Scipedia: Documents published in 2018

ECOCHAMPS – City Bus Application

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:12:24 +0100

The ECOCHAMPS project addresses the topic GV-04-2014 Hybrid Light and Heavy Duty Vehicles under"br" Horizon2020. This project is realized, through the activities of a 26-member consortium. The overall objectives"br" are to achieve efficient, compact, low weight, robust and cost effective hybrid powertrains for both passenger"br" cars and commercial vehicles, with increased functionality, improved performance, comfort, safety and"br" emissions levels below Euro 6 or VI. In particular, to achieve 10% powertrain efficiency improvements for the"br" Hybrid Bus Demonstrator and weight plus volume reductions with respect to the best in class vehicles on the"br" market at the time of proposal, whilst having a maximum of a 10% cost premium. At the time of the TRA2018,"br" the project will just be completed. The bus application, a serial hybrid vehicle with Diesel ICE, as being worked"br" on by MAN and partners in Work Package 6, will be presented in this paper.

A new clustering structure for VANET

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:11:37 +0100

TRA 2018, 7th Transport Research Arena, Vienne, AUTRICHE, 16-/04/2018 - 19/04/2018; The Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) paradigm offers the opportunity of extending Intelligent Transport System (ITS) by supporting its applications through vehicle-to-vehicle communications, notably in the areas where the infrastructure is inexistent, in failure, or overloaded. However, the complexity induced by ad hoc network management raises many challenges that have to be solved such as the sharing of bandwidth resources, the limitations on the duration of the connections between the vehicles, and the application-specific quality of service (QoS) requirements. Recently, the Chain-Branch-Leaf clustering scheme (CBL) has been proposed for vehicle-to-vehicle ad hoc routing that combines the information of road configuration, vehicle mobility, and link quality in order to build an efficient clustering connecting the entire VANET through a flexible backbone. This work presents a comparative study between the native Multipoint relaying clustering used in the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) and CBL scheme. The results show that CBL reduces significantly the routing traffic overhead compared to native OLSR, thus freeing up more bandwidth for ITS applications and reducing the IP delays for peer-to-peer applications.

Impact of connected and autonomous vehicles on the capacity of signalized intersections – Microsimulation of an intersection in Munich

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:10:49 +0100

In recent years, there have been several studies about the impact of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) on"br" the capacity of street networks. However, most studies consider a purely automated traffic on freeways where"br" neither human drivers nor pedestrians or bicyclists are present. With the introduction of CAVs into the urban road"br" environment, the effect of CAVs on inner-city traffic becomes more and more important. This paper focuses on"br" the impact that an increasing share of CAVs with a harmonized driving behaviour will have on the capacity of"br" signalized urban intersections. We do not only consider the scenario with pure automated traffic, but analyse"br" several scenarios with mixed traffic, where an increasing number of CAVs shares the road with human drivers as"br" well as other road users. The effects are assessed by simulating a representative signalized intersection in central"br" Munich, Germany, using real data considering the geometry of the intersection, the signal control and the traffic"br" volume. Our study shows that average waiting times at the intersection can decrease significantly.

Increasing cycling safety by an adaptively triggered road instrumented warning element in EU project XCYCLE

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:08:13 +0100

In urban traffic, cyclists are often exposed to high risks especially when being in interaction with motorized traffic participants. Objectives of EU funded project XCYCLE (http://www.xcycle-h2020.eu) are to improve and increase cyclists’ safety. Focusing on urban traffic, the project addresses the use case of an intersection with right turning motorized traffic (especially HGV’s) and privileged cyclists going straight on."br" One of the main project activities lies in developing an infrastructural supported cooperative advanced driver assistance system (C-ADAS). Infrastructural detection and computations allow it to send situation and risk related information to the given road users (esp. the motorized traffic participant) using wireless communication standards like ITS-G5. As parts of the cooperative overall system equipped trucks and bicycles will also receive a warning. In this paper, the focus is on the concept, construction and triggering of a visual road instrumentation positively influencing gaze behavior of drivers of non-instrumented vehicles.

Application of fuzzy cognitive maps to investigate the contributors of maritime collision accidents

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:00:06 +0100

Maritime transport has been striving to reduce ship accidents since its origins, which results in loss of lives or"br" properties and damage for the environment. Hence, a continuous effort to enhance safety is a crucial requirement"br" for the maritime sector, for which several approaches have been tried for the past years. This paper presents the"br" first results of a study which aim is to assess the factors affecting collision accidents in order to enhance safety and"br" resilience. This aim is achieved by using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) method, which consider and evaluates"br" importance of these factor by calculating and assigning individual weights to them. Moreover, FCM appears to be"br" a suitable approach since it can take into account both, fuzzy data and past accidents experiences. Hence, in this"br" paper with the help of FCM, past accidents from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) database"br" regarding collision are analysed to identify the contributors of collision accidents and their FCM weightings.

Document type: Conference object

Designing graceful degradation into complex systems: The interaction between causes of degradation and the association with degradation prevention and recovery

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:54:18 +0100

Efficient Measurement on Programmable Switches Using Probabilistic Recirculation

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:50:51 +0100

Programmable network switches promise flexibility and high throughput, enabling applications such as load balancing and traffic engineering. Network measurement is a fundamental building block for such applications, including tasks such as the identification of heavy hitters (largest flows) or the detection of traffic changes. However, high-throughput packet processing architectures place certain limitations on the programming model, such as restricted branching, limited capability for memory access, and a limited number of processing stages. These limitations restrict the types of measurement algorithms that can run on programmable switches. In this paper, we focus on the RMT programmable high-throughput switch architecture, and carefully examine its constraints on designing measurement algorithms. We demonstrate our findings while solving the heavy hitter problem. We introduce PRECISION, an algorithm that uses \\emph{Probabilistic Recirculation} to find top flows on a programmable switch. By recirculating a small fraction of packets, PRECISION simplifies the access to stateful memory to conform with RMT limitations and achieves higher accuracy than previous heavy hitter detection algorithms that avoid recirculation. We also analyze the effect of each architectural constraint on the measurement accuracy and provide insights for measurement algorithm designers.

Comment: To appear in IEEE ICNP 2018

Behavioral learning of aircraft landing sequencing using a society of Probabilistic Finite state Machines

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:50:36 +0100

Traffic Control (ATC) is a complex safety critical environment. A tower controller would be making many decisions in real-time to sequence aircraft. While some optimization tools exist to help the controller in some airports, even in these situations, the real sequence of the aircraft adopted by the controller is significantly different from the one proposed by the optimization algorithm. This is due to the very dynamic nature of the environment. The objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that one can learn from the sequence adopted by the controller some strategies that can act as heuristics in decision support tools for aircraft sequencing. This aim is tested in this paper by attempting to learn sequences generated from a well-known sequencing method that is being used in the real world. The approach relies on a genetic algorithm (GA) to learn these sequences using a society Probabilistic Finite-state Machines (PFSMs). Each PFSM learns a different sub-space; thus, decomposing the learning problem into a group of agents that need to work together to learn the overall problem. Three sequence metrics (Levenshtein, Hamming and Position distances) are compared as the fitness functions in GA. As the results suggest, it is possible to learn the behavior of the algorithm/heuristic that generated the original sequence from very limited information.

Testing of dynamic characteristic and comfort of Indonesia automated people mover from Bandung

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:46:19 +0100

Indonesia automated people mover from Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, is a mass public transport using electric motor as its driving source and using a very clean technology that runs on a special track, so it can effectively reduce the level of traffic congestion in Bandung that are densely populated. Before it can be used by the public, the automated people mover must meet any government regulated testing to ensure the safety aspect of the passengers. One of the regulated tests is dynamic test or comfort test. The government regulation that must be met by the automated people mover is the Regulation of the Minister of Transport No. 175 of 2015. In addition, other standards are also used as a reference for testing and analysis as well as standard operating procedure (SOP). The testing process will be carried out in accordance with the standard operating procedure that have been made and used standardized test equipment on the first prototype of automated people mover in test track at Subang, West Java, Indonesia. The measurement data will be analyzed using MATLAB and compared with the selected standards. The results of the analysis of first prototype show that for ISO 2631 standard, there are no resultant r.m.s acceleration below 0.315 m/s2. According to Sperling’s ride index, riding quality for longitudinal and lateral accelerations is below 2.5 while for vertical acceleration, it is above 2.5. According to the fatigue-decreased proficiency boundaries graph, passengers can feel comfortable at average for 1 hour for longitudinal direction, 16 minutes for lateral direction, and 16 minutes for vertical direction.Indonesia automated people mover from Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, is a mass public transport using electric motor as its driving source and using a very clean technology that runs on a special track, so it can effectively reduce the level of traffic congestion in Bandung that are densely populated. Before it can be used by the public, the automated people mover must meet any government regulated testing to ensure the safety aspect of the passengers. One of the regulated tests is dynamic test or comfort test. The government regulation that must be met by the automated people mover is the Regulation of the Minister of Transport No. 175 of 2015. In addition, other standards are also used as a reference for testing and analysis as well as standard operating procedure (SOP). The testing process will be carried out in accordance with the standard operating procedure that have been made and used standardized test equipment on the first prototype of automated people mover in test track at Subang, West Java, In...

TRAFFIC OPERATION ON A ROAD NETWORK WITH RECURRENT CONGESTION

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:45:35 +0100

Quantification of the maritime security problem onboard passenger ships

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:44:21 +0100

Given the large number of recent terror attacks worldwide, there is a growing concern over the security issue in the maritime world. Aim of this paper is to address a scenario pertinent to the maritime security problem using the evacuation simulation software tool EVI. The vessel chosen for this case study is a 13-deck cruise ship. The scenario investigated deals with the evacuation of a large density populated area within the vessel, where an explosive device has been placed and assesses the potential loss of life, according to the distance of the agents relative to the explosion blast. Three different positions of the explosive device are examined in this study and for each position six different cases are examined, in which the effect of prior warning to the explosion is taken into consideration. In the first case, the explosion takes place at the beginning of the simulation (t=0) in order to replicate such a scenario in which those agents within the restaurant are un-alerted to the presence of the explosive device. In the rest of the cases the explosion takes place after warning times of 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 minutes respectively in order to assess the sensitivity of the fatality rate and evacuation to prior warning time.

Document type: Conference object

Are railways ready for technologically capable societies?

