Scipedia: Documents published in 2018

A Maintainable and Secure Backend Infrastructure for Carpooling Applications

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:19:31 +0100

Nowadays, carpooling is one of the most widely promoted options for urban and inter-urban mobility due to a number of advantages, such as reduction of travel cost and CO2 emissions. As a result, many carpooling services and associated supporting applications have been developed with various technical characteristics. One of the most critical components of these systems is the backend infrastructure, which acts as an orchestrator of the overall system’s functionality, having as main objective the integrity, security and maintainability of the information exchanged. In this technical report, we present the backend infrastructure of the SocialCar carpooling application, a European-funded research and innovation project aiming to incorporate carpooling into existing mobility systems, by means of powerful planning algorithms and big data integration from public transport, carpooling systems, and crowd sourcing.

Paving the Way for an IT Security Architecture for LDACS: A Datalink Security Threat- and Risk Analysis

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:18:42 +0100

With air transportation growing and current civil aeronautical communication systems reaching their capacity limit in high density areas, the need for new aeronautical communication technologies becomes apparent. This implies the transition from analogue voice to digital data communication. A promising candidate for terrestrial air-ground communication is the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (LDACS). LDACS is currently in the process of being standardized in ICAO. Being integrated in the aeronautical telecommunication network and providing a digital communication link for safety critical applications, each and every installation of LDACS requires protection against cyber-attacks. A rigorous threat and risk analysis is the fundamental basis to derive an IT security architecture for LDACS. The objective of this paper is to identify safety relevant air traffic management services, perform a threat and risk analysis, and define attacker types. Having created a threat catalog, we introduce a threat rating system allowing us to set our findings in a qualitative context and pave the way for a future LDACS IT security architecture.

The Symbiosis between Traffic Management and Mobility-as-a-Service

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:18:19 +0100

Social media offers a wealth of mobility-related information and an ultimate instrument for day-to-day traffic management road operators activities. The social community approach presented in this paper (Social Traffic Management) offers a personalised traffic information service and traffic management platform, which is based on mainstream social media, and aims to best match demand and supply with the intent to improve travellers’ comfort in a multi-modal environment, while contributing to road operators and public authorities’ goals. This paper describes the Social Traffic Management approach, the traveller experience and discusses the symbiosis between traffic management and mobility-as-a-service (MaaS). It also gives an insight in how this approach is being tested within the H2020 MyCorridor and CEF Socrates 2.0 projects.

The leading role of public transport for successful MaaS deployment in Europe

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:18:08 +0100

hough some “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) initiatives have been piloted across Europe, so far most of them had problems reaching a significant scale and stable business operation, and there is still a lack of a solid MaaS experience replicable at the EU level. Achieving the appropriate balance between public and private components in the combined mobility scheme is a major issue, with the need of compromising between different business roles, objectives and attitudes within the same ecosystem. The adoption of viable policies for information and service sharing is also a barrier to overcome. To remain the “backbone of mobility” for liveable and sustainable cities, Public Transport should embrace the emergence of those new mobility services and concepts, together with the development of the autonomous vehicles, as great opportunities to enhance the efficiency and capacity of its services and systems and to gain new customers. This paper analyses the opportunities and the challenges for the public transport sector to play a leading role in providing mobility as a service, with the autonomy revolution as a key enabler.

Do the Impacts Justify Point-to-Point Speed Enforcement on Rural Roads?

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:17:27 +0100

Point-to-point speed enforcement is applied in Austria since 2003; and commonly called “Section Control”. Speed is determined by taking two pictures at different locations along a road, automatically recognising the number plates and calculating speed from the distance between the two cameras and the time elapsed between the two photo shots. Currently, there are about two dozen of Section Control devices in operation in Austria, half of them are stationary units. The mobile units are used at roadwork sections on highways. In 2012, a Section Control device was installed on a rural road for the first time. In order to determine criteria for further application, this device and four stationary units were included in a before-and-after-study about impacts of Section Control on road safety and its applicability on rural road. In addition, crash records of tunnels with and without speed enforcement by Section Control were compared as well as speed behaviour at roadwork sections on highways."br" The analysis used four parameters: Crash density, crash rate, rate of injuries and rate of crash costs. These numbers were calculated for the road sections concerned as well as for 5 kilometres ahead and after respectively, in order to capture potential displacement effects. Nearly all of these numbers were lower for the after than for the before period. The same applies for roadwork areas: Both, crash rate and injury rate were much lower with Section Control. A comparison of driving speeds at four different locations of roadwork areas showed lower values for average speed, 85-percentile speed as well as the share of offenders."br" It was found that none of the crash parameters allows for a sole assessment. Decisions about whether to install a Section Control or not have to consider all crash parameters in order to fulfil the legal requirement of a “particular local risk”. Such a holistic assessment also requires investigation of crash records, daily traffic and speed behaviour on the respective road section. Particular road sections like tunnels, bridges or roadwork areas justify use of Section Control even if the benefit-cost ratio is poor. The results of the study suggest that these recommendations apply to highways and rural roads equally.

SAFER-LC project: Safer Level Crossings by integrating and optimizing road-rail infrastructure management and design

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:16:58 +0100

Level Crossings represent vulnerable points in the European land transport system, since collisions at level crossings account for a high number of fatalities and serious injuries among road users and lead to major disruptions of railway operations. This paper presents part of the ongoing work conducted in the SAFER-LC EU project, namely an overview of indicators for level crossing safety solutions, taking into account the road and rail users’ perspective. The paper identifies key safety criteria concerning the requirements coming from various types of level crossing users. The analysis focuses on human errors, attentional processes and risk perception, while paying special attention to vulnerable users such as pedestrians. The results are discussed in the context of a Human Factors methodological framework which analyses how technological and non-technological safety measures can be better adapted from a user perspective to make level crossings more self-explanatory and ‘forgiving’. The implications for the implementation and evaluation of ‘user-friendly’ safety measures at level-crossings are also discussed.

Numerical Simulation of Spill Oil Diffusion in Offshore Oil Pipeline

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:15:26 +0100

Bootstrapping Deep Neural Networks from Approximate Image Processing Pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:11:42 +0100

Complex image processing and computer vision systems often consist of a processing pipeline of functional modules. We intend to replace parts or all of a target pipeline with deep neural networks to achieve benefits such as increased accuracy or reduced computational requirement. To acquire a large amount of labeled data necessary to train the deep neural network, we propose a workflow that leverages the target pipeline to create a significantly larger labeled training set automatically, without prior domain knowledge of the target pipeline. We show experimentally that despite the noise introduced by automated labeling and only using a very small initially labeled data set, the trained deep neural networks can achieve similar or even better performance than the components they replace, while in some cases also reducing computational requirements.

Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Implementation of user driven innovation methodology to estimate Origin-Destination Matrices and to deploy tailored bus routes

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:10:32 +0100

a new solution to estimate OD-M of transport and to design tailored bus routes, the project B_us (commercial"br" name of the project FitYourBus, funded by the European Commision H2020 programme frontierCities) proposes"br" a new way of collecting and treating mobility pattern data in order to reduce about 36% the cost of data"br" acquisition and 41% the cost of exploiting data, allowing the deployment of user-driven transport services. The"br" proposed methodology includes the following stages: 1) Platform. Deployment of a back-end service and its"br" administration interfaces. The data collection set-up is based on a client-server architecture using J2EE and"br" Docker technologies; 2) Data collection. Users provide their basic commuting data –origin, destination, work"br" hours, etc– using our cross-platform smartphone app, which communicates with the back-end service; 3) Data"br" treatment. The collected data stored in a database is converted into a proper OD-M through an algorithm that"br" combines Dijkstra's and A*algorithms, running as a MapReduce job on a Big Data Apache Hadoop engine."br" Single citizen objective optimization algorithm influences the development of the multi-objective optimization"br" branches in the problem (maximizing the overall time savings for the participants at the same time as maximizes"br" the number of passengers per bus)."br" To test the methodology and validate the correct implementation of the algorithm, a pilot project has taken place"br" in coordination with EMT, the main bus public company in the city of Madrid (Spain). The trial consisted in"br" deploying employees’ bus routes to reach to and to go from one of their operation centres (involving about 1,300"br" workers, including drivers, mechanical technicians, and other workers). Mobility patterns data of 30.8% of them"br" were obtained. After running the algorithm, the result was a set of vectors (one from each user), which was"br" exported to a GIS platform to plot the first “draft corridors” surrounding the routes that go through the most"br" repeated nodes. These corridors were particularized for the conditions of circulation of the buses and according"br" to the schedules of the daytime and night-time of the rest of employees’ routes of EMT and the current public"br" transport services in the metropolitan area. Results show that operation times of the two current employees’"br" routes have been reduced between 1.2% (but improving spatial coverage and frequencies) and 44.1% while has"br" been increased the fleet utilization ratio because the service passes to be used by workers who previously did not"br" use it (with a majority change from the car to the bus).

Adoption of cooperative intelligent transport systems in Flemish passenger cars : a review of European Policy options

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:09:41 +0100

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) enable vehicles to be aware of objects that are not in line of sight, by interacting directly with each other and the surrounding road infrastructure. C-ITS promise to reduce traffic congestion, lessen the environmental impact of transportation, and most importantly, significantly reduce the number of (lethal) traffic accidents. As C-ITS is subject to strong network effects, adoption of C-ITS is a key driver of its (societal) benefits. Therefore, this paper estimates penetration rates of C-ITS equipped cars in the car park of Flanders, Belgium. Based on the preferred policy option with mandatory adoption, as proposed in the recent new Delegated Regulation of the European Commission, full penetration of C-ITS in the Flemish car park is expected later than twenty years after the mandate enters into force. Determination of C-ITS adoption numbers is valuable for a number of stakeholders, such as national and local governments, road authorities, technology providers and network operators. Additionally, penetration numbers allow Member States to ascertain to what extent C-ITS can contribute to the goal of zero traffic mortalities by 2050, as envisioned by the European Commission.

A Causal Model for Air Traffic Analysis Considering Induced Collision Scenarios

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:08:25 +0100

Bolted Flange Joint Made of Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) for Oil and Gas Pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:07:38 +0100

The objective of this work is an experimental and numerical investigation for a bol Richard Cullen ted composite flange connection for composite pipes, which are used in the oil and gas applications, and obtain a joint with high strength and high corrosion resistance. For the experimental part, we have designed and manufactured the required mould, which ensures the quality of the composite materials and controls its surface grade. Based on the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section X, this GFRP flange has been fabricated using biaxial glass fibre braid and polyester resin in a vacuum infusion process. Numerically, an investigation is carried out using 3D finite element analysis (FEA) of a bolted GFRP flange joint including flange, pipe, gasket and bolts. This model has taken into account the orthotropy of the GFRP material and the non-linear behaviour of the rubber gasket material for both the loading and non-loading conditions. Furthermore, the leakage propagation between the flange and the gasket has also been simulated in this investigation by using the pressure-penetration criteria PPNC in ANSYS. Finally, the flange has been tested under the internal pressure and the agreement between the experimental and numerical results is excellent.

Factors Preventing the Use of Alternative Transport Modes to the Car in Later Life

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:06:35 +0100

Recent research related to transport gerontology argues that the autonomy, flexibility and independence provided by the car are fundamental in fulfilling travel needs in later life. Statistics show that in the western world the car is the most used mode of travel among the older population. Despite the importance of promoting transport policies to incentivize people to switch to more sustainable forms of transportation, alternatives to the car are still underused by older people. The aim of this scoping review is to analyze the transport barriers affecting the use of alternative modes to the car in later life. The paper investigates how issues related to personal security, health impairments, service provision, affordability, comfort, attitude, built environment, information and awareness of all transport modes influence modal choice. The analysis of the literature shows that despite the benefits provided by public transport, flexible transport services, taxis, walking and cycling, there are still several factors that negatively affect the use of these modes. The paper concludes by reflecting on potential solutions that might help to create a transport system less reliant on the car and which is able to meet the mobility needs of the older population.

Document type: Article

LNG Blue Corridors: A summary of the main activities performed during the first four years of the project.

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:06:00 +0100

The aim of the LNG Blue Corridors project is to establish LNG as a real alternative fuel for medium- and longdistance"br" heavy-duty vehicles; first, as a complementary fuel, and later, as an adequate substitute for diesel. The"br" use of LNG as fuel for transport in trucks also has great potential to achieve Europe’s policy objectives as well"br" the European Commission’s greenhouse gas reduction and air quality targets."br" LNG Blue Corridors unites the critical mass of experience (know-how, expertise, industrial parties and"br" stakeholders) in LNG transport and infrastructure technology. It involves cooperation between heavy-duty"br" vehicle manufacturers, fuel suppliers, fuel distributors and fleet operators. The project includes a first definition"br" of European LNG Blue Corridors, with strategic LNG refuelling locations in order to guarantee the availability"br" of LNG for road transport in a simple and cost effective way in order to perform a large-scale demonstration"br" taking place in four main corridors across Europe, and currently involving a consortium of 59 partners, (OEM’s,"br" fuel suppliers, research centres, fleet operators) from 11 countries."br" This paper presents the main activities, most relevant achievements, and the partial conclusions of the LNG Blue"br" Corridors project so far.

