Scipedia: Documents published in 2018

Alternative FWD evaluation concepts

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

The following paper describes a more dynamic backcalculation approach that focuses on the time history of the"br" FWD. The time history allows a presentation of deflection against stress and vice versa. This consideration"br" represents a hysteresis loop, which allows a further interpretation of the deflection results. This alternative"br" evaluation methods is being utilised and compared to common evaluation methods, based on an actual"br" measuring campaign. The measuring site is a federal highway (B 22) in Bavaria: 2 km long, asphalt pavement"br" with surface cracks, measuring grid of 100 m. The result of this comparison is that common, as well as"br" alternative evaluation methods indicate structural deficiencies within the pavement – a rather strong correlation"br" can be drawn between the utilised evaluation methods. Furthermore, the alternative evaluation methods provide"br" further structural information that refine the possible range of significance and validity of FWD measurements.

Investigation of track stiffness quality based on rail foot bending strain utilizing structure optimization methods

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:40:57 +0100

Track stiffness variation is one of the major sources of track quality deviation. To investigate track stiffness, it is common to install trackside sensors to measure track answer under extern excitation. In this research, rail foot bending strain at the middle of rail seats along the track under normal train runs is recorded by strain gauge to investigate track stiffness quality. To determine track stiffness quality based on the measurement strain result, there exists two difficulties: firstly, the dynamic wheel load is time-variant and unknown; secondly, the relationship between rail seat stiffness and rail bending strain is a multi-input-multi-output function, which makes a direct analytical solution difficult."br" The first issue is solved by introducing the concept of the strain-location curve. The second issue is solved by transferring the problem to a structural optimization problem. The commercial structure optimization software Ansys Designxplorer® is used to processing field measurement result and a good match is achieved.

Traffic Characterization on Airport Surface Using Aircraft Ground Trajectories

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:40:45 +0100

The 21st IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Maui - Hawaï, Etats-Unis, 04-/11/2018 - 07/11/2018; The continuous increase in air traffic is pressuring airport operators to augment their capacity while still complying with safety regulations. To achieve this goal, operators need a thorough knowledge of how the airport surface is put to use (i.e., how aircraft are routed) under various conditions. We propose an approach to characterizing traffic in an airport from radar-collected aircraft ground trajectories. The approach does not require prior knowledge of the airport's topology (since it reconstructs it from the available data) and uses network constrained trajectory clustering to produce groups of similar trajectories that represent frequently traveled routes in the airport. Our main findings from experimental results on real data from the Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport (France) indicate that the retrieved routes are highly linked to exploitation constraints (maneuver undertaken by the aircraft, runway, and configuration) and that the approach can help uncover the existence of less traveled alternative routes that can be useful for rerouting purposes.

Power Factor Correction Converters with Continuous Input and Output Currents for Battery Chargers in Data Centers: Performance Assessment

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:37:18 +0100

In this paper, the performance of two types of DC-DC converters namely ?uk and Boost-Buck converters is assessed for battery charging systems. Operation with power factor correction for the input side AC current, and continuous input and output currents at the DC side of the converter are considered. The aforementioned system can be employed for many applications such as electric vehicles, data centers, etc. This paper focuses typically on data centers. Matlab/Simulink models for the two converters have been built to verify the claimed contributions. This publication was made possible by NPRP grant NPRP (10-0130-170286) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). Scopu

Digital mobilities to regenerate transport? Need for innovative engineering design

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:36:56 +0100

Public transport faces increasing challenges to provide the desired service by improving its digital integration. The gap between customer/user expectations and the service proposed by many transport operators seems very hard to overcome without a structured method. We propose using the KCP method, an innovative engineering design method to propose digital mobilities and to regenerate transport through disruptive innovations. We describe how this method has been applied inside SNCF, the French national train operator, and expose two case studies on different workshops. We conclude by showing the value that ITS and digital applications can have in reviewing classical transport, and that working on the subject can help a transport operator to go outside its classical boundaries and work on different objects.