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:44:04 +0100

There is an observed exponential technological capability of society resulting from digitalisation. BlablaCarsharing"br" in a short time impacted SNCF high-speed trains service. Are railways ready to embed new societal actors"br" in their value chain? Our study reveals that despite this industry strategic intents it lacks formal practices allowing"br" reciprocal knowledge exchanges to occur throughout the technology development process. Therefore, missing the"br" opportunity to add value from society. This way, by recurring to constructive technology assessment theory, we"br" propose a set of measures to be considered by the sector collectively under the scope of Shift2Rail. They center in"br" ensuring that reciprocal knowledge exchanges occur. Initially in shared future visions and later within"br" technological research projects. Through curated events, safeguarding a minimal risk for the industry, paying"br" attention to tailoring knowledge exchanges to the respective technology readiness level and relying on a thirdparty"br" orchestration provided by technology assessment practitioners.

Ensuring consistency between cycle-accurate and instruction set simulators

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:43:44 +0100

International audience; The xMAS micro-architecture modeling language has been introduced by Intel to facilitate the formal representation and analysis of on-chip interconnect fabrics. In this paper, we introduce xMAStime, a new domain-specific language inspired by xMAS. xMAStime allows the modeling of full micro-architectures comprising certain classes of CPU pipelines, caches, and RAM. Given an in-order pipeline model in xMAStime, we automatically generate both a Cycle-Accurate, Bit-Accurate (CABA) hardware simulator and a timed instruction set simulator where time is accounted with safe upper bounds, as in the pipeline analysis step of Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis. The approach relies on the theory of endochronous systems, which allows us to ensure functional equivalence and timing consistency between the two generated simulators, using a delay-insensitivity argument. xMAStime is implemented over Lucid Synchrone-a dataflow synchronous language featuring a higher order type system and type inference, which facilitate the definition of our DSL. We use the new DSL to model and synthesize simulation code for a full-fledged MIPS32-based architecture.

Developing the CIPTEC toolbox for the promotion of Public Transport Innovation

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:42:53 +0100

Public Transport players must become more innovative in order to provide high level of service that can better satisfy the needs of existing passengers and attract new customers at the lowest cost. Knowledge, recommendations and guidance provided in the form of a toolbox could be very beneficial for them. The aim of this paper is to (i) briefly provide a review of past and on-going initiatives such as toolboxes and toolkits that support Public Transport, highlighting this way the need for a Toolbox that will support the promotion and implementation of innovation, (ii) outline the objectives, the target audience and the structure of the Public Transport Innovation Toolbox developed in the frame of the H2020 CIPTEC project, (iii) describe the design process used for the Toolbox development, in particular related to the on-line version, and (iv) specify the main functionalities and use case scenarios supported by the on-line Toolbox. The CIPTEC Toolbox aims to comprise an online reference point for anyone interested in adopting, implementing and managing innovation in the Public Transport sector.

Holistic characterisation of cylindrical lithium ion cells by thermal ramp experiments and simulation of failure scenarios

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:42:36 +0100

method for characterising the over-temperature behaviour of lithium ion cells has been established. Single cells of the 18650 format are submitted to a heating ramp and their respective thermal behaviour, i.e. occurring exothermic and endothermic effects, is recorded. The events of gas release are monitored by ex-situ analysis using gas chromatography. The thermal response is evaluated by comparison of the trigger temperatures for degradative effects and by calculation of the respective energy. Approx. 30 kJ of heat and 6000 cm³ of gas containing more than 70% of H2 and CO have been detected. Experimental data is used to establish a 2D model, taking in account the rotational symmetry of the cylindrical cells. The simulation framework then is used for prediction of the thermal response at various heating rates. Evaluation of the safety relevant factors from experiment and simulation allows for the postulation of safety characteristics regarding different types of cell.

TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF MAPATHONS – REFLECTING ON YOUTHMAPPERS EXPERIENCES

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:42:18 +0100

YouthMappers is a global network of student chapters actively engaged in collaborative mapping efforts, such as OpenStreetMap mapathons. Many questions have been raised about the impact of mapathons on open map data and on the participating mappers. For example, how can the social gathering and event format encourage productivity and quality, while also contributing to community building? Because YouthMappers chapters regularly host mapathons, there are frequent opportunities to investigate the impact of mapathons. In this paper, three universities involved in the YouthMappers network, located in Europe, North America and Africa, describe how mapathons are conducted at their respective universities. Incorporating mapathons into the curriculum encourages students to contribute much-needed open geospatial data for humanitarian projects. At the same time, students get practical experience in data capturing with open source tools and awareness is raised of humanitarian challenges in other parts of the world, thus nurturing socially engaged citizens for the future. The experiences at the three universities are diverse and richly contextual to the specific character of the campus and its students. These differences underscore the challenge of a common means to formally assess the impact of such events in general. Based on this exploratory research, three themes for assessing the impact of mapathons are proposed: the volume and quality of open geographic data produced during mapathons; the social and personal growth of the students attending the mapathons; and the changes in university programs and curricula introduced as a result of the mapathons.

Improving heavy vehicle safety and road transport efficiency: a Performance-Based Standards approach in South Africa

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:41:05 +0100

part of a performance-based standards (PBS) research programme for heavy vehicles in South Africa, a need"br" was identified to design and operate a number of PBS demonstration vehicles in a pilot project. The purpose of"br" the project is to gain practical experience in the PBS approach and to quantify and evaluate the potential"br" infrastructure preservation, safety and productivity benefits for road freight transport. To date, 450 permits for"br" PBS demonstration vehicles (including 200 car-carriers) have been issued. The pilot project reached the minimum"br" target of 100 million PBS vehicle kilometres in June 2017. The project has shown significant improvements with"br" a reduction in the crash rate of 39% compared with the baseline fleet. Significant financial savings have also been"br" recorded with a weighted average reduction in trips of 28% and an average reduction of 12.2% in fuel consumption"br" and CO2 emissions. The project has thus far shown the possibility to improve heavy vehicle safety and decrease"br" road freight transport costs by several percentage points. This paper provides an overview of the PBS pilot project"br" including measured benefits based on the monitoring data.

Awareness and behaviour of road tunnel users: what headway has been made since the 2000s?

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:34:59 +0100

The safety of a road tunnel depends not only on its design and operation, but also on the users’ knowledge of the"br" tunnel. Therefore, in France, the Centre for Tunnel Studies (CETU) conducted in 2004 a qualitative survey focused"br" on tunnel users’ knowledge of the tunnel and its equipment. Following this survey, several actions were"br" implemented and in order to measure their impact, a similar survey was conducted in 2015. It highlighted an"br" improved knowledge of existing safety equipment especially of the blue marker lights on side walls designed to"br" help drivers maintain an appropriate safety distance."br" In order to check this knowledge of the blue marker lights, CETU designed a regulatory road sign and tested its"br" installation at the entrance to the Foix tunnel in the Occitanie region. At the end of 2016, approximately 600 users"br" were questioned on their understanding of the road sign in a survey, which was conducted via Internet and via a"br" questionnaire hand-delivered to participants’ homes.

Ethical issues in road safety policy-making

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:33:37 +0100

Road safety policy-making often requires a balanced consideration of different societal viewpoints and the possibly differing interests of a range of stakeholders. This paper discusses the main ethical perspectives that are at play in policy making in road safety. First, it is shown that ethical considerations are a vital part of road safety policy. Subsequently, five important ethical principles are identified that are key to road safety and that are applicable both to the individual level as to the policy level. These key ethical principles are: avoiding harm (which is the core value); individual freedom; assuming responsibility; fairness and equity; and respect for privacy. It is shown how each of these ethical principles are related to (possible) measures and regulation in road safety. Examples are given which illustrate that policy choices are often related to conflicts between these principles, or even to conflicts within a single principle. It is also shown how the ethical principles and examples can be related to classical ethical theories and schools of thought such as utilitarianism, deontologism, libertarianism and egalitarianism.

2-wheel personal rapid transit: Self-driving vehicles for maximum sustainability

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:32:16 +0100

The topic of this paper is a concept for socially and ecologically sustainable passenger transportation in rural and suburban areas, based on the idea of driverless cabin motorcycles running on an own, segregated guideway network. It describes the functioning principle, characteristics of vehicles and route network and possible effects on cross-modal competition and intermodal travel chains. Finally, estimations upon costs and resource consumption as well as regulatory aspects are discussed.

Features of the definition of objects of protection for objects such as "road transport infrastructure"

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:30:22 +0100

Backpropagating through Structured Argmax using a SPIGOT

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:27:48 +0100

We introduce the structured projection of intermediate gradients optimization technique (SPIGOT), a new method for backpropagating through neural networks that include hard-decision structured predictions (e.g., parsing) in intermediate layers. SPIGOT requires no marginal inference, unlike structured attention networks (Kim et al., 2017) and some reinforcement learning-inspired solutions (Yogatama et al., 2017). Like so-called straight-through estimators (Hinton, 2012), SPIGOT defines gradient-like quantities associated with intermediate nondifferentiable operations, allowing backpropagation before and after them; SPIGOT's proxy aims to ensure that, after a parameter update, the intermediate structure will remain well-formed. We experiment on two structured NLP pipelines: syntactic-then-semantic dependency parsing, and semantic parsing followed by sentiment classification. We show that training with SPIGOT leads to a larger improvement on the downstream task than a modularly-trained pipeline, the straight-through estimator, and structured attention, reaching a new state of the art on semantic dependency parsing.

Comment: ACL 2018

Evaluation of the performance of rubber-modified bitumen

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:26:47 +0100

The paper discusses the effect of the amount and particle size of rubber on the properties of rubber-modified"br" bitumen. Therefore, rubber-modified bitumen with rubber contents of 10, 15 and 20 % and a variation of the"br" particle size from small (0.4 mm) to middle (0.8 mm) and up to big (1.0 mm) were prepared in laboratory by using"br" a paving bitumen 50/70 as reference bitumen. Additionally, a polymer-modified bitumen (PmB 25/55-55), which"br" is commonly used in asphalt wearing and binder courses, was involved in the investigations to verify the"br" modification states. Different laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the influence of the selected rubber"br" particles. At first, the impact of the rubber modifications on conventional bitumen tests are presented. Furthermore,"br" DSR tests were conducted to determine performance related bitumen properties. DSR results have also been used"br" to determine the rutting susceptibility. In addition, the binders were rated to their fatigue damage resistance by"br" applying repeated load cycles using the DSR test device as well. Following, the paper gives recommendations in"br" terms of the use of rubber-modified binders for asphalt pavements.

