint will be researched as part of this. Funding and better investment criteria will also be explored. The paper draws on European policy and governance frame works incorporating SSS as a component of the logistics response to sustainability. The green supply chain is now an important determinant of competitive advantage and is commercially acceptable.

Inland navigation channel model: application to the Cuinchy-Fontinettes reach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:50:19 +0100

Inland navigation networks offer an alternative to land transport with economic and environmental benefits, and direct access to urban and industrial centers. Promoting the navigation transport requires the modernization of the network management, in particular the control of navigation levels and the improvement of the network safety. To reach these aims, modeling methods of the inland navigation networks have to be proposed. These networks are large scale distributed systems characterized by non-Iinearities, time-delays and generally no significant slope. A modeling method of a navigation channel based on identification method is proposed in this paper. It is applied on the Cuinchy-Fontinettes reach located in the north of France.

Peer Reviewed

Document type: Conference object

Self-growing motion mechanism for inspection and maintenance

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:49:41 +0100

Purpose An inspection and maintenance system is essential to obtain a proper and stable construction. However, internal inspection and maintenance of the inner parts of pipeline are difficult to conduct. Force effects should be eliminated to accurately inspect the state of a pipeline. This paper suggests a self-growing mechanism (SGM) which focuses on a minimization of force effects compared to previous progress maintenance methods. Method SGM mimicks the motion of amoeba, a protozoan, as a growing unit. It is shaped like a reversed hose. The SGM represents gelation and isolation of the amoeba; the inside skin is fixed outside and fluid is injected. In this way contact force is minimized so as to be negligible. By passing through injected fluid, the SGM acts as a buffer. Nevertheless, there is a limit to the use of this instrument for maintenance due to the drift of the upper section of the growing unit. To overcome this and expand the field application, the SGM was equipped with auxiliary equipment called install-base, this is composed of three rings. Bundling several units was also considered. This can give SGM direction by differential fluid injection to each unit, and facilitates progress through the curved paths. Results & Discussion SGM allows only contact force on the surface, similar to amoeba movement. This can be described as the contact which occurs when a rolled surface unfolds. SGM can help in the maintenance process of highly hazardous or unreachable spots, such as nuclear power plants, pipelines, and so on. It is best suited for highly sensitive environments. SGM is also promising in combination with inspection and maintenance of constructions with field endoscopy; it can provide medical checkups or remedies innovatively. Moreover, it is expected that SGM, unlike previous methods, can more accurately carry out maintenance of gradually downsized applications.

Planning for electric cars in Australia's cities

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:33:33 +0100

Urban transport technology is about to enter a new phase, one in which there will be less reliance on carbon emissions intensive energy sources such as petroleum based fuels. Australia"s metropolitan planning strategies place their emphasis on public transport, cycling and walking within integrated transport solutions in an effort to minimise carbon emissions. However, global automotive manufacturers now have commercially viable electric cars and petrol electric cars that are about to be introduced to the Australian market place. The model of charging infrastructure for electric cars (using an electric socket in a private garage) complements traditional low density suburban environments, although paradoxically, the limited range of electric cars creates problems in urban enviromnents with dispersed facilities. If there is widespread substitution of electric vehicles for petrol cars, there will need to be fast charge electric charging infrastructure developed on a large scale, which will have significant implications for the development of centres and parking facilities. This paper examines the attributes of the relevant technologies to detennine what the electric charging infrastructure implications would mean within a metropolitan area, using Adelaide as a case study. The planning implications are examined in tenus of the changes that would be required at both the level of strategic plan making and local planning. The paper's conclusions indicate the nature of infrastructure required, likely changes to planning policies, and whether substituting electric cars for petrol cars is the best option for making personal transport in Australia"s low dffisity metropolitan suburbs enviromnentally sustainable. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Traffic sign detection and analysis: Recent studies and emerging trends

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:27:09 +0100

Traffic sign recognition (TSR) is a research field that has seen much activity in the recent decade. This paper introduces the problem and presents 4 recent papers on traffic sign detection and 4 recent papers on traffic sign classification. It attempts to extract recent trends in the field and touch upon unexplored areas, especially the lack of research into integrating TSR with a driver-in-the-loop system and some of the problems that presents. TSR is an exciting field with great promises for integration in driver assistance systems and that particular area deserves to be explored further. Traffic sign recognition (TSR) is a research field that has seen much activity in the recent decade. This paper introduces the problem and presents 4 recent papers on traffic sign detection and 4 recent papers on traffic sign classification. It attempts to extract recent trends in the field and touch upon unexplored areas, especially the lack of research into integrating TSR with a driver-in-the-loop system and some of the problems that presents. TSR is an exciting field with great promises for integration in driver assistance systems and that particular area deserves to be explored further.

Benchmarks for solving coupled thermal, hydraulic, and air (THA) numerical models in roadways in cold regions

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:22:47 +0100

The cold climate environment can cause damage to engineering structures such as roadway/railways and pipelines. There has been an increased use of finite element numerical models to study and understand the processes involved. The primary difficulty in the application of such numerical models is the lack of proper coupling between the related processes of water, thermal, and airflow. This paper presents classic benchmarks solved with a finite element numerical modeling code which demonstrates the correct coupling of the thermal, hydraulic, and air (THA) processes. The use of this technology potentially opens the use of numerical models to a wider range of applications in artic regions.

Interdomain Path Computation for PCE-assisted Traffic Engineering

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:12:16 +0100

Interdomain Traffic Engineering (TE) across domains employing Path Computation Elements should allow a source domain to select a good AS path, i.e. one likely to allow the actual setup of an interdomain tunnel. This is impossible if the AS path is computed online during path setup (which happens, e.g., in per-domain tunnel setup). On the other hand, the routes that a source domain learns from BGP are normally too few, and oblivious to TE constraints. In this paper, we present the Inter-AS Path Computation Protocol (IA-PCP), whose purpose is to compute a larger number of “good” AS paths, allowing a source to choose the suitable one among a larger set, so as to route PCE-assisted interdomain path computation. We show that, within a reasonable computation time, sending relatively few messages and preserving domain confidentiality, IA-PCP provides a source domain with a set of AS paths which closely approximates the one found exploiting full knowledge of the network AS-topology.