Driver De-Skilling and its Effect for Safety in Autonomous Driving

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:05:19 +0100

Semi-automated vehicles allow drivers to conduct other activities in the vehicle, such as reading a book. In case"br" of an emergency, the vehicle might induce a handover. This may happen in cases which are not manageable for"br" the automated system. It requires the driver to take over and resolve the situation in sub-optimal, complex, and"br" potentially dangerous situations. As a result of a lack of frequent driving, drivers may no longer possess the"br" skills to do so. This phenomenon is also known as one of the ironies of automation (Bainbridge, 1983). We target"br" the question how de-skilling will affect driving capabilities of drivers and how we can support the skill loss. In"br" an online study, we showed a dominance of initial skilling over de-skilling effects. In interviews with pilots, we"br" identified strategies against de-skilling in aviation for adaptation in the automotive domain. We show that initial"br" driver education, repeated transition training, increased situation awareness, constant mode awareness,"br" calibrating trust, and assigning responsibility are important factors for safe automated driving.

New ropeway system for Smart Urban Mobility & Logistics in the City of Graz

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:03:40 +0100

With the need for resource-saving within urban areas it is necessary to create traffic solutions which exhibit an efficient and environmentally-friendly infrastructure system. For the first time, the research project “ROPEWAY_POT II” will identify potential for a fully-integrated goods delivery and freight logistic urban cable car system as part of “last mile” logistics for the City of Graz, taking into consideration parallel use of cable cars in public passenger transport. The project started in March 2017 and will last for 24 months. It is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The innovative system approach offers the possibility of bundling transport of goods from the city limits over the “last mile” to shops (C2C) and clients (C2B). As a result, highly-frequented transport routes within the city are relieved and negative environmental impacts are reduced. It is also considered that further synergy effects within the overall system of goods and passenger transport may be generated. After the introduction we present the objectives, expected results as well as the procedures and methods.

Adapting the Railway for the Future

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:03:26 +0100

Future railway systems will consist of many elements that are already in service plus a variety of major and minor changes. How resilient this new system-of-systems is to the changing context of climate, society and economy, will depend on our ability to imagine and implement adaptation processes and measures in an effective and holistic way. This cannot be separate from operational business-as-usual but rather needs to be embedded across organisations as well as promoted through inter-agency working and engagement across the breadth of stakeholders. A framework is proposed as a foundation on which to encourage such developments.

Developing modified fuzzy multi actor–multi level decision making in appraisal of mass transit system in the greater Jakarta area, Indonesia

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:01:33 +0100

The Greater Jakarta Area is an urban area consisting of the capital city of Indonesia - Jakarta and the buffer region that have been continually growing rapidly. Traffic demand of the road network from and toward the core of the Greater Jakarta area has been and will continue to expand. Fortunately, the incremental level is declined. Comparing previous traffic survey in The Greater Jakarta Area, traffic volume in 1988-1993 has increased by 12.6% per year, and from 1993 to 2000 has increased by 6% per year [3]. However, the traffic increase is very significant, and potentially significant in creating severe traffic congestion in The Greater Jakarta Area in the future. The Greater Jakarta Area has a lot of plans to build a mass transit system, such as the development of bus rapid transit (BRT), Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), monorail and commuter rail revitalization, etc. This research is expected to give special attention to build a tool in the decision-making method to assess the priority of an investment plan in a mass transport strategic plan in developing countries. The developed method is Modified Fuzzy Multi Method Actor – Multi Level Decision Making, which is trying to be developed by the authors. The survey was conducted in The Greater Jakarta Area involving respondents from the involved actors, i.e., public transit user, society (non-users), operators and investors and the government as regulator. In addition, data collected from various levels of stakeholders from various levels of authority viz. the district/city, provincial and central government level. The results of this research show that the decision-making process is more effective, objective and more comprehensive.The Greater Jakarta Area is an urban area consisting of the capital city of Indonesia - Jakarta and the buffer region that have been continually growing rapidly. Traffic demand of the road network from and toward the core of the Greater Jakarta area has been and will continue to expand. Fortunately, the incremental level is declined. Comparing previous traffic survey in The Greater Jakarta Area, traffic volume in 1988-1993 has increased by 12.6% per year, and from 1993 to 2000 has increased by 6% per year [3]. However, the traffic increase is very significant, and potentially significant in creating severe traffic congestion in The Greater Jakarta Area in the future. The Greater Jakarta Area has a lot of plans to build a mass transit system, such as the development of bus rapid transit (BRT), Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), monorail and commuter rail revitalization, etc. This research is expected to give special attention to build a tool in the decision-making method to assess the priority of an investment plan...

Exploring the Impact of User Preferences on Shared Autonomous Vehicle Modal Split: A Multi-Agent Simulation Approach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:59:27 +0100

International audience; Shared autonomous vehicles are considered to have a transformative impact on future urban transportation and especially Shared Mobility. In order to assess the transport-related impact of this new mode, various models and simulations are under development. The majority of recently proposed simulations are based on activity-based multi-agent approaches. Thanks to the disaggregated level of data in multi-agent simulation, the traveler decision making mechanisms might be individualized according the attributes. In this paper we try to take in advantage of this granularity in order to explore the impact of user preferences on the modal split of shared autonomous vehicles. To illustrate the proposed methodology the transport system of Paris is simulated by using an activity-based multi-agent tool called MATSim. The traveler preferences toward shared autonomous vehicles use are also summarized based on the literature review.

Document type: Conference object

Flow characteristics and dispersion during the vertical anthropogenic venting of supercritical CO2 from an industrial scale pipeline

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:58:14 +0100

Pressurized pipelines represent the most reliable and cost effective way of transporting captured CO2 from fossil fuel-fired electricity generation plants for subsequent sequestration. Leakage of CO2 through a small puncture is the most common form pipeline failure during normal operation; such failures could lead to fracture. The study of pipeline depressurization and inventory dispersion behavior is of paramount importance for assessing the possibility of fracture propagation and the impact of CO2 pipeline releases on the surrounding environment. A large-scale fully instrumented pipeline (258 m long, 233mm i.d.) was constructed to study the pressure response, phase transition and dispersion of gaseous, dense and supercritical phase CO2 during vertical leakage through a 15 mm diameter orifice. The fluid pressures and temperatures in the pipeline were recorded to study the pressure response and phase transition inside the pipeline. Video cameras and CO2 concentration sensors were used to monitor the formation of the visible cloud and the gas concentration distribution in the far-field. There was a “two cold, intermediate hot” phenomenon during the vertical release in the dense and supercritical release due to the dry ice particle accumulation near the orifice. The intersection of the jet flow and settling CO2 mixture resulted in complex visible cloud forms in dense CO2 release.

Traffic-Cascade

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:56:46 +0100

road transportation supports both economic and social activities in developed cities, it is important to maintain smooth traffic on all highways and local roads. Whenever possible, traffic congestions should be detected early and resolved quickly. While existing traffic monitoring dashboard systems have been put in place in many cities, these systems require high-cost vehicle speed monitoring instruments and detect traffic congestion as independent events. There is a lack of low-cost dashboards to inspect and analyze the lifecycle of traffic congestion which is critical in assessing the overall impact of congestion, determining the possible the source(s) of congestion and its evolution. In the absence of publicly available sophisticated road sensor data which measures on-road vehicle speed, we make use of publicly available vehicle trajectory data to detect the lifecycle of traffic congestion, also known as congestion cascade. We have developed Traffic-Cascade, a dashboard system to identify traffic congestion events, compile them into congestion cascades, and visualize them on a web dashboard. Traffic-Cascade unveils spatio-temporal insights of the congestion cascades.

The science of testing : an automotive perspective

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:54:09 +0100

Increasing automation in the automotive systems has re-focused the industry's attention on verification and validation methods and especially on the development of test scenarios. The complex nature of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADASs) and Automated Driving (AD) systems warrant the adoption of new and innovative means of evaluating and establishing the safety of such systems. In this paper, the authors discuss the results from a semi-structured interview study, which involved interviewing ADAS and AD experts across the industry supply chain. \\ud \\ud Eighteen experts (each with over 10 years' of experience in testing and development of automotive systems) from different countries were interviewed on two themes: test methods and test scenarios. Each of the themes had three guiding questions which had some follow-up questions. The interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis via coding was conducted on the transcripts. A two-stage coding analysis process was done to first identify codes from the transcripts and subsequently, the codes were grouped into categories. \\ud \\ud The analysis of transcripts for the question about the biggest challenge in the area of test methods revealed two specific themes. Firstly, the definition of pass/fail criteria and secondly the quality of requirements (completeness and consistency). The analysis of the questions on test scenarios revealed that "good" scenario is one that is able to test a safety goal and ways in which a system may fail. Based on the analysis of the transcripts, the authors propose two types of testing for ADAS and AD systems: Requirements-Based Testing (traditional method) and Hazard Based Testing. The proposed approach not only generates test scenarios for testing how the system works, but also how the system may fail.

Impact of thermal-electric networks on the usability of EVs based on a study with a C-segment car

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:53:23 +0100

One of the major concerns of contemporary Fully Electric Vehicles (FEV) is the high dependency of the maximum range on ambient temperature conditions. In some cases the range of an EV can drop by more than 50%. One of the main reasons for this behaviour is the energy demand required by the thermal conditioning of the passenger compartment. Within this paper a comprehensive approach will be presented to reuse the waste heat energy of the powertrain components combined with a thermal storage for conditioning the car’s cabin."br" To evaluate the influence of the ambient temperature on the vehicle range, an electro-thermal simulation of a C-segment car, including the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) and the cooling system was performed. The following components/systems were considered: battery, thermal energy storage, thermal insulation as well as heat pump and thermal preconditioning due to an inductive charger."br" It will be shown that, despite a low amount of waste heat from the high voltage components, the combination of the heat pump with the thermal energy storage (using advanced control strategies) leads to a remarkable range improvement."br" This research is based on the integration of new electro-thermal system components including novel control algorithms into the thermal system layout. In this article modern control approaches for heat-pump subsystem as well as overall control strategies for complete electro-thermal networks will be discussed. Model-based development has been proven to be an efficient way of control algorithms and software design, including advanced control techniques like MPC and virtual sensors."br" To validate the simulation results the system will be integrated in a demonstrator car (Mercedes Benz B-Class)."br" This research was carried out in the project H2020 653514 OSEM-EV, Optimized and Systematic Energy Management in Electric Vehicles, which belongs to the GV-2-2014 call.

Design of a novel, low impact bogie for a freight locomotive

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:52:46 +0100

This paper reports on the work being carried out in the Shift2Rail ‘DYNAFREIGHT’ project to develop a novel freight locomotive bogie which will reduce wheel and track wear and run with lower noise than current locomotive bogie designs. This is being achieved by developments in several areas including the use of advanced materials and manufacturing processes and the adoption of passive and mechatronic systems for radial steering of bogies, which will allow improved running performance compared to conventional bogies. In particular, significant reduction of wheel wear and damage, improved traction in curves and reduced resistance to motion in sharp curves will be achieved. The use of noise optimized wheelsets and noise absorbing structure in order to reduce the running gear related noise is also being considered. Monitoring of the most maintenance cost-intensive bogie elements is also being considered in order to contribute to lower life cycle costs and to improve the reliability and availability of the locomotive.

Cooperative container trucking – System, model and solution

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:52:20 +0100

This work considers a multi-resource routing problem (MRRP) where drayage orders need to be completed with trucks and trailers from multiple cooperating carriers. The problem contains multiple challenging aspects including a complex pricing model and the need to coordinate cooperating vehicles of several carriers. While the cooperation aspect of the problem can make the overall drayage operation more efficient, it also introduces additional requirements, most notably a cooperation model which respects the individual preferences of carrier companies and customers. In this paper, we first present an efficient way to model this problem and describe a system that collects and analyzes the required data. We then introduce a solution method based on a variable neighborhood search (VNS) metaheuristic, describe our solution representation and discuss the cost function which is specially tailored to the resource sharing aspect of the problem. Finally, we present a scenario-based evaluation of the system based on real-world data and discuss the results.