The RINGO project, identifying research infrastructure needs and gaps to foster innovation in aeronautical research in Europe

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:26:09 +0100

This paper presents the RINGO (“Research Infrastructures – Needs, Gaps and Overlap”) project, a Coordination"br" and Support Action funded by the European Commission under H2020, and its approach for the identification"br" and assessment of needs, gaps and overlaps for strategic aviation research infrastructures in Europe. The"br" identification of research infrastructure needs to work towards the goals laid out in Flightpath 2050 produced by"br" the Advisory Council for Aviation Research and innovation in Europe (ACARE) will be performed by expert"br" interviews based on the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which serves as a roadmap for"br" aeronautical research for the next decades. The creation of a catalogue of existing research infrastructure is based"br" on available inventories and an additional search for specific needs dependent on interview outcomes. The"br" following synthesis and matching of needed and existing infrastructures will yield information about gaps and"br" overlaps. Initial results of expert interviews and first identified, existing research infrastructures are presented.

PREMiUM – Understanding network-level measurement and management of road equipment

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:25:46 +0100

The PREMiUM project aims to deliver improvements in the ability to manage road equipment at the network level, focusing on road markings, road signs, vehicle restraint systems and noise barriers. The key condition characteristics a road administration should include in their asset management strategy to manage the risks of loss of performance have been established. Following this, the views of users were sought on the characteristics that should be measured at the network level to manage the risks of loss of performance, and the alternative technologies available to obtain this data identified. The project has proposed survey regimes that could be implemented, subject to suitable development, to provide the key condition data that would assist in understanding and managing these assets. It has then considered the parameters that such a network level monitoring regime would provide, and proposed a set of condition indicators that could be utilised to quantify the condition of each of the assets, and how these could be used to assist in targeting maintenance planning.

One solution for measurement of wheel-rail contact forces

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:25:06 +0100

This paper presents one solution for measurement of wheel-rail contact forces by using instrumented wheelset developed at the Faculty of Mechanical and Civil Engineering in Kraljevo, Serbia. In addition to measurement of wheel-rail contact forces which is necessary for assessment of safety against derailment in accordance to the standards UIC 518 and EN 14363, the developed solution enables measurement of location of wheel-rail contact point. The optimal ways for solution of key problems in development of instrumented wheelsets are proposed. Identification of parameters to be measured is based on the method of blind signal separation (BSS) using independent component analysis (ICA). The developed solution is validated by experimental testing of prototype of instrumented wheelset on specially designed test stand. It was concluded that developed solution enables reliable testing of safety against derailment of railway vehicles, while measurement error of derailment coefficient is less than 10%, that corresponding to the latest world solutions.

Does competition in the housing market cause transport poverty? Interrelations of residential location choice and mobility

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:24:46 +0100

Introduction This contribution examines the impact of the housing market on daily mobility and is based on the assumption that, in a supply-dominated housing market, as availability and affordability decline, many people must compromise, particularly on accessibility-related decision criteria when searching for a residential location. This applies even more to households with low financial flexibility, which can neither bear the high cost of housing in accessible inner-city neighborhoods nor afford the higher cost of mobility in less well-connected suburban areas. Methods These interrelations are examined in a current study in more detail by means of problem-centered qualitative interviews highlighting the situation of low-income households, using the Munich Metropolitan Region as an example. This paper gives an overview of interrelations and presents selected results of the study. Results Low-income households do not change their residential location unless it is really necessary. If they do move, they are nearly unable to optimize their location in order to have better access to destinations. Whereas they are able to change some destinations, there are also some immutable destinations, which lead to an increase in effort spent on transport. Conclusions All in all the insights presented confirm the suggested assumptions. They show the very limited residential choices low-income households have, but leave room for further evaluations on possible implications.

Document type: Article

Novice drivers' eye movement patterns in potentially hazardous pedestrian events: Differences between novice drivers with high and low hazard perception skills

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:24:07 +0100

This study examines drivers’ fixation sequences and compares them to the responsiveness measured in a driving simulator. The assessment is based on a comparison of driving simulator based hazard detection skills with eye movement patterns. Sixty-three 18-24-year-old male drivers’ response to a pedestrian potentially crossing the street was examined and used as indicator of hazard perception skills (HPS). Drivers’ eye movements were examined to gain information about differences in scanning patterns between drivers with high and low HPS. Drivers with high HPS, fixated on the pedestrian continuously and had more multiple fixations on the standing pedestrian than drivers with low HPS. Moreover, more drivers that did not respond to the hazard did not fixate on the speedometer and if they did so, then mostly only once. The results show that novice drivers with high HPS differ in their eye movement patterns from drivers with low HPS. Moreover, drivers with low HPS pose an even higher risk as they consider their speed less often than drivers with high HPS.

Empowering International, Intersectoral and Interdisciplinary Dimensions in Higher Education: The STEPS and EECPS Master Courses Experience

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:22:12 +0100

IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC) (2019. Hanoi, Vietnam)

This work has been partially supported by: the EACEA, Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency from the European Commission, under Erasmus + Programme, Grant No. 574442-EPP-1-2016-1-ESEPPKA1-JMD-MOB, EMJMD STEPS; the Government of the Principality of Asturias, Spain, under Grant No. FC-GRUPIN-IDI/2018/000241; and by FCT Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under Project UID/MULTI/00308/2019.

Document type: Conference object

Comparison of real driving emissions and chassis dynamometer tests on emissions of two fuels in three Euro 6 diesel cars

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:28:02 +0100

Real driving emissions (RDE) from passenger cars has come under close scrutiny in recent times due to a perceived divergence between stated certification performance and measured on-road performance. This has been most pointed in the case of NOx emissions from diesel cars. To build understanding of the emissions performance of latest available diesel passenger cars, Concawe has conducted a study of the chassis dynamometer (CD) and RDE performance of three vehicles. As well as Diesel Particulate Filters, (DPFs) two of the vehicles featured high and low pressure Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) and aqueous urea-dosed Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) after-treatment, whilst the third used high pressure EGR and was fitted with a Lean NOx Trap (LNT). For each vehicle, triplicate tests were conducted over RDE, WLTC, NEDC and US06 cycles. The data generated provides insights into the on-road emissions performance of latest diesel passenger cars and how this compares to regulated emissions limits and results from CD tests run under comparable conditions. The study also examines fuel effects over RDE cycles in these modern vehicles.

Impact of Heavier and Longer Vehicles on the Performance of Asphalt Pavements

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:27:46 +0100

Longer and heavier vehicles (LHVs) have been permitted to operate in Sweden. Since 1996 and as of the beginning"br" of 2015, the maximum gross vehicle weight of 60 tonnes and a length of up to 25.25 m have been permitted. The"br" Swedish Transport Administration has decided to further increase the maximum gross vehicle weight to 74 tonnes."br" The axle load limits are on the other hand not increased. This will therefore increase the number of multiple axle"br" groups (i.e. tandem and tridem axle groups) per heavy vehicle. Studies are under way to evaluate the impact of the"br" proposed LHVs on the existing transport infrastructure. Repeated load triaxial tests and indirect tensile fatigue"br" tests have been conducted on selected conventional asphalt mixtures to investigate and quantify the impact of"br" single, tandem and tridem axle configurations on permanent deformation and fatigue performances of conventional"br" asphalt pavements. In addition, fatigue tests for selected LHV scenarios were conducted. This paper presents the"br" results of the laboratory tests and simulations conducted. The test results have clearly demonstrated the impact of"br" the different axle configurations on the rutting and fatigue performances of the mixture. Furthermore, such results"br" can explain the significance of axle configuration on the rutting and fatigue performances of asphalt pavements.

The SaveMyBike Project: ITS Technologies and Rewarding Policies to Improve Sustainable Mobility in Cities

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:26:08 +0100

Private car mobility registers a high accident rate and, in addition, in 2014 in the EU-28, around 70% of the overall"br" CO2 emissions from transport were generated by road mode. As a result, a modal shift of at least a part of passenger"br" transport in urban areas, from private car to sustainable transport systems is desirable. Several policies have been"br" adopted in the EU in this direction. The SaveMyBike project regards the development of a rewarding system for"br" sustainable mobility based on an open source platform able to monitor systematically trips in the city, starting to"br" integrate the platform with a service to incentive private bike use by means of UHF-RFID systems, creating secure"br" areas for bike parking and finding stolen bicycles. The real testing application to the Livorno case study from the"br" beginning of 2018. Then, SaveMyBike project introduces four innovations: it’s, for the first time, an open source"br" rewarding platform, called GOOD_GO linked to an anti-theft system for private bikes, it is applied to a whole city"br" and it introduces a ‘financially hot system’ for municipalities able to find financial resource from bike services.

Torque control strategy for an axial flux switched reluctance machine

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:25:42 +0100

This paper reflects the work done to design a torque control strategy for an axial flux switched reluctance machine. The general electrical model is first presented but as the switched reluctance machine behaves nonlinearly1 a (three-dimensional) finite element method characterization is performed, so the nonlinearity may be considered. Once the machine is characterized in FEM a Simulink model is developed where a torque control strategy is proposed. Then, both the machine and the control are experimentally tested. The control setting, and the obtained real performance results are also presented in this document. Finally, the most outstanding conclusions about the control strategy are captured. Main difficulties encountered during the implementation of the control strategy are also collected.

Document type: Conference object

Improvement of crash behavior in a light urban electric vehicle

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:24:44 +0100

Urban-EV applies innovative manufacturing technologies and materials to produce a 2-seat urban electric"br" vehicle with enhanced range: 150km. Attending to weight and power targets, the vehicle is classified as L7e,"br" heavy quadricycle. The aim of the project is to design and test urban electric vehicles with crash behavior similar"br" to conventional vehicles. The crash configurations considered for the design include both the ones in the"br" Regulation and also the ones done by Euro NCAP. For achieving this target new materials and processes and"br" also innovative joining processes have been optimized. The result is a very light multi-material structure that"br" includes innovative solutions for energy absorption based on the use of low cost structural thermoplastic"br" components. The paper includes the description of the structure optimization process and also of the restrain"br" system that presents specific characteristics to be adapted to this kind of vehicles.

A Cognitive IoT Monitoring and Support System for Elderly Care

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:23:49 +0100

Ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling the possibility to provide remote health-care services through networks of environmental and personalized sensors. We present an e-health system, which collects real-life sensor data through motion, door and pressure sensors installed at elderly households. Daily activity and health status are extracted from raw sensor signals. We present different ways to detect abnormal behaviors, based on which personalized health-care services can be provided. Such systems minimize user input and interaction, thus could offer a long-term practical service.