Measuring success of ITS services and their implementation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:36:01 +0100

Over the last decade significant developments in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have emerged as"br" innovative tools have been developed based on the application of Information and Communications Technologies"br" (ICT) in the transport sector. There is agreement in the transport research and practice communities that the main"br" functions of ITS and related services include increasing efficiency in transport, improving traffic safety, increasing"br" transport comfort and improving environmental performance of transport. However, it is widely acknowledged"br" that deployment of ITS services is fragmented and slow, as there are several barriers hampering successful"br" implementation of these services. They range from technical barriers (e.g. lack of interoperability of services) to"br" institutional (e.g. lack of robust legislative framework), economic (e.g. high investment costs) and"br" social/organisational (e.g. lack of cooperation between stakeholders) ones. Furthermore, a set of ITS service"br" performance measures which can be widely accepted by all relevant stakeholders is still required."br" As part of a wider research initiative, this research builds on the need for a better understanding of the barriers"br" hampering ITS services deployment and the set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) currently used for ITS"br" services. The main objective is to identify the main barriers and KPIs for both different market segments and types"br" of ITS services, based on a systematic review of the relevant literature, complemented by a series of interviews"br" with participants from a number of ITS service initiatives."br" This research makes a significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge on barriers hampering ITS service"br" deployment and measuring success of ITS services. In doing so, it helps transport research and practice in their"br" efforts to develop and deploy service initiatives that successfully meet the expectations of their key stakeholders.

Direct Adaptive Backstepping Flight Control for Quadcopter Trajectory Tracking

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:32:14 +0100

International audience; In the near future, unmanned aerial vehicles, are probably going to be integrated in the airspace and the current air traffic management concepts, need to be reviewed. Enhancements are expected from reliability, safety, and accuracy point of view. Adaptive flight control could support partially such challenge, regarding its capability to face modelling inaccuracies, parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. In addition, it could improve both of the flying and handling qualities, and impacts positively stability and maneuvrability margins, especially in the presence of unfavorable flight conditions. The main objective of this paper deals with a quadcopter adaptive flight control system that generates the necessary control laws to perform accurately, as well as possible, the reference flight trajectories. In this paper, a direct dynamical adaptive flight controller, based on backstepping approach, is developed for quadcopter trajectory tracking, where minimum phase and observability conditions are checked from differential geometry point of view. Developed direct adaptive backstepping flight control system provides nonlinear adaptive control laws in an iterative and systematic procedure design. Therefore, interlaced tuning functions are used to estimate and update laws in order to compensate the uncertain parameters of interest. The global stability of the proposed adaptive flight control system is guaranteed, based on Lyapunov theory, where the design of adaptation laws according to some quadcopter parameters is developed. Numerical simulations are performed for the quadcopter, engaged in complex trajectory tracking, and obtained results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed adaptive flight control approach.

An innovative way to embed local mobility services into the transport networks

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:31:16 +0100

To move around the country without the use of a personal vehicle entails a connected sequence of several modes of transport. Multiple modes of public and private transport already exist, but no viable unified and integrated system of information. Starting with a theoretical exploration of the business model of door-to-door transport, this article presents the first results of an experimental Innovation & Research project developed by SNCF. The approach is original in two respects: first, it investigates a new so-called distributed business model, focusing on management by local actors. Second, the exploration is undertaken through a form of institutional bricolage that does not prejudge the ultimate solutions. The first findings from surveys conducted with local actors and future avenues for research are presented.

Data-Driven Variable Speed Limit Design for Highways via Distributionally Robust Optimization

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:31:05 +0100

This paper introduces an optimization problem (P) and a solution strategy to design variable-speed-limit controls for a highway that is subject to traffic congestion and uncertain vehicle arrival and departure. By employing a finite data-set of samples of the uncertain variables, we aim to find a data-driven solution that has a guaranteed out-of-sample performance. In principle, such formulation leads to an intractable problem (P) as the distribution of the uncertainty variable is unknown. By adopting a distributionally robust optimization approach, this work presents a tractable reformulation of (P) and an efficient algorithm that provides a suboptimal solution that retains the out-of-sample performance guarantee. A simulation illustrates the effectiveness of this method.

Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to ECC 2019

Monitoring of railway structures HSL BPL with bituminous layer

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:30:40 +0100

The phenomena of packing and wear of the ballast, under dynamic stresses lead to high frequencies and high maintenance costs. It has been demonstrated that the settlements in the ballast were linked to the high accelerations produced in this layer by the passage of high-speed trains. The solution with bituminous underlay was used since the 1980s in several countries like the United States, Italy, Spain, especially on high-traffic and high-speed lines (HSL). In France, the interest in this technique is recent. Following the satisfactory behavior of the East European HSL, a layer of asphalt concrete was made under the ballast layer on a high scale lane, the Bretagne-Pays de la Loire (BPL) fast lane. It is intended, among other things, to reduce the amplitude of the accelerations produced at the passage of the HST."br" The HSL BPL has 105 km of innovative track with an asphalt concrete (GB) sublayer under the ballast, and 77 km with a granular under layer. In order to study the dynamic responses of these different structures and to understand the effect of the different layers on the dynamic response, four sections were instrumented (3 with asphalt concrete, and one on a standard granular structure) using, among others, accelerometers, strain gauges, temperature probes, etc. More than 100 sensors have been installed on the structure in different positions and depths. The acquisition of the data is made during the speed up test phase under controlled conditions with the same train passing with speeds going up from 160 to 352 Km/h. In a later phase, measurements of all the sensors will be treated under actual traffic. The BPL lane is subjected to commercial traffic since July 2017."br" The main idea of the project and the expected results for the first phase are to analyze the measurements in the database created and determine the responses of the different sections and the variations of the various parameters measured: Vertical displacements, accelerations at different levels, horizontal deformations in the bituminous layer, etc."br" In this paper, a description of the railway track “Bretagne pays De la Loire”, the instrumentation of the different sections and the acquisition system are detailed. The processing and treatment method used for the registered data is explained. The variation of the speed of the trains is also expected to be carried out in this paper to evaluate the behavior of the structures in section 4 with bituminous underlayment in terms of vertical acceleration.

TRAJECTORY-BASED MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT FOR RESILIENT TRANSPORTATION

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:29:54 +0100

The transport of goods and persons with two or more transport carriers (road, rail, air, inland waterway, or sea) results in multipartite transport chains whose profitability depends on the cost-effectiveness of the transport carriers involved as well as on the capability of multimodal transport management. Currently, differences with regard to the technical equipment used and infrastructural facilities available as well as administrative and public organizational structures in place are the major obstacles to comprehensive multimodal transport management within and beyond European Union borders. Though information and communication technologies (ICT) have entered into all traffic and transport systems, the levels of ICT penetration achieved in controlling, monitoring, and managing of system operation and processes are currently quite different [1-5]. One of the reasons for that is the lack of homogenous ICT standards and, as a result, the technological barriers for interconnectivity between different systems, processes, applications, and stakeholders [2]. The proposed trajectory-based concept is considered as suitable approach to perform the smart and adaptable planning, operation, and management of systems with dissimilar structures, a wide diversity of actors, and distributed responsibilities. It is therefore expected that it will be especially well suited to facilitate multimodal transport management for future Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Based on the “transport trajectory” formulation introduced here, it will be shown that a trajectory-based status description is generally possible for all transport-relevant components and processes. The expected benefit of the trajectory-based transport management is illustrated by means of selected transportation scenarios.

Application of VISSIM software in traffic engineering course reform of road and bridge major

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:27:57 +0100

Travel Time Modeling using Spatiotemporal Speed Variation and a Mixture of Linear Regressions

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:27:14 +0100

Real-time, accurate travel time prediction algorithms are needed for individual travelers, business sectors, and government agencies. They help commuters make better travel decisions, avert traffic congestion, help the environment by reducing carbon emissions, and improve traffic efficiency. Travel time prediction has begun to attract more attention with the rapid development of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), and is considered one of the more important elements required for successful ITS subsystems deployment. However, the stochastic nature of travel time makes accurate prediction a difficult task. This paper proposes travel time modeling using a mixture of linear regressions. The proposed model consists of two normal components. The first component models the congested regime while the other models the free-flow regime. The means of the two components are modeled by two linear regression equations. The predictors used in the linear regression equation are selected out of the spatiotemporal speed matrix using a random forest machine-learning algorithm. The proposed model is tested using archived data from a 74.4-mile freeway stretch of I-66 eastbound connecting I-81 and Washington, D.C. The experimental results show the ability of the model to capture the stochastic nature of travel time and to predict travel time accurately.

Coordinated Dense Aerial Traffic with Self-Driving Drones

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:26:33 +0100

In this paper we present a general, decentralized air traffic control solution using autonomous drones. We challenge some of the most difficult dense traffic situations, namely, crosswalk and package-delivery scenarios, where intelligent collective collision avoidance and motion planning is essential for a jam-free optimal traffic flow. We build up a force-based distributed multi-robot control model using a tunable selection of interaction terms: anisotropic repulsion, behaviour-driven velocity alignment, self-organized queueing and conflict-avoiding self-driving. We optimize the model with evolution in a realistic simulation framework and demonstrate its applicability with 30 autonomous drones in a coordinated outdoor flight within a densely packed virtual arena.