Asset Management and Social Effects - CEDR-Project ISABELA

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:52:04 +0100

Social aspects in form of social effects, benefit and risk become more and more important in the context of assessing different maintenance strategies and policies on the road infrastructure networks. The decision makers need to present the consequences of their strategies and policies on both, the technical level and more and more the social level."br" The main objective of the CEDR-project ISABELA was the definition of a holistic asset management framework for social key performance indicators and social benefit modeling in form of social effects (monetary and non-monetary), social backlog and social risk. ISABELA takes into account maintenance aspects such as traffic availability, disturbance and efficiency, road safety, environment and socio economy. The results of the project provide a clear and reproducible definition of the necessary basics for social benefit calculation within life-cycle-assessment (LCA), life-cycle-cost-analysis (LCCA) and risk assessmen

Using the Product Impact Tool for Prospective Thinking

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:49:55 +0100

The ever rising role of products and technologies in humans’ lives is increasing the call for ways to understand and investigate their influences, in the form of prospective analytical methods. This paper proposes one such method, based upon the Product Impact Tool. This Tool was developed to combine both philosophy of technology and design for usability perspectives. Its effects offer potential for prospective and reflective purposes, and can be used to investigate and structure ideas about the impacts of both current and future technologies. The proposed method offers an addition to existing tools within the field of prospective analysis. This added value is demonstrated through a case study of a concept for future personal transport. Through this case study, it is shown that the proposed method can help uncover information that remained hidden by conventional approaches, by inducing a critical investigation of the subject from multiple perspectives. Such information will aid analysts and strategists in their work, leading to more effective, desirable, and responsible technologies being developed and implemented.

A HYBRID THERMAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH NEGATIVE PARASITIC LOSSES FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERY PACKS

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:47:22 +0100

Parasitic power requirement is a key criterion in selection of suitable battery thermal management system (TMS) for EV applications. This paper presents a hybrid TMS with negative parasitic requirements, designed by integrating phase change material (PCM) with thermoelectric devices. The proposed system does not require any power consumption to maintain tight control over battery cell temperature during aggressive use and repetitive cycling. In addition, it can recover a portion of waste heat produced during the typical operation of EV battery packs."/jats:p" "jats:p"Commercially available LiFeP04 20 Ah pouch cell has been chosen as a test battery sample for validating the conceptual design presented herein. The commercial battery cells, submerged in a PCM-filled polycarbonate casing, are subjected to a cyclic discharge process to elucidate their heat generation characteristics at 27 °C. Charging and discharging is conducted at 0.5C and 1C, respectively. A thermoelectric circuit is used to recover the heat energy absorbed by the PCM and to convert it to electrical energy. The manuscript further details some of the major findings of this experiment.

Optimal Scheduling of Multiproduct Pipeline System Using MILP Continuous Approach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:46:43 +0100

Part 5: Planning and Scheduling; International audience; To date, the multiproduct pipeline transportation mode has nationally and internationally considerably evolved thanks to his efficiently and effectively of transporting several products. In this paper, we focus our study on the scheduling of a multiproduct pipeline system that receives a number of petroleum products (fuels) from a single refinery source in order to be distributed to several storage and distribution centers (depots). Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) continuous mathematical approach is presented to solve this problem. The sequence of injected products in the same pipeline should be carefully studied, in order to meet market demands and ensure storage autonomy of the marketable pure products in the fuels depots on the one hand and to minimize the number of interfaces; Birth zone of mixture between two products in contact and in sequential flow, which may hinder the continuous operation of the pipeline system, by the necessity of additional storage capacity for this last mixture, that is in no way marketable and requires special processing operations. This work is applied on a real case of a multiproduct pipeline that feeds the western and southwestern region of Algeria with fuels. The obtained results based on the MILP continuous approach give an optimal scheduling of the multiproduct transport system with a minimized number of interfaces.

Document type: Conference object

Earthquake damage estimation of gas continuous buried pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:44:36 +0100

Designing and demonstrating an electric road system for efficient and sustainable road freight

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:42:43 +0100

To meet constraints faced by road freight in terms of significantly lowering or reducing CO2 emissions and"br" improved air quality an Electric Road System (ERS), based on an Overhead Contact Line (OCL)-hybrid heavyduty"br" vehicle (HDV), has been designed, developed, tested and demonstrated. The ERS demonstrated has twice"br" the energy efficiency of conventional diesel HDVs and enables usage of renewable energy. The technological"br" development was made possible by combining expertise from rail electrification, electric drives and a newly"br" developed active current collector for dynamically connecting to the OCL and receiving a continuous supply of"br" electricity to power the engine and store energy on-board. The research project demonstrated that a hybrid truck"br" can run in pure electric mode without any change in the operations for the driver and without concessions on"br" truck performance. This paper presents the latest results and points the way to a heavy-duty road freight system"br" with full electric power and full flexibility.

TransportBuddy: Navigation in Human Accessible Spaces

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:42:04 +0100

This work presents advancements achieved in the field of autonomous service robotics in open accessible spaces, with preliminary project results. A novel navigation algorithm is presented. It integrates (i) a new trajectory planner which can be proven to be safe with respect to expected moving objects by making use of emergency trajectories, (ii) person motion models trained from historical data and integrated into the trajectory planner to mimic human-like behaviors, and (iii) a global planner which is able to coordinate multiple vehicles in tight spaces without handcrafted tracks to prevent deadlocks. The results presented are shown on real and simulated hardware which was developed and used in the projects TransitBuddy, TransportBuddy and Autonomous Fleet.

Optimizing Video Object Detection via a Scale-Time Lattice

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:41:40 +0100

High-performance object detection relies on expensive convolutional networks to compute features, often leading to significant challenges in applications, e.g. those that require detecting objects from video streams in real time. The key to this problem is to trade accuracy for efficiency in an effective way, i.e. reducing the computing cost while maintaining competitive performance. To seek a good balance, previous efforts usually focus on optimizing the model architectures. This paper explores an alternative approach, that is, to reallocate the computation over a scale-time space. The basic idea is to perform expensive detection sparsely and propagate the results across both scales and time with substantially cheaper networks, by exploiting the strong correlations among them. Specifically, we present a unified framework that integrates detection, temporal propagation, and across-scale refinement on a Scale-Time Lattice. On this framework, one can explore various strategies to balance performance and cost. Taking advantage of this flexibility, we further develop an adaptive scheme with the detector invoked on demand and thus obtain improved tradeoff. On ImageNet VID dataset, the proposed method can achieve a competitive mAP 79.6% at 20 fps, or 79.0% at 62 fps as a performance/speed tradeoff.

Comment: Accepted to CVPR 2018. Project page: http://mmlab.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/projects/ST-Lattice

On the Importance of Analysing Microarchitecture for Accurate Software Fault Models

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:40:39 +0100

Fault injection is a powerful technique for attacking digital systems. Software developers have to take into account fault effects when system security is a concern. To this end, software fault models have been developed. However, these models are often designed independently of any hardware consideration and thus raise the problem of realism. The generality of these models cannot account for the specificities of each architecture. As a consequence, software countermeasures based on such software fault models do not guarantee a good protection against faults. Processor microarchitecture should be precisely analysed to better understand faulty behaviours and design stronger software countermeasures. To illustrate this assumption, we will show in this paper some faulty behaviours that have been observed on a RISC-V processor, and their consequences on typical software countermeasures.

Connected and Automated Vehicles on a freeway scenario. Effect on traffic congestion and network capacity

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:40:25 +0100

In the next decades, road transport will undergo a deep transformation with the advent of Connected and"br" Automated Vehicles (CAVs), which are about to drastically change the way we commute. CAVs promise to"br" increase productivity and comfort and to facilitate a greater inclusion in mobility of specific user groups, which"br" may eventually lead to increased travel demand. Together, CAVs will enable the full potential of self-driving"br" technology and they will completely merge over time. The complexity of transportation systems is high and"br" therefore, efficient tools for the assessment of this disruptive change are important."br" The objective of this paper is to evaluate the behavior of automation and/or connectivity in vehicles under realistic"br" traffic conditions and provide preliminary indicative results aiming to assess the efficiency of the corresponding"br" technologies in terms of traffic congestions and network capacity. In the present work, the case-study of the ring"br" road of Antwerp was used along with traffic demand generated based on real traffic counts."br" Preliminary results show that, ceteris paribus, automation alone is less probable to have positive impacts on traffic"br" conditions. The safety constraints that AVs will be designed to fulfill are in fact likely to generate vehicle which"br" are as cautious (if not more cautious), than human drivers. In this picture, the significant step ahead can be brought"br" by connectivity. Vehicles able to communicate in a seamless and secure way can theoretically see an effective"br" reduction in time headways and reaction time with a consequent positive effect on network capacity and thus road"br" congestion until the traffic demand stays constant. This effect is made more evident as their penetration rate over"br" the entire network increases."br" Preliminary results presented in this paper seem to confirm the effectiveness of the strategy put forward by the"br" European Commission to consider connectivity, cooperation and automation as deeply intertwined aspects of the"br" future transformation in the transportation sector.

Train tracking and train condition monitoring by Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:38:39 +0100

In this technical contribution we present the potential of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) for monitoring railway tracks and rolling stock. DAS is a measuring technique that allows to sense pressure changes in an optical fiber through sensing the Rayleigh backscatter of injected light pulses. The optical fibers used for sensing are an integral part of modern railway infrastructure, therefore installing a DAS system does not require investment in new infrastructure. We present algorithms for train tracking as well as for train condition monitoring. Both of these applications are at the core of railway safety and therefore immediately relevant for infrastructure management. The presented algorithms are evaluated on more than 5 hours of data recorded along two different railway tracks in Austria. The goal of this contribution is to show the currently unused potential of existing optical fibers along railway infrastructure.

What is the potential of a bird strike advisory system?

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:37:38 +0100

This paper presents a collision avoidance algorithm to prevent bird strikes for aircraft departing from an airport. By using trajectory-information of aircraft and birds, the algorithm predicts potential collisions. Collision avoidance is performed by delaying departing aircraft until they can follow a collision-free trajectory. An implementation of this concept has the potential to increase aviation safety by preventing bird strikes but might reduce runway capacity due to delaying aircraft. As a precursor to the feasibility, this study investigates the maximum achievable safety effect at minimum delay costs of such a system by assuming a deterministic world. Therefore, no uncertainties regarding bird and aircraft positions were considered to enable the system to prevent all bird strikes for departing traffic while causing the smallest possible delay. The anticipated effects were studied by running fast-time simulations including three air traffic intensities at a single-runway airport and bird movements from all seasons. The results imply a high potential for the increase in safety at a reasonable reduction in runway capacity. An initial cost-estimate even revealed a strong saving potential for the airlines. Based on these results, a feasibility study of implementing a bird strike advisory system including uncertainties in bird movements as well as probabilistic effects will be performed.

Towards Modern Air-to-Air Communications: the LDACS A2A Mode

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:35:41 +0100

The increasing air traffic foreseen for the next decades has triggered an extensive modernization of the air traffic management. Specifically, new air traffic services and operational concepts have been defined and shall be supported during all phases of flight by a set of modern digital data links integrated into a single communications network named the Future Communications Infrastructure (FCI). The air-to-air (A2A) component of the FCI, the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (LDACS) A2A mode, is currently in the initial stages of its development. Given that the LDACS A2A mode must be able to operate without any ground or satellite support, the data link must provide means for the aircraft to establish and organize an independent communications ad-hoc network, which imposes a great challenge for the design of the data link and specially for its medium-access control. In this paper, we contribute to the development of the LDACS A2A mode by assessing the performance of an A2A data link based on two different medium-access protocols; ALOHA with and without diversity, and a self-organizing time-division multiple-access (STDMA) scheme. The performance is obtained by simulating the implemented models of both the ALOHA-based and the STDMA-based A2A data link for different design parameters, requirements, and air traffic conditions. The obtained results show that the STDMA-based A2A data link performs better than the ALOHA-based A2A data link in most considered cases, given than the former requires a lower bandwidth than the latter to achieve the desired performance. Based on our analysis, we conclude that STDMA is a better candidate than ALOHA with or without diversity for the medium-access control of the LDACS A2A mode.

Analysis of Reasons of Accidents Between Cyclists and Public Transport Vehicles in Cities

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

In European cities, a bicycle is now or is systematically becoming an equal means of transport. Unfortunately, the growth of bicycle traffic is associated with an increase in the number of accidents involving cyclists. Some of these accidents, are events with cyclists and public transport vehicles - and therefore means of transport, which together are to constitute a serious alternative to a car. Although the share of these kind of accidents is relatively small - each such event has a very negative impact on the perception of ecological forms of transport. The paper discusses types of events between cyclists and public transport vehicles, with the identification of dangerous behaviours of cyclists and drivers. The most frequent reasons of these events are discussed, taking into account the places of occurrence of accidents, type and condition of bicycle and public transport infrastructure and types of behaviours of traffic participants. The research part of the paper presents statistical analyses of the number of accidents between cyclists and public transport vehicles, as well as statistics describing the number of victims in accidents in the six largest Polish cities. Based on detailed descriptions of events - using statistical tools - accidents were analysed in terms of identifying the most important reasons of their occurrence and circumstances conducive to the occurrence of accidents. The article was crowned with the recommendations for the application of solutions reducing the risk of accidents.