Short-Term and Long-Term Solutions for Secure Verification of Aircraft- Reported ADS-B Location in Air Traffic Networks

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:22:31 +0100

Fe3: An Evaluation Tool for Low-Altitude Air Traffic Operations

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:21:33 +0100

HIDDEN DANGEROUS GOODS CONTAINING LITHIUM BATTERIES SHIPMENT BY AIR FREIGHT

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:20:49 +0100

Lithium batteries recently become recommended power sources due to its advantages which have high specific energy, high capacity, long cycle, etc. The development of lithium batteries pushes the development and production of electonic equipments to the next step. As the effect, the demand for electronic equipment shipments rises. Besides creating opportunities, lithium batteries also pose threats due to its capability of posing hazards which endanger flight safety. In air transport history, there are many accidents occured due to lithium batteries carriages. One of the factors that induces lithium battery deficiency is mishandling due to inaccurate information about the goods. A lot of goods that may contain lithium battery such as electronic equipment, medical equipment, machinery parts, etc. often declared as general cargo by the shipper. To prevent and minimize accident caused by hidden dangerous goods, air carrier staffs are demanded to comprehend informations related to dangerous goods. This paper explains a glimpse of information about hidden dangerous goods containing lithium batteries shipment by air freight. Keywords : Lithium batteries, air cargo, hidden, dangerous goods, safety.

The waterway Danube as smart transport infrastructure of the future

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:19:51 +0100

Providing efficient and environmentally friendly multi-modal transport infrastructures is the key to economic"br" growth, competitiveness, and sustainability. Developing technologies and services for an increased availability"br" and accessibility of inland waterways is a way of strengthening this mode of transport as a competitive alternative"br" to road and rail. In Austria viadonau is taking this approach a few steps further, aiming to establish the waterway"br" Danube as a smart transport infrastructure of the future. The paper will provide an overview on recent"br" achievements and ongoing developments allowing for a seamless cyclic process in the field of waterway"br" infrastructure management. With semi-automatic analysis and measure planning, viadonau's Waterway Asset"br" Management System (WAMS) enables the implementation of pro-active maintenance strategies, including an"br" ongoing assessment and optimization of planned maintenance and construction activities. In addition, the"br" developed services compute all actual information which is needed for an efficient management and navigation.

SciPipe: A workflow library for agile development of complex and dynamic bioinformatics pipelines

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:16:05 +0100

Background"/jats:title""jats:p"The complex nature of biological data has driven the development of specialized software tools. Scientific workflow management systems simplify the assembly of such tools into pipelines, assist with job automation and aid reproducibility of analyses. Many contemporary workflow tools are specialized and not designed for highly complex workflows, such as with nested loops, dynamic scheduling and parametriza-tion, which is common in e.g. machine learning."/jats:p""/jats:sec""jats:sec""jats:title"Findings"/jats:title""jats:p"SciPipe is a workflow programming library implemented in the programming language Go, for managing complex and dynamic pipelines in bioinformatics, cheminformatics and other fields. SciPipe helps in particular with workflow constructs common in machine learning, such as extensive branching, parameter sweeps and dynamic scheduling and parametrization of downstream tasks. SciPipe builds on Flow-based programming principles to support agile development of workflows based on a library of self-contained, reusable components. It supports running subsets of workflows for improved iterative development, and provides a data-centric audit logging feature that saves a full audit trace for every output file of a workflow, which can be converted to other formats such as HTML, TeX and PDF on-demand. The utility of SciPipe is demonstrated with a machine learning pipeline, a genomics, and a transcriptomics pipeline."/jats:p""/jats:sec""jats:sec""jats:title"Conclusions"/jats:title""jats:p"SciPipe provides a solution for agile development of complex and dynamic pipelines, espe-cially in machine leaning, through a flexible programming API suitable for scientists used to programming or scripting."/jats:p""/jats:sec

Document type: Article

Ecosystems in Winter Road Maintenance and C-ITS

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:14:10 +0100

Trafisafe - Parental feedback for novice drivers

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:13:56 +0100

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of parental feedback on novice driver behavior in the first 6"br" months of driving, aided by telematic data. A sample of 74 pairs of male novice drivers and their parents was"br" randomly allocated to an intervention group (IG) or a control group (CG). Parents of the IG received weekly email"br" safety reports, allowing parents to provide feedback about their kids´ solo driving. Questionnaires for both novice"br" drivers and parents were used to analyze acceptance. Results indicate that parental feedback aided by telematic"br" data seem to have beneficial effects on teen driving as risky driving events were lower in the IG once feedback"br" was established, statistically different from the 3rd usage month onwards. Questionnaire results also suggest"br" positive influence on IG individual driving style and showed a good acceptance of the provided tools among users."br" Authors recommend telematic-aided parental feedback to reduce young driver risk directly after licensing.

Fluid Model Transformation in Pipelines for Fault Diagnosis Analysis

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:13:17 +0100

Study on the Improvement of Traffic Congestion by Community Open

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:12:50 +0100

Local Event Forecasting and Synthesis Using Unpaired Deep Graph Translations

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:11:37 +0100

Local rare event forecasting and synthesis on networks are highly useful for emergence management. For example, synthesizing traffic congestion and disease diffusion over the road network and disease-contact network respectively of specific geo-locations is highly important for transportation planning and disease outbreaks intervention. This task requires to learn how the events of congestion or disease "translate" the graph patterns from source mode (e.g., without event) to target mode (e.g., with event) based on historical data for some locations. Then it needs to apply such "translation" upon a source-mode graph pattern in a new location's network, in order to estimate and foresee what it will look like in target-mode in this location. Such task is called graph translation, which is an analogy and generalization to image and text translation. Similar to the situations in image and text translation, paired training data, which consists of pairs of source-mode graph and its corresponding target-mode, will usually not be available. In this work, we propose an approach for learn the translation of graphs from source-mode to target-mode such that the generated target-mode is indistinguishable from the distribution of the real target-mode using an adversarial loss. Because there is no paired training data, we also learn an inverse translation from target-mode to source-mode and couple these two translation mappings through cycle consistency loss. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world application data demonstrate that the proposed approaches is capable of generating graphs close to real target graphs. Case studies on the synthesized networks have also been illustrated and analyzed to show the reasonableness of the generated target-mode graphs.

Towards Intelligent Mobility: The Mobility Intelligent Cooperative Systems (MOBICS) Platform

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:09:31 +0100

Intelligent Mobility (IM) is a growing development area challenging an integrated management and operations of"br" diversity (heterogeneous) of both cyber-physical and informatics (systems) infrastructures. The approach that has"br" been taken by A-to-Be, powered by Brisa in the SCOOP@F Part 2 project on developing cooperative systems"br" assuring the interoperability among different road operators and across borders, based on vehicle to"br" vehicle/infrastructure (V2X) communications, is presented and discussed. The project is challenging making"br" transparent the specificities of the involved stakeholders for drivers from Portugal, Spain, France, and Austria to"br" freely travel multi-concessions and multi-country road infrastructures under a continuous offering of a suite of"br" mobility services. This requires, beyond a proper operation of the On-Board Units (OBU), an efficient coordination"br" among the participating road operators’ infrastructure (stakeholders). Collaborative models where stakeholders"br" with different technologies, processes, and organizational culture are invited to participate is also discussed.

On low-latency-capable topologies, and their impact on the design of intra-domain routing

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:08:36 +0100

n ISP's customers increasingly demand delivery of their traffic without congestion and with low latency. The ISP's topology, routing, and traffic engineering, often over multiple paths, together determine congestion and latency within its backbone. We first consider how to measure a topology's capacity to route traffic without congestion and with low latency. We introduce low-latency path diversity (LLPD), a metric that captures a topology's flexibility to accommodate traffic on alternative low-latency paths. We explore to what extent 116 real backbone topologies can, regardless of routing system, keep latency low when demand exceeds the shortest path's capacity. We find, perhaps surprisingly, that topologies with good LLPD are precisely those where routing schemes struggle to achieve low latency without congestion. We examine why these schemes perform poorly, and offer an existence proof that a practical routing scheme can achieve a topology's potential for congestion-free, low-delay routing. Finally we examine implications for the design of backbone topologies amenable to achieving high capacity and low delay.

Computer Vision-Based Dynamic Monitoring of Multimodal Traffic in Streets

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:08:21 +0100

Inadequate pedestrian and cycling infrastructure in city streets puts non-motorists across the globe at fatal risk."br" One reason for the severity of these public health and safety problems is a lack of accurate, representative data on"br" the usage of urban streets across transit modes. Unfortunately, attempts to fill this gap in understanding have been"br" limited over time by the prohibitively low reliability or high cost of current methods. Computer vision (CV)"br" systems offer a scalable and accurate platform with which to monitor traffic that overcome the sampling biases"br" imposed by most traffic measurement solutions. One such system is Numina, a standalone sensor and data platform"br" that leverages computer vision and machine learning to count and map the travel paths of street users in real time."br" Numina can concurrently detect and track travellers representing any mode of traffic and performs the majority of"br" image processing onboard each device itself, resulting in anonymized traffic data that is protective of personal"br" privacy. Using Numina and similar CV systems to enable an iterative approach to urban planning can mitigate"br" some of the risks and costs associated with legacy traffic data collection methods.

INFRALERT. Improving Linear Transport Infrastructure Efficiency by Automated Learning and Optimised Predictive Maintenance Techniques

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:07:37 +0100

The on-going H2020 project INFRALERT aims to increase rail and road infrastructure capacity in the current"br" framework of increased transportation demand by developing and deploying solutions to optimise maintenance"br" interventions planning. INFRALERT develops an ICT platform - the expert-based Infrastructure Management"br" System eIMS - which follows a modular approach including several expert-based toolkits. This paper presents"br" the architecture of the eIMS as well as the functionalities, methodologies and exemplary results of the toolkits"br" for i) nowcasting and forecasting of asset condition, ii) alert generation, iii) RAMS & LCC analysis and iv)"br" decision support. The applicability and effectiveness of the eIMS and its toolkits will be demonstrated in two"br" real-world pilot scenarios, which are described in the paper: a meshed road network in Portugal under the"br" jurisdiction of Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) and a freight railway line in Northern Europe managed by"br" Trafikverket.

All for one and one for all: towards a one-stop-shop, all inclusive mobility future!

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:06:58 +0100

To provide personalised and multimodal urban, interurban and cross-border mobility services through an all inclusive one stop shop by promoting the replacement of private ownership by private use through an all in one single payment and Mobility Token mobile app.