Indirect CO2 emissions of electric vehicles: Insights from real-world vehicle use

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:23:23 +0100

Greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2 emissions, are a major environmental problem caused mainly by the transportation and the energy sectors. Electric vehicles have been proposed as a solution for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in road transport. At the same time their potential emission reduction depends on the emissions from the generation of electricity used to charge the vehicles. This study analyzes indirect emissions of electric vehicles to examine optimization potential using real-world data. The results of the study suggest that charging during the daytime is associated with the usage of more electricity from renewable energy sources than charging in typical non-work hours. However, due to the highly violate character of renewable energy sources the differences are rather small. Also, CO2 emissions per kilometer driven depend on driving patterns influencing the energy demand of the vehicles. Accordingly, optimization potential using renewable energy-oriented time course of charging is found to be rather small with an average greenhouse gas emission reduction of 4%. Thus to achieve the potential of electric vehicles to solve environmental issues requires the optimization of driving and charging patterns as well as measures for reducing the carbon intensity in the electricity grid.

Manufacturing process for automated preforming of complex, double-curved components based on the diaphragm method

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:22:44 +0100

the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Center for Lightweight Production Technology (ZLP) Augsburg"br" automation solutions for manufacturing processes of extensive fiber composite components are developed. One"br" challenge in this context is the automated preforming process of complex, double-curved geometries. Here, dry"br" fiber cut pieces are transferred from a flat to a three-dimensional state. In order to fix the single layers of the"br" stacking, the fiber package is being compacted and the powder binder system is activated using thermal energy."br" In addition, double-curved component geometries inhere particularly high requirements on the preforming"br" process, since the fiber materials must not only be deformed, but also be draped."br" With the state of the art, the production of double-curved components can only be carried out manually, due to"br" the high process complexity. Therefore scientists at the ZLP Augsburg developed an integrated preform"br" manufacturing process, beginning at single cut piece handling till supply of the finished preform. Focus was set"br" on a diaphragm based preforming mechanism that can be directly controlled regarding its forming behavior on"br" the preform to ensure an adequate preforming of the carbon fiber semi-finished product."br" This paper focuses the challenges of automated production processes for complex, double-curved component"br" geometries and presents one automation solution developed at ZLP Augsburg.

Routing a mix of conventional, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:22:30 +0100

International audience; We introduce an electric vehicle routing problem combining conventional, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are constrained in their service range by their battery capacity, and may require time-consuming recharging operations at some specific locations. Plug-in hybrid vehicles have two engines, an internal combustion engine and an electric engine using a built-in rechargeable battery. These vehicles can avoid visits to recharging stations by switching to fossil fuel. However, this flexibility comes at the price of a generally higher consumption rate and utility cost. To solve this complex problem variant, we design a sophisticated metaheuristic which combines a genetic algorithm with local and large neighborhood search. All route evaluations, within the approach, are based on a layered optimization algorithm which combines labeling techniques and greedy evaluation policies to optimally insert recharging stations visits in a fixed trip and to select the fuel types. The metaheuristic is finally hybridized with an integer programming solver, over a set partitioning formulation, so as to recombine high-quality routes from the past search into better solutions. Extensive experimental analyses are conducted, highlighting the good performance of the algorithm and the contribution of each of its main components. Finally, we investigate the impact of fuel and energy cost on fleet composition decisions. Our experiments show that a careful use of a mixed fleet can significantly reduce operational costs in a large variety of price scenarios, in comparison with the use of a fleet composed of a single vehicle class.

User experience in public transport as versatile and flexible key factor

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:19:51 +0100

Public transport is seen as a way to solve challenges in mobility. Increasing mobility demand, energy consumption"br" and GHG emissions as well as excessive costs could be addressed by resource efficient services as an alternative"br" to the private car. A precondition for this mode shift is a positive experience of passengers with public transport."br" A broad study carried out in cities across eight European countries plus the FIA network measured passengers’"br" experience based on interviews to understand which aspects contribute to satisfaction or dissatisfaction. To"br" understand the differing needs of passengers, we built a typology based on a cluster analysis leading to six groups"br" with specific characteristics. Working commuters appeared especially sensitive to reliable services and comfort"br" on their daily trips. Leisure travellers need orientation to reduce insecurity related to their occasional trips."br" Dissatisfaction with ticketing was an issue in all groups, and student commuters were critical in their assessments,"br" which puts transport providers at risk of losing their potential future customers at an early stage.