Back-Pressure Based Adaptive Traffic Signal Control and Vehicle Routing with Real-Time Control Information Update

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:34:04 +0100

Back-pressure algorithm has been shown to be effective in reducing traffic congestion. However, available works on back-pressure based traffic control usually ignore the fact that vehicles need time to travel across roads, resulting in inconsistency between controllers' viewpoint of traffic congestion situation and real traffic situation and thus misleading controllers. In this paper, we propose back-pressure based adaptive traffic signal control and vehicle routing with real-time control information update such that controllers always have consistent viewpoint of traffic congestion with real traffic situation and make wise signal control and vehicle routing decisions. As verified by simulations, our algorithm significantly reduces traffic congestion. For example, it reduces average vehicle travelling time by percentage ranging from 71% to 87% under high vehicle arrival rates when compared to other three algorithms.

Generating a Real-Time Constraint Engine for Network Protocols

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:32:42 +0100

Part 2: Real World; International audience; In this paper, we present a practical approach to generate the constraint engine for an effective constraint-based intrusion detection system (IDS). The IDS framework was designed for safety-sensitive networks that involve limited-access closed networks such as the networks for command and control systems or Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems. The constraint engine generated by the framework supports real-time performance while ensuring the intended, normal behaviour of its target networks. We present the IDS framework in terms of its internal DSL representation as well as its transformation mechanisms to generate the constraint engine code. Comparing the autogenerated version against a manually implemented, optimized version of the constraint engine indicates no significant difference in terms of their performance.

Document type: Conference object

User – centric approach for C-ITS solution proof of concept

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:32:03 +0100

The current manuscript presents the iterative user-centred approach that has been followed for the prioritisation and full definition of the Use Cases of a revolutionary C-ITS integrated technological solution newly introduced in the EU funded SAFE STRIP project (GA: n° 723211). This solution aims to shift intelligence from the vehicle to the road infrastructure, in a cost-efficient way, deploying I2X communication technologies and energy harvesting modules to support the micro/ nano sensorial networks that will be embedded on the road pavement surface and will transmit real-time information (static and dynamic) about the road condition, the traffic and environmental conditions to the road users. In this way, a series of C-ITS applications can be supported with real-time, reliable, accurate and lane specific information, directly coming from the infrastructure. Next to the description of the overall approach followed, the key aggregated feedback coming from the stakeholders’ point of view is summarised.

Living Labs for Mobility – The Urban Mobility Labs Approach in Austria

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:31:40 +0100

Mobility needs are constantly changing in terms of technological developments, organisational, legal aspects and in terms of user needs. The Living Lab approach can provide the support frame for the development of future innovation in the transport sector jointly with the users. Recognizing the potential of living labs the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) introduced the initiative Urban Mobility Labs (UML) on a strategic national level. It was launched in the frame of the research and development program “Mobility of the Future”. The first phase was an exploration phase, where eight proposals for UMLs were evaluated and checked for feasibility. In a current second phase five UML are under implementation. In this paper we give an overview on the advantages of providing UMLs to research and development projects and how they can be implemented along a research funding scheme based on the example of Austria.

Blockchains in mobility and logistics

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:30:28 +0100

In this paper, we analyze the applicability of blockchain in the transport and mobility sector. To begin with, the paper surveys identified and potential application ideas from publicly available information sources. Secondly, we examine an in-depth stakeholder workshop held to analyze selected transportation and mobility applications and ideas. Thirdly, we present a conducted PESTEL analysis to understand the utility and societal impact of blockchains as well as to provide an overall view on this issue for aiding governance."br" Identified blockchain application areas are multiple, and include mobility services, such as a peer-to-peer car sharing, carpooling, ride-sharing, smart insurance contracts as well as logistics and supply chains with full transparency, proven authenticity, digitized shipping documents, and automated customs clearance. The current state of blockchain applications for transport is mostly at a proof-of-concept level, with specific cases recently moving towards commercial implementations. A visionary future scenario includes autonomous vehicles that operate as independent service providers earning their own fares, selecting their charging and service stations, paying their costs, obtaining their own auto insurance, and even negotiating liability in collisions. Clearly, the applicability of blockchain is under broad exploration, and the results of this study illustrate the status and directions of exploration. Finally, the paper gives ideas and future recommendations for utilizing and governing blockchain in the European transport sector.

Rail operator and passenger friendly efficient rail vehicle interiors

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:29:56 +0100

In order to be "competitive" as a railway, operating efficiency counts as an important imperative. In the context of railway carriage interior planning this is often made subordinate to other substantial aspects such as for example, expediency. This leads in practice to the opposite wished for result. Misunderstood operating efficiency concepts such as a maximal utilization of space for seating can in reality lead to a decline in operating efficiency, operational problems and in incidents to serious safety risks.

Chemical and microbially-induced corrosion in petroleum pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:28:32 +0100

A Comprehensive Comparison of Rail Power Conditioners Based on Two-level Converters and a V/V Power Transformer in Railway Traction Power Systems

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:26:40 +0100

Electric locomotives in the traction power systems represent huge nonlinear single phase loads and they affect adversely the public electrical grid stability and the power quality. Some of such problems are related to the harmonic distortion and the Negative Sequence Components (NSCs). The Rail Power Conditioners (RPCs) are widely used to accomplish harmonics mitigation, besides NSCs compensation, then, maintaining balanced and sinusoidal public electrical grid currents. This paper presents a comprehensive comparison study between three different RPCs based on the two level converters and a V/V power transformer. The Four Wire Rail Power Conditioner (FW RPC), the Three Wire Rail Power Conditioner (TW RPC) and the Half Bridge Rail Power Conditioner (HB RPC) are the main conditioners of interest. The main contribution of this paper is to perform a comprehensive comparison between the aforementioned RPCs, including the control algorithms and the compensating performance regarding the power quality problems. Simulation results with different operation scenarios are presented to establish an appropriate comparison between the aforementioned RPCs topologies. Mohamed Tanta was supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) PhD grant with a reference PD/BD/127815/2016. This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145–FEDER–007043 and FCT within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Optimization of Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles on Motorways

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:24:58 +0100

The electrification of transport is considered to be a promising way for reducing negative environmental impacts. It has a high priority for many European nations but its dispersion is far behind expectations. One cause for this lag is the insufficient charging infrastructure. When charging infrastructure is established, the question arises where to place new charging stations and/or how to extend existing ones. We present the results of a study commissioned by the Asfinag (Austrian motorway operator) which addresses this question. Further we propose a method for an optimized siting and sizing of fast charging stations. The objective is to establish a fast charging infrastructure for battery electric vehicles on motorways to enable long distance trips beyond cruising ranges."br" Charging demand is estimated based on traffic flows between origins and destinations. Predicted penetration rates for battery electric vehicles for the years 2020 and 2025 are used to estimate a traffic demand, described by path flows, for battery electric vehicles. Path flows beyond maximum cruising range are selected, and a sub-route is determined, bounded by the first possible and latest necessary location for charging."br" Finally, a facility location problem is formulated in order make trips beyond maximum cruising range on motorways in Austria feasible. In the optimization problem, only rest areas are considered as possible locations for charging stations. Existing charging stations on motorways are included. In addition to determining locations, the number of CPs per charging station to be build is investigated.

Semi-Automated Location Planning for Urban Bike-Sharing Systems

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:24:11 +0100

Bike-sharing has developed into an established part of many urban transportation systems. However, new bikesharing"br" systems (BSS) are still built and existing ones are extended. Particularly for large BSS, location planning"br" is complex since factors determining potential usage are manifold. We propose a semi-automatic approach for"br" creating or extending real-world sized BSS during general planning. Our approach optimizes locations such that"br" the number of trips is maximized for a given budget respecting construction as well as operation costs. The"br" approach consists of four steps: (1) collecting and preprocessing required data, (2) estimating a demand model,"br" (3) calculating optimized locations considering estimated redistribution costs, and (4) presenting the solution to"br" the planner in a visualization and planning front end. The full approach was implemented and evaluated positively"br" with BSS and planning experts.

Predicting computational reproducibility of data analysis pipelines in large population studies using collaborative filtering

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:21:46 +0100

Evaluating the computational reproducibility of data analysis pipelines has become a critical issue. It is, however, a cumbersome process for analyses that involve data from large populations of subjects, due to their computational and storage requirements. We present a method to predict the computational reproducibility of data analysis pipelines in large population studies. We formulate the problem as a collaborative filtering process, with constraints on the construction of the training set. We propose 6 different strategies to build the training set, which we evaluate on 2 datasets, a synthetic one modeling a population with a growing number of subject types, and a real one obtained with neuroinformatics pipelines. Results show that one sampling method, "Random File Numbers (Uniform)" is able to predict computational reproducibility with a good accuracy. We also analyze the relevance of including file and subject biases in the collaborative filtering model. We conclude that the proposed method is able to speedup reproducibility evaluations substantially, with a reduced accuracy loss.

Current and potential negative effects of autonomous vehicles

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:21:05 +0100

There is a general enthusiastic approach toward autonomous vehicles, e.g. they are claimed to be the breakthrough solution for a drastic reduction of road accidents, largely caused by human errors. However, their current and potential negative effects have not been adequately addressed yet: decreasing driving skills, new “automotive digital divide”, additional reaction time, “last mile” issue for automated HGVs are only some examples of still pending issues that can jeopardize the expected advantages. This paper analyzes the levels of automated driving defined by SAEJ3016 according to the current literature and resumes the main issues not yet adequately solved, in order to give a clear picture of the current and potential negative effect of each level, starting from “Level 2 - Partial automation” up to “level 4 –High automation”. Level 5 is not analyzed because its deployment appears too far in the time and there are not enough data for an effective discussion. The position of the automotive industry and its need to re-invent the business is related to the present market approach and may have a relevant influence on the incoming paradigm shift.

Frequency and Severity of Crashes Involving Vulnerable Road Users – An Integrated Spatial And Temporal Analysis

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:20:51 +0100

Worldwide, it is estimated that every year 1.2 million road users lose their lives on road crashes. This situation has a huge impact in terms of health and economical development and costs to governments. Pedestrians and cyclists, often called vulnerable road users (VRUs), are more likely to be injured in road crashes as they are unprotected and more exposed to risk in the presence of motor vehicles. In 2015, 21% of the fatalities in European Union’s roads were pedestrians, while 8% were cyclists. The respective percentages in Portugal were 23% for pedestrians and 5% cyclists. The objective of the paper is to developed a comprehensive study between motor vehicle and pedestrians or cyclists collisions occurrences integrating spatio-temporal data analysis with crash prediction models. Spatial analysis is the first step to identify the patterns between blackspots in three cities from Portugal (Aveiro, Porto and Lisbon). Blackspots were identified using ArcGIS and the Kernel Density Estimation function taking into account the level of injury severity. The second step is a temporal analysis that involves a temporal distribution of the crashes or injured people. Lastly, a crash prediction model was developed for each city that calculates the likelihood of VRUs to be involved in a crash taking into account injury severity. The findings from the study highlighted target variables and specificities at a local level that may influence the number and severity of crashes between motor vehicle and VRUs. The identification of blackspots revealed that most injuries occurs surrounding high attraction places. Temporal analysis results showed a major percentage of crashes occurring during afternoon peak-hours (4-7p.m.). Comparison between the cities showed that Porto presents the worst scenario in terms of number of VRUs injuries per ten thousand inhabitants or kilometers squared. The developed Multinomial Logistic Regression models revealed that VRU gender and age, as well as weather conditions, are statistically significant for the prediction models. The spatio-temporal analysis of crashes taking into account the level of injury severity has the goal of establishing patterns between the different cities, which is important to understand risk factors. The outcomes of the study are valuable not only for VRUs awareness, but also for traffic planners and decision-makers.

The impact of new technologies on mode shift towards sustainable travel: findings from the STTRIDE project

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:20:37 +0100

STTRIDE is funded by the Conference of European Directors of Roads. It is addressing how best to use"br" technological advances to deliver positive modal shift towards sustainable travel, with emphasis on the interurban"br" network managed by National Road Authorities. This paper summarises the results of the part of the"br" project that is concerned with assessing the potential impact of a selection of ten new technologies on mode shift."br" It is based on an extensive review of literature and consultation with experts. The analysis identified three"br" different types of mode shift, to which the technologies contribute in varying ways and with different roles for"br" road authorities in implementation. The conclusions relate to the contribution of each technology towards mode"br" shift but also identify several key uncertainties around the impacts of new technologies on mode shift.

