Scipedia: Documents published in 2018

Does the introduction of small electric cargo vehicles into a logistics concept for last mile delivery of parcels and groceries in urban areas reduce its environmental impact ?

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

The presented investigation analysed the environmental impact of introducing electric cargo vehicles into logistics concepts for last mile delivery of parcels and groceries in urban areas. In order to evaluate the environmental impact of substituting an electric cargo vehicle as e.g. an electric light duty vehicle (LDV), a batterv-electric passenger car (BEV) or an e-cargobike for a diesel light duty vehicle, a comparison based on a simplified Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) was conducted. Data from existing LCA studies of vehicles were combined with information on the actual transport service, i.e. the average cargo weight of vehicles. The expected change of the four chosen indicators cumulated primary energy consumption (for energy efficiency), CO2 equivalents (for climate impact), NOx and PM (for air quality) and noise level was estimated. Results show that application of all investigated electric cargo vehicles has a potential to reduce the environmental impact of the logistics chain and that application of e-cargobikes has an especially high reduction potential.

Neuromorphic Vision Based Multivehicle Detection and Tracking for Intelligent Transportation System

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:14:36 +0100

Neuromorphic vision sensor is a new passive sensing modality and a frameless sensor with a number of advantages over traditional cameras. Instead of wastefully sending entire images at fixed frame rate, neuromorphic vision sensor only transmits the local pixel-level changes caused by the movement in a scene"jats:italic" at the time they occur"/jats:italic". This results in advantageous characteristics, in terms of low energy consumption, high dynamic range, sparse event stream, and low response latency, which can be very useful in intelligent perception systems for modern intelligent transportation system (ITS) that requires efficient wireless data communication and low power embedded computing resources. In this paper, we propose the first neuromorphic vision based multivehicle detection and tracking system in ITS. The performance of the system is evaluated with a dataset recorded by a neuromorphic vision sensor mounted on a highway bridge. We performed a preliminary multivehicle tracking-by-clustering study using three classical clustering approaches and four tracking approaches. Our experiment results indicate that, by making full use of the low latency and sparse event stream, we could easily integrate an online tracking-by-clustering system running at a high frame rate, which far exceeds the real-time capabilities of traditional frame-based cameras. If the accuracy is prioritized, the tracking task can also be performed robustly at a relatively high rate with different combinations of algorithms. We also provide our dataset and evaluation approaches serving as the first neuromorphic benchmark in ITS and hopefully can motivate further research on neuromorphic vision sensors for ITS solutions.

Document type: Article

Addressing Barriers And Opportunities Engendered By Big Data In Transport: The Lemo Project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:12:55 +0100

Big data has opened a wide spectrum of opportunities in the field of transport research. Several challenges will constitute opportunities for researchers (as well as the industry) in the foreseeable future. Observing the recent growing interest in the application of big data within urban transportation, as well as the widened scope of its applications, it is evident that most of the challenges have yet to be addressed. A new European‐funded project, Leveraging Big Data to Manage Transport Operations (LeMO1) project will address these issues by investigating the implications of the utilisation of such big data to enhance the sustainability and competitiveness of European transport sector. The project will study and analyse big data in the European transport domain in particular with respect to five transport dimensions: mode, sector, technology, policy and evaluation. 2nd Symposium on Management of Future motorway and urban Traffic Systems, Ispra, June 11‐12, 2018

Road user related risks and measures – evidence based decision support for road safety policy

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:10:28 +0100

The EU-funded SafetyCube† project aims at facilitating decision making in road safety by providing systematically analysed and assessed scientific evidence on risk factors and countermeasures. While this is done for the areas infrastructure, vehicle and road users, this paper focus solely on the latter. The project outcomes are available online and are targeted at actual decision makers as well as researchers. Various stakeholders were consulted to identify hot topics and the needs of practitioners. The accessible database currently contains about 450 individual study outcomes and synopses with condensed information for 49 road risks (e.g. speeding, drink-driving, fatigue) and measures (fitness to drive, education, enforcement, campaigns, etc.) associated with all kinds of road users (vehicle drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, elderly, young, commercial drivers). In a further step, cost-benefit will be assessed on the basis of the effectiveness of countermeasures. While vehicle and infrastructure related risks and measures are well suited for effect quantification, this is a challenging endeavour for road users for many reasons.

EurOpean Logistics Information eXchange with waterways

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:09:59 +0100

Inland Waterway Transport (IWT) has the potential of moving significant amounts of cargo across the European continent. Similar to the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) initiative in the road sector, River Information Services (RIS) have been created to advance IWT in terms of safety and efficiency of transports by means of telematics, with the ultimate goal to improve its share in multi-modal transport chains. Since the beginning of the creation of RIS within European projects funded in the Framework Programmes (FP) of the European Commission (EC) around the millennium, the EU has been actively supporting the RIS initiative, which led into a European Directive (2005/44/EC) on the implementation of RIS in the member states. Since then the implementation of RIS infrastructure and services has progressed a lot and is heading towards a harmonized implementation in Europe around the year 2020."br" Under the umbrella of e-freight and embedded into multiple FP-funded projects, serious attempts have been made and are still ongoing to progress with the multi-modal exchange of digital transport information for logistics purposes. In line with the Digital Single Market Strategy, the European Commission has launched the DINA (Digital Inland Waterway area) initiative which aims at fostering the digitalisation of logistics information flows in inland navigation."br" The Horizon 2020 (H2020) project “Architecture for EurOpean Logistics Information eXchange” (AEOLIX) started in September 2016 and aims at overcoming the current fragmentation of digital logistics information by creating a neutral platform which allows to connect data streams from different sources and transport modes and provide easy access to the information for logistics players."br" viadonau as the Austrian RIS Provider is actively supporting the DINA initiative and pushing the use of RIS for logistics purposes in order to strengthen the role of IWT in European transport. Within the project AEOLIX, viadonau is actively involved in the “Living Lab Danube” which aims at increasing the use of digital transport information by the stronger use of electronic reporting capabilities and connection with other types of data like vessel position or status of the inland waterway infrastructure."br" Within the AEOLIX Living Lab Danube, digital flows of transport information shall be demonstrated for transports in the Danube corridor between Austria and Romania and fed into the “AEOLIX Platform” which connects digital data streams from various sources and transport modes. It will be investigated under which conditions privacy related information collected by the governmental RIS Providers can be shared within the AEOLIX Ecosystem. Through the involvement of several logistics players, the AEOLIX concept will be evaluated with respect to its maturity and benefit."br" Since the AEOLIX projects will run until mid-2019, it is foreseen to present at the TRA 2018 the current state of play in River Information Services in Europe, their connection to EU regulations and funding instruments as well as inter-mediate results from the AEOLIX Living Lab Danube which will for the first time connect cross-border IWT information directly to an inter-modal data hub for logistics users.

Development of a Multi-Step Approach for Continuous Planning and Forecasting of Required Transport Capacity for the Design of Sustainable Transport Chains

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:09:47 +0100

Logistics service providers deal with the challenge of estimating future freight transport demands due to the increasing volatility. Short-term planning horizons and planning uncertainties cause reduced capacity utilization and increasing empty mileage. Due to higher flexibility of road transportation, planning uncertainties in freight transport lead to using the road as a preferential mode of transport in most cases. Thus, more ecologically sustainable, but less flexible modes of transport as rail or waterway are omitted."br" To overcome the aforementioned challenge, a multistep approach is proposed to continuously plan future transport capacity in order to redesign and adjust the intermodal fleet accordingly. The proposed multistep approach combines methods of forecasting, multi-period intermodal routing and decision support for capacity adjustments. Finally, we present first results on a use-case of outbound logistics in automotive industry and give an outlook on our future research.

An Algorithm to Determine Airport Runway Usage/Configuration Based on Aircraft Trajectories

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:08:48 +0100

transportation growth is a reality described by different sources (e.g. The World Bank [1], the latest Eurocontrol report [2]). One essential initiative required to improve air traffic capacity while maintaining or increasing safety is to introduce predictive analytics that enable a dynamic adaptation of airline operations in a preemptive manner to an ever changing environment. An important part of this task is to model airport operations and plan accordingly. Particularly runway usage and/or configuration are important aspects of these operations. For example, prior knowledge of runway usage could improve flight plan optimizers outputs. Of course, to create any model or predictor, ground truth data is required. However most of the time, detailed information about runway historical usage/configuration is inaccessible, unreliable or it belongs to national ATC services providers. Then, thinking on a high-scale forecast methodology there is an important drawback given the lack of a feasible target for most of the airports. Thus, the goal of this work is to introduce an accessible, easy to implement algorithm that allows historical reconstruction of runway usage/configuration for any airport based on data transmitted from aircrafts through either Radar or ADS- B technologies, even when the track data is not consistent. We study the quality of the assessment performed by the two outputs of the algorithm: 1) Measuring runway usage accuracy in comparison to the report given by the Spanish ATC service provider (ENAIRE) for each flight landing to or taking off from two Spanish airports, Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona-El Prat, during October 2016. 2) Comparing the Netherlands-Schiphol runway configuration reported by the Netherlands airspace regulator (LVNL) for three different months: February, April and August 2018. The results provide values above 97% of accuracy for both types of assessment.

Implementing a two-step decision-aid tool for the assessment of new mobility offers in a spatial framework

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:08:33 +0100

In this article we seek to elaborate various sustainable mobility scenarios depending on heterogeneous"br" geographical contexts. We use a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to assess 50 mobility offers, relying on"br" an original two-step assessment method. In a first step, we use the diviz decision-aid tool to obtain a global score"br" for every offer, on the basis of 18 criteria that cover the three domains of sustainable development: economics,"br" environment, society. In a second step, we use the MICMAC decision-aid tool to build relationships of influence"br" and dependency between the 18 criteria. For each type of territory, we state what could be a development scenario"br" for the future of mobility. Ultimately, an innovative hybrid mobility solution relies on the strengths and levers of"br" the offers that were assessed, in response to the mobility scenario. We identify relevant solutions for dense and"br" low-dense areas: in particular, carpooling offers reach particular efficiency in low-dense areas, combined with"br" walking practices. Such combinations should be assisted by reliable multimodal mobility applications.

Document type: Conference object

Are SRM drives a real alternative for EV powertrain? : Conclusions of the Workshop

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:07:02 +0100

This paper is a summary of the debate that took place in the round tables: - What is slowing down the application of SRM drivesfor road vehicle electrification? - Where should research and development focus toboost application of SRM drives to E-traction? These round tables were the second part of the Workshop SRM an alternative for E-Traction held at the EPSEVG, on February 2, 2018.

Empirical MFDs using Google Traffic Data

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:02:24 +0100

The Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) describes the relation between accumulation and speed in a zone. While theoretically expected, empirical validations have been done with limited numbers of floating car (e.g., taxi) data, and loop detectors. This paper will verify existence, shape and crispness of the MFD using Floating Car Data (FCD) from Google. Due to the large amount of users (i.e., high penetration rate), this unique data-set contains traffic information with a high spatial resolution, a high spatial scope and high reliability. We use the data for 3 purposes. First, an MFD for the city of Amsterdam is constructed, revealing a strong relationship between the average density and the average flow. It also shows that the urban road network never reaches its capacity. Secondly, inhomogeneity is analysed. Traffic is well spread over the network, hence inhomogeneity is low. Moreover, if present, the inhomogeneity has only a minor effect on the flow. Also traffic in different directions is homogeneous. Thirdly, for the first time, an MFD is created for a whole country, which turned out to be very crisp as well. This suggests that small areas or a directional split are not needed to create crisp MFDs. That, in turn, implies that a crisp MFD is not a sufficient condition to apply control without considering internal dynamics. "br

Supply Chain Security: Benefits for the Socio-Economy

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:02:09 +0100

Maritime Intermodal door-2-door supply chains are complex as many different actors are involved. Beside legal supply chain actors also criminals use logistics transport networks for their operations. For example, illicit narcotics, weapons and counterfeited products are smuggled in these supply chains. There are already mitigation measures for maritime security in place but there is still need for improvement in order to reduce the volume of illicit transports and the social damages related to it."br" Customs authorities focus on these illicit activities in order to detect and to limit damage to the society. The main aim is to ensure safety and security in international trade. Therefore, customs authorities use risk targeting systems which are based on customs declaration data and intelligence systems to detect high risk trade flows. High quality data has to be used to detect these illicit trade flows. However, today the quality of data is lacking. The CASSANDRA project developed a data pipeline approach to improve the data quality by sharing data between all legal supply chain actors, including businesses and authorities."br" During the project a socio-economic cost benefit analysis was carried out. A matrix specially designed for the evaluation of improvement of security in maritime supply chains was developed to assess the benefit generated by the data pipeline. The implemented methodology approach for a quantitative assessment considers criteria like risk indicators (available data on which customs decide to inspect a container), kinds of damages (e.g. damages due to smuggling of narcotics or weapons) and inspection rates. For the validation of the methodology interviews with different European customs authorities were carried out."br" The execution of socio-economic cost benefit analysis was carried out twice: with and without the implementation of the data pipeline approach. Thus, the damage for the socio-economy, which is already prevented by customs (as-is situation), and the possible improvements through the CASSANDRA approach (to-be situation) was compared.