Driving dynamic investigations for the estimation of possible braking energy recovery of passenger cars in Germany

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 15:54:35 +0100

Road traffic represents an important source of air quality problems, particularly in urban areas. Hence,"br" innovative drive solutions as the electrification of the vehicle drive train are of emerging importance as electricand"br" hybrid vehicles offer the possibility of local emission-free driving."br" The recoverable braking energy profit depends crucially on the number and the characteristics of the braking"br" process which are characterized predominately by the driving behavior and the prevailing traffic situation. Only"br" such braking phases lead to high energy recovery, in which the deceleration process is attributable to the electric"br" machine. Based on a traffic situation- / braking phase analysis, it is estimated which traffic situations are"br" particularly suitable for possible energy recuperation and what share they have to total road traffic in Germany."br" For this purpose, passenger cars traffic data from the transport emission model TREMOD is analyzed and"br" evaluated in terms of relevant dynamic parameters related to braking operations.

Mobility patterns and impact on the grid

Scipedia content — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 15:49:31 +0100

Traffic pollution: A search for solutions for a city like Nairobi

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:07:57 +0100

Congestion and traffic-related pollution are typically the largest contributors to air pollution in cities. Rapid urbanization in developing countries has caused large-scale proliferation in motor vehicle use making cities increasingly congested and, subsequently, polluted. There is a growing awareness that the air quality status quo in East African cities is unacceptable. This paper uses the case of Nairobi, Kenya to discuss current traffic pollution challenges and how they may be addressed. The paper begins with an overview of urbanization and pollution effects. It goes on to look at the specific case of Nairobi as it searches for solutions to the negative impacts of pollution through a lens which sees resolution of congestion effects as key to amelioration of traffic-related air pollution. It suggests that a combination of infrastructure, policy, regulatory and softer measures may provide the most effective way to address traffic congestion and, thus, traffic pollution. In addition, the paper highlights the need for further research into the lived experience of negotiating daily life in Nairobi, as well as further exploration of the social, economic and environmental feasibility of potential solutions for the city. While Nairobi is used as the case study city, the lessons learned are generalized for cities in the East African region, which often share similar traits of congestion and traffic related pollution.

ADAPTIVE TRAFFIC LIGHT CYCLE TIME CONTROLLER USING MICROCONTROLLERS AND CROWDSOURCE DATA OF GOOGLE APIs FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:06:51 +0100

Mishra, S., Bhattacharya, D., Gupta, A., & Singh, V. R. (2018). Adaptive traffic light cycle time controller using microcontrollers and crwodsource data of Google APIs for developing countries. In 3rd International Conference on Smart Data and Smart Cities (4/W7 ed., Vol. 4, pp. 83-90). (ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences). DOI: 10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-4-W7-83-2018 Controlling of traffic signals optimally helps in avoiding traffic jams as vehicle volume density changes on temporally short and spatially small scales. Nowadays, due to embedded system development with the rising standards of computational technology, condense electronics boards as well as software packages, system can be developed for controlling cycle time in real time. At present, the traffic control systems in India lack intelligence and act as an open-loop control system, with no feedback or sensing network, due to the high costs involved. This paper aims to improve the traffic control system by integrating different technologies to provide intelligent feedback to the existing network with congestion status adapting to the changing traffic density patterns. The system presented in this paper aims to sense real-time traffic congestion around the traffic light using Google API crowdsource data and hence avoids infrastructure cost of sensors. Subsequently, it manipulates the signal timing by triggering and conveying information to the timer control system. Generic information processing and communication hardware system designed in this paper has been tested and found to be functional for a pilot run in real time. Both simulation and hardware trials show the transmission of required information with an average time delay of 1.2 seconds that is comparatively very small considering cycle time. publishersversion published

Document type: Article

Providing Intermodal Route Alternatives

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:05:16 +0100

Within this paper, we present a novel routing algorithm capable of providing not only truly intermodal routes but also coming up with route alternatives. These route alternatives feature different route and mode choices while still optimizing the same objective function (e.g. travel time). We therefore, provide a first presentation of the next generation routing service, which are fundamental for the introduction of Mobility-as-a-Service in the passenger sector or synchromodality in the freight transportation sector. We finally provide a showcase of motorhome routing where the full potential of the presented routing algorithm is shown.

Digital solutions for environmental performance and efficient navigation using on-board monitoring and river modelling

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:04:10 +0100

The PROMINENT project co-funded under the H2020 program aims to develop innovations in inland waterway transport. It focusses on several areas: a) the introduction of technologies to improve energy efficiency and to reduce pollutant emissions, b) certification and (on-board) monitoring and c) professional qualification."br" This publication focusses on the possibilities of digital solutions and on-board monitoring in order to evaluate the operational performance of vessels and to develop tools for the skipper for energy-efficient navigation. An on-board monitoring measures speed and location, fuel consumption, power distribution, NOx and CO2 emissions. This data is continuously sent to a central database for the evaluation and benchmarking. It can also be used to optimize the efficiency of the ship driveline. The digital solution for efficient navigation combines on-board monitoring with the information from river models in order to provide the skipper with up to date information on sailing speed, arrival time and fuel consumption on each trip.

Mixture Kalman filter based highway congestion mode and vehicle density estimator and its application

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:59:31 +0100

We present our latest results on developing and implementing a traffic congestion mode and vehicle density estimator for a segment of Interstate 210 in Southern California. Using a mixture Kalman filtering (MKF) algorithm on the switching-mode traffic model, the estimator is able to provide estimated vehicle densities at unmeasured locations, as well as the congestion statuses (free-flow or congested), which are not directly observed. The program runs efficiently, thus making it possible to carry out estimation in real time.

Education and business. Formation of the human resources potential of road transport sector

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:57:24 +0100

FR8RAIL: Development of functional requirements for sustainable and attractive European rail freight

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:56:20 +0100

The modal share of intra-EU rail freight transport is less than 20% of the freight transport sector. The current rail"br" freight situation is not only due to the existence of legal barriers restricting competition (including the track access"br" regime, taxation, etc.), but also due to limitations of operational and technical nature, which impact the overall"br" capacity and performance of the sector."br" In order to overcome these issues, Shift2Rail set a specific Innovation Programme 5 (IP5) focused on Technologies"br" for Sustainable & Attractive European Rail Freight. In this context, the FR8RAIL project, is working on the"br" “Development of Functional Requirements for Sustainable and Attractive European Rail”."br" To overcome these limitations, a holistic approach involving several technical areas, that form the backbone of the"br" project approach. The outcomes of FR8RAIL will positively contribute to and support the Shift2Rail goals to"br" strengthen the role of the freight rail transport.

Information or integration? Supporting multimodal travelling through mobility apps

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:50:52 +0100

Digital tools like journey planners and mobile ticketing apps are adopted by more and more users and seen as"br" key enablers to making multimodal travel choices easier. This paper looks at success factors for establishing a"br" highly integrated mobility app. By analysing and comparing levels of integration across different axes for"br" mobility apps as well as geographical coverage and user adoption figures, we identify common types and"br" evolution paths. The findings suggest that vertically integrated apps tend to be limited to one mode and in terms"br" of geographic coverage. Widely used apps often integrate travel information with other functions and have wider"br" coverage, but show low vertical integration levels. If increased multimodal travel behaviour is linked to using"br" mobility apps, then a strategy pursuing wide user adoption may be more successful than building strongly"br" integrated platforms in the first place. This has implications for public and private initiatives looking to build"br" their own app or sharing their data and cooperating with others.

Assessment of ACC and CACC systems using SUMO

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:50:18 +0100

Emerging developments in the field of automotive technologies, such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) systems, are expected to enhance traffic efficiency and safety on highways and urban roads. For this reason, substantial effort has been made by researchers to model and simulate these automation systems over the last few years. This study aims to integrate a recently developed car-following model for ACC and CACC equipped vehicles in the microscopic traffic simulation tool SUMO; the implemented ACC/CACC simulation models originate from empirical ones, ensuring the collision-free property in the full-speed-range operation. Simulation experiments for different penetration rates of cooperative automated vehicles, desired time-gap settings and network topologies are conducted to test the validity of the proposed approach and to assess the impact of ACC and CACC equipped vehicles on traffic flow characteristics.

Austrian 2nd phase road safety track training seems to increase risk competence among novice drivers

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:50:04 +0100

Obligatory Austrian 2nd phase education module of safety track training was analysed in order to examine potential"br" safety benefits for novice car drivers. Earlier findings showed that the safety benefits of the 2nd phase education"br" courses are contradictory. Furthermore, the goal and the content of the 2nd phase education have changed from"br" simple slippery track practices to preventive risk competence education over the last decades. Austrian 2nd phase"br" safety training was evaluated by gathering self-reported conclusions and safety-relevant assessments directly after"br" training and up to 12 months subsequent to the safety course as well as directly observed emergency braking"br" behaviour skill on track training day. Results show beneficial development regarding safety views and risk"br" competence, especially emergency braking skill improved substantially during safety training.

Training & Education on standardization of transport chains emission accounting

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:49:49 +0100

The knowledge and capacity gap for the many SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) that are involved in the logistics sector is significant. Even the largest logistics service providers subcontract a significant proportion of their transport to specialist carriers and acknowledge that they struggle to get reliable, company-specific data back in a format that can be used to fulfil carbon account requests from their customers. This paper -as part of the LEARN (Logistics, emissions and reduction network) European project- covers the needs of training and education as this is considered the least-developed area in the sector that currently represents a big challenge."br" The papers shows the requirements identified from stakeholders via surveys in emissions accounting, reporting and verifying together with methodology guidelines developed in the field. The paper will provide the path to produce a proper material, and how to be assembled, re-oriented and adapted towards the end users, with the aim of increasing the knowledge base in the field and to strengthen the network of industries willing to use a common standard framework for emissions accounting.

Airports: Spanish initiative for "Airport Improvement Research on Processes & Operations of Runway, TMA and Surface"

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:46:08 +0100

IRPORTS (Airport Improvement Research on Processes & Operations of Runway, TMA & Surface) is a"br" research and development initiative aimed at developing technologies and capabilities to enable the"br" implementation of TBO (Trajectory-Based Operations) and PBO (Performance-Based Operations) in the airport"br" context, considering operations and processes affecting both aircraft and ground vehicles. AIRPORTS is a"br" multidisciplinary and integrated effort that tackles highly complex scientific and technological challenges with"br" important repercussions for the global air transportation system. The project tackles the development of"br" technology solutions that contribute to modernize and improve the air transportation system from a"br" multidisciplinary perspective, considering both air and ground operations. The project embraces a holistic"br" approach, considering both analysis and experimentation and culminating in proofs of concept and integrated use"br" case scenarios that demonstrate advanced technology solutions that enhance airport operations.