Calculation of weather-corrected traffic noise immission levels on the basis of emission data and meteorological quantities

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:19:57 +0100

The assessment methods for noise exposure from different modes of traffic are usually based on simplified models. Regarding meteorological influences, it is well known that weather conditions in favor of sound propagation can cause maximum noise levels which are not reflected in the averaged rating levels. Especially in larger distances from the emitter these effects become evident. Correction factors are not always sufficient to capture the strong impact of the actual atmospheric structure. An applicable and accurate meteorological model for obtaining the “real” immission load in residential areas can serve e.g. as a supplement to the averaged rating levels to better understand noise situation. In this study we look at the sound propagation models NMPB-Roads-2008 and Harmonoise, which include meteorological considerations. We compare them to the German RLS-90, discuss their advantages and drawbacks, and apply them to a simple weather-dependent test scenario to examine if their meteorologically corrected noise immission levels are feasible.

A Detection System for Dirty Bombs in Open Environments

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:13:42 +0100

In this paper, a system is presented, which addresses the first question of source assignment in an open"br" environment of unordered person flows using sophisticated data fusion algorithms for a set of gamma ray"br" detectors and 3D time-of-flight cameras for tracking. The basis of such a system are precise, reliable, and real"br" time updated tracks of all persons within the region of interest. In our system, a set of 3D time-of-flight cameras"br" is used to extract position information of persons in a room."br" In parallel, a set of gamma ray sensors is used to measure the current intensity spatially distributed in the room."br" Nuclear decay is a random process, where the statistics can be described with a Poisson distribution with high"br" variance. Thus, it directly follows that the gamma detection sensors have a poor spatial resolution for allocation"br" of a source. Therefore, the inference of which person is a carrier of radio active material must be based on"br" multiple sensors in order to reduce ambiguities. In the system proposed in this paper, this assignment problem is"br" solved based on Bayesian estimation. At each time step, a prior probability for all possible assignments within"br" the range of a sensor is updated by a likelihood which is modeled as a convolution of a Poisson process and"br" Gaussian distributed measurement noise.

Research outlook: A study about inland ports in the Physical Internet

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:12:29 +0100

Innovative mobility concepts for freight transport require a further digital (and physical) integration as well as a more efficient interconnectivity of all transport modes. Currently, freight transport networks are more or less fragmented and are mainly “managed” by forwarders, shippers or logistics service providers - there is no integrally operating transport network. Synchromodal transport can be regarded as enabler for such an integrally operating transport network and as an important constituent of the “Physical Internet”. “PI hubs” and “conventional” (intermodal) logistic nodes need to be regarded as key factors for the success of the synchromodal system: They are the neuralgic nodes where trans-shipment is happening. They form the backbone of an interconnected, synchromodal logistics network and link flows to and from various origins and destinations. So far, basic research regarding the functional design of potential PI hubs was undertaken for unimodal road-based crossdocking hubs, road-rail hubs and road-transit centres, but just a superficial analysis of road-rail-water hubs has been conducted. When undertaking research on hubs and defining their new roles in the PI, it is not sufficient to concentrate on their functional design only: The integration of intermodal hubs at strategic level (freight TEN-T), tactical level (Pan-European service profiles) and operational level (city-port relations) has to be investigated as well."br" This paper introduces a proposed research project (“InPoPI”) which is about to start during 2018; explaining its objectives, expected results, state of the art and proposed methodology.

Lean Innovative Connected Vessels (LINCOLN)

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:12:01 +0100

The European vessel industry is traditionally leader in the sector. In the last decades, to stay competitive worldwide, it has repositioned on the high-end market, characterized by specialized design and production with high complexity and technological content. This implies new challenges in complex product creation with reduced costs, fast design and optimal production time. This is more valid for SMEs and for emerging maritime sectors, where traditional vessels can’t comply with their requirements. A comprehensive approach starting from early vessels design stages can help to overcome those issues. In this paper is proposed an integrated solution based on lean design methodology, IoT (Internet of Things) tools, HPC (High Performance Computing) simulation and sustainability methods, such as LCA (Life cycle Cost Analysis) and LCC (Life Cycle Cost). This is validated towards three specific industrial cases, related to small and medium vessels and mainly coastal activities. The adoption of this approach along the maritime value chain can also foster the introduction of new business models.

Towards an intelligent and automated platform for railway Asset Management

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:11:46 +0100

This paper presents the objectives and the main expected results from IN2SMART Project, funded by the SHIFT2RAIL Joint Undertaking and the European Commission, within the SHIFT2RAIL Research Programme. This project contributes to the development of an intelligent and automated platform for Asset Management decision-making, focused on the planning of predictive, condition and risk-based Asset Management activities. Based on a framework for Asset Management aligned with international standards, the platform receives inputs from tools and models for predictive analytics that are able to extract information on current and future asset condition, using heterogeneous data from the field. In particular, nowcasting and forecasting methodologies, diagnostics and anomaly detection techniques and indicators derived from Risk, RAMS and LCC analysis are used to support decision-making. Finally, real-world business cases are presented to show the expected applicability of the proposed automated platform and the usefulness of the relevant methodology.

An open source approach for the intrinsic assessment of the temporal accuracy, up-to-dateness and lineage of OpenStreetMap

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:11:06 +0100

Abstract. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the most popular crowdsourced geographic information project. The main factor that still limits the practical use of OSM is the lack of quality assurance. OSM quality assessment is thus a well-studied topic in literature, with most of the studies evaluating the quality by comparison against reference datasets. In contrast to these extrinsic approaches, OSM intrinsic assessment evaluates the quality by only analysing OSM itself. This study contributes to OSM intrinsic assessment by introducing an open source procedure to evaluate the temporal accuracy, up-to-dateness and lineage of OSM. Two workflows are presented: the first allows accessing the historical evolution of single OSM objects through an interactive web application, while the second aggregates and stores results on a user-defined grid to enable further GIS processing. The methodology is applied on the OSM nodes in the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, by computing the following measures on the cells of an hexagonal grid: total number of nodes, average date of creation and last edit of nodes, average update frequency of nodes, average number of versions of nodes, average and total number of different contributors on nodes. Results highlight the mapping dynamics driven by the Dar Ramani Huria project, focused on increasing flood preparedness and resilience. When moving from the peripheral areas to the city centre, OSM is characterized by a progressively higher density of nodes, created earlier in time and updated by a higher number of contributors, which are all indexes of a general higher data quality.

Document type: Article

Performance Comparison of Dynamic Vehicle Routing Methods for Minimizing the Global Dwell Time in Upcoming Smart Cities

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:06:00 +0100

Traffic jams in urban scenarios are often caused by bottlenecks related to the street topology and road infrastructure, e.g traffic lights and merging of lanes. Instead of addressing traffic flow optimization in a static way by extending the road capacity through constructing additional streets, upcoming smart cities will take advantage of the availability of modern communication technologies to dynamically change the mobility behavior of individual vehicles taking these bottlenecks into account. The underlying overall goal is to minimize the total dwell time of the vehicles within the road network. In this paper, a new bottleneck-aware method for dynamic vehicle routing is introduced and compared to existing methods in comprehensive simulations. As a realistic evaluation scenario, the inner city of Dusseldorf is modeled and the mobility behavior of the cars is represented based on real-world traffic flow data. The simulation results show, that the consideration of bottlenecks in a routing method decreased the average travel time by around 23%. The newly created routing method reduces the average travel time further by around 10%. The simulations also show, that the implementation of dynamic lanes in inner cities, and so the manipulation of the capacity of the bottleneck, most of the time only shift traffic congestion to following bottlenecks without reducing the travel times.

Cooperative and connected intelligent transport systems for sustainable European road transport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:05:19 +0100

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) covers a wide range of products and solutions that deploy Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) aiming at improving traffic safety, transport efficiency, environmental efficiency, energy efficiency and driver comfort. The development and large-scale deployment of C-ITS (Cooperative ITS) will not only provide services for road users, but also substantially contribute to automated road transport. The project C-MobILE (Accelerating C-ITS Mobility Innovation and depLoyment in Europe) aims to stimulate large-scale, real-life and interoperable C-ITS deployments across Europe. It will establish research pilot sites for deployment of sustainable services that are supported by local authorities, and ensure interoperability and seamless availability of high-quality services for end users, that will be successful from a business perspective. The paper will present some preliminary results of C-MobILE, including recently developed business model for C-ITS deployment and an initial generic architecture, followed by some discussions.

A Structure-from-Motion Pipeline for Generating Digital Elevation Models for Surface-Runoff Analysis

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:04:48 +0100

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are used to derive information from the morphology of a land. The topographic attributes obtained from the DEM data allow the construction of watershed delineation useful for predicting the behavior of systems and for studying hydrological processes. Imagery acquired from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and 3D photogrammetry techniques offer cost-effective advantages over other remote sensing methods such as LIDAR or RADAR. In particular, a high spatial resolution for measuring the terrain microtopography. In this work, we propose a Structure from Motion (SfM) pipeline using UAVs for generating high-resolution, high-quality DEMs for developing a rainfall-runoff model to study flood areas. SfM is a computer vision technique that simultaneously estimates the 3D coordinates of a scene and the pose of a camera that moves around it. The result is a 3D point cloud which we process to obtain a georeference model from the GPS information of the camera and ground control points. The pipeline is based on open source software OpenSfM and OpenDroneMap. Encouraging experimental results on a test land show that the produced DEMs meet the metrological requirements for developing a surface-runoff model. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. This work has been partly funded by Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar project (FI2006T2001). The authors thank Direccion de Investigaciones Universidad Tecnologica de Bolivar for their support.

Multi- and intermodal Trip Chain Simulation for individual daily Routines, using Bicycles

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:04:34 +0100

In recent years, the funding of bicycle traffic especially in European countries has increased substantially."br" Nevertheless, bicycles are often not depicted in detail within traffic models. Especially for bicycle traffic, research"br" just started to contribute better understandings of spatio-temporal distribution of cycle trips. Without realistic"br" bicycle models, neither the initial state can be consistently evaluated, nor can an assessment of the effectiveness"br" measures be carried out. Within this paper, we focus on a framework for routing and utility calculation of bicycle"br" trips within agent-based simulation environment. Therefore, we consider influencing factors, coming from"br" environment or infrastructure side. As bicyclists do not necessarily take the shortest path, we developed an edge"br" weight calculation to feed the Dijkstra Algorithm. With it a unique route for each person is found. Every person"br" perceives a utility for the chosen route, dependent on the conceived friendliness of cycling. In further consequence"br" this paper represents the base work for the simulation of e-bike sharing and intermodal trips involving bicycles.

Modal substitution in urban transport: a stated preference approach

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:04:06 +0100

Mode shift from car to public transport (PT) can be obtained by imposing restrictive policies on car use, or by improving PT. However, the state of knowledge of modal substitution is weak. This paper documents a preference survey of Norwegian urban dwellers who were asked to consider their mode choice for a reference trip in hypothetical scenarios where their current mode becomes less attractive or unavailable, or substitute modes improve. This allows for analysis of aspects that have rarely been studied before, like directional asymmetry, different mode choice impacts of different attributes (travel time, price etc), and the impacts of magnitude (or intensity) of the attribute change. The analysis focuses on diversion factors (δ), i.e. the proportion of the change in demand for one mode which diverts to another mode. We present empirical evidence of δ and show how it differs with different attributes, with size/intensity of attribute change, and, importantly, how it depends on whether the attribute change accrues to their current transport mode (stick) or to an alternative mode (carrot).

Faster Command Input Using the Multimodal Controller Working Position "TriControl"

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:02:38 +0100

TriControl is a controller working position (CWP) prototype developed by German Aerospace Center (DLR) to enable more natural, efficient, and faster command inputs. The prototype integrates three input modalities: speech recognition, eye tracking, and multi-touch sensing. Air traffic controllers may use all three modalities simultaneously to build commands that will be forwarded to the pilot and to the air traffic management (ATM) system. This paper evaluates possible speed improvements of TriControl compared to conventional systems involving voice transmission and manual data entry. 26 air traffic controllers participated in one of two air traffic control simulation sub-studies, one with each input system. Results show potential of a 15% speed gain for multimodal controller command input in contrast to conventional inputs. Thus, the use and combination of modern human machine interface (HMI) technologies at the CWP can increase controller productivity.

Document type: Article

Deep sequence learning with auxiliary information for traffic prediction

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:01:32 +0100

Predicting traffic conditions from online route queries is a challenging task as there are many complicated interactions over the roads and crowds involved. In this paper, we intend to improve traffic prediction by appropriate integration of three kinds of implicit but essential factors encoded in auxiliary information. We do this within an encoder-decoder sequence learning framework that integrates the following data: 1) offline geographical and social attributes. For example, the geographical structure of roads or public social events such as national celebrations; 2) road intersection information. In general, traffic congestion occurs at major junctions; 3) online crowd queries. For example, when many online queries issued for the same destination due to a public performance, the traffic around the destination will potentially become heavier at this location after a while. Qualitative and quantitative experiments on a real-world dataset from Baidu have demonstrated the effectiveness of our framework.