Two decades of smart growth in Maryland (U.S.A): impact assessment and future directions of a national leader

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:57:15 +0100

In the context of land use planning, Maryland has attracted significant attention at the national scale for innovative planning efforts. In 1997, Maryland passed a package of legislation collectively referred to as ‘smart growth’. Distinct from earlier regulatory state level attempts to alter development patterns in states like Oregon and Florida, this approach relied on incentives to influence development patterns. This innovative ‘inside/outside’ approach to managing growth relies on targeting state funding to encourage growth and investment in existing urbanized areas and areas planned for development (Priority Funding Areas [PFAs]) while discouraging growth and encouraging the preservation of rural areas (Rural Legacy Areas). Transportation funding for new projects or increased capacity must be directed into PFAs, constituting 85% of total funding on average from 1999 to 2008. Though the statute restricts the expenditure of state funds for transportation outside areas targeted for development, the statutes offer little explicit guidance regarding integrating transportation and land use policies. This article proposes that Smart Growth efforts could be even stronger if land-use policies were integrated more closely with transportation policies. The Maryland Statewide Transportation Model is applied to test the impact of various Smart Growth policies and transportation policies. The paper concludes that Smart Growth could have a bigger impact if transportation policies played a larger role.

Document type: Article

On coordinating document exchange in maritime containerized transport: the STM project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:55:38 +0100

Maritime transport involves many stakeholders, whose decisions and actions affect the whole logistic chain of containerized transport. In this context, ports play a crucial role, since their operation performance determines the quality of containerized transport. Port call processes should be coordinated, and optimized, not only during planning, but also in realizing and evaluating conducted port calls. In fact, nowadays the document exchange in maritime transport is definitely too fragmented. A major reason why is that involved port actors usually try to get access to, and retain control of, information that is valuable with respect to their own goals. As a result, seaport approaches are often uncoordinated. Such a lack of coordination in information exchange among all the involved actors provokes at least a significant waste of time, and an avoidable decrease of maritime transport efficiency. Then, the challenge of designing and implementing an effective coordination in document exchange in maritime transportation should be taken and won, as also European Commission fosters.

Application of risk assessment models for railway systems to ensure safe rail operations - Development of risk based standards for upgrading railway interlocking systems

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:55:00 +0100

Given that signaling and safety systems are strongly affected by the rapid change in technology and subject to varying rules and regulations, most railway infrastructure operators are currently using a large number of different and partly dated interlocking systems. Therefore, priorities regarding cost- and safety effectiveness have to be assigned in an objective manner during the constant upgrading and renovation process of railway networks. The paper presents a newly developed application of risk-based decision making methodology for the necessity of specific safety functions within dated interlocking systems. Focus is kept on the assessment of specific safety functions which especially help to avoid human errors. The methodology combines a fully quantitative risk model with an absolute assessment criterion derived from a normative recommendation. The presented approach serves as a basis for the development of future decision tools and equipment standards and therefore may have a noticeable impact on the future appearance of national railway networks.

On the efficient use of Road Safety Inspections on rural roads

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:50:50 +0100

Road safety on the trans-European road network (TERN) is continuously assessed and improved under Directive 2008/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on Road Infrastructure Safety Management by means of Road Safety Inspections (RSI), an effective intervention conducted by specifically trained and certified experts, who systematically scan existing roads for potential risks. For Austrian rural roads, a network 40 times the length of the Austrian part of the TERN, there is no such inspection obligation. Yet about 50 % of all road accidents in which people are injured occur on rural roads. Nonetheless, subjecting the complete rural road network to RSIs is neither necessary nor practicable. The objective of this research was therefore to develop and test theoretical methods for detecting and prioritizing sections of the road that would benefit most from such inspections. The findings (high-risk sections, mostly suitable for low-cost-measures) of one method were verified by an RSI and a comparison to low-risk sections.

Energy Efficiency and Emission Testing for Connected and Automated Vehicles Using Real-World Driving Data

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:50:11 +0100

By using the onboard sensing and external connectivity technology, connected and automated vehicles (CAV) could lead to improved energy efficiency, better routing, and lower traffic congestion. With the rapid development of the technology and adaptation of CAV, it is more critical to develop the universal evaluation method and the testing standard which could evaluate the impacts on energy consumption and environmental pollution of CAV fairly, especially under the various traffic conditions. In this paper, we proposed a new method and framework to evaluate the energy efficiency and emission of the vehicle based on the unsupervised learning methods. Both the real-world driving data of the evaluated vehicle and the large naturalistic driving dataset are used to perform the driving primitive analysis and coupling. Then the linear weighted estimation method could be used to calculate the testing result of the evaluated vehicle. The results show that this method can successfully identify the typical driving primitives. The couples of the driving primitives from the evaluated vehicle and the typical driving primitives from the large real-world driving dataset coincide with each other very well. This new method could enhance the standard development of the energy efficiency and emission testing of CAV and other off-cycle credits.

Analysis of pressure loads on installations in high-speed tunnels- with model scale experiments and numerical simulations

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:49:19 +0100

Trains passing through railway tunnels cause pressure and suction waves which affect the vehicle, tunnel equipment, and passenger comfort. In the Alps, several very long single-track, twin-tube tunnels either have been opened recently or are under construction. Pressurized cross passage tubes spaced every 333 to 500 meters interconnect the main tunnel tubes and are sealed with air-tight doors which must sustain high pressure loads."br" The impact of various configurations of the shallow cavity between the main tube and the cross passage and the pressure loads generated on installations in different configurations of high-speed tunnels are analysed by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis and experimental validations at the Tunnel Simulation Facility Göttingen (TSG) in model scale experiments (1:25). The effects on internal tunnel installations (e.g., emergency exit doors) were investigated in connection with their structural dynamics using FEA. The life span was evaluated and compared with the cumulative damage method after Palmgren- Miner.

Crowdsourcing techniques for transport planning and operations

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:45:31 +0100

Crowdsourcing is an organized way of involving people in decision-making and production. Crowdsourced"br" products, like Wikipedia, are replacing established products. Crowdsourced transport services, like UberTaxi, are"br" replacing established transport providers. Crowdsourced advice, like Trip Advisor, is replacing established experts."br" Crowdsourcing is becoming ubiquitous as people and organizations realize that it helps them make better decisions"br" and produce better products. This paper is predicated on the belief that crowdsourcing is key innovation needed"br" for public transport to thrive in this age of rapid change. It presents a model structure for helping understand"br" crowdsourcing and examples of how public transport organizations can use crowdsourcing. This paper’s goal is to"br" help practitioners and researchers implement and understand crowdsourcing by presenting a broad survey of how"br" crowdsourcing is being used today.

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of self-driving vehicles on the road

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:44:53 +0100

Vehicle manufacturers are developing new technologies for self-driving vehicles presumably replacing today’s manually driven vehicles. The purpose of this study is to apply cost-benefit analysis of expected benefits and costs with an increasing share of self-driving vehicles on the Swedish roads, and to find out which effects are most important for socio-economic profitability. Self-driving vehicles lead to reduced generalized costs for transportation. The most important benefits in the example calculations are the reduced need for drivers of lorries and decreased time cost for drivers of cars. Passenger traffic contributes with the largest part of both benefits and costs, because it represents the major part of the traffic on the roads. The net benefits are however larger for freight, because the entire cost for the driver disappears. Capital costs for the new vehicles are an important factor, but the effects on safety, saved fuel and emissions due to platooning and smoother driving are relatively small.

Transport of Li-Ion Batteries: Early Failure Detection by Gas Composition Measurements

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:44:12 +0100

Improved volumetric energy density of the battery system is requested to increase the range of upcoming electric cars. To guarantee safety of enhanced Li-ion batteries in electric vehicles operation as well as for transport and storage is of crucial importance for acceptability of this technology. Failure cases of Li-ion batteries causing high temperatures and undesirable chemical reactions which can result in exothermic reactions and furthermore thermal runaway have to be avoided reliably."br" This paper presents potential failure cases of large batteries and approaches how to detect these failures. Important parameters as well as the composition of gas release with the focus on hydrogen fluoride (HF) are provided. The aim is to improve gas composition measurement, to learn more about the Li-ion failure cases and to use early failure detection for preventing the release of harmful toxic and inflammable gases. In this paper the gas composition of the failure case “second degassing” is measured and analyzed with an FTIR spectrometer.

Localization Techniques for Water Pipeline Leakages: A Review

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:43:43 +0100

n efficient water management system placed a great emphasize in the water distribution network efficiency. Water pipeline leakages is one of the prominent issues in water distribution network that has caught the interest to most researchers. A lot of research and studies have been conducted in the past few decades in addressing this issue with the objectives of detecting and localizing the leakages accurately and efficiently. Detecting the pipeline leakages is the first step and for a complete solution the detection must follow with the leakage localization. This paper reviewed some of the localization techniques that has been proposed, explored and studied. Each technique is reviewed and discussed, where challenges are highlighted. A localization technique using vibration sensor is also proposed.

Optimizing Taxi Carpool Policies via Reinforcement Learning and Spatio-Temporal Mining

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:43:15 +0100

In this paper, we develop a reinforcement learning (RL) based system to learn an effective policy for carpooling that maximizes transportation efficiency so that fewer cars are required to fulfill the given amount of trip demand. For this purpose, first, we develop a deep neural network model, called ST-NN (Spatio-Temporal Neural Network), to predict taxi trip time from the raw GPS trip data. Secondly, we develop a carpooling simulation environment for RL training, with the output of ST-NN and using the NYC taxi trip dataset. In order to maximize transportation efficiency and minimize traffic congestion, we choose the effective distance covered by the driver on a carpool trip as the reward. Therefore, the more effective distance a driver achieves over a trip (i.e. to satisfy more trip demand) the higher the efficiency and the less will be the traffic congestion. We compared the performance of RL learned policy to a fixed policy (which always accepts carpool) as a baseline and obtained promising results that are interpretable and demonstrate the advantage of our RL approach. We also compare the performance of ST-NN to that of state-of-the-art travel time estimation methods and observe that ST-NN significantly improves the prediction performance and is more robust to outliers.

Comment: Accepted at IEEE International Conference on Big Data 2018. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1710.04350

The promotion of e-mobility in regional policies: the ongoing PROMETEUS project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:38:29 +0100

This paper presents the rationale and the first results as regards the ongoing learning process of the PROMETEUS project, co-financed by the Interreg Europe programme. This project has the objective of promoting e-mobility by tackling the lack of availability of infrastructures and low awareness among the public through the improvement of policy instruments linked to Structural Funds. Addressing the transition to a low carbon economy in five countries (Austria, Italy, Malta, Slovakia, Spain), PROMETEUS aims at overcoming such barriers and promoting e-mobility, focusing on the integration of electric mobility in strategies/plans/programs, on the definition of incentives, on awareness raising, on research and innovation. PROMETEUS, that started in January 2017, will produce a learning process based on the identification, analysis and exchange of knowledge and practices in the field of e-mobility, in order to set up and implement an Action Plan in each partner region.

Train speed profiles optimization using a genetic algorithm based on a random-forest model to estimate energy consumption

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:37:46 +0100

International audience; The most important part of the train's energy is consumed by the traction system. The tractive energy depends mainly on the driving behaviour. Improving driving strategies has great potential to enhance the energy efficiency. This paper presents a speed profile optimization approach based on a genetic algorithm. The objective of the genetic algorithm is to find, for each interstation, the best speed profile which minimizes the energy consumption. The optimized profile takes into account both the physical and the operational constraints such as the maximum allowed travel time, the speed limitations per section and the maximum allowed acceleration and jerk. The fitness function is based on a Random Forest model which is built using on-board measurements. The aim of the model is to estimate accurately the energy consumption corresponding to each speed profile. The initial population of genetic algorithm is mainly composed of the best realistic speed profiles extracted from the collected data.

Document type: Conference object

Repair of Discrete Rail Head Defects – A Novel Technology

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:37:32 +0100

The complexity and severity of contact stresses at the rail-wheel interface coupled with operational conditions of acceleration and braking can lead to the formation of discrete defects such as squats and wheel burns even in the best maintained railway networks. Modern track inspection technologies are deployed for the early detection of such defects to manage the required remedial action to prevent transverse rail breaks. The remedial actions involve either in-situ repair or the replacement of a short length of rail containing the defect. This paper examines the technical and financial imperatives for rail defect repair and details a novel, cost effective, and largely automated low preheat weld restoration technology for the in-situ repair of discrete rail head defects. The paper provides explanation of the science behind the use of low preheat process through instrumented trials to establish the thermal history, metallographic examinations to establish internal integrity, and controlled tests to demonstrate fatigue resistance under cyclic loading. Key findings of the independently audited trial are also summarised.