Leakage Detection in Pipelines Using Decision Tree and Multi-Support Vector Machine

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:45:14 +0100

Fiber optic monitoring of pipelines in permafrost context

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:40:07 +0100

We propose the most suitable setup to have complete integrity monitoring of buried pipelines in permafrost using optical fiber sensing. Choice of best optical fiber cables and their best location near the pipe are discussed.

DigiTrans: Exploring the new Austrian test region for automated driving in transport logistics

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:39:29 +0100

In Europe, several test sites have recently been opened to validate automated driving functions. However, there"br" are limited initiatives for freight transport and logistics compared to passenger transport. The aim of this paper is"br" to demonstrate how a test region for automated transport logistics can be built up in Austria. A profound feasibility"br" study was conducted to investigate organisational, technical and economic requirements for a successful"br" implementation and operation of the test region. A stakeholder consultation process was set up to collect specific"br" needs of various target groups, including interviews, focus groups and workshops. Overall, the results of the"br" feasibility study show that automated driving in the area of transport logistics is a highly important topic, which is"br" supported by industry and shows profitable potential. Based on the study results, future work will comprise the"br" planning, implementation and operation of the actual test region within a time frame of at least five years.

Motion Trajectories of Over-Height Vehicles for Warning Drivers

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:39:10 +0100

Collision of over-height vehicles with low bridges and tunnels occur with high frequency in the UK as many structures were built at a time when there was less moving traffic on the roadway. These older bridges are now considered at risk of vehicular strikes due to its low clearance height (less than 16 feet 6 inches or 5.03 metres). While previous methods have used vision-based systems to address the over-height warning problem, such methods are sensitive to wind. In this paper, we proposed an extension of the work done to minimise false detections due to wind by using a constraint-based method to track motion trajectories to improve the overall performance of the system. The dataset consists of 102 over-height vehicles recorded at 25 fps. The paper compares feature detectors to optimally track vehicle trajectories and analyses its motion to accurately classify positive detections. The final validation yields a performance of 94.5% recall and 91.1% precision. Career Integration Grants (CIG) - Marie Curie Action

Compliance with Monitoring Requests, Biomechanical Readiness, and Take-Over Performance: Video Analysis from a Simulator Study

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:38:11 +0100

In the context of automated driving, a monitoring request (MR) is a means to prepare drivers for a take-over event. However, driver compliance may be an issue because not all MRs require a take-over. In this study, we investigated how drivers’ compliance with MRs was associated with previously experienced scenarios. The compliance level was measured based on drivers’ eye, hand, and foot preparatory behaviours retrieved from manual video observation. Although drivers showed good overall compliance by looking up to the road in response to MRs in all cases, hand and foot preparatory behaviour appeared to deteriorate after experiencing an MR without a critical event, and increased after a take-over event. Results further showed a positive association between preparatory behaviour and take-over performance.

Scube—Concept and Implementation of a Self-balancing, Autonomous Mobility Device for Personal Transport

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:34:30 +0100

Public transportation (PT) systems suffer from disutility compared to private transportation due to the inability to provide passengers with a door-to-door service, referred to as the first/last mile problem. Personal mobility devices (PMDs) are thought to improve PT service quality by closing this first/last mile gap. However, current PMDs are generally driven manually by the rider and require a learning phase for safe vehicle operation. Additionally, most PMDs require a standing riding position and are not easily accessible to elderly people or persons with disabilities. In this paper, the concept of an autonomously operating mobility device is introduced. The visionary concept is designed as an on-demand transportation service which transports people for short to medium distances and increases the accessibility to public transport. The device is envisioned to be operated as a larger fleet and does not belong to an individual person. The vehicle features an electric powertrain and a one-axle self-balancing design with a small footprint. It provides one seat for a passenger and a tilt mechanism that is designed to improve the ride comfort and safety at horizontal curves. An affordable 3D-camera system is used for autonomous localization and navigation. For the evaluation and demonstration of the concept, a functional prototype is implemented.

Document type: Article

REFINET: A new era for the sustainable development of Transport infrastructures networks in Europe

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:33:55 +0100

The main objective or the REFINET Coordination and Support Action has been about identifying research and innovation needs and supporting the mass-market deployment of existing innovative technologies, such as materials, components, systems and processes to support the modernisation of the European Transport Infrastructure using a multimodal approach to support investment decisions. To achieve its objectives, REFINET has in particular developed solutions enabling infrastructures decision-makers (e.g. Public Bodies, Ministries, the European Commission, Infrastructure Managers and Operators, etc.) to carry out an integrated evaluation, selection of projects and programs and monitoring them. This paper introduces to the main outcomes of REFINET, in particular the REFINET multi-modal transport infrastructure model, vision and Strategic Implementation Plan for research and innovation priorities. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission under the H2020 programme, and are grateful to the REFINET Consortium partners, namely Fundación TECNALIA, D'Appolonia S.p.A., FEHRL, UIC, Fundación Plataforma Tecnológica Española de Construccion, DRAGADOS SA, CSTB and Ove Arup & Partners International Limited.

Electric vehicles in commercial fleets: Potentials and challenges from the user perspective in Germany

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:33:08 +0100

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been discussed as a promising alternative to conventional cars and as a potential solution for mitigating environmental problems caused by road transport. This study analyzes the potential of the commercial use of EVs and the factors influencing user acceptance in commercial fleets. Empirical data on the daily use of EVs was collected by conducting online surveys, interviews, and workshops with the users. This paper summarizes the insights on potential advances and challenges related to the use of the vehicles in commercial fleets from a user perspective. The results suggest that EVs meet the mobility needs of different commercial users, bringing reputational and environmental related benefits for the companies. Main challenges for the deployment of EVs are related rather to the periphery of the EVs (e.g., infrastructure, market characteristics, and lack of experts in related service sectors as well as psychological barriers). Finally, policy and management recommendations in different fields drawn from a synthesis of the data collected within the study are introduced in this paper.

Genetic Algorithm to optimize the strategies for bridge repair works

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:31:24 +0100

n approach to solve the problem of reducing the operating costs and increasing the residual life of highway bridges is showed in this article. The main goal of this study is to optimize a lifecycle model of highway bridge’s elements using a special type of genetic algorithm (GA). GA allows managing the residual life of highway bridges. The goal is achieved by performing the following tasks: developing a degradation model of bridge elements; developing a model for the definition of bridge performance measures costs at the network level; optimizing the lifecycle of the bridge’s elements using GA. A special high-speed GA was developed and designed for working with the Ukrainian Bridge Management System (AEBMS). The developed GA differs from the traditional GA. For example, the GA takes into account the peculiarities of the allowable sequence of various repair works depending on the degree of the bridge’s degradation and the steps which were taken during the previous years.

Trajectory Modeling and Prediction with Waypoint Information Using a Conditionally Markov Sequence

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:31:06 +0100

Information about the waypoints of a moving object, e.g., an airliner in an air traffic control (ATC) problem, should be considered in trajectory modeling and prediction. Due to the ATC regulations, trajectory design criteria, and restricted motion capability of airliners there are long-range dependencies in trajectories of airliners. Waypoint information can be used for modeling such dependencies in trajectories. This paper proposes a conditionally Markov (CM) sequence for modeling trajectories passing by waypoints. A dynamic model governing the proposed sequence is obtained. Filtering and trajectory prediction formulations are presented. The use of the proposed sequence for modeling trajectories with waypoints is justified.

Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.08021

Self-Refining Deep Symmetry Enhanced Network for Rain Removal

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:30:04 +0100

Rain removal aims to remove the rain streaks on rain images. The state-of-the-art methods are mostly based on Convolutional Neural Network~(CNN). However, as CNN is not equivariant to object rotation, these methods are unsuitable for dealing with the tilted rain streaks. To tackle this problem, we propose Deep Symmetry Enhanced Network~(DSEN) that is able to explicitly extract the rotation equivariant features from rain images. In addition, we design a self-refining mechanism to remove the accumulated rain streaks in a coarse-to-fine manner. This mechanism reuses DSEN with a novel information link which passes the gradient flow to the higher stages. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world rain images show that our self-refining DSEN yields the top performance.

Comment: Accepted by ICIP 19. Corresponding author: Hanrong Ye

Modeling Cyclists Traffic Volume – Can Bicycle Planning benefit from Smartphone based Data?

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:28:05 +0100

Good transportation planning requires reliable data. Nowadays many smartphone users record their routes and submit these GPS tracks to servers of smartphone application operators. These aggregate tracks are the base for a bunch of tools to close the gap in bicycle planning and evaluation. However, there is only few information about the app users. Therefore the question is if it is possible to derive predictions from the app data that are valid compared to field data. An analysis of field data collections in Dresden with a dataset collected by the smartphone app Strava with an overall of 3,200 cyclists and 70,500 rides was undertaken. The comparison focused on traffic volumes, speed and origin-destination matrices. Overall, the predicted values based on the Strava app sample were comparable to the permanent counting devices, especially in areas with higher traffic flow. Strava app data is with some limitations applicable for bicycle planning. Recommendations for the future use of Strava and similar data sources for bicycle planning and transportation research will be discussed.

Hybrid Optimal Control for Time-Efficient Highway Traffic Management

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:26:00 +0100

This article examines the hybrid traffic control problem to minimize total travel time (TTT) of a highway network through traffic management infrastructures, including dynamic speed limit signs, ramp metering, and information board. We first build the traffic flow model based on the Moskowitz function for each highway link to predict traffic status within a control horizon. The traffic density is predicted based on the flow dynamic model and corrected periodically by the measured traffic flow data. The minimum TTT traffic control problem is then formulated as a mixed-integer quadratic programming problem with quadratic constraints. Numerical simulation of a real world highway network is provided to demonstrate a significant reduction of TTT and alleviation of traffic congestion compared to results obtained from ALINEA and PI-ALINEA methods.

Introducing public transport and relevant strategies in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia: a stakeholders’ perspective

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:22:40 +0100

There is an increasing concern about the growth of car dependence and its associated negative impacts on cities, including economic and environmental factors, urban form and lifestyle. City authorities worldwide now pay increasing attention to sustainable transport systems by enhancing or introducing public transit services. An example is Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia, which has witnessed a significant growth in car ownership and population. Current efforts to reduce high dependence on private cars in Riyadh involve the development of a new public transport system. Against this background, this paper considers the wider impacts of the new public transport system in Riyadh City on urban form, economics, environment, social norms and culture. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews conducted with transport experts and officials of relevant authorities in Riyadh City. The study results highlight that the city’s urban form would have the highest impact on the uptake of public transport. Moreover, stakeholders assumed that the provision of public transport services in Riyadh would improve mobility, decrease travel time, and create more employment opportunities, positively affecting Riyadh City’s economy and the environment. Interviewees concluded that these potential interventions would affect social norms and culture positively in the long term.