Comment: KDD 2018. The first two authors share equal contribution

Physical and numerical modeling of hydrophysical proceses on the site of underwater pipelines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:59:46 +0100

The paper outlines issues related to ensuring the exploitation safety of underwater pipelines that are at risk of accidents. The performed research is based on physical and mathematical modeling of local bottom erosion in the area of pipeline location. The experimental studies were performed on the basis of the Hydraulics Laboratory of the Department of Hydraulic Engineering Construction, Safety and Ecology of NSUACE (Sibstrin). In the course of physical experiments it was revealed that the intensity of the bottom soil reforming depends on the deepening of the pipeline. The ANSYS software has been used for numerical modeling. The process of erosion of the sandy bottom was modeled under the pipeline. Comparison of computational results at various mass flow rates was made.The paper outlines issues related to ensuring the exploitation safety of underwater pipelines that are at risk of accidents. The performed research is based on physical and mathematical modeling of local bottom erosion in the area of pipeline location. The experimental studies were performed on the basis of the Hydraulics Laboratory of the Department of Hydraulic Engineering Construction, Safety and Ecology of NSUACE (Sibstrin). In the course of physical experiments it was revealed that the intensity of the bottom soil reforming depends on the deepening of the pipeline. The ANSYS software has been used for numerical modeling. The process of erosion of the sandy bottom was modeled under the pipeline. Comparison of computational results at various mass flow rates was made.

On-board positioning strategies based on GNSS low-cost receivers for rail freight transport

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:57:49 +0100

The European initiative Shift2Rail (S2R) joins efforts for smart and sustainable growth in the railway sector by fostering research and innovation. Specifically, the project FR8RAIL within the Innovation Programme 5 (IP5) 'rail freight' of S2R aims to remove limiting factors of rail freight transportation. The work presented here is part of FR8RAIL and addresses the use and implementation of positioning strategies for rail freight transportation. Freight localization services based on on-board positioning, for example, can facilitate logistic optimization schemes that rely on continuous position and speed information. No extra trackside infrastructure is required, which reduces implementation and maintenance costs. The paper describes the challenges and requirements of on-board positioning strategies for the use in rail freight transportation and presents solution concepts (positioning requirements, hardware architecture, algorithms) for a more competitive rail freight.

A deep learning pipeline for product recognition on store shelves

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:57:31 +0100

Recognition of grocery products in store shelves poses peculiar challenges. Firstly, the task mandates the recognition of an extremely high number of different items, in the order of several thousands for medium-small shops, with many of them featuring small inter and intra class variability. Then, available product databases usually include just one or a few studio-quality images per product (referred to herein as reference images), whilst at test time recognition is performed on pictures displaying a portion of a shelf containing several products and taken in the store by cheap cameras (referred to herein as query images). Moreover, as the items on sale in a store as well as their appearance change frequently overtime, a practical recognition system should handle seamlessly new products/packages. We developed a deep learning based pipeline to solve this task. First we deploy state of the art object detectors to obtain an initial product-agnostic item detection, then, we pursue product recognition through a similarity search between global descriptors computed on reference and cropped query images. To maximize performance, we learn an ad-hoc global descriptor by a CNN trained on reference images based on an image embedding loss. We have tested our pipeline on the standard grocery product [1] dataset and improved the currents state of the art. While computationally expensive at training time our system turn out not only accurate but also quite fast at test time.

Road wearing layer type and age effect on pavement acoustic degradation

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:56:39 +0100

Long-term positive acoustic behavior as well as sufficient strength and durability is required for low noise road surfaces. However, combination of these properties in many cases is a challenging task, especially at the severe climate conditions. In such regions, optimized asphalt layers (SMA and AC) seem to be promising solution as they have similar structural conditions to traditional AC and SMA pavements but at the same time modified distribution of aggregates, increased air void content and optimized surface texture for noise reduction. Development of optimized surface layer asphalts in most cases relies on the good experience from different climate regions, however, acoustic degradation is different, faster than in milder regions. To analyze these effects, large number of road sections constructed of different asphalt mixtures (incl. low noise asphalt mixtures, traditional asphalt mixtures) and with different exploitation age were measured by Close Proximity (CPX) trailer. Collected noise level data was compared and linked with the pavement age, resulting acoustic degradation trends. After analyzing interrelations and similarities between traditional and optimized low noise asphalt surfaces and summarizing the results, recommendations for optimized low noise asphalt mixtures development are presented in the paper.

Integration vs fragmentation: alternative tactics of local mobility businesses in response to a global wave of market disruptions

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:52:58 +0100

In this paper we present the results of a facilitation process for consensus building among local mobility stakeholders (public transport providers, taxi associations, carpooling organizations, local authorities, etc.) aimed at identifying business and deployment strategies for travel assistance services integrating regular and on-demand mobility solutions. This process was centered around a service model deployed by the SocialCar platform, providing planning and booking services for multimodal trips, combining collective transport modes with community-based services (carpooling). Local consultation events were held in ten European cities where stakeholders were asked to assess four potential deployment scenarios enabled by the SocialCar service model. The business patterns will define an investment blueprint for local business development in Europe facing the current fragmented environment in the local transport market and including the key elements of legally sound public-private data integration, monetization and financing.

DeepTransport: Learning Spatial-Temporal Dependency for Traffic Condition Forecasting

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:52:20 +0100

Predicting traffic conditions has been recently explored as a way to relieve traffic congestion. Several pioneering approaches have been proposed based on traffic observations of the target location as well as its adjacent regions, but they obtain somewhat limited accuracy due to lack of mining road topology. To address the effect attenuation problem, we propose to take account of the traffic of surrounding locations(wider than adjacent range). We propose an end-to-end framework called DeepTransport, in which Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) are utilized to obtain spatial-temporal traffic information within a transport network topology. In addition, attention mechanism is introduced to align spatial and temporal information. Moreover, we constructed and released a real-world large traffic condition dataset with 5-minute resolution. Our experiments on this dataset demonstrate our method captures the complex relationship in temporal and spatial domain. It significantly outperforms traditional statistical methods and a state-of-the-art deep learning method.

Setup and validation of a pre-prototype aftertreatment system aimed to reduce PM2.5 and NOx emissions from locomotive diesel engines

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:51:44 +0100

In the ENSPIRIT FP7 European project framework a locomotive diesel engine aftertreatment pre-prototype, due to real-world testing difficulties, was realized directly downscaled and adapted for an automotive emissions laboratory testing. It is here reported how its NOx and PM2.5 abatement capabilities were determined testing two diesel engine passenger cars deprived of all abatement systems. With the first car the setup and performance of the ENSPIRIT® pre-prototype were optimized using several analyzers, even providing size distributions of ultrafine particles: final emission reductions, calculated in g/bhp-hr, of NOx by ~90% and of PM2.5 by ~60% were reached. The pre-prototype NOx and PM2.5 abatement capabilities were then validated with the second car and results have been compared with the ones from U.S. EPA Tier 4 non-road emissions standard. It was found a NOx emission reduction by ~90% and by ~50% for PM2.5, confirmed as statistically significant by applying the Student’s t-test.

Expectations towards the self-driving car: results from a survey of use-intentions and demand responses in the adult Danish population.

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:51:30 +0100

To support foresight on the uptake of autonomous vehicles and their impact upon the demand for road transport"br" a study of the Danish population expectations towards self-driving cars was conducted. In general the survey"br" participants were positive towards self-driving cars and focused on the potential gains. Most would expect to"br" drive more in a future with access to a self-driving car. A net increase in road traffic demand should be expected,"br" partly due to new user groups that are currently limited in their car use. The expectancy towards use of a selfdriving"br" car vary considerably by age groups, gender, technology interest, disability preventing from driving,"br" current travel distances, motorway driving, driving in congestion, and experiences with assisted driving. But the"br" willingness to pay is limited and lower costs will be important for the adoption of self-driving cars. Wider"br" application of assisted driving, successful trials, increasing congestion, as well as the technological orientation of"br" the younger generations may also contribute to future appreciation and adoption of self-driving cars.

Assessing unsignalised pedestrian crossings

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:50:25 +0100

The lack of pedestrian safety on crossings is a complex problem and one that is influenced by a number of factors such as the law, road traffic culture, the road and traffic. This paper will focus on the last two by presenting a method for assessing pedestrian crossings for their geometry and roadside using data from 930 pedestrian crossings in Warsaw. The authors of this paper have attempted to systematise the process of assessment of the existing crossings safety. It should be noted that the actions taken in the field of safety assessments were carried out consecutively with a team of lighting experts whose task was to assess the impact of lighting elements on the level of pedestrian safety. The paper will describe the successive steps of the method: detailed safety inspection of crossings, identification of pedestrian hazards, including an assessment of the required sight distance in relation to actual vehicle speeds and safety improvement recommendations. Because not all data were available during the site inspection and seemed to be necessary for the assessment, efforts were made to obtain information about the road traffic volume (from a Warsaw transport model) and the traffic volume of pedestrians and cyclists by age group (own measurements conducted). In addition, the method of required visibility was developed by the authors, taking into account the position of a pedestrian at a distance of 1m from the edge of the road at drivers’ speed of V85. The authors will present the preliminary results of work on modelling the effects of selected road and traffic parameters on road safety. The authors will also present the results of analyses looking at the methodology of systematic studies of pedestrian behaviour and the pedestrian-driver relation for 70 locations: cities, small towns and outside built-up areas. The effect of the location of the measurement cross-section, type of cross-section and other selected parameters on driver and pedestrian behaviour at and around pedestrian crossings is demonstrated. Driver behaviour was analysed for pedestrians approaching the crossing, waiting at the edge of the road and in the absence of a pedestrian near the crossing.

Standards facilitating adoption of electronic exchanges

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:46:55 +0100

Electronic data exchange has made the logistics and supply chain faster and more efficient. However, the technical"br" departments of companies are getting bigger because of the lack of interoperability of messages and the need to"br" create bridges between different business processes, syntax and data elements. Recognized international standards"br" can facilitate these exchanges and ensure better understanding between all parties in the logistics change exchange"br" of information. This paper concentrates on the standards of UN/CEFACT, the United Nations Centre for Trade"br" Facilitation and Electronic Business under the UN Economic Commission for Europe.

Energy Management in Electric Vehicle based on Frequency sharing approach, using Fuel cells, Lithium batteries and Supercapacitors

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:45:52 +0100

International audience; This paper deals with an energy management improvement based on frequency sharing approach for an electric vehicle. In order to satisfy the traction/propulsion system requirement, the Fuel cell (FC) system is assisted by lithium-ion batteries and Supercapacitors (SC). Bidirectional Buck Boost converters link the batteries and Supercapacitors to the DC-Bus. The FC stack is connected to the DC-Bus by an interleaved Boost DC-DC converter. The traction/propulsion motor is a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) coupled to a DC motor in order to emulate the vehicle's load and energy requirements during the driven cycle. The DC-Bus feeds the permanent magnet synchronous motor via a bidirectional DC-AC converter. The contribution of this study involves EV's energy effort sharing between Supercapacitors, Fuel cells and Lithium-ion batteries, taking into account the dynamic responses and electrical performances of each energy sources. The effectiveness of the control is verified through simulations performed on Matlab/Simulink software.

REFINET Multi-modal Transport Infrastructure framework

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:44 +0100

Most European transport infrastructure was built in the 1960-1970s and was designed for a working life of 50 years. This infrastructure is now reaching the end of its lifetime and it is often strained far beyond intended capacities in terms of traffic flows and loads. In addition to aging, infrastructure networks will eventually face new challenges such as climate change impacts, demographic trends, and cross-modal requirements. Across Europe there is therefore an urgent need to modernise and future-proof existing infrastructure and to deliver new infrastructure in an innovative and efficient way. A pan-European, coordinated approach to the development and delivery of innovative concepts and solutions for design, construction, maintenance and upgrade of transport infrastructure would help the EU transport network remain globally competitive. This paper argues that the REFINET Multi-Modal Transport Infrastructure (RMMTI) framework provides a simple but powerful vision, which resonates with transport sector stakeholders across all modes. The RMMTI framework aims to be an open, active and quality reference that can 1) help infrastructure managers from strategic planning to operational level, 2) inform research and innovation priorities for transport infrastructure; and, 3) be used as a benchmark for future multi-modal transport infrastructure.

Toward a Programmable FIB Caching Architecture

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:31 +0100

The current Internet routing ecosystem is neither sustainable nor economical. More than 711K IPv4 routes and more than 41K IPv6 routes exist in current global Forwarding Information Base (FIBs) with growth rates increasing. This rapid growth has serious consequences, such as creating the need for costly FIB memory upgrades and increased potential for Internet service outages. And while FIB memories are power-hungry and prohibitively expensive, more than 70\\% of the routes in FIBs carry no traffic for long time periods, a wasteful use of these expensive resources. Taking advantage of the emerging concept of programmable data plane, we design a programmable FIB caching architecture to address the existing concerns. Our preliminary evaluation results show that the architecture can significantly mitigate the global routing scalability and poor FIB utilization issues.