Research into the possibility of using asphaltene-resin-paraffin deposits for thermal insulation of oil pipelines in permafrost

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:18:12 +0100

Phase transitions of petroleum and commercial paraffins in gas condensate and its compositions have been studied with the application of the method of differential scanning calorimetry. According to the obtained data, the degree of crystallinity and the melting temperature of paraffins in the systems under study have been determined. Based on the results of the experimental work, it has been concluded that paraffin deposits can be used as insulating material of pipelines for oil transportation in a permafrost zone.Phase transitions of petroleum and commercial paraffins in gas condensate and its compositions have been studied with the application of the method of differential scanning calorimetry. According to the obtained data, the degree of crystallinity and the melting temperature of paraffins in the systems under study have been determined. Based on the results of the experimental work, it has been concluded that paraffin deposits can be used as insulating material of pipelines for oil transportation in a permafrost zone.

Autonomous Mobility and Energy Service Management in Future Smart Cities: An Overview

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:15:40 +0100

With the rise of transportation electrification, autonomous driving and shared mobility in urban mobility systems, and increasing penetrations of distributed energy resources and autonomous demand-side management techniques in energy systems, tremendous opportunities, as well as challenges, are emerging in the forging of a sustainable and converged urban mobility and energy future. This paper is motivated by these disruptive transformations and gives an overview of managing autonomous mobility and energy services in future smart cities. First, we propose a three-layer architecture for the convergence of future mobility and energy systems. For each layer, we give a brief overview of the disruptive transformations that directly contribute to the rise of autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems. Second, we propose the concept of autonomous flexibility-on-demand (AFoD), as an energy service platform built directly on existing infrastructures of AMoD systems. In the vision of AFoD, autonomous electric vehicles provide charging flexibilities as a service on demand in energy systems. Third, we analyze and compare AMoD and AFoD, and we identify four key decisions that, if appropriately coordinated, will create a synergy between AMoD and AFoD. Finally, we discuss key challenges towards the success of AMoD and AFoD in future smart cities and present some key research directions regarding the system-wide coordination between AMoD and AFoD.

Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

TRANSFORMERS Test Drive Results of a new Hybridisation Concept for Truck-Semitrailer Combinations

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:14:30 +0100

This contribution is based on results obtained in the collaboration project “TRANSFORMERS”, which has received funding from the European Commission in the FP7-programme. The project has the objective to reduce CO2 emissions per tonne·km by up to 25%, by improved reconfigurable aerodynamic measures, by innovative loading efficiency measures and by a hybrid-on-demand driveline for truck-semitrailer combinations. Besides giving insight to the overall project, this publication focusses on the trailer mounted hybrid-on-demand (HoD) driveline. This electric driveline is combined with a conventionally propelled tractor unit, effectively hybridizing the combination with minimal changes to the tractor. The objective is to save fuel both in long haulage applications and urban dense traffic scenarios. Test results obtained in both test track and public road testing show that an actual fuel saving of up to 12% can be achieved.

Safety culture in maritime cargo transport in Norway and Greece: which factors predict unsafe maritime behaviours?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:13:42 +0100

The aim of the study is to examine the influence of national safety culture, sector safety culture and organizational"br" safety culture on safety behaviours among Greek (N=99) and Norwegian (N=93) crewmembers on cargo vessels,"br" and to discuss results in light of additional explanatory variables. We focus on three types of unsafe maritime"br" behaviours: 1) Violations/risk acceptance, 2) Working under the influence of alcohol, or while being hungover,"br" and 3) Non-intervention/non-reporting. Linear regression analyses indicate that organisational factors like"br" demanding working conditions and organizational safety culture are the most important predictors of"br" violations/risk acceptance and non-intervention/non-reporting. National safety culture is the most important"br" predictor of respondents’ tendency to work under the influence of alcohol, or while being hungover. National"br" safety culture is measured as descriptive norms and as values (“freedom to take risks at sea”). The study indicates"br" that safety culture at different analytical levels influence different types of unsafe behaviours.