Document type: Article

Modeling IP-to-IP Communication using the Weighted Stochastic Block Model

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:18:30 +0100

The vision of self-driving networks integrates network measurements with network control. Processing data for each of the tasks comprising network control separately might be prohibitive due to the large volume and waste of computational resources. In this work we make the case of using the Weighted Stochastic Block Model (WSBM), a probabilistic model, to learn a task independent representation. In particular, we consider a case study of real-world IP-to-IP communication. The learned representation provides higher level-features for traffic engineering, anomaly detection, or other tasks, and reduces their computational effort. We find that the WSBM is able to accurately model traffic and structure of communication in the considered trace.

Proposition of a formal model for crisis management in the context of high-speed train networks in border areas

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:16:51 +0100

TRA 2018, 7th Transport Research Arena, Vienne, AUTRICHE, 16-/04/2018 - 19/04/2018; Especially in inter-country areas, Crisis Management (CM) faces several challenges. Thorough preparation and anticipation are crucial organizational tools to address those challenges and enable proper reaction to crises. CM requires the joint effort of various stakeholders from different countries: public authorities, private companies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), etc. need to collaborate under specific, locally different regulations. The present paper includes a brief introduction to the state of the art of CM of international railways with special regard to the topics partnerships, leadership & communication as well as training. As part of a research project, a survey with international crisis management experts was conducted. Based on the survey results, a handbook containing transnational recommendations regarding the involved stakeholders and their responsibilities is developed. Of course, existing CM concepts of relevant organizations are taken into consideration for the development. The handbook was discussed with end-users in the course of a project workshop. In addition, when the crisis management is required, the response is coordinated within the framework of the National Crisis Management System (NCMS). The cooperation between these NCMSs leads to the concept of System-of-Systems (SoS). Based on Supervision Control Theory (SCT), we propose a formal model built from decomposition of NCMSs using a multi-model approach. The resulted framework offers a global view of the SoS and resolves problems of system's dependence and of operating mode management. The proposed model is designed by using the High Level Petri Nets (HLPNs) formalism and is illustrated with a crisis of a railway system. The main result of this paper is the comprehensive knowledge of current crisis management strategies in the context of cross-border incidents. Weaknesses in the existing system are identified and two approaches that seek to enhance CM are introduced.

Local emotions - using social media to understand human-environment interaction in cities

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:13:03 +0100

Cities have become the most common living environment for humans. With this rising urbanization, urban design has become vital for these growing cities. While measuring objective data like traffic congestion or air quality is important, it does not tell the whole story of how people live in the cities or how cities should be developed to make them more livable. In future for a true smart city a more humane component is needed to understand how the population of cities actually interact with and feel about their surroundings. Surveys are a great and a necessary tool for this and they are already being used in the design process. However, they require effort and and a lot of silent information can be missed. The surveying process also doesn't happen in real time. We suggest that social media data could be used to gather more information about human- environment interaction in cities and compliment the surveys. We show a working prototype of a tool that creates an emotional map of a city by mining social media data for sentiments and heatmapping them. This kind of method could prove to be an useful tool for urban designers, who could take advantage of the visual intuition of humans and see instantly where and how emotional hotspots arise. It could also be of interest for emotion researchers, who could get data on what it really means to be happy for a human being - for example eating an ice cream at the beach - instead of only linking conceptual words (such as happy) to external stimuli (such as smiling). Peer reviewed

A compact and efficient heat-pump system with a preconditioning concept for electric vehicles

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:10:53 +0100

DENSO has developed an innovative concept which provides efficient thermal management including"br" preconditioning for electric vehicles. The thermal conditioning for the cabin and powertrain offers maximum"br" comfort to the user and increases the driving range of the vehicle. The efficient thermal management in the"br" vehicle is provided by a compact water-to-water heat pump system which can harvest heat from the ambient"br" environment even at sub-zero temperatures and excess heat dissipated from the powertrain components, i.e."br" inverter and the electric motor with possibilities to also include the battery. The system provides simultaneous"br" cold and warm water coolant, which with control logic is used to harvest or reject heat from the cabin and"br" powertrain, respectively. The overall system proves to be 30 percent more efficient compared to a PTC based"br" direct air heating.

European Competitiveness in Commercial Hybrid and Automotive Powertrains (ECOCHAMPS): Integration and Validation of Modular Standardised Framework Hybrid Components in a Heavy Duty Vehicle Driveline

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:10:35 +0100

The ECOCHAMPS project has addressed the topic GV-04-2014 Hybrid Light and Heavy Duty Vehicles of the Green Vehicles work programme under Horizon 2020. This project realized, in a single, coordinated action, all the aspects of this call through the activities of a twenty-six member consortium representing the European Automotive Industry. At the time of the TRA in Vienna, the ECOCHAMPS project will just have been completed after three years of activity."br" This paper will focus on the integrated components developed in the ECOCHAMPS project in a TRL 7 heavy duty vehicle as part of Work Package 7 lead by DAF, proving a significant CO2 reduction with a cost-effective driveline. For this purpose, an integral modular approach has been used to combine waste heat recovery and the hybrid system. The aim has been to achieve an increased combined fuel consumption reduction by utilizing synergy advantages. These advantages occur when the systems are connected through a common high voltage bus combined with an energy storage device, in this case a 400V DC bus and a hybrid battery. It is targeted to achieve a cost-effective powertrain efficiency improvement of 20% by using standardized, modular hybrid components.

Value of V2G Frequency Regulation in Great Britain Considering Real Driving Data

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:09:41 +0100

Electric Vehicles (EVs) can, when they are not used for driving, create value for the EV owner, by delivering ancillary services to the transmission system operator. Calculating potential earnings from grid services and charging strategies highly depends on the driving time, driving distance, and time spent at different locations. While few datasets describing EV usage exist, this work is based on one of the most extensive datasets gathered from 7,163 Nissan LEAFs. Using the real driving and charging data it was possible to calculate the value of a specific charging strategy for the individual EV. The EV dataset was used in a simulation based on British electricity transmission network operating codes and frequency measurement data. The outcome is the profit from frequency regulation for each EV in the data-set, which is found to range between 50 and 350 £/year, because of the large difference in the EV usage.

Quantifying the impact of risk factors at railway level crossings using accident prediction models: A cross-country study

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:07:50 +0100

Railway level crossings are critical elements in railway and road networks with accident occurrences resulting in"br" fatal and severe injuries. In addition to the human loss, level crossing accidents also negatively impact rail"br" transport reliability and transport speed. For safety management, specific risk factors should be identified and"br" their impact on overall safety quantified. To this end, multivariate regression equations, commonly known as"br" accident prediction models, have been used in the study. The paper describes the development of accident"br" prediction models in three Central European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria), using samples of"br" data on railway level crossings with flashing lights. The models were used to quantify the impact of several risk"br" factors. The cross-country study design enabled comparison of obtained experience and drawing conclusions for"br" further development of both road and railway network safety management.

Towards the development of real time services for an optimized multimodal mobility supported by cooperative networks and open data - Advances in TIMON project

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:07:10 +0100

TIMON project (www.timon-project.eu) aims at providing Real-Time (RT) information and services through a cooperative open web-based platform and a mobile application to different transport users – drivers, Vulnerable Road Users (VRU), and businesses."br" Problems such as the traffic congestion and accidents cause cities to be the principal source of pollutant emissions. TIMON provides a solution by creating a cooperative ecosystem which connects people, vehicles, infrastructure and business, with the aim of improving safety, sustainability, flexibility and efficiency of the road transport."br" The system collects and stores RT data from infrastructure, cars, VRUs and open data; it processes the information using several innovative technologies, such as open data management, hybrid vehicle communications, artificial intelligence and cooperative positioning; and delivers RT services to drivers, VRUs and business particularly information on nearby accidents, traffic jams or air pollution, a multi-modal commuter and dynamic route planner.

First steps of the FIBRESHIP project: Engineering, production and life cycle management for the complete construction of large length fibre-based ships.

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:06:46 +0100

The main objective of the FIBRESHIP project is to enable the building of the complete hull and superstructure of large-length seagoing and inland ships in FRP materials by overcoming few technical challenges. In order to achieve this objective, the project will develop, qualify and audit innovative FRP materials for marine applications, elaborate new design and production guidelines and procedures, generate efficient production and inspection methodologies, and develop new validated software analysis tools. Clear performance indicators will be designed and applied in the evaluation of the different solutions developed for three targeted vessels categories. Finally, the different technologies generated in FIBRESHIP will be first validated and then demonstrated by using advanced simulation techniques and experimental testing on real-scale structures."br" This paper is dealing with the presentation of the project scope and progress of the FIBRESHIP project over the first six months.

Scenarios and requirements for the operation of longer freight trains in Europe

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:01:29 +0100

The increase of the length of freight trains in operation across EU corridors is a key objective to achieve to increase the capacity and strengthen the competitiveness of rail freight transport by decreasing the cost of rail haulage without affecting safety standards. Research projects such as MARATHON-FP7 aimed at developing technical solutions for the regular operation of 1,500 metres long freight trains."br" The definition of technical and homologation requirements, together with safety standards and protocols for radio-remote controlling is of paramount importance to ensure that longer freight trains are put in operation across rail networks in EU Member States and beyond."br" Shift2Rail project DYNAFREIGHT (whose activities are carried out in cooperation with the Shift2Rail project FF4LE) is now an ongoing project and full results will be available in late 2018. This paper shows the results achieved at the current intermediate stage on the definition of longer train requirements and tests. Functional and technical requirements of longer trains, including the radio controlled traction and braking are going to be defined with the aim to develop a radio system for long train operation ready for certification. This paper reports the results of the safety analysis performed with full-scale tests and first indications for functional requirements. Moreover, the paper reports the results of pneumatics and multibody dynamics simulations performed to provide guidelines on how to reduce the risk of derailment of long freight trains. The analyses will deal with different train configurations (vehicles and payloads), initial speed and brake applications, as well as different track layouts including gradients and horizontal curves."br" Finally, a thorough analysis of infrastructure requirements has to be developed to derive common technical specification and quality requirements for rail infrastructure to accommodate long freight train operations. The present paper reports the analysis made on the Spanish rail network leading to preliminary identification of lines where 1500m long trains could be tested, while identifying current infrastructure constraints that constitute barriers against a full implementation of longer train traffic.