Combination of traditional and new methods for the analysis of travel patterns: the case of nationwide public transport OD matrices in Hungary

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:40:58 +0100

Big data is a keyword of current and future trends in transport planning. However, despite recent developments and diffusion of smart technology based e-ticketing (e.g. by access cards) and systems for tracking passenger movements by mobile devices, their use is still not common in European countries. Thus, currently both classical and novel surveying and data processing methods are used to estimate origin-destination (OD) matrices in interurban public transport in some countries like Hungary, where nationwide OD matrices are pillars of strategy-making and planning."br" In 2016-2017, nearly ten years after the last update, new interurban public transport passenger OD matrices have been elaborated in Hungary, including all trips on non-local bus and train services on a weekday in autumn 2016. Although public passenger transport services are provided by state-owned companies (a national and a regional railway operator as well as seven regional bus companies) and a handful of small private operators, there is no standardized data collection or integrated ticketing."br" Consequently survey methods of cross-sectional passenger counts and personal OD interviews have been combined with electronic ticket sales data to build a database. Trip chains and travel patterns of a sample of more than 100,000 passengers have been surveyed on buses, trains and major interchanges. Data has been processed to generate OD matrices of direct trips using the method of conversion and to integrate (bus↔bus and bus↔train) transfers using probability estimation techniques. Matrices have been estimated by transport mode, on both regional and national level, including a comprehensive national public transport OD matrix."br" In this contribution, the novel combination of data collection techniques to realize a nationwide survey, data processing methodology as well as key findings (especially main traffic flows and travel patterns) are presented.

Evolution of Decision Support Systems for Railway Infrastructure Managers

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:40:32 +0100

Infrastructure maintenance is a complex task due to operational needs of service quality, availability demands, traffic intensity, and budget constraints. Traditionally, maintenance decisions are based on infrastructure managers' experiences, judgments, and available choices. Though, the technology push and the availability of an abundance of data have made an urge to derive the decisions and insights from data. This data-driven approach resulted in computerized solutions, e.g. decision support system (DSS), which are rich in data but poor in insights. The DSS confronted with data management challenges of data acquisitions, data cleaning, and data reliability further complicate the already complex task of maintenance decision-making. To tackle these challenges of maintenance decision-making and data management, a decision-driven approach is suggested for the development of DSS. The decision-driven approach builds on the definition of decision context specified by infrastructure manager. The data requirements are provided by decision context, where the interrelationships between the data and the decision context are made explicit by developing an information model. We illustrate the decision-driven approach for DSS development using a case study of maintenance decisions for bridge selection. It is found that the decision-driven approach directs the focus towards the decision context definition and decision analysis while minimizing the overhead of data management.

Instantaneous actual motion estimation with a single high-resolution radar sensor

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:38:59 +0100

Future high-resolution radars enable new functionalities in advanced driver assistance systems, relying on fast and reliable extraction of properties of vehicles on the road. A critical property for the prediction of trajectories and the assessment of potentially dangerous situations is that of the actual motion - the velocity vector and yaw rate - of observed objects. In this paper, an approach to distinguish linear from non-linear motions as well as estimating the yaw rate using only a single radar sensor is presented and evaluated via measurements.

Machine learning techniques for taxi-out time prediction with a macroscopic network topology

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:37:37 +0100

urate prediction of taxi-out time is essential for enhancing airport performance and flight efficiency. In this paper, we apply machine learning techniques to predict the taxi- out time of departure aircraft at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The exploration of historical data reveals several relevant influencing factors of taxi-out time as well as their correlations. We formulate an extensive system of predictors for our machine learning approach, based on a macroscopic network topology from an aggregate view. The predictors can be divided into 4 categories; namely surface instantaneous flow indices (SIFIs), surface cumulative flow indices (SCFIs), aircraft queue length indices (AQLIs) and slot resource demand indices (SRDIs). Three machine learning methods: linear regression (LR), support vector machines (SVM) and random forest (RF) are formulated using one-day and one-month training samples, and applied to new test dataset to validate the prediction performance. Computational results show that the training RF model using one-month sample significantly outperform other models in terms of prediction accuracy. The proposed methodology can bring significant benefits to analyzing airport ground movement performance and support the activities of airport decision making.

Characterization of Road Condition with Data Mining Based on Measured Kinematic Vehicle Parameters

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:36:38 +0100

This work aims at classifying the road condition with data mining methods using simple acceleration sensors and gyroscopes installed in vehicles. Two classifiers are developed with a support vector machine (SVM) to distinguish between different types of road surfaces, such as asphalt and concrete, and obstacles, such as potholes or railway crossings. From the sensor signals, frequency-based features are extracted, evaluated automatically with MANOVA. The selected features and their meaning to predict the classes are discussed. The best features are used for designing the classifiers. Finally, the methods, which are developed and applied in this work, are implemented in a Matlab toolbox with a graphical user interface. The toolbox visualizes the classification results on maps, thus enabling manual verification of the results. The accuracy of the cross-validation of classifying obstacles yields 81.0% on average and of classifying road material 96.1% on average. The results are discussed on a comprehensive exemplary data set.

SCOPUS: ar.j

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Document type: Article

Oxygen Impurity Effects on Hydrogen Assisted Fatigue and Fracture of X100 Pipeline Steel

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:35:42 +0100

Hydrogen gas accelerates fatigue crack growth and reduces fracture toughness in ferritic structural materials such as pipelines and pressure vessels. The extent to which the crack growth rates are accelerated depends upon environment, mechanical loading conditions, and material. In this work, the effects of loading conditions and environment, specifically oxygen impurities, are examined on an X100 pipeline steel in high pressure hydrogen gas. Fatigue crack growth rates were measured in a gas mixture consisting of nominally 100 ppm O2 in a balance of H2 gas to evaluate the effects of pressure and load ratio (R-ratio) on the manifestation of hydrogen-accelerated fatigue crack growth (HA-FCG). Tests were performed at 21 MPa, 2.1 MPa, and 1.4 MPa and at load ratios of 0.5 and 0.1. The onset of HA-FCG was observed to be dependent on both absolute pressure and load ratio and it will be shown that a critical combination can result in complete mitigation of HA-FCG over the stress intensity factor range (ΔK) examined. Tests were predominantly performed at 10 Hz; however, a single test was performed at 1 Hz which exhibited negligible HA-FCG compared to a test at 10 Hz which did exhibit HA-FCG. Rising load fracture toughness tests were conducted via constant displacement rates to generate J-R curves in both pure H2 and 100 ppm O2 mixed gas. At similar absolute pressures, fracture toughness was measured to be greater in the 100 ppm O2 mixed gas compared to the pure H2. Hydrogen-assisted fracture was completely alleviated at pressures below 2.1 MPa in the 100 ppm O2 mixed gas, in which fracture toughness values were consistent with tests in air.

Car seat comfort assessment based on objective and subjective measurements in elderly population

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:34:51 +0100

n important role in ensuring a comfortable driving experience is represented by a properly designed car seat, especially for elderly drivers. A seat prototype with easily interchangeable pads of cushion and backrest (e.g. thickness, lift at 40%) was realized to meet elderly needs. In this study both a subjective assessment, by means of selected surveys and checklists as well as an objective evaluation, throughout a pressure distribution evaluation, of an existing car seat and the new developed one, in three different pads configurations, has been performed. Thirteen healthy elderly subjects aged between 65 and 83 y.o. have been included in the study. Results showed that the new developed seat ensured a minor discomfort, both perceived (i.e. measured throughout the checklists) and objective (i.e. measured throughout pressure distribution measures) one, with respect to the pre-existing seat, for all the tested subjects. One of the tested configuration seemed to perform better in terms of perceived comfort while showing a uniform pressure distribution.

Assessment of climate change effects on navigable conditions on the river branches of the Rhine in The Netherlands.

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:34:39 +0100

Inland Water Transport (IWT) is one of the modalities for freight transport between the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and the hinterland in Germany. Transport over water between these areas is possible as a result of the presence of the Rhine, but more important are the navigation conditions on the river. As a result of climate change, these navigable conditions on the river will deteriorate in the future by lower extreme river discharges and sea level rise. The available navigable water depth will decrease on the Rhine branches Waal, Nederrijn en IUssel due to lower river discharges in dry periods, while the available head clearance under bridges becomes smaller for transport of containers in the Rhine-Meuse-delta. The worsening navigable conditions are amplified by long term-processes in the river system and trends in the freight transport sector. This will lead to the reduction of load capacity of vessels, an increase of travel time and travel costs. Stakeholders in the IWT-sector (port authorities, waterway authorities, shippers and barge operators) have the urgency to find out where potential bottlenecks may arise in the future and to develop mitigation measures. In the current literature numerical models are applied to assess the impact of climate change on Inland Water Transport for specific relations or processes. Simulations with those models is executed for one climate scenario or one time horizon for a larger part of the IWT -network. Other researchers make use of analytical relations applied on one or two bottlenecks for multiple climate scenarios and time horizons. An integral assessment to setup an overview of potential bottlenecks for multiple climate scenarios and time horizons based on an integrated model is lacking. In this project an integrated assessment meta-model is built to examine navigation conditions as a result of climate change and the impact on IWT. The focus of the first part of the project is to assess the climate change impacts on IWT. In the second part the aim is to develop and assess a number of mitigation measures. In this paper, first, an analysis of potential bottlenecks is executed. As a case study, the integrated assessment meta-model is applied on the river branches Waal and IUssel for one climate scenario and time horizon. The results give insight into the locations where problems will occur for navigation conditions and mitigation measures are needed to improve the conditions in case of low river discharges. The method and model will be applied for the assessment of mitigation measures in the second phase of the research project. The outcomes of the two research phases shall be used to define policies by waterway manager Rijkswaterstaat for efficient IWT in the future over the river Rhine or to develop new logistic concepts by ports, shipping companies or barge operators.

Work-related road safety – challenges and recommendations for professional drivers

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:33:25 +0100

When it comes to road safety, professional drivers find themselves under pressure in various circumstances and are also exposed to diverse risk factors. To minimize personal negative consequences – and negative consequences for road safety – KFV carried out a project on work-related road safety on behalf of and in collaboration with the AUVA. Data on driving behavior, working conditions, individual pressure, distraction, and challenges relating to driver assistance and in-vehicle information systems was gathered using naturalistic driving observations (17 professional drivers), 11 in-depth interviews, 11 mobility diaries, and 2 focus group discussions. These reveal that reduction in cognitive performance is a comprehensive problem linked both to driver assistance systems as well as other forms of distraction. Based on the project findings, measures were developed by experts to improve road safety by making driving less distracting and less exhausting.

Data Quality Concept For E-Government Web-Map Based Services

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:30:56 +0100

WeGovNow (WGN) is a platform combining a number of e-Government web-map based services. The platform is designed to increase citizens’ involvement into government of urban areas and collaborative decision making processes. Data quality is one of the most important factors for success of e-Government solutions. A data quality concept for the WGN platform was developed. In the frame of the platform, ground-truth reference datasets are not available. Thus, data quality is assessed intrinsically and comparably. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a base map for all WGN components; Open Data spatial layers are provided by municipalities. OSM data quality is assessed for tiles; quality of Open Data provided by municipalities is evaluated in comparison to OSM data with defined quality. Additionally, OSM and Open Data with defined quality are utilized to improve users’ input. Currently, the following tools for users’ input improvement are available: auto completing, spell checking, auto snapping, and object picking.

Proactive condition-based bridge rehabilitation planning including LCA and LCC

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:30:16 +0100

The implementation of structural health monitoring (SHM) for management and maintenance of critical transport infrastructures, such as bridges, dams or tunnels, is a widely established approach. Even though, SHM shows various technical limitations (e.g. relating to spatial capabilities of the sensors, high cost, repeatability or interpretation of the sensor measurements to support structural assessment and prediction of the infrastructure condition states). Furthermore, linking SHM with life cycle based methodologies such as life cycle costing (LCC) or life cycle assessment (LCA) is only recently discussed. The SENSKIN EC co-funded research project aims to overcome above mentioned challenges through development of a new sensor system and its integration within a Decision Support System (DSS) for proactive condition-based structural rehabilitation planning during the bridge life cycle. The DSS will include structural assessment models (exclusively based on sensor measurements for assessing the bridge condition and damage states of the main structural and a rehabilitation planning module (RPM) that will enable end-users to assess the life cycle economic and environmental implications of bridge rehabilitation options. Hereby, a tailored submodule for integrated life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA) assists, taking into account not only direct impacts of the rehabilitation solutions but also external effects caused by restricted traffic conditions (e.g. due to ongoing construction works). Thus, the SENSKIN project will contribute to a sustainable infrastructure. The following paper will sketch out the main scientific and functional structures of the developed DSS, with focus on the RPM and its LCA/LCC submodule for bridge rehabilitation planning.