Mapping and evaluation for GPS restricted environments used for automated parking applications

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:37:18 +0100

In this paper, two state-of-the-art solutions to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem are implemented, depending on the environment type. A line feature-based solution using the extended Kalman filter is selected for structured environments, while for unstructured an incremental likelihood maximization algorithm using scan matching is adopted. This work proposes an evaluation method for the mapping accuracy assessment, able to handle results from different map representations. The resulting maps of both algorithms are compared to the digitalized areas blueprints after being converted to a common representation, which makes use of custom elements supported by the popular OpenStreetMap digital map format. Experiments were performed in two parking garages with different characteristics showing the applicability of the proposed evaluation method independent of the SLAM algorithm used.

Impact of Shift2Rail - a KPI model for the entire railway system

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:37:06 +0100

The Joint Undertaking Shift2Rail comprises five Innovation Programs and five Cross Cutting Activities of European railway research and development within the next years. More than 40 Technical Demonstrators will be developed in the field of rolling stock, traffic management and control systems, infrastructure, IT solutions and rail freight. A technology and impact evaluation is an essential element within the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking in order to show the effect that this initiative will have on its key target KPIs: to double the capacity and availability and to reduce the costs of the railway system by 50%. The Project “IMPACT-1” is producing a comprehensive bottom-up KPI model with the aim to show the interdependencies between the technological or procedural developments and the high level KPIs of the railway system. The overall objective is to prove the achievement of the objectives of Shift2Rail by determining to which extent the aims of reducing costs and improving availability and capacity will be reached. In a first step, these interdependencies will be analyzed as cause-and-effect chains in order to obtain a qualitative model. Subsequently, the qualitative relations will be replaced by mathematical and logical descriptions. This is necessary in order to apply the model to data of the different market segments like high speed, regional, urban / suburban and freight rail. The analysis of the interdependencies as well as the application of the model is done in close collaboration between industry, infrastructure managers, railway operators and scientific institutions. Thus a KPI model will be generated which covers all aspects of the entire railway system. The presentation will cover the approach that has been chosen to develop the qualitative and quantitative model, share the experience made during this process and show the first results of the impact assessment of the Joint Undertaking Shift2Rail.

Exploiting long coherent integration times in DVB-T based passive radar systems

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:35:56 +0100

Long coherent integration times can be exploited in passive radar systems in order to broaden their coverage and to improve their target detection capability. However, proper strategies must be considered to compensate for the target migration effects that could limit the system performance when long coherent processing intervals are used. In this paper, we refer to the case of a passive coherent location system for air traffic surveillance, exploiting DVB-T signals as source of opportunity, and we propose two strategies able to deal with the typically high speeds and possible accelerations of civil aircrafts. We show that the proposed detection schemes allow to effectively correct the target walk effects and therefore to benefit from the extended coherent integration time, while controlling the false alarm rate. The effectiveness is demonstrated on both simulated and real data provided by Leonardo S.p.A. The experimental results clearly show that the proposed approaches allow the coherent integration time to be increased up to a few seconds.

Modélisation de la Mobilité Urbain à échelle Métropolitaine : une Comparaison des Modèles de Transport Franciliens

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:32:29 +0100

International audience; Modeling transportation systems is strategic to evaluate urban development projects by providing traffic estimates and social, economic or environmental impacts. This paper puts forward an analysis grid highlighting Travel Demand Models (TDMs) characteristics and specificities to spell out the modeled mobility aspects and their operational capacities. This grid is then applied on 5 operational models used in the Paris region.In order to build this analytical framework, the standard model structure based on the supply, the demand, the mobility uses and their impacts is assessed. The proposed grid is articulated around the spatio-temporal frame, the demand, the transportation modes and services supply, and the mobility uses representations. Travel demand representation is treated in-depth by focusing on mobility decisions modeling. A final analytic table comparing Paris region models highlights the different mobility aspects revealed by each and discusses their specificities and their link to the TDMs’ operational uses.

Document type: Conference object

Fuel cell electric buses: Experience of a zero-emission solution

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:31:58 +0100

Mobility is at the heart of our society meanwhile the transport sector is responsible for about one third of Europe’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the main cause of air and noise pollution, affecting citizens’ health, especially in urban areas. What if we could find a way to move as flexibly, quickly and conveniently as today and at the same time keep our environment clean? Fuel cell electric buses are part of the solution and a commercialisation strategy is in place to bring the costs down, and this is what past deployments and the JIVE project are demonstrating across Europe."br" After introducing the topic and explaining what fuel cell electric buses are, the paper will highlight the results and recommendations of previous and current fuel cell bus deployment projects to date – namely CHIC, High V.LO-City and Hytransit. The JIVE and MEHRLIN projects, which will deploy 139 new fuel cell buses and their hydrogen infrastructure will then be introduced along with the commercialisation strategy of fuel cell buses that started in parallel. The paper ends with a mention of the JIVE 2 project, which will add another 152 fuel cell buses in European cities, and will expend the deployment to new countries in Europe.

A Pipeline for Lenslet Light Field Quality Enhancement

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:30:51 +0100

In recent years, light fields have become a major research topic and their applications span across the entire spectrum of classical image processing. Among the different methods used to capture a light field are the lenslet cameras, such as those developed by Lytro. While these cameras give a lot of freedom to the user, they also create light field views that suffer from a number of artefacts. As a result, it is common to ignore a significant subset of these views when doing high-level light field processing. We propose a pipeline to process light field views, first with an enhanced processing of RAW images to extract subaperture images, then a colour correction process using a recent colour transfer algorithm, and finally a denoising process using a state of the art light field denoising approach. We show that our method improves the light field quality on many levels, by reducing ghosting artefacts and noise, as well as retrieving more accurate and homogeneous colours across the sub-aperture images.

Comment: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 2018, 5 pages, 7 figure

Train-to-Ground communications of a Train Control and Monitoring Systems: A simulation platform modelling approach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:30:02 +0100

Under the SAFE4RAIL project, we are developing a simulation platform based on a discrete-events network simulator."br" This platform models the Train-to-Ground (T2G) link in the framework of a system-level simulation of"br" Train Control Management System (TCMS). The modelled T2G link is based on existing wireless technologies,"br" e.g. Wi-Fi and LTE. Different T2G scenarios are defined in order to evaluate the performances of the Mobile"br" Communication Gateway (managing train communications) and Quality of Services (QoS) offered to TCMS applications"br" in the context of various environments (regular train lines, train stations, shunting zones, etc.) while"br" varying the number of communicating trains, train’s speed, radio channel characteristics (delay spread, channel"br" attenuation, etc.). This paper focusses on the design and validation of the TCMS transmission over Wi-Fi/LTE via"br" an approach based on simulation. This simulation platform aims to be also used to test actual TCMS equipment’s,"br" i.e. Mobile Communication Gateway and Ground Communication Gateway, connected to it through Hardware-"br" In-the-Loop facilities of the chosen discrete-events network simulator.

Document type: Contribution for newspaper or weekly magazine

Advances in Road Infrastructure, both Physical and Digital, for Mixed Vehicle Traffic Flows

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

Over the last years, significant resources have been devoted to developing new automation technologies for vehicles, whereas investment and resources for road infrastructure in general have steadily dwindled. INFRAMIX is preparing the road infrastructure to support the transition period and the coexistence of conventional and automated vehicles. Its main target is to design, upgrade, adapt and test both physical and digital elements of the road infrastructure, ensuring an uninterrupted, predictable, safe and efficient traffic. Towards this objective different technologies are deployed; mature simulation tools adapted to automated vehicles characteristics, new methods for traffic flow modelling to study the traffic-level influence of different levels of automated vehicles in different penetration rates, traffic estimation and traffic control algorithms. Moreover, ways of informing all types of vehicles about the control commands issued by the road operator and new kind of visual and electronic signals are developed. The project outcomes will be assessed via simulation and in real stretches of advanced highways.

Using a consolidation centre to reduce deliveries and waste collections from an urban UK shopping centre

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:29:28 +0100

Today’s shrinking product lifecycles and accelerated product-to-market launches are placing unprecedented"br" pressures on the retail sector to deal with a surfeit of goods and end-of-life products. In response, the EU has"br" enacted a considerable body of environmental legislation that place responsibility on retailers, producers and"br" distributors for the collection, treatment and recovery of end-of-life materials. Due to the complexities of materialspecific"br" collections, many retailers outsource them to specialised waste contractors resulting in considerable"br" variation in contractual, business and operational practices and complex waste logistics networks. This paper aims"br" to identify the potential logistics and environmental impacts that could arise from the use of a traditional urban"br" consolidation centre in Southampton UK as an inspection, treatment and consolidation platform for mixed,"br" recycling and hazardous wastes produced by 92 retailers operating within the city’s main urban shopping centre.

Assessing the relevance of mobile phone data to estimate origindestination matrices

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:25:52 +0100

Determining the transport demand is essential to develop models for trip planning. Until now, the most common"br" way to estimate OD matrices is surveys in the field. In spite of the quality of results, this method is long, expensive,"br" and sometime impossible to apply. Mobiles phone technologies provide new tools to investigate the travel"br" behaviours of people. However, validity and reliability of these data for flow estimation should be assessed. In the"br" paper, we propose a comparative analysis between OD matrices obtained from a commonly used traditional survey"br" and mobile phone data analysis. Both trip surveys have been independently conducted at the same time and at the"br" same point of the road network. Representativeness and variability of key indicators are studied. Similarities of"br" trip distributions have been searched among OD relationships. Advantages and limitations about using GSM"br" mobile tracking for trip surveys are then discussed. This novel method is concluded to be a promising alternative"br" or addition to traditional survey protocols, but further developments are still needed.

EGNOS service evaluation in railway environment for safety-critical operations

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:25:28 +0100

TRA 2018, 7th Transport Research Arena, Vienne, AUTRICHE, 16-/04/2018 - 19/04/2018; Cet article présente un résumé de l'état de l'art réalisé pour le projet EU STARS sur l'utilisation d'EGNOS dans le domine ferroviaire. GNSS is expected to help the railway system to be modernized. However, such localization applications requires a high level of accuracy and safety that deserve to use the best potential of satellite-based technologies. The augmentation systems, as the satellite-based augmentation system EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), helps to increase the nominal performance. One of the tasks of the EU STARS project deals with the study of the usability of EGNOS in railway environments. EGNOS has indeed been developed driven by the requirements of civil aviation safety procedures in conditions for signal reception that differ from the railway ones. In this paper, after introducing the needs and the basic principles of these systems, we describe the limitations caused by the specificities of railways and some solutions perspectives proposed by the project.

Influence of Intelligent Transport Systems services on motorways road safety

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:24:35 +0100

The positive effects of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) services on road safety was confirmed by long-term studies conducted, inter alia, in the USA, Japan and Europe. Benefits resulting from the application of ITS services can be presented through performance indicators. The paper presents analysis results of the influence of existing ITS services on road safety on motorways in Poland and indicators describing that impact. For the purpose of the analysis data of accidents (years 2013-2015) are used to describe safety level for motorways with different number and scope of ITS services. Additionally, the authors analyzed - based on the diagnosis of the traffic status - the possibility of the impact of existing and planned ITS services on improving the road safety in the area of the National Road Traffic Management System (Krajowy System Zarządzania Ruchem, - KSZR). Current level of ITS services on Polish motorways within the architecture of KSZR System and state of its development will be presented as well.

Nanosecond-precision Time-of-Arrival Estimation for Aircraft Signals with low-cost SDR Receivers

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:18:46 +0100

Precise Time-of-Arrival (TOA) estimations of aircraft and drone signals are important for a wide set of applications including aircraft/drone tracking, air traffic data verification, or self-localization. Our focus in this work is on TOA estimation methods that can run on low-cost software-defined radio (SDR) receivers, as widely deployed in Mode S / ADS-B crowdsourced sensor networks such as the OpenSky Network. We evaluate experimentally classical TOA estimation methods which are based on a cross-correlation with a reconstructed message template and find that these methods are not optimal for such signals. We propose two alternative methods that provide superior results for real-world Mode S / ADS-B signals captured with low-cost SDR receivers. The best method achieves a standard deviation error of 1.5 ns.

Comment: IPSN 2018

MOVEUS Project: "ICT Cloud-based platform and mobility services available, universal and safe for all users"

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:18:08 +0100

The main goal of MoveUs project http://www.moveus-project.eu is to design, implement, pilot, evaluate, disseminate and exploit a number of ICT tools for smart mobility in smart cities, with the aim of radically change the European users’ mobility habits by offering intelligent and personalized travel information services, helping people to decide the best transport choice and providing meaningful feedback on the energy efficiency savings obtained as a result. The paper focus on the services developed for the Madrid use case:"br" • A smart crossing service: allows pedestrians to activate a request for green light, but also takes into account the real-time status of the intersection, and directly interacts with the traffic control center and extends the green phase if needed."br" • A bus priority service: prioritizes delayed buses at selected crossings in order to optimize travel time and frequency, improving also the efficiency of this mode of transport."br" • A trip planning and info mobility service: calculates the best multimodal journey option, taking into account different parameters such as time, energy efficiency, incentives, etc.