BMVI Network of Experts "Knowledge – Ability – Action": An Intermodal Research Network for an Innovation Oriented and Resilient Transport System in Germany

Scipedia content — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:08 +0100

The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) is taking an innovative course of action to face challenges for future transport. It pools the expertise and skills of seven departmental research facilities and executive agencies in an intermodal research network entitled “BMVI Network of Experts: Knowledge – Ability – Action”. The research network works on modal and intermodal solutions for complex challenges such as climate change, environmentally friendly development, changes to energy policy, digitalization and ageing infrastructure. The objective of transport policy is to put new, sustainable concepts into practice. These shall be based on technical and scientific innovations in order to create a long-lasting, permanently resilient infrastructure.

Towards Environmentally Friendly High-Energy Cathodes for Sustainable Lithium-Ion Batteries

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:59:47 +0100

The EU-funded collaborative MARS-EV Project (FP7, grant agreement 609201) has been targeting inter alia the"br" realization of aqueous electrode processing technologies for high-energy lithium-ion positive electrodes with a"br" particular focus on achieving the high recycling requirements established by the European Commission in its"br" Battery Directive 2006/66 EG, stipulating a minimum recycling rate of 50%. Indeed, the aqueous electrode"br" fabrication does not only allow for avoiding the use of environmentally hazardous, toxic, and expensive organic"br" solvents as well as the need for super-dry conditions up to the cell assembly, but moreover a facilitated recycling"br" process due to the water-soluble binding agents. Additionally, of great importance with regard to the latter is the"br" careful selection of the cathode chemistry – not least with respect to economic aspects."br" Herein, we summarize the results and progresses obtained within MARS-EV, highlighting their importance for"br" the realization of environmentally friendly lithium-ion batteries for a sustainably electrified transportation.

An offshore energy simulation through flow networks: CEL within the MSP Challenge 2050 simulation game platform

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:59:02 +0100

This paper presents the design of the offshore energy simulation CEL as a flow network, and its integration in the MSP Challenge 2050 simulation game platform. This platform is designed to aid learning about the key characteristics and complexity of marine or maritime spatial planning (MSP). The addition of CEL to this platform greatly AIDS MSP authorities in learning about and planning for offshore energy production, a highly topical and big development in human activities at sea. Rather than a standard flow network, CEL incorporates three additions to accommodate for the specificities of energy grids: an additional node for each team's expected energy, a split of each node representing an object into input and output parts to include the node's capacity, and bidirectional edges for all cables to enable more complex energy grid designs. Implemented with Dinic's algorithm it takes less than 30ms for the simulation to run for the average amount of grids included in an MSP Challenge 2050 game session. In this manner CEL enables MSP authorities and their energy stakeholders to use MSP Challenge 2050 for designing and testing more comprehensive offshore energy grids.

Customers' demands for multimodal tariffs

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:56:52 +0100

Transport provider are facing the question of how to adjust their service as part of an integrated service. For the determination of potentials for different models of multimodal tariffs, a survey was carried out among occasional and regular users of public transport in the major city of Frankfurt am Main. 43 % of all adults in Frankfurt have a mobility suitable for multimodal tariffs: They are customers of public transport and require a car on an occasional basis. Only a quarter of the customers using public transport occasionally and one fifth of all regular customers are not interested in ticketing solutions including more than conventional means of public transport. Though, the preferences for content which is integrated in a multimodal tariff, are heterogeneous. Consequently, the content shouldn’t be predetermined but modularly built. This conclusion is supported by conjoint analyses: Tariff combinations with selectable contents provide higher benefits. From the customers’ point of view, price strategies including the use of transportation services at a discount are more valued than a limited use at no costs.

Review of Unmanned Aircraft System Technologies to Enable Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Operations

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:52:51 +0100

The need to develop and deploy Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) aerial vehicles has intensified over the last decade. As the demand for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has increased, so too has the regulations that surrounds the industry. Strict regulations are currently in place but differ from country to country. Due to these regulations BVLOS innovators have been posed the task of exploring the means of operating flight missions with the UAV out of the sight of the pilot. Autonomous flight capability is not only fundamental to BVLOS operations for UAS but also likely to have a significant impact on the future development of passenger carrying autonomous aircraft. This review explores the technologies that have been developed to date that enable BVLOS applications. BVLOS flight operations have the potential to open a huge area of commercial opportunity however, there remain many concerns about the current capabilities of UAS to detect and avoid manned and unmanned airborne hazards that may pose a significant safety risk.

Distributed opportunistic sensing and fusion for traffic congestion detection

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:52:16 +0100

Our particular research in the Distributed Analytics\\ud and Information Science International Technology Alliance\\ud (DAIS ITA) is focused on ”Anticipatory Situational Understanding\\ud for Coalitions”.\\ud This paper takes the concrete example of detecting and\\ud predicting traffic congestion in the UK road transport network\\ud from existing generic sensing sources, such as real-time CCTV\\ud imagery and video, which are publicly available for this purpose.\\ud This scenario has been chosen carefully as we believe that in\\ud a typical city, all data relevant to transport network congestion\\ud information is not generally available from a single unified source,\\ud and that different organizations in the city (e.g. the weather office,\\ud the police force, the general public, etc.) have their own different\\ud sensors which can provide information potentially relevant to\\ud the traffic congestion problem. In this paper we are looking at\\ud the problem of (a) identifying congestion using cameras that,\\ud for example, the police department may have access to, and (b)\\ud fusing that with other data from other agencies in order to (c)\\ud augment any base data provided by the official transportation\\ud department feeds. By taking this coalition approach this requires\\ud using standard cameras to do different supplementary tasks like\\ud car counting, and in this paper we examine how well those tasks\\ud can be done with RNN/CNN, and other distributed machine\\ud learning processes.\\ud In this paper we provide details of an initial four-layer\\ud architecture and potential tooling to enable rapid formation of\\ud human/machine hybrid teams in this setting, with a focus on\\ud opportunistic and distributed processing of the data at the edge\\ud of the network. In future work we plan to integrate additional\\ud data-sources to further augment the core imagery data.

Traditional and Participatory Methods assessing Autonomous Driving

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:50:38 +0100

This paper deals with traditional and participatory theoretical models of technology assessment by different stakeholders. Conclusions on the policy implications, especially in autonomous mobility, of such a comparison will be drawn while also analyzing the acceptance survey results based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and discussing some of its limitations. Further on participatory models of technology assessment especially will be discussed. The process of entering in dialogue and triggering engagement from different stakeholders and lay persons has the potential to open new avenues of understanding as well as demonstrating to researchers and policy makers that non-experts may have important reflections on technological agendas. Engagement may familiarize researchers and policy makers with new types of arguments and pave the way for a more inclusive, effective and socially embedded process of new technology embracement.

Truck parking space creation through intelligent structuring of given capacity

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:44:21 +0100

This study shows how intelligent parking systems can extend the parking space capacity along German federal motorways by the use of satellite close-ups. Through this approach, the expansion potential of existing rest and service stations can be analyzed by means of intelligent parking facility management. We focused our analysis on German federal motorways with the highest lack for truck parking lots. Along these motorways, suitable rest and service stations were identified and we applied different telematics and non-telematics approaches in order to increase the capacity of parking areas without starting extensive constructional projects. Our findings show that parking space utilization can be significantly improved by simple structural extensions and a simultaneous use of intelligent parking facility management. Our study shows possibilities for a rapid and sustainable increase of truck parking spaces in a simple way.

Processing of passenger data for zone estimation

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:41:12 +0100

Information society: we call often so our society. It means we are collecting day by day lot of data. On the other"br" hand we need lot of information. How can we transform data into information? One way is the data mining and"br" data processing. In this paper we show our previous and latest results and their comparison in the field of public"br" transport. We introduce a method to discover information among the data of public transport usage (boarding"br" and alighting). We describe how it is possible to find the connection between planning zones and raw data of"br" boarding and alighting. The method shown in this paper is the example that the data of a possible e-ticketing"br" system inherits much more information than we can image."br" The paper shows previous calculation results in a city with 130 thousand inhabitants, the new result in a city with"br" 40 thousand inhabitants and the comparison and conclusions of the results of these two different cities.

Terminal 4.0 – automation and optimization of multimodal cargo handling processes in existing terminal environments

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:40:42 +0100

The transition towards logistics 4.0 is a major challenge for existing and historically grown multimodal hinterland cargo terminals. It is assumed that the traditional communication between human operators, machines and products will become increasingly negligible and will be converted to internet (of things)-based technologies. So far, automated processes have already been partially implemented in some areas as a growing number of operational processes is already undergoing change of digitization, but major adaptations are necessary due to the transition phase towards logistics 4.0. The paper presents findings of the ongoing research project Terminal 4.0 within the framework of the 7. call of the tender “Mobilität der Zukunft” of the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit). It deals with the automation and optimization of existing cargo handling processes in order to develop recommendations for future terminals 4.0.

Smart infrastructure access policy: a highway towards more efficient road freight transport

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:34:36 +0100

This paper describes interim results of the ongoing CEDR-funded "FALCON" project, which aims to introduce a step improvement in transport efficiency in Europe through the definition of a new performance-oriented legislative framework for road freight transport, thus ensuring a proper match between vehicles and the infrastructure. A Smart Infrastructure Access Policy (SIAP) is being developed as the primary method of regulation, in which policy explicitly specifies the performance level required from the road freight vehicle with respect to safety, manoeuvrability, infrastructure loading, and environmental impact, while giving consideration to national topologies and operational conditions. This method is fundamentally different to the prescriptive approach which mandates mass and dimension limits of vehicles. The prescriptive approach indirectly and often ineffectively ensures acceptable vehicle performance, as is the case of current, mainly prescriptive oriented, European legislation (96/53/EC).

Analysis of the market actors interests in Shift2Rail and Interoperability Framework solutions

Scipedia content — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:30:57 +0100

The Interoperability Framework (IF) designed and developed in the IT2Rail project and promoted in GoF4R project (both funded under the EU Shift2Rail programme) reduces and potentially eliminates the need for centrally directed and coordinated adoption of centralized platforms or single standards. The Interoperability Framework creates an explicit, formal, shareable, machine-readable and computable description of data and services in order to allow a higher degree of automation of distributed processes across multiple data formats and unspecified actors."br" Analysis of the market actor interests in the Interoperability Framework technologies and relevant use cases have been identified. In addition, the paper presents the results from a survey and interviews with relevant stakeholders, conducted to understand the impact and the benefit perceived on the adoption of the Interoperability Framework solutions.