Document type: Conference object

Optimizing vehicle distributions and fleet sizes for shared mobility-on-demand

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:28:48 +0100

Mobility-on-demand (MoD) systems are revolutionizing urban transit with the introduction of ride-sharing. Such systems have the potential to reduce vehicle congestion and improve accessibility of a city's transportation infrastructure. Recently developed algorithms can compute routes for vehicles in real-time for a city-scale volume of requests while allowing vehicles to carry multiple passengers at the same time. However, these algorithms focus on optimizing the performance for a given fleet of vehicles and do not tell us how many vehicles are needed to service all the requests. In this paper, we present an offline method to optimize the vehicle distributions and fleet sizes on historical demand data for MoD systems that allow passengers to share vehicles. We present an algorithm to determine how many vehicles are needed, where they should be initialized, and how they should be routed to service all the travel demand for a given period of time. Evaluation using 23,529,740 historical taxi requests from one month in Manhattan shows that on average 2864 four passenger vehicles are needed to service all of the taxi demand in a day with an average added travel delay of 2.8 mins.

LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4cathode materials for high-voltage, next-generation automotive Li-ion cells

Scipedia content — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:28:06 +0100

The insufficient autonomy of Electric Vehicles (EVs), which is mainly due to the limited energy density of automotive batteries, can be addressed by increasing the specific energy and/or the average operating voltage of the active cell materials. LiMn1.5Ni0.5O4 (LNMO) is a top candidate active cathode material due to its access to a rare two-electron transition from Ni2+ to Ni4+ at two voltage plateaus near 4.7 V vs. Li+/Li, a theoretical capacity of 147 mAhg-1 and fast three-dimensional Li-ion diffusion paths within the cubic lattice. Furthermore, LNMO is a relatively low-cost material with fairly good charging rate capability, suitable for EV requirements. However, the employment of LNMO in next-generation Li-ion batteries is prohibited by phenomena related to structural stability due to manganese dissolution and electrolyte compatibility. Structural modification via the inclusion of suitable dopants and proper surface treatment constitute promising solutions to these problems. Materials development for more efficient automotive batteries is an urgent task. In this work, four research organizations have joined efforts to realize LNMO cathodes appropriate for EVs. Three partners in this team worked on the materials development, and the fourth partner worked on the benchmarking of the materials. We have exploited nine different synthesis technologies for the pristine LNMO. From the evaluated technologies, three have been identified as most promising and were optimized for the specific application: the co-precipitation, the sol-gel and the aerosol spray pyrolysis methods. Several calcination profile conditions of the produced powder were studied obtaining two LNMO spinel phases: the ordered (P4332) and the disordered (Fd-3m) with the latter identified as the most electrochemically active. Five dopants have been introduced into the most promising LNMO lattices with Fe and Al proven to be the best-performing ones. Twelve materials have been considered for the LNMO particle surface treatment, and the Al2O3 was evaluated as the one showing satisfactory cyclic stability. We have used Scanning and Transition Electron Microscopy (SEM/TEM), micro-Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRD) and Particle Size Analysis (PSD) for the structural characterization of the products. The most promising compositions have been scaled up to quantities sufficient for the manufacture of battery cells used in the automotive sector. In this work, we will present the most significant results from the above developments including results from electrochemical performance tests of electrodes in half and full coin cells (HCC/FCC). At HCC and C/5 we managed to obtain a specific capacity of more than 130 mAh/g with about 10% irreversible capacity loss. In FCC (vs. graphite) and C/20 we have obtained materials with 118 mAh/g specific capacity and about 20 % irreversible loss. During cycling of FCCs at 1C, with the best performing material, we have attained about 80 % of the initial capacity after 100 charging/discharging cycles. Future developments should focus on increasing the cycling ability of the full-cell by optimising the active materials (both cathode and anode), the electrolyte as well as the electrode structure.

TinyLTE: Lightweight, Ad-Hoc Deployable Cellular Network for Vehicular Communication

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:47:47 +0100

The application of LTE technology has evolved from infrastructure-based deployments in licensed bands to new use cases covering ad hoc, device-to-device communications and unlicensed band operation. Vehicular communication is an emerging field of particular interest for LTE, covering in our understanding both automotive (cars) as well as unmanned aerial vehicles. Existing commercial equipment is designed for infrastructure making it unsuitable for vehicular applications requiring low weight and unlicensed band support (e.g. 5.9 GHz ITS-band). In this work, we present tinyLTE, a system design which provides fully autonomous, multi-purpose and ultra-compact LTE cells by utilizing existing open source eNB and EPC implementations. Due to its small form factor and low weight, the tinyLTE system enables mobile deployment on board of cars and drones as well as smooth integration with existing roadside infrastructure. Additionally, the standalone design allows for systems to be chained in a multi-hop configuration. The paper describes the lean and low-cost design concept and implementation followed by a performance evaluation for single and two-hop configurations at 5.9 GHz. The results from both lab and field experiments validate the feasibility of the tinyLTE approach and demonstrate its potential to even support real-time vehicular applications (e.g. with a lowest average end-to-end latency of around 7 ms in the lab experiment).

Cooperative Safety Applications for C-ITS Equipped and Non-equipped Vehicles Supported by an Extended Local Dynamic Map built on SAFE STRIP Technology

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:46:56 +0100

The work describes the contribution of SAFESTRIP EU project technology to the implementation of the Dynamic Local Map used by C-ITS safety applications. The road strips developed in SAFESTRIP are able to detect and estimate the longitudinal and lateral position of detected vehicle at lane level. This is exploited by many existing and new C-ITS applications. Here a Coorperative Intersection Support application is described and used as example to explain the concept and highlight the benefit put forward by the road strips informations.

Time-aware Sub-Trajectory Clustering in Hermes@PostgreSQL

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:44:15 +0100

In this paper, we present an efficient in-DBMS framework for progressive time-aware sub-trajectory cluster analysis. In particular, we address two variants of the problem: (a) spatiotemporal sub-trajectory clustering and (b) index-based time-aware clustering at querying environment. Our approach for (a) relies on a two-phase process: a voting-and-segmentation phase followed by a sampling-and-clustering phase. Regarding (b), we organize data into partitions that correspond to groups of sub-trajectories, which are incrementally maintained in a hierarchical structure. Both approaches have been implemented in Hermes@PostgreSQL, a real Moving Object Database engine built on top of PostgreSQL, enabling users to perform progressive cluster analysis via simple SQL. The framework is also extended with a Visual Analytics (VA) tool to facilitate real world analysis.

Document type: Conference object

Towards Big Data Analytics in Large-Scale Federations of Semantically Heterogeneous IoT Platforms

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:43:50 +0100

Part 1: SEDSEAL; International audience; The technological advances in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) have led to the generation of large amounts of data and the production of a large number of IoT platforms for their management. The abundance of raw data necessitates the use of data analytics in order to extract useful patterns for decision making. Current architectures for big data analytics in the IoT domain address the large volume and velocity of the produced data. However, they do not address the semantic heterogeneity in the data models used by diverse IoT platforms, which emerges when large-scale deployments, spanning across multiple deployment sites, are considered. This paper proposes an architecture for big data analytics in the context of large-scale IoT systems consisting of multiple IoT platforms. A Semantic Interoperability Layer (SIL) handles the interoperability among the data models of the individual platforms, using semantic mappings between them and a unified ontology. Data queries to the SIL and result collection is handled by a cloud-based data management layer, namely the Data Lake, along with storage of metadata needed by data analytics methods. Based on this infrastructure, web-based data analytics and visual analytics methods are used to analyze the collected data, while being agnostic of platform-specific details. The proposed architecture is developed in the context of healthcare provision for older people, although it can be applied to any IoT domain.

Document type: Conference object

A New Approach to Integrated Cross-Modal Transport – the FOX and USE-iT Experience

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:43:36 +0100

The objective of this paper is to present a new interdisciplinary approach to integrated transport which considers all modes of transport including road, rail, water and air. Integrated and cross-modal transport is presented from the user perspective and in consideration with the infrastructure changes and adaptations necessary for implementing current and future technologies. Cross modal transport research gaps and experience gained from participating in two Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) – FOX (Forever Open Infrastructure across (X) all transport modes) and USE-iT (Users, Safety, security and Energy in Transport Infrastructure) – funded under the H2020 framework constitute the core of the paper. A comprehensive research roadmap was produced as a result of these projects which highlighted the key research areas that cross-modal transport should focus on. The paper concludes with a discussion on the role of research and innovation in meeting cross-modal and integrated transport’s challenges and the role of the projects in breaking down the silo thinking of transport.

Sensor fault diagnosis in inland navigation networks based on a grey-box model

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:43:15 +0100

Inland navigation networks are equipped with limnimeters to measure and record water level data for the control of water levels and the management of water resources. When faults occur on sensors, corrupted data can be considered as correct, leading to undesirable management actions. Therefore, it is necessary to detect and localize these faults. In this paper, the detection and localization of sensor faults is performed through the analysis of the parameters of a grey-box model, which are obtained from available real data. The parameters are determined with a sliding window, with the exception of the delays, which are considered known a priori. A fault is detected and then localized when there is a change in the value of the parameters. This approach is well suited for constant faults and particularly well adapted for intermittent faults. Data of an inland navigation reach located in the north of France are used to highlight the performance of the proposed approach.

This work has been partially funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD) through the projects DEOCS (ref. MINECO DPI2016- 76493), SCAV (ref. MINECO DPI2017-88403-R) and through the grant IJCI-2014-20801. This work has also been partially funded by AGAUR of Generalitat de Catalunya through the Advanced Control Systems (SAC) group grant (2017 SGR 482).

Peer reviewed

ENABLE-S3 – Advanced V&V technologies and methods combined with simulation and testing environments enable the safe and secure development of Autonomous Vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:42:03 +0100

Highly automated and autonomous transport is a technology field that enables safer and cleaner transport and unburdens the driver from boring and/or error prone driving task. The development of automated transport features and vehicles will or have already led to new business opportunities in many technology sectors, like sensor technologies, SW-development or mobility services to name just a few of them. The highly precise sensors and communication technologies as well as the necessary computing power and algorithms within the vehicle plus the digital infrastructure that are necessary to realize the autonomous transport are developing very fast. But this goes also along with new heavy-weight challenges in terms of safety and security aspects. Extensive verification and validation efforts are necessary to make automated systems at least as safe as human-operated systems are nowadays."br" The ENABLE-S3 project develops verification and validation technologies and methods that will help to tackle this challenge with reasonable efforts and high coverage of test-cases. 71 partners from different transport sectors (automotive, aerospace, rail, maritime, farming) and other industries are creating new knowledge in the areas of testing and simulation methods & technologies as well as the required testing platforms and environments."br" Research within ENABLE-S3 focuses on:"br" - Test and simulation environments supporting open standards (e.g. Functional Mock-up Interface, OpenSimulationInterface) wherever possible in order to run tests for automated transport seamlessly in different virtual and semi-virtual environments."br" - Open standards for the definition, management and execution of test cases/testing scenarios like OpenScenario or OpenDrive and their relationship to other existing standards like ASAM-XiL."br" - Investigation of testing methodologies which are necessary to reduce the number of test cases tremendously, among them are DoE (design of experiments), combinatorial testing, FMEA analysis etc."br" - Development of sensor models as well as sensor stimuli (physical sensor signal generators)."br" - Generation of test cases out of existing recorded real-world data."br" The developed methods are applied in different industrial use-cases. This paper will give an overview over the needed building blocks for testing AD functions, including scenario generation, test planning, and test execution and simulation that were already developed within the ENABLE-S3 project and will finally present a practical use case and the application of aforementioned methods to an ACC function of a vehicle."br" The results gained so far in the project will show that the verification and validation methods combined with simulation and testing technologies for automated vehicles in transport play a major role in reaching the high safety and security levels that end customers and legal authorities will demand for this important technology in order to get acceptance and in order to provide a great step forward in reducing road fatalities and at the same time also CO2 emissions.

From H2020 research to political initiatives: the "factor 100" campaign of the ELIPTIC project

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:41:52 +0100

ELIPTIC is a Horizon 2020 research project on ‘electrification of public transport in cities’ – and one of the very few H2020 projects coordinated by a municipality – the City of Bremen. The “factor 1002” campaign compares impacts of e-buses and e-cars - showing that the electrification of an 18m bus for urban operation has impacts that match about 100 e-cars. Whereas there are many funding programmes for electric cars, there was nothing for electric buses equivalent to their impacts. The “factor 100” campaign has been presented at various national events and events of the European Commission. In May 2017, the German Ministers for Environment of all states and the federal level met (“Umweltministerkonferenz”), discussed and adopted a political initiative for a funding programme for electric buses. The successful political initiative was launched by the City of Bremen. In August 2017, the German government announced a €100 million funding programme for electric buses – as part of a strategy to reduce the NO2 problems in German cities.