Uncertainty Analysis in Railway Asset Management using the Point-Estimate-Method

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:17:58 +0100

Preventive and condition-based maintenance of rail infrastructure is an important aspect in reducing interruptions and delays in train operations. In case of optimal implementation, it even helps to lower the overall maintenance costs by avoiding expensive instant repairs of sudden failures including possible incidental damages. For being effective in this context, asset managers need to estimate not only the current state of the rail infrastructure and its components but they also need to predict future conditions based on available data and measurements. Stochastic modelling has shown to be a promising way for tackling these tasks. However, uncertainties of the model results need to be evaluated then in order to make maintenance planning as solid as possible. Commonly, Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are used for analyzing the stochastic distributions of the model outputs whenever analytical solutions are not possible or difficult to obtain. In contrast to that, an interesting alternative for numerically deriving important statistical quantities related to the model results (such as mean or standard deviation) is given by the so-called Point Estimate Method (PEM). Depending on the details of the model under consideration, PEM can be shown to be even exact under certain constraints while often requiring just a small number of sample points to be evaluated. In contrast to that, the MC approach naturally yields approximate results only with a potential need for several hundred or thousand sample points in order to converge. The present contribution shortly reviews the mathematical background of PEM before demonstrating its performance based on three more or less academic examples from the wide field of railway asset management: i) track degradation, ii) reliability analysis of composite systems, iii) failure detection/identification using decision trees. Finally, advantages as well as limitations of the PEM approach in comparison to common MC simulations are discussed.

Bridge vibrations under road traffic during concrete hardening of widened bridge deck

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:17:19 +0100

daptations of road infrastructure must often be performed without interruption of traffic. Vibrations induced by"br" ongoing traffic propagate to structural elements under construction and may affect the concrete hardening"br" process and thus negatively influence quality of the final structure. This paper examines major influencing"br" factors that contribute to large bridge vibration velocities during widening of bridge deck with ongoing traffic."br" The vibrations are evaluated in light of the considered limit for fresh concrete in hardening process. The analysis"br" presents a case study of a reinforced-concrete bridge under traffic excitation. Vehicle velocity, type, mass, as"br" well as road profile characteristic were varied in the simulation and bridge vibration amplitudes were calculated"br" using full vehicle-structure interaction. The simulation results provide a basis for meaningful discussion on"br" necessary traffic restrictions or other measures to avoid quality impairment in construction.

Road and Tunnel Safety Management: Establishment of a Common Enhanced Approach to Road Infrastructure and Tunnel Safety Management

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:17:04 +0100

The objective of the ECOROADS project is to overcome where appropriate the barrier established by a formal interpretation of the two Directives 2008/96/EC (on road infrastructure safety management) and 2004/54/EC (on tunnels), that in practice do not foresee the same Road Safety Audits/Inspections (RSA/RSI) to be performed on open roads and in tunnels. To overcome this legal barrier, the project examined a common-coordinated enhanced approach by applying some of the concepts (RSA/RSI) of the Directive 2008/96/EC to transition areas between tunnels and open roads, without jeopardising (but rather complementing) the usual tunnel safety management operations. This paper presents the results of the project which includes the recommendations and guidelines for the application of the RSA and RSI concepts within the tunnel safety operations.

Scenarios for the development of self-driving vehicles in freight transport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:16:35 +0100

This paper extends previous research by developing future scenarios for self-driving vehicles and their societal impacts in freight transport using Sweden as a case study. Freight experts from vehicle manufacturers, agencies, universities and hauliers were recruited for a workshop where they assessed the benefits, costs, possibilities and barriers for self-driving vehicles in freight transport. The paper shows that reduction in driver and vehicle costs, reduced number of incidents and more fuel-efficient driving are seen as the main benefits of self-driving vehicles in freight transport, and increased vehicle costs, lost jobs, reduced degree of filling and more transport as the main costs. Furthermore, reduced drivers’ costs, more hours-of-service and new business models are identified as the main drivers of the development and traffic management, small hauliers, loading and unloading and cross-border transport as the main barriers. The paper also integrates the description of possible developments of self-driving vehicles in freight transport into the four future scenarios developed for passenger transport in Sweden.

CONTEXTUALISING MOBILITY VARIABLES

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:12:17 +0100

Real Time Dense Depth Estimation by Fusing Stereo with Sparse Depth Measurements

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:11:20 +0100

We present an approach to depth estimation that fuses information from a stereo pair with sparse range measurements derived from a LIDAR sensor or a range camera. The goal of this work is to exploit the complementary strengths of the two sensor modalities, the accurate but sparse range measurements and the ambiguous but dense stereo information. These two sources are effectively and efficiently fused by combining ideas from anisotropic diffusion and semi-global matching. We evaluate our approach on the KITTI 2015 and Middlebury 2014 datasets, using randomly sampled ground truth range measurements as our sparse depth input. We achieve significant performance improvements with a small fraction of range measurements on both datasets. We also provide qualitative results from our platform using the PMDTec Monstar sensor. Our entire pipeline runs on an NVIDIA TX-2 platform at 5Hz on 1280x1024 stereo images with 128 disparity levels.

Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

A new packaging solution for Li-ion battery cells

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:10:26 +0100

The development of highly efficient batteries is a critical need in the automotive industry in order to enable the"br" future success of Electric Vehicles (EV). The optimization of battery stacks integration in EV can greatly benefit"br" from an improvement of Li-ion cells modular assembly and electrical interconnection, while ensuring a high level"br" of safety. This is part of the technical challenges of the European SPICY project."br" In this paper, we present a new polymer-based packaging concept for Li-ion cells. A modular approach is"br" investigated in order to enable a high flexibility in the selection of power output and stack geometry. The design"br" of the polymer packaging is described in details. In addition to the Li-ion cells and USB power bank packaging, a"br" specific connector for packaging assembly is developed. The manufacturing of the initial prototypes by 3Dprinting"br" and demonstrators by injection moulding is described.

Tools and guidance to help National Road Administrations address climate change

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:06:07 +0100

National Road Administrations (NRAs) are confronted by a number of challenges in their efforts to maintain the resilience of their road network in the face of increasing climate change impacts and reduce the carbon emissions associated with the maintenance and operation of their network. This paper describes the development of tools and guidance designed to help NRAs address two of these challenges; making the business case for climate change adaptation and embedding consideration of climate change in their operations and procurement processes. The work is being carried out as part of the DeTECToR (Decision-support Tools for Embedding Climate Change Thinking on Roads) project, commissioned through the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR) Transnational Research Programme. The paper presents the work undertaken in the first half of the project, focusing on the approach to developing the tools and describing the next steps which includes working with selected NRAs to trial the tools and guidance in a series of pilot studies.

Road Surface Characterization using Crowdsourcing Vehicles

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:05:26 +0100

The contact between vehicle's tires and the road surface is one of the crucial elements for driving safety and efficiency. The contact's quality depends on several factors, some of them relate to the vehicle itself and some relate to the surface conditions. Generally, these parameters change gradually with time and need to be monitored. Therefore, efforts are made to map road surfaces and analyze the collected data."br" A traditional way of detecting and mapping road surface is by using dedicated survey vehicles. In recent years, smart vehicles are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Such vehicles are generally equipped with a multitude of sensors, from wheel speed to camera and LiDAR in addition to providing internet connectivity. Thus, the use of crowd-sourcing techniques for mapping road and vehicle characteristics is becoming more practical. However, on-board vehicle sensors are normally inaccurate and are influenced by vehicle and weather conditions."br" MobiWize Solutions has developed a novel approach for road surface characteristics mapping, using crowd sourcing and sharing and demonstrated correlation with survey data provided by the Israel National Transport Infrastructure Company. This paper describes the challenges and limitations of existing characterization solutions, methods to overcome them and finally provides field tests results.

Framework for assessing the impacts of automated driving

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:05:12 +0100

Members of the Trilateral Working Group on Automation in Road Transportation (ART WG) have been working"br" to address the complexity of impacts caused by automated driving. They are setting up a high-level impact"br" assessment framework to coordinate the impact assessments performed in the field of automated driving. The"br" paper presents this framework. It gives recommendations for classifying automation implementations and"br" determining impact areas to be assessed. It also presents the impact mechanisms through which automated driving"br" is expected to impact our life, covering both direct and indirect impacts. In addition, recommendations are provided"br" for experimental procedure, simulation approach and data sharing.

Collaborative Planning and Synchromodal Transport: towards a research agenda for the SELIS project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:04:11 +0100

Policymakers and shippers are asking for a container transport with lower levels of Green House Gases emissions, lower energy consumption and improved quality. At the same time, stakeholders and carriers are looking for a more reliable transport system and an improved utilization of their assets. As candidate solutions to improve containerized freight transport in its costs and reliability, collaborative planning and synchromodal transport are proposed within the SELIS project. Synchromodal transport is a novel concept, originated in the hinterland container transport, prescribing an adaptive planning approach that takes advantage of updated information on the transport network and the synchronization of transport demand with supply. In this work, we consider the planning of synchromodal transport in a collaborative environment where costs and reliability are the two performance measures to be examined. Our work opens a research direction that takes into account both the current practice and the state of the academic knowledge to foster practice adoption of synchromodality. This research direction is presented here and detailed out as one of the research agendas of the SELIS project.

Logistics Information Exchange Platforms: insights of the AEOLIX Project

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

(Within this paper, the vision for a European logistics information exchange platform is presented and discussed, as it has been developed within the EC funded AEOLIX project. To overcome the fragmentation and lack of connectivity of ICT-based information systems for logistics decision making, AEOLIX aims to establish a cloud-based collaborative logistics ecosystem for configuring and managing (logistics-related) information pipelines. This digital business ecosystem will create visibility across the supply chain, enabling more sustainable and efficient transport of goods cross Europe. An essential element of the approach is to ensure that for logistics actors connecting to and using the ecosystem in undemanding and has a low level of complexity. AEOLIX envisions the ecosystem enabling the integration of supply-chain-related transport business processes through logistics software solutions for cloud-based connectivity and interaction, in order to support more efficient collaboration in the logistics supply chain than exists today.

Instantaneous Incident Detection System Based on Analysis of Acoustic Signal from Crash and Skid in Tunnel

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 20:03:43 +0100

Introduction:"/jats:title""jats:p"An acoustic signal-based tunnel accident detection system was developed in this study. In a tunnel environment, the sound diffusion effect is minimized and thanks to that, discrimination of accident sounds (crash and skid) from other noises can apparently be accomplished."/jats:p""/jats:sec""jats:sec""jats:title"Discussion:"/jats:title""jats:p"The system is composed of three parts: algorithm, field device, and center system. To distinguish accident-related acoustic signals such as a crash or skid among various other sounds in a tunnel, a delicate algorithm that can discriminate those signals from other normal signals generated from moving vehicles was created."/jats:p""/jats:sec""jats:sec""jats:title"Conclusion:"/jats:title""jats:p"The developed algorithm processes acoustic signals to filter out noises and to identify accident-related signals. The field device, installed in a tunnel, collects analog sounds, transforms them into digital signals, and transmits the digital signals to the server in the tunnel traffic management center. Lastly, in the tunnel traffic management center, the acoustic signal processing algorithm described above, installed in a server system, can instantaneously detect accidents. Once confirmed by the system operators, the information on the detected accidents is intended to be provided to drivers following behind as well as relevant agencies to prevent secondary accidents and to respond promptly. The developed system was evaluated in a real tunnel environment using traffic accident sounds acquired from real crash tests. The detection rates were 95, 91, and 80% at distances of 10, 30, and 50 m, respectively with a detection duration less than 1.4 s. Compared to conventional detection systems using loop detectors or video images that have a long detection time of around 1 min, the developed system can be regarded as superior in that it has an extremely short detection time, which, of course, is one of the most important factors for automatic incident detection systems."/jats:p""/jats:sec

EU projects contribute to continuing development of ship propulsion

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

Is funding from the European Commission’s Framework Programme an effective investment? And how could you demonstrate the effectiveness? This paper aims to give an answer to those questions from the perspective of MARIN’s involvement in several consecutive projects in the field of ship resistance and propulsion. Previous projects such as SMOOTH, MoVeIT, STREAMLINE, GRIP and SONIC have laid a solid foundation for MARIN’s involvement in current projects such as MOTOR, LeanShips, HOLISHIP and NOVIMAR. An ongoing research line is recognised through these projects. This paper aims to show how research is brought forward and brought to the market through these EU projects. Suggestions are given into the requirements for future FP projects to continue the development in improving the efficiency of ships and shipping.

Provision of Frequency-Containment-Reserve by Electric Vehicles: Impact of Technical Requirements

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:57:23 +0100

International audience; As the share of Renewable Energy Sources is increasing as well as Electric Vehicles sales, storage of Vehicles is now studied as a potential provider of flexibility products, such as reserve. As offering this service is remunerated, it would allow to decrease Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Vehicles and to facilitate their adoption. However, provision should satisfy technical requirements as well as mobility needs. In this paper, we analyze how degrees of freedom in the technical requirements, such as dead-band or possibility of over-solicitation could increase provision of reserve and reduce constraints on mobility needs.

A new approach to accessibility – Examining perceived accessibility in contrast to objectively measured accessibility in daily travel

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:57:10 +0100

y has conventionally been measured and evaluated ignoring user perceptions in favor of focusing on travel time and distance to a number of pre-determined destinations. Acknowledging this gap, we recently developed a scale for perceived accessibility PAC (Lättman, Friman, & Olsson 2016b) aimed at capturing the individual perspective of accessibility with a certain travel mode. In this paper, we 1) further develop the PAC measure of perceived accessibility in order to capture how easy it is to live a satisfactory life with the help of the transport system, 2) compare levels of perceived accessibility between residential areas and main travel modes, and 3) compare residents’ perceived accessibility to the objective accessibility level for the same residential area. Data from 2711 residents of Malmö, Sweden show that perceived accessibility is consistently different from objective accessibility across 13 residential areas, with minor differences in levels of perceived accessibility between areas. Surprisingly, bicycle users rate their accessibility significantly higher than those who mainly use the car or public transport for daily travel, contrary to objective accessibility assumptions. These differences point at the importance of including perceived accessibility as a complementary tool when planning for and evaluating transport systems. MistraSAMS

Loss Rank Mining: A General Hard Example Mining Method for Real-time Detectors

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:56:10 +0100

Modern object detectors usually suffer from low accuracy issues, as foregrounds always drown in tons of backgrounds and become hard examples during training. Compared with those proposal-based ones, real-time detectors are in far more serious trouble since they renounce the use of region-proposing stage which is used to filter a majority of backgrounds for achieving real-time rates. Though foregrounds as hard examples are in urgent need of being mined from tons of backgrounds, a considerable number of state-of-the-art real-time detectors, like YOLO series, have yet to profit from existing hard example mining methods, as using these methods need detectors fit series of prerequisites. In this paper, we propose a general hard example mining method named Loss Rank Mining (LRM) to fill the gap. LRM is a general method for real-time detectors, as it utilizes the final feature map which exists in all real-time detectors to mine hard examples. By using LRM, some elements representing easy examples in final feature map are filtered and detectors are forced to concentrate on hard examples during training. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our method. With our method, the improvements of YOLOv2 detector on auto-driving related dataset KITTI and more general dataset PASCAL VOC are over 5% and 2% mAP, respectively. In addition, LRM is the first hard example mining strategy which could fit YOLOv2 perfectly and make it better applied in series of real scenarios where both real-time rates and accurate detection are strongly demanded.

Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Development of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System Towards Flexible Production of Electricity, Heat and Cooling Power for Transport Applications

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:55:31 +0100

This work will show the coupling of a 6 kWel SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) system developed by AVL using a stack module from Fraunhofer IKTS with a 5 kWcold absorption chiller developed by Graz University of Technology. The exhaust gas heat from the SOFC which is available at >200 °C will be used to operate the thermally driven absorption chiller. The SOFCs fuel flexibility was extended from gaseous fuels towards the utilization of liquid fuels such as conventional and synthetic diesel to address also transport applications. Besides a high electrical efficiency of 60 %, the option to generate cooling power in addition to heat is very attractive as it will enable new fields of applications in the transport sector such as conditioned freight transport and shipping containers or serving hotel loads of ships and trains which require simultaneous generation of electricity, heat and cooling capacity. An analysis of the system configuration and its dependency on various application scenarios is shown. Finally, the build-up of the prototype including test results will be shown in this work.

Feasibility study of trains involvement in electric demand-response

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:55:18 +0100

The electric grid is more and more under pressure. A blackout is possible. In Europe and particularly in France,"br" during cold period the consumption reaches a share of production capacity higher and higher every year."br" Moreover, the increasing part of intermittent energy sources coupled with a drop of peak production sources"br" investments are nowadays impacting the electric grid stability. With electricity market liberalization and new"br" mechanisms, not only producers can be a part of electricity grid stability, consumers can. The most consuming"br" industries can act and participate in these mechanisms (demand-response). In France the first consumer is the"br" main French railway operator SNCF. Its presence all over France makes it relevant as a distributed-but-unique"br" service provider. In a societal point of view, SNCF, as a public industry, is legitimate to make efforts towards"br" electric grid stability avoiding home or region blackout due to unbalance between consumption and production."br" SNCF yearly power consumption of 8 TWh is exposed in this paper, showing a distribution of 84% for traction,"br" 14% for buildings and stations, and 2 % for rolling stock maintenance centres. Rolling stock involvement in"br" demand-response mechanism is meaningful. But reducing the power of a train may involve a delay at arrival that"br" is not acceptable for passengers. Many Driver Advisory Systems (DAS) on the market owe to reduce energy"br" consumption. The objective of this paper is to show the development of a new add-on in a DAS that will"br" optimize power reduction of trains during a balancing period and ensure the arrival time, while controlling the"br" energy consumed during the overall trip. A demand-response period is added in the optimisation tool to get"br" involved in electricity market mechanisms. A virtual test is done on high speed line “LN1” between Paris and"br" Lyon. Different scenarios are presented and show a flexibility potential between 3 to 7 MW during peak hour"br" involving 15 High Speed Trains (HST). The economic potential of this implication is finally detailed. On a"br" national basis, it represents a big share of electrical primary reserve and is also a matter of concern for network"br" operators and utilities.

Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs – international comparison of 25 countries

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:54:41 +0100

In 2015/2016, the first E-Survey or Road users’ Attitudes (ESRA1) was conducted online using representative samples (N=1,000) of the national adult populations in 25 countries across the world. The aim of the survey is to collect comparable national information on road users’ attitudes and to provide scientific support for road safety policy. In total, the ESRA1 survey covers almost 27,000 respondents, among which more than 16,000 regular car drivers. The present paper is giving an overview of the results on impaired driving. Drink-driving was reported by 30% of the drivers and drug-driving by 14%. The national results differ substantially, ranging from 11 to 43% for alcohol and from 3 to 24% for drugs. Different factors have been found to be associated with impaired driving, among others ‘gender’, ‘personal acceptability’ and ‘perceived likelihood of being checked for alcohol, respectively for drugs’. The intention is to repeat this survey on a triennial basis, retaining a core set of questions which will allow the development of time series of road safety performance indicators.

I'LL DRIVE YOU! On the public acceptance of Autonomous Driving and its impacts on further considerations in Austria and beyond

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

The main aim of this research is to look at the attitude of the Austrian public and different stakeholders towards Autonomous mobility, especially self-driving cars and design some possible measures for further research and policy makers on the topic public acceptance, engagement and information. Our research has so far shown that measures concerning traffic safety are key for the successful introduction of autonomous driving in Austria. This approach has to include measures concerning target-oriented information, research about the interaction mode between vulnerable road users and autonomous cars as well as measures regarding future training and licensing.

Water management for road authorities in the face of climate change

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:52:41 +0100

European National Road Authorities (NRAs) have recognized for a long time that climate change will have a significant effect on their assets and operations. Especially, water management assets will be affected. The damage caused by floods and rain to infrastructure assets amounts to €600 million annually, making it by far the dominant weather impact already in the current climate, let alone in the future when it is expected that likelihood and intensity of intense rainfall will increase. Many challenges exist in addressing intense rainfall events into proper design and maintenance of water management systems. These challenges exist both in the field of climate science itself as well as in the translation of climate projections into proper design and maintenance of water management systems. This paper presents results of the WATCH project (WATer management in the face of climate CHange) that was commissioned under the CEDR 2015 call - Climate Change: From Desk to Road. It addresses climate change, socio economic evaluation and sustainable drainage systems.

EEG-Based Human Factors Evaluation of Air Traffic Control Operators (ATCOs) for Optimal Training

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:52:27 +0100

To deal with the increasing demands in Air Traffic Control (ATC), new working place designs are proposed and developed that need novel human factors evaluation tools. In this paper, we propose a novel application of Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based emotion, workload, and stress recognition algorithms to investigate the optimal length of training for Air Traffic Control Officers (ATCOs) to learn working with threedimensional (3D) display as a supplementary to the existing 2D display. We tested and applied the state-of-the-art EEG-based subject-dependent algorithms. The following experiment was carried out. Twelve ATCOs were recruited to take part in the experiment. The participants were in charge of the Terminal Control Area, providing navigation assistance to aircraft departing and approaching the airport using 2D and 3D displays. EEG data were recorded, and traditional human factors questionnaires were given to the participants after 15-minute, 60- minute, and 120-minute training. Different from the questionnaires, the EEG-based evaluation tools allow the recognition of emotions, workload, and stress with different temporal resolutions during the task performance by subjects. The results showed that 50-minute training could be enough for the ATCOs to learn the new display setting as they had relatively low stress and workload. The study demonstrated that there is a potential of applying the EEG-based human factors evaluation tools to assess novel system designs in addition to traditional questionnaire and feedback, which can be beneficial for future improvements and developments of the systems and interfaces.

The HERCULES-2 Project of R&D on Large Engines for Ships

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:50:05 +0100

The major research project named HERCULES-2, 2015-2018, has been the next phase of the R&D programme HERCULES on large engine technologies, which was initiated in the year 2004 as a joint vision by the two major engine manufacturer groups MAN and WÄRTSILÄ. Three consecutive projects namely HERCULES - A, -B, -C spanned the years 2004-2014.The objectives of the current project HERCULES-2 are associated to 4 areas of engine integrated R&D:•Improving fuel flexibility for seamless switching between different fuel types, including non-conventional fuels.•Formulating new materials to support high temperature component applications. •Developing adaptive control methodologies to retain performance over the powerplant lifetime. •Achieving near-zero emissions, via combined integrated aftertreatment of exhaust gases. This paper describes the evolution towards the objectives and work-plan of the current project and presents the results of the HERCULES-2 project in all areas.

Openstreetmap convient-elle aux études sur le climat urbain ?

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:49:52 +0100

International audience; In order to assess the impact on cities on the regional climate, either present or future, an adequate description of the cities is needed. In global climate models, cities are most often not represented. In high-resolution climate models, they are now physically represented by dedicated surfaces schemes, as TEB (Town Energy Balance) model (Masson 2000). However, the urban description itself is most often very crude, based on land cover classes. First these land cover classes are at typically 1km of resolution, a coarse resolution from the stakeholders point of view, and secondly, the urban parameters associated with these classes are uniform for each class (same building height for all suburban areas for example). Recently, the Local Climate Zones concept has been proposed by Steward and Oke (2012), and is widely accepted as a reference in the urban climate community. It classifies the urban tissues and the surrounding land cover in classes (10 urban classes). Mills et al (2015) propose a methodology and a toolchain to build a world climate database on the physical geographies of cities. The World Urban Database and Portal Tool (WUDAPT) project categorizes data in 3 levels :- Level 0 describes a city in terms of its constituent neighbourhood types using the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) scheme (Stewart and Oke, 2012).- Level 1 refines the parameters for each LCZ through sampling. These data will capture information on UFF at a finer spatial resolution and in greater details.- Level 2 refines the data still further by integrating available data sources that can provide accurate parameter values at a fine spatial resolution, suited for boundary - layer modelling.The WUDAPT methodology is to use landsat images in order to classify the LCZ with pixels at 100m of resolution. Each city would be processed and validated by a scientist having local knowledge. While very promising to acquire urban data for urban climate modeling anywhere in the world, the resolution still is relatively coarse (100m), and there is no description of the morphological or architectural parameters yet. Those parameters are still uniform for each class. Bocher et al (2018) present an open geoprocessing framework to calculate standardized urban indicators at three geographic scales : building, block and a reference spatial unit (RSU). Called MApUCE database and based on a fine vector database provided by the French National Geographical Institute (IGN), it offers new opportunities to extend the WUDAPT database at a finest scale (with morphological, architectural and socioeconomic indicators). However because WUDAPT intends to classify the urban fabric by climate properties from homogeneous and available data at world scale, there is a need to investigate other databases.OpenStreetMap (OSM) is one of the most famous user-generated map. Its popularity is growing steadily, as evidenced by the number of users and the multiplication of uses. Due to its world geographic coverage , OSM constitutes an opportunity for environmental studies by opening-up possibilities for comparative scientific studies on several territories at the same time.This paper describes a methodology and a set of tools to check the availability of the OSM data to feed the MApUCE geoprocessing chain and thus urban climate studies. We propose an open source framework to :- Query on the fly the OSM database from a country code,- Compute spatial and attribute metrics on the country,- Store the results on a multi-dimensional database,- Visualise the results from a dashboard service that integrates chart and map representations at different scales : time, attributes, geography.; Afin d'évaluer l'impact des villes sur le climat régional, présent ou futur, une description adéquate de celles-ci est nécessaire. Dans les modèles climatiques globaux, le plus souvent, les villes ne sont pas représentées. Dans les modèles climatiques à haute résolution, elles sont maintenant représentées physiquement par des schémas de surfaces dédiés, comme le modèle TEB (Town Energy Balance) (Masson 2000). Cependant, la description urbaine elle-même est le plus souvent très grossière, basée sur les classes de couverture terrestre. D'une part, ces classes d'occupation du sol ont une résolution typique de 1 km, une résolution grossière du point de vue des parties prenantes, et d'autre part, les paramètres urbains associés à ces classes sont uniformes pour chaque classe (même hauteur de bâtiment pour toutes les zones suburbaines par exemple). Récemment, le concept de zones climatiques locales a été proposé par Steward et Oke (2012) et est largement accepté comme une référence dans la communauté climatique urbaine. Il classe les tissus urbains et la couverture végétale environnante en classes (10 classes urbaines). Mills et al (2015) proposent une méthodologie et une chaîne d'outils pour construire une base de données climatique mondiale sur la géographie physique des villes. Le projet WUDAPT (World Urban Database and Portal Tool) classe les données en trois niveaux :- Le niveau 0 décrit une ville en fonction des types de quartiers qui la composent à l'aide du schéma des zones climatiques locales ou Local Climate Zone(LCZ) (Stewart et Oke, 2012).- Le niveau 1 affine les paramètres de chaque LCZ par échantillonnage. Ces données permettront d'obtenir des informations sur l'UFF à une résolution spatiale plus fine et de manière plus détaillée.- Le niveau 2 affine encore davantage les données en intégrant les sources de données disponibles qui peuvent fournir des valeurs de paramètres précises à une résolution spatiale fine, adaptées à la modélisation des couches limites.La méthodologie WUDAPT consiste à utiliser des images Landsat afin de classer les LCZ en pixels à 100m de résolution. Chaque ville serait traitée et validée par un scientifique ayant des connaissances locales. Bien qu'il soit très prometteur d'acquérir des données urbaines pour la modélisation du climat urbain n'importe où dans le monde, la résolution est encore relativement grossière (100m), et il n'y a pas encore de description des paramètres morphologiques ou architecturaux. Ces paramètres sont toujours uniformes pour chaque classe. Bocher et al (2018) présentent un cadre de géotraitement ouvert pour calculer des indicateurs urbains normalisés à trois échelles géographiques : bâtiment, bloc et unité spatiale de référence ou reference spatial unit (RSU). Appelée base de données MApUCE et basée sur une base de données vectorielle fine fournie par l'Institut géographique national (IGN), elle offre de nouvelles possibilités d'étendre la base de données WUDAPT à une échelle plus fine (avec des indicateurs morphologiques, architecturaux et socio-économiques). Toutefois, étant donné que WUDAPT a l'intention de classer le tissu urbain par propriétés climatiques à partir de données homogènes et disponibles à l'échelle mondiale, il est nécessaire d'étudier d'autres bases de données.OpenStreetMap (OSM) est l'une des cartes les plus connues des utilisateurs. Sa popularité ne cesse de croître, comme en témoignent le nombre d'utilisateurs et la multiplication des usages. De par sa couverture géographique mondiale, OSM constitue une opportunité pour les études environnementales en ouvrant des possibilités d'études scientifiques comparatives sur plusieurs territoires en même temps.Cet article décrit une méthodologie et un ensemble d'outils permettant de vérifier la disponibilité des données d'OSM pour alimenter la chaîne de géotraitement MApUCE et donc les études climatiques urbaines. Nous proposons un framework open source pour :- Interroger à la volée la base de données d'OSM à partir d'un code pays,- Calculer les métriques spatiales et d'attributs sur le pays,- Stocker les résultats dans une base de données multidimensionnelle,- Visualiser les résultats à partir d'un service de tableau de bord qui intègre des représentations graphiques et cartographiques à différentes échelles : temps, attributs, géographie.

Management of autonomous straddle carrier fleet

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:49:09 +0100

The continuous development of maritime trade over the last decades has led to a significant growth of needs in"br" every section of maritime transport and port operations. During the next 5 years the annual volume at global"br" container terminals will rise significantly, making terminal utilization rates higher than the ones where the"br" systems operate optimally. There is a need for finding more efficient, quick and economic ways of transporting,"br" handling and storing goods as well as seeking more productive strategies for yard management and terminal"br" operation. Inspired by markets’ growing demands and the possibilities of transforming conventional vehicles"br" into automatic ones, an algorithm for smart job allocation and routing of automated vehicles (Straddle Carriers)"br" in terminals is presented in this paper. A management strategy for handling a fleet of autonomous straddle"br" carriers in port yard areas aiming at minimizing the energy consumption while maintaining the performance of"br" the port operations is developed. The strategy is based on a three-layer approach, with job assignment and"br" individual routing at the first two levels and conflict resolution at the last layer, aiming at providing collisionfree"br" trajectories and speed profiles. The algorithm is integrated into the terminal operating system of the port and"br" constitutes a complete solution for small-medium sized ports.

Automated handling of a screw coupling of freight wagons

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:48:55 +0100

Based on the fact, that the screw coupling is still used in Europe for the majority of freight wagons, the"br" operations at marshalling yards are not state of the art. All operations must be done manually by workers called"br" shunters and are hard work. Some of the hardest parts are loosening the coupling and the uncoupling. Therefore"br" a mechanical devise shall be developed to do these tasks automatically to increase productivity and safety. To"br" realize this, the complete processes got analyzed and potential solutions were developed and tested. Also"br" Lifecycle Management and the protection of workers have to be considered during the development process."br" Additionally also a sensor system is necessary to provide the required data for the control of the mechanic part."br" However a working solution doesn’t exist and has to be searched and combined. The complete solution had been"br" tested at a laboratory model and furthermore the uncoupling will be tested at the marshalling yard in Linz on"br" moving rail wagons.

Exploring the Living Lab approach for improving the interoperability between local, regional and transnational transport networks

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:48:41 +0100

Transport systems in Central Europe often show a lack of integration between different transport networks and modes. Linking the Trans-European Network to the regional passenger transport system is a challenge, linking both to flexible mobility services such as sharing services, on demand transport etc. on a local level, is an even bigger one. However, the potential of a successful integration with regard to improved service quality, increased accessibility and sustainability is high. The paper will outline the basic concept of Living Labs and its usability for the improvement of local, regional and transnational transport systems. The Living Lab approach will help take into account the mobility needs of different user groups when developing new services or adapting existing ones and will support these services to become more competitive and financially viable. In the Interreg-project SHAREPLACE six Living Lab sites in Austria, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Hungary will be implemented.

Mobility Energy Emissions Diagnosis (MEED)*: A standardized approach to assess the environmental impacts of urban mobility in France"

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:47:45 +0100

The article describes the methodology used to systematically enhance the Household Travel Surveys (HTS) with energy data on consumption, local pollutant emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in France. This is part of an approach called Mobility Emission Energy Diagnosis (MEED), which aims to facilitate the development of Urban Mobility Plans by providing a strategic diagnosis of environmental issues related to urban mobility of travellers. To obtain quality data that are comparable in time and space, a standardized methodology is proposed. This has been used systematically since 2014, and has already made it possible to link individual mobility behaviours with emissions of pollutants in about 25 towns, which represents about 15% of the French population. The method used is considered relevant and the database so constituted should be capable of generating many innovative analyses.

Determining The Elongation Energy Of PmB At Various Extension Lengths

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:47:07 +0100

The topic of the work is evaluation of standardized method for determining force in ductility measurement according to the standard EN 13589. Standard EN 13589 specifies a method for determining the tensile properties of bituminous binders, in particular those of polymer-modified bitumens by means of a force ductility test. A molded test specimen is extended in ductilometer at the test temperature and at constant speed until fracture or an elongation of at least 1333 % (400 mm) is achieved. Standard EN 13703 specifies a method for determining energy of bituminous binders from tensile characteristics. During the standardized test, the force and elongation are recorded, and the deformation energy is calculated. The deformation energy (Ei) is determined from the recordings of the tensile curves. Conventional energy (E*i) is obtained as a quotient of the deformation energy and the initial cross-area of the test specimens. The main results of the investigation are the readings of the energy consumed up to an elongation of 0.2 m (E'0.2) and 0.4 m (E'0.4). The final result of the investigation is the difference between the readings of the measured energy, i.e. E's = E'0.4 - E'0.2 = E*0.2-0.4."br" The main objective of the work was to investigate whether the energy E's, as defined according to the draft standard prEN 13589: 2016, is in correlation with the results of other properties of bitumen. Estimates of the achieved correlation were also performed in the case when the elongation lengths were different from those defined in the standard. Three different test temperatures were used 5°C, 10°C and 25°C. In the work it was also investigated whether the requirements in these standards are applicable to all polymer bitumen types PmB 45/80-65 available on Slovenian market.

Research on quality control system for cold-chain road transport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:44:13 +0100

High Capacity Transport vehicles vs. standard vehicles in Finland

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:41:27 +0100

Legislation of road vehicles was changed in Finland in 2013. The change allows the transport enterprises to get test licenses of specified time periods for vehicles, which exceed the limits of lengths and masses of the standard or normal vehicle combinations. The permanent legislation allows maximum gross mass of 76 t and length of 25.25 m for vehicles. The test vehicles (= HCT or High Capacity Transport vehicles) are mainly combinations with semi-trailers and/or trailers. So far (September 2017) number of these licences is more than 30. The Finnish Transport Agency (former Road Administration) ordered Vemosim Ltd to research the issue. The study includes driving resistance measurements of the HCT and standard vehicles. Based on these data fuel economy, carbon dioxide emissions and transportation costs are determined by simulation. Road wear impacts are determined, too. The interim conclusions are: the HCT vehicles are better than the normal vehicles in terms of fuel efficiency, CO2 emissions and of road wear impacts, provided that the roads are built according to the extant road design norms.

Direct Route Optimization for Air Traffic Management Improvement

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:40:49 +0100

International audience; Aircraft are able to connect any pair of points on earth by using direct routing thanks to the flight management system (FMS) which is the on-board system in charge of the navigation. From an air traffic control point of view, such direct routing is only possible in low density areas. When demand is high, aircraft have to stay on a route network for which crossing points are well located and do not change with time. This location stability, helps controllers to manage efficiently the traffic and ensure a higher capacity compared with management of the same traffic with direct routes for which crossing points always change in space and in time dimensions. This instability reduces the overall capacity of sectors. During the night, when traffic demand decreases, air traffic controllers often deliver direct routes to aircraft because they know that such aircraft will not interfere with other traffic. During the day, such direct route assignments are not proposed anymore and the controller keeps the aircraft on the route network in order to structure the traffic and to reduce the associated complexity. In this research we propose an intermediate milestone for which direct routes could be proposed to aircraft during the day when it is possible and this in order to reduce also the congestion at some points in the airspace. We then consider a real crossing in the French airspace where aircraft have to merge at the same point and exit toward different directions. An optimization algorithm has been developed for this crossing in order to minimize the workload of the controller in charge of this airspace. Three decision variables are then assigned to each aircraft: speed regulation, flight level setting and direct route setting. The associated objectives of this problem are the minimization of the conflict between aircraft (has to reach zero), the maximization of the number of aircraft having a direct route (avoiding the crossing) and the minimization of the flight deviation (speed and FL). When a direct is given to an aircraft, we must ensure that such aircraft is separated from other aircraft by one when they share the same spatial location; this ensure that the controller in charge of such aircraft has few monitoring workload for this aircraft (because it has no interaction with other traffic). This optimization must satisfy some constraints: speed and FL have to stay in a given range. This algorithm has been applied successfully to a test case quite similar to one located in the west of France ACC (Brest) for which the capacity of the crossing point has been strongly increased thanks to many direct routes that have been given.

A viscoplastic model to simulate settlements inside innovative asphalt concrete railway structures

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:40:36 +0100

French project named REVES started in 2015. The goal of this project is to design ballastless railway tracks without sleepers in order to reduce track thickness and increase gauge in tunnels. Older tunnels would benefit particularly from such a track since it would allow for modern freight trains to circulate inside them while providing a cost-effective and time-saving construction process."br" A PhD thesis has begun within this project. It aims at modelling the viscoplastic behaviour of asphalt concretes in order to predict the long-term mechanical response of a railway infrastructure such as those considered in project REVES."br" A viscoplastic model using the Perzyna formulation was developed to describe the irreversible creep behaviour of asphalt concretes. Model parameters were identified by means of triaxial tests. An efficient yield surface was developed as well as a hardening law with a single parameter. A sequential method for determining model parameters was established. The model was implemented in FEM software Cast3M in order to perform numerical railway track simulation. Some simulations of ballastless railway structures were performed. Firstly, it can be observed than predicted settlements stabilizes and do not reach the limits recommended by the French railway board. It can also be seen that viscoplastic strains concentrates in the Asphalt concrete, just under the rail. Then, it can be seen that stresses redistribute inside the structure over time, leading to eliminate tensile and shear stresses.

The ACCRA Project. Importance of accuracy in vehicle emissions estimation for urban dynamic geofencing.

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:38:44 +0100

Five UK cities will implement clean air zones (CAZ) to improve air quality (AQ), specifically in relation to NO2"br" and 253 UK local authorities have declared Air Quality Management Areas for NO2. Vehicles which have an"br" internal combustion engine and an electric only range can offer zero emission (ZE) operation but cities lack the"br" ability to monitor and control the vehicles. Project ACCRA will address this problem."br" The project is of 12 month duration aiming to develop and demonstrate a system that allows hybrid ICE/EV vehicles"br" to become part of a city’s urban traffic management control system; monitoring the vehicles’ location and operational"br" state, and able to control the ZE running strategy ensuring ZE through areas of poor AQ. Using a combination of"br" estimated emissions and air quality sensors the system’s decision-making engine will demonstrate the ability to"br" respond to pollution violations and modify (on-demand) the ZE strategy of the vehicle via active geo-fencing."br" In order to support the decision on the dynamic geofencing, estimation of emissions represents an important and"br" fundamental step in the process, hence this paper focuses on the comparison of instantaneous vehicle emissions"br" modelling using traditional and low-cost GPS devices. A sensitivity test between the low-cost device (recording"br" frequency, typically 0.2Hz), and the more expensive recording at 1Hz has been performed. Results show that if"br" low-cost sensors were to be deployed in place of more expensive alternatives the emissions model underestimates"br" the total CO2 and NOx emission rates by a factor of between 5% and 20% depending on the vehicle and pollutant"br" type. The source of this divergence is identified as the sampling rate of the instrument rather than the low-cost"br" instrument. Hence, the deployment of low-cost, or specifically low resolution, sensors is only a suitable alternative"br" in situations where this margin of error is acceptable rather than a general solution."br" This result will support further development of the dynamic geofencing within this project as well as will impact"br" vehicle tracking studies using methodologies other than GPS and CAN as it constrains the effective sampling rate"br" required by these methodologies to a minimum of 1Hz as well.

Fast Charging Station with Battery Storage System for EV: Optimal Integration into the Grid

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:37:00 +0100

International audience; Electric Vehicles (EVs) will be in a near future a non-negligible part of the world's car fleet. Nevertheless, a dense network of Fast Charging Stations (FCS) on highways is needed to enable EVs to be competitive with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles for long distances. FCS require high power from the grid which could generate stress on the power grid and necessitate expensive investments for grid connection. An Electric Storage System (ESS) inside the FCS could mitigate those impacts, and a Battery ESS (BESS) also allows to offer grid services and to maximise the profits of the FCS operator. In this paper, we propose a FCS model including grid services and battery degradation. A trade-off between BESS size and contracted power value is assessed to satisfy the EV needs and to respect the battery state-of-charge limits. Finally, an economic survey is done with the net present value to compare a FCS with BESS (with or without delivery of grid services) and without BESS.

Performance Analysis of Detector Algorithms Using Drone-Based Radar Systems for Oil Spill Detection

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:36:32 +0100

In this paper, we develop algorithms for oil spill detection using radar remote sensing. The algorithms take into account both the mathematical and the physical modeling of the sea surface covered by oil slicks. We use the statistical characterization of the power reflectivity and its distribution under various oil thicknesses and electromagnetic wave frequencies. We first introduce a single frequency (SF) oil spill detector that uses single or multiple observations (SO or MO) of power reflection coefficients over several scanning iterations for the sea area. Then, using Monte Carlo simulations we address the correctness of this detector by choosing different frequencies. Results show the inability of this detector to effectively distinguish between oil slicks and oil-free slicks for the total range of possible thicknesses. Nevertheless, increasing the number of observations leads to an increase in the effectiveness of the detector. An upgrade of this detector is the dual-frequency (DF) detector using single and multiple observations where two electromagnetic frequencies are used at the same time. Performance analysis of this detector proves its ability to overcome the drawbacks of the first detector by providing accurate detection especially for multiple observations.

Document type: Article

Changes in Material Stocks and Flows of a Century-old Rail Network Caused by Refurbishment

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:35:50 +0100

The main objective of the paper at hand is to investigate material flows and stock changes of subway infrastructure associated with its refurbishment. Specific attention is given to the relation between recycling, reuse and virgin material flows. Furthermore, the extent to which policy targets are achieved in a specific refurbishment process is investigated. Thereto the refurbishment of a subsection of Vienna’s subway network was chosen as a case study. To fulfil the objective, a bottom up material flow analysis (MFA) of the refurbishment process on the subsection was performed. Results show that the overall material stock is 360,000 t, of which three-fourths remained unchanged within the refurbishment. Within the refurbishment process, in total material with a mass of around 155,000 t was built into the system. The share of recycling material was significantly higher than the use of virgin material. In detail 39% virgin construction material, 15% recycling construction material, 41% on site-recycling construction material and 5% reuse construction components were built into the section.

Evaluation of the energy saving potential of a Power Electronic Transformer for rolling stock under 25kV, 50Hz

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:35:26 +0100

Nowadays, the rolling stock powertrains under AC supply have a bulky and heavy electromagnetic transformer. A possible solution to replace it could be the solid state transformer. In this paper we simulate the most representative French rolling stocks, on different services, in order to emphasize the energy gains obtained by the replacement of the classical transformer by an electronic one, under 25kV 50Hz. These simulations have been used to estimate the gains of an entire regional fleet for Alsace region (France). Important gains in energy (kWh) are highlight but they are not enough to have a good ROI (€) in France, without adding new value to the power electronic transformer functionality’s, as the mass and volume reduction, redundancy, reliability and easy switch between different voltage supply’s.

Human science and professional approaches to improve road worker and driver safety on workzones

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:34:52 +0100

On the French national road network, over the past ten years, from one to two road workers are killed and thirty injured during interventions every year. The number of killed and severely injured is the same for drivers. However, it is worrying from a social point of view and it is a priority for road operators in terms of safety at work. In France, several experiments are in progress. For French authorities, it is often difficult to obtain direct measurable impacts of these experiments on both drivers’ and road workers’ safety. In fact, there is no system analysis centred on acceptability. So, it is difficult to adjust or change existing rules and guidelines. Recently, Cerema Normandie-Centre used human sciences and ergonomic approach in two field studies related to work zones' safety. In the context of these two studies, we proposed a conceptual and methodological framework to investigate work zone and workers’ safety. After an analysis of the accidents on the national road network, this framework combined field studies on road workers' practices and on drivers’ perception and understanding of work zones. A special attention throughout the process focused on the safety level of drivers and road workers. In this project, Cerema Normandie-Centre worked in close cooperation with several road operators. The work carried out underlined the importance of a priori validation of both the configuration of the countermeasure and of the acceptability of the beneficiaries (i.e., network managers, road workers and road users). Indeed, the a priori validation ended up in the changing of countermeasure configuration and in the evolution of the carried out of this countermeasure by the workers.

Study on Research Development and Application of Urban Logistics Platform Based on Android

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:32:53 +0100

Satellite Imagery Multiscale Rapid Detection with Windowed Networks

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:30:19 +0100

Detecting small objects over large areas remains a significant challenge in satellite imagery analytics. Among the challenges is the sheer number of pixels and geographical extent per image: a single DigitalGlobe satellite image encompasses over 64 km2 and over 250 million pixels. Another challenge is that objects of interest are often minuscule (~pixels in extent even for the highest resolution imagery), which complicates traditional computer vision techniques. To address these issues, we propose a pipeline (SIMRDWN) that evaluates satellite images of arbitrarily large size at native resolution at a rate of " 0.2 km2/s. Building upon the tensorflow object detection API paper, this pipeline offers a unified approach to multiple object detection frameworks that can run inference on images of arbitrary size. The SIMRDWN pipeline includes a modified version of YOLO (known as YOLT), along with the models of the tensorflow object detection API: SSD, Faster R-CNN, and R-FCN. The proposed approach allows comparison of the performance of these four frameworks, and can rapidly detect objects of vastly different scales with relatively little training data over multiple sensors. For objects of very different scales (e.g. airplanes versus airports) we find that using two different detectors at different scales is very effective with negligible runtime cost.We evaluate large test images at native resolution and find mAP scores of 0.2 to 0.8 for vehicle localization, with the YOLT architecture achieving both the highest mAP and fastest inference speed.

Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, 1 appendix. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1805.09512

Modeling the outflow of thick sediments from buffer tanks and discharge pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:25:49 +0100

The paper deals with the problems linked to creating simple and reliable engineering methods for calculating bunkers both for the accumulation and discharge of thick precipitation and to the intensification of unloading and transportation of thick sediments. This problem is important both for obtaining a quality product in the production of powdered materials and suspensions and for achieving the required productivity. Current methods of calculation do not have sufficient generality and do not allow us to describe the regularities of the complicated process of the outflow of viscous suspensions with different theologies from buffer tanks and discharge pipelines of various configurations. Unlike the currently used methods, in this paper the formula for calculating the outflow rate from buffer tanks with accounting to the energy dissipation has been submitted. Such an approach allows us to propose a calculation scheme that can be adapted to different rheological models. The second important result is devoted to mathematical modeling the pneumatic-pulsed regimes of the overload of loosed materials. The mathematical model allowing for defining the resonance modes of thick sediments intensive overload and transportation has been submitted.The paper deals with the problems linked to creating simple and reliable engineering methods for calculating bunkers both for the accumulation and discharge of thick precipitation and to the intensification of unloading and transportation of thick sediments. This problem is important both for obtaining a quality product in the production of powdered materials and suspensions and for achieving the required productivity. Current methods of calculation do not have sufficient generality and do not allow us to describe the regularities of the complicated process of the outflow of viscous suspensions with different theologies from buffer tanks and discharge pipelines of various configurations. Unlike the currently used methods, in this paper the formula for calculating the outflow rate from buffer tanks with accounting to the energy dissipation has been submitted. Such an approach allows us to propose a calculation scheme that can be adapted to different rheological models. The second important result is devote...

A methodology to facilitate the implementation of new sustainable technologies for greener asphalt roads

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:24:36 +0100

The adoption of new sustainable technologies by National Road Administrations (NRAs) throughout Europe is often a slow and difficult process. The set of potentially relevant sustainability indicators which need to be considered from a life cycle perspective is wide and NRAs are often confronted with a large amount of missing or uncertain data. The EDGAR project (Evaluation and Decision process for Greener Asphalt Roads), funded by the CEDR (Conference of European Directors of Roads) Transnational Road Research Program Call 2013 ‘Energy Efficiency’, developed a methodology to facilitate quicker adoption of the technologies that offer the greatest sustainability benefits for the road sector and the society as a whole. EDGAR proposed a reduced basket of sustainability indicators specifically designed for asphalt materials and directly relevant to NRAs. A methodology was then devised to quantify these indicators, using either existing or new tools, and to implement the results in a Multiple Attribute Decision Making Model to make a balanced and well informed decision.

Learning Real Trajectory Data to Enhance Conflict Detection Accuracy in Closest Point of Approach Problem

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:24:07 +0100

Closest Point of Approach (CPA) is one of the main problems in aircraft Conflict Detection (CD). It aims to find out the minimum distance and the associated time between two aircraft on the same altitude with crossing traffic. Conventional CPA prediction model generally assumes that the speed and heading of the aircraft are constant. But the uncertainties in real operations lead to the inaccuracy of CPA prediction. In this paper, we introduce a novel CD framework with Machine Learning (ML) methods. It aims to improve the CPA prediction accuracy with the help of real trajectory data. The new model contributes to not only reduce the number of fault short-mid term conflict alert for air traffic controllers but also support the implementation of future free flight concept, so as to reduce fuel consumption and emission. In our study, we firstly propose a data processing method to generate a close-to-reality simulation data from Mode-S observations. Then, feature engineering is used to transform the raw data into suitable features, which will enable the ML models to make predictions with high-performance. Six prevailing ML methods (MLR, SVM, FFNNs, KNN, GBM, RF) are used to predict the CPA time and distance. Their prediction results are compared with the conventional CPA model (baseline). The simulation results demonstrate that the GBM is the best prediction model both in CPA prediction and conflict detection. However, the results also prove that not all ML models outperform the baseline CPA model. Suitable ML methods can greatly enhance the accuracy of conflict detection Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Solar hybrid road: from concept to modeling and lab scale mock-up experiments

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:21:32 +0100

International audience; We present in this paper the concept of solar hybrid road and the numerical model studied and develop to compute its thermal state at any time step. The aim of these new structures is to collect part of the solar radiation during the summer period, to prevent from icing at the surface during the winter period. As it is reversible, it will help also to prevent from a too high structure temperature (in particular closed to the surface) in summer season. Two types of modifications, compared to traditional structures are presented. The first one concerns the insertion of a porous layer allowing a heat fluid to exchange thermal energy. The second one concerns the use of a semi-transparent material at pavement surface allowing the solar radiation to penetrate deeper in the structure. The numerical model of this multi-physics problem develop with the finite element method is presented and discussed. A validation on two test cases is proposed. First results on energy harvesting evaluation for few locations (i.e. climatic conditions) in France are presented and discussed. Finally, conclusion and perspectives are proposed.

Document type: Conference object

Modelling and Analysing ERTMS L3 Moving Block Railway Signalling with Simulink and Uppaal SMC

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:20:25 +0100

Efficient and safe railway signalling systems, together with energy-saving infrastructures, are among the main pillars to guarantee sustainable transportation. ERTMS L3 moving block is one of the next generation railway signalling systems currently under trial deployment, with the promise of increased capacity on railway tracks, reduced costs and improved reliability. We report an experience in modelling a satellite-based ERTMS L3 moving block signalling system from the railway industry with Simulink and Uppaal and analysing the Uppaal model with Uppaal SMC. The lessons learned range from demonstrating the feasibility of applying Uppaal SMC in a moving block railway context, to the offered possibility of fine tuning communication parameters in satellite-based ERTMS L3 moving block railway signalling system models that are fundamental for the reliability of their operational behaviour.

Impact of Simultaneous Movements on the Perception of Safety, Workload and Task Difficulty in a Multiple Remote Tower Environment

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:20:11 +0100

Providing air traffic service to more than one aerodrome is a key concept within Remote Tower. So-called Multiple Remote Tower Operations (MRTO) are expected to be more cost-efficient and user-friendly. On the one hand, their anticipated benefit is to maintain smaller airports that are currently non-profitable due to low traffic numbers, high staff- and tower maintenance costs. On the other hand, MTRO offer equally distributed and constant activity for air traffic controllers (ATCOs), with the expectation to lower risks of human error due to boredom or sleepiness at work. However, multiple tasking challenges arise if one ATCO needs to handle traffic at three airports simultaneously. Thus, combinations of visual, audio, vocal and haptic tasks need to be performed for more than just one location. Therefore, this paper addresses the impact of simultaneous movements on perceived safety, workload and task difficulty. Descriptive results show that with the increase of simultaneous movements, providing ATC is perceived as being more efficiency-critical, more demanding in workload and task difficulty increases as well. It was not tested if the differences were significant, since statistical conditions haven’t been met. Results show that no situation containing simultaneous movements was perceived as a threat to safety, good workload or the ability to provide ATC. The discussion shows why the impact of simultaneous movements might not only affect MRTO but also single remote or conventional tower environments.

The vehicle relocation for electric free-floating car-sharing services

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:17:17 +0100

Free-floating is the new paradigm of car-sharing. These services enable one-way trips freely within a specified area, overcoming the need of a network of stations, that characterizes station-based services. Despite the increase of level of service for the users, free-floating poses a problem for the spatial distribution of the vehicles, due to a possible unbalance between the users-demand and the availability of vehicles. In such cases, the service provider has to develop strategies to reallocate the vehicles and restore an optimal distribution of the fleet of the car-sharing service. In case of free-floating services using electric-vehicles, the problem is even more complicated, due to the need of plug-in the vehicles to charging stations when needed. The paper presents a new model for vehicle relocation problem for an electric free-floating service, where cars are moved by operators of the service provider to keep the system balanced, generating a challenging pickup and delivery problem. The proposed algorithm has been designed and calibrated using real data from the city of Milan.

Turning data driven condition now- and forecasting for railway switches into maintenance actions

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:17:01 +0100

Railway switches are crucial for normal operation and during disruptions of the railroad system since they allow trains to use alternative routes. Switches moving parts are subject to high deterioration and prone to malfunctioning, representing a potential safety hazard. Thus frequent inspection, maintenance and renewal are required. Models to optimize the railroad system operation and reduce costs are possible on the basis of inspections vehicles, online condition monitoring, inspection standardization and data-based models. This paper presents a switch condition now- and forecasting model based on continuous monitored data (switch engine current during blades movement). The model is capable of identifying unusual behavior due to emerging failures without the need of manually set switch-specific thresholds. In this approach no labelled training data set of historic switch failures is required for training the model. Its output combined with maintenance information and the switch functional model sheds light on switch degradation modes, helping to optimize maintenance actions.

Technical Assessment of Hybrid Powertrains for Energy-efficient Heavy-Duty Vehicles

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:15:02 +0100

This article presents the approach used for the design optimization of heavy vehicles such as urban buses and"br" delivery trucks as a part or the ORCA European Project. A methodology to find the optimal combination of"br" hardware components and energy management strategy is presented and the use cases where it will be applied are"br" described."br" To achieve the optimal results, the vehicles need to be modeled with an appropriated methodology that allows for"br" both performance evaluation and energy consumption assessment in short times. To achieve both objectives, the"br" “forward” vehicle modeling, together with static or “low fidelity” models is proposed. Several simulation examples"br" in both electric and conventional mode are given. These models will be used to assess several potential vehicles"br" design, assess their performance, consumption and eventually estimate the total cost of ownership.

Saturation based forecasting of travel time reliability in urban road transport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:13:50 +0100

The objective of this paper is to provide a brief review on travel time reliability approaches, to explore the relation between reliability and the volume-capacity ratio (saturation level) based on a case study of Budapest, and considering the results to propose an adequate method, plus draft further research. In this paper reliability is analysed based on automatic measurements of journey times and traffic volumes from a dataset for the city of Budapest. Due to the limitations of measurements and data route-level analyses has been carried out. The main finding and the novelty of the study is a model which can forecast the standard deviation of travel times based on the volume-capacity ratio and the free-flow travel time. The results prove that besides existing mean-delay-based models, travel time reliability can be forecasted based on the volume-capacity ratio with an adequate accuracy.

Adaptive Optimization Design of Vector Error Diffusion Algorithm and IP Core for FPGA

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:12:40 +0100

vector error diffusion algorithm can obtain better halftone results than a scalar error diffusion algorithm in digital printing, thus, extensive research work about the vector error diffusion has been done to decrease the time that users wait for printing. In this paper, an improved vector error diffusion IP core is proposed. The IP is implemented in FPGA and can meet the requirement of real-time printing by the improvements as follow: three R G B planes are computed in parallel, a matrix-valued error filter is designed to diffuse error among the three planes, matrix-valued pre-stored memory is created to speed multiplications and five stage pipelines are adopted to replace traditional sequential processes. Based on the improvements, we build a practical hardware test system on the SoCKit platform. The test results show that optimal algorithm only needs one clock circle to get the halftone result of a pixel on average and can meet the requirements of practical printing.

Impact assessment of wave statistics on ship survivability

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:10:07 +0100

This paper presents a brief summary of the work conducted by the MSRC at Strathclyde University in which the"br" effect of operational location on the estimation of a vessel’s survival probability has been investigated and new sfactor"br" formulations proposed. Further work is presented in which updated accident wave statistics have been used"br" in order to assess the impact of vessel specific data on the predicted survivability. A test case on a large container"br" ship has been conducted in order to gauge the effect of the new s-factor formula on the Attained Subdivision Index"br" and thus the vessel safety level with regards to collision damage.

Document type: Conference object

A reference model for the design of Service-Dominant Business Models in the smart mobility domain

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:09:38 +0100

Initiatives in the smart mobility domain are increasingly characterized by a service-dominant mindset, focusing explicitly on the value that is created for the customer. As a result, the business models of these initiatives become more agile in nature, forcing them to be continuously and rapidly redesigned. However, given the wide landscape of potential stakeholders in the smart mobility domain, it may prove difficult to identify the stakeholders that should be considered for viable business model design. In response, this paper proposes a reference business model for the smart mobility domain which elaborates on a generic set of stakeholder categories and their characteristics to guide the design of these models. Following a design science research approach, we iteratively derived and evaluated the validity of the reference model using a set of business model design workshops. We illustrate the applicability of the reference model by means of a business model design case.

Traffic Safety Culture – A New Paradigm For Road Safety?

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:09:00 +0100

The cultural approach to traffic safety is a new research perspective which has emerged recently, especially in the US. It is part of the safe systems approach in recent safety research. The project ‘TraSaCu’, which received funding from EU’s Horizon 2020 RISE program and still runs until February 2018 takes up the concept of safety culture which is well established in organisational safety research and applies it to the open realm of road traffic and road safety. In the course of the project a theoretical model has been developed and the traffic safety culture of selected countries has been analysed to demonstrate the concept of traffic safety culture in an applied manner. Existing large-scale survey data on attitudes, perceived norms and self-reported behaviour have been used to statistically extract four scales that are suitable to describe cultural dimensions. Furthermore, factors which determine deliberate (un)safe behaviours and their potential to be changed in favor of higher levels of safety were identified.

IMPERIUM – IMplementation of Powertrain Control for Economic and Clean Real driving emIssion and fuel ConsUMption

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:08:46 +0100

Fuel economy is a key aspect to reduce operating costs and improve efficiency of freight traffic, thus increasing truck competitiveness. The main objective of the IMPERIUM project (IMplementation of Powertrain Control for Economic and Clean Real driving EmIssion and ConsUMption) is to achieve fuel consumption reduction by 20% (diesel and urea) whilst keeping the vehicle within the legal limits for pollutant emissions. The approach relies on three stages targeting the improvement of the control strategy: (a) direct optimisation of the control of the main components (engine, exhaust after-treatment, transmission, waste heat recovery, e-drive) to maximize their performances, (b) global powertrain energy manager to coordinate the different energy sources and optimize their use depending on the current driving situation, (c) providing a more comprehensive understanding of the mission (eHorizon, mission-based learning) such that the different energy sources can be planned and optimized on a long term. The IMPERIUM consortium consists of major European actors and is able to provide a 100% European value chain for the development of future powertrain control strategies for trucks. This paper addresses the opportunities for powertrain optimization from the control strategy point of view, by modeling the physical behaviour of the truck, presenting the existing control strategies, and finally identifying the opportunities for additional, look-ahead mission-related information.

Fast Gaussian Process Occupancy Maps

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:07:52 +0100

In this paper, we demonstrate our work on Gaussian Process Occupancy Mapping (GPOM). We concentrate on the inefficiency of the frame computation of the classical GPOM approaches. In robotics, most of the algorithms are required to run in real time. However, the high cost of computation makes the classical GPOM less useful. In this paper we dont try to optimize the Gaussian Process itself, instead, we focus on the application. By analyzing the time cost of each step of the algorithm, we find a way that to reduce the cost while maintaining a good performance compared to the general GPOM framework. From our experiments, we can find that our model enables GPOM to run online and achieve a relatively better quality than the classical GPOM.

Comment: Accepted to ICARCV2018

Moving Ship Detection Algorithm Based on Gaussian Mixture Model

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:05:35 +0100

Smart solution for the last mile problem in urban areas

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:04:56 +0100

The article presents a comprehensive solution proposed in response to the last mile problem tackled in freight"br" transport. This specific part of the supply chain requires considerable funding, particularly in urban areas, as well"br" as organisational solutions specifically matching the needs of the given territory. One of the measures"br" undertaken under of the S-mile project was implementation of an ICT solution enabling integration of large"br" transport companies (system clients, in this case) with carriers along with reduction of negative environmental"br" impact of freight transport. Basic modules of the extended S-mileSys system are as follows: S-mile Market Tool"br" (supporting contacts between an urban carrier and customers), S-mile Freighter Tool, S-mile Fleet Management"br" Tool and S-mile Simulation Tool (supporting fleet management by means of such features as e.g. vehicle"br" assignment optimisation algorithms, route planning etc.), S-mile Transport Planner Tool (used for route planning"br" optimisation) as well as S-mile Visualizer Tool (Big Data base addressing local authorities, enabling them to"br" generate a concise review of the overall impact of freight transport on the given area, of the emission distribution"br" as well as of the freight transport distribution against the transport network for spatial planning). The article also"br" provides a description illustrating individual phases of interaction between clients/users and the system.

Temporal Recurrent Networks for Online Action Detection

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:04:43 +0100

Most work on temporal action detection is formulated as an offline problem, in which the start and end times of actions are determined after the entire video is fully observed. However, important real-time applications including surveillance and driver assistance systems require identifying actions as soon as each video frame arrives, based only on current and historical observations. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, the Temporal Recurrent Network (TRN), to model greater temporal context of each frame by simultaneously performing online action detection and anticipation of the immediate future. At each moment in time, our approach makes use of both accumulated historical evidence and predicted future information to better recognize the action that is currently occurring, and integrates both of these into a unified end-to-end architecture. We evaluate our approach on two popular online action detection datasets, HDD and TVSeries, as well as another widely used dataset, THUMOS'14. The results show that TRN significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art.