Terminal Planning: The Selection of Relevant KPIs to Evaluate Operations

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:12:43 +0100

The European Union is highly dependent on seaports for trade with the rest of the world and within its Internal"br" Market. Approximately, 75% of goods imported and exported and 37% of exchanges within the Union transited"br" through seaports in 2013. To manage this amount of cargo in ports, smooth operations are required. The"br" performance of ports is currently evaluated by using different types of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). How"br" the indicators are described is dependent on the stakeholders and their organizational interest."br" Ports, and the transport sector as a whole, are undergoing drastic changes. To cite a few, demand increases, ship"br" capacity enlargements, shipping line mergers and alliances lead to more concentrated flows and increase of traffic"br" in certain hub ports detrimental to medium size ones, other aspects such new requirements regarding environment"br" protection and security are also relevant. At the same time, ports are usually located in the middle of existing"br" neighborhoods, which limits possibilities to enlarge their area whilst stress is placed to improve the port-city"br" interrelation. Therefore, there is a need to invest in port infrastructure, but expansion or renovation of a port is"br" extremely difficult. The required investments are big and the planning horizon is long. Hence, if the designed"br" structures turn out to be unsuitable due to changes in needs, it is rather expensive to make changes."br" Planning tools have developed remarkably during the past 10 years. Different types of planning tools are used in"br" seaport and terminal design to model the completeness. Modelling generates digital representations of physical"br" and functional characteristics of a terminal area, buildings and other infrastructures. With the help of model-based"br" approaches and with suitable KPIs, it is easier to understand and evaluate the effects of certain design solutions"br" for terminal operations in a larger context. By using modelling tools, it is also possible to compare different design"br" options to outline how certain choices in terminal design influences on the completeness."br" There is a need to define the objectives of good terminal prior to plan the terminal and its operations. A good"br" terminal would satisfy the stakeholders’ expectations in best possible ways in the given preconditions. The"br" achievement of objectives can be evaluated by using suitable indicators. However, the indicators used to plan and"br" model terminal operations may differ from indicators used to evaluate the performance of current ports and"br" terminals. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the indicators required for terminal planning and compare them"br" with existing KPIs used for measuring the performance of ports and terminals.

Safety effects of infrastructure road safety measures

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:12:24 +0100

The objective of this study is the comparative assessment and ranking of a large number of infrastructure measures in order to aid road safety stakeholders reach informed decisions concerning the implementation of measures with an evidence-based approach. This analysis was carried out within the SafetyCube project, which aims to identify and quantify the effects of risk factors and measures related to behaviour, infrastructure or vehicle, and integrate the results in an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS). More than 260 high quality studies were examined for the aforementioned measure factors, including more than 30 recent and updated meta-analyses which provide results from a number of original works. This allowed the ranking of infrastructure related measures into three groups: clearly reducing risk (14 measures), probably reducing risk (21 measures), and unclear (13 measures). Obtained results provide state-of-the-art, comprehensive information for the examined measures that can be exploited both microscopically, for instance for site improvements, and macroscopically, for instance for strategic decisions.

Autonomous driving on freely accessible railway tracks

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:11:23 +0100

utonomous vehicles are a rapidly emerging technology that will radically transform the face of public and"br" personal transportation in the near future. The project autoBAHN2020 aims to promote this trend on local"br" railway tracks to make them more attractive for passengers again. Trains, by concept, come with major"br" shortcomings such as lack of privacy and inflexibility due to long cycle times and continuous stops. This"br" problem could partly be overcome by splitting them up into multiple smaller trainlets while significantly"br" reducing the cycle time and the number of passengers per trainlet. However, a train driver for each small trainlet"br" would not be economically feasible, therefore a fully autonomous operation is required. Since many railway"br" tracks are freely accessible, a sensor system for reliable obstacle detection is required. This technical paper will"br" present the current state of the project autoBAHN2020 and its actual topics of research.

Rail freight research: How market trends and customers' needs drive technology innovation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:10:51 +0100

The article presents an investigation of current market trends and customers’ requirements, which have driven research aimed at developing a novel wagon concept that integrates innovative solutions relating to the identified major challenges for the freight vehicles of the future. These challenges are: i. Freight condition monitoring; ii. Lightweight wagon design; and iii. Predictive maintenance. This research was initiated by the INNOWAG project, which is funded by the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme."br" The major challenges in rail freight competitiveness relate to the increasing complexity and sophistication of supply chains, increasing transport capacity and logistic capability, as well as improving RAMS and lowering LCC. Therefore, the goal is to develop intelligent cargo monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions integrated on a novel concept of lightweight wagon.

FASSTbridge methodology and strengthening system

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:10:03 +0100

TRA 2018, Transport Research Arena, VIENNE, AUTRICHE, 16-/04/2018 - 19/04/2018; Steel bridges present frequent fatigue problems that reduce their load-carrying capacity and residual life. The increase of traffic flows and loads in the last decades has enhanced this problem, especially on ageing structures. Having this in mind, in November 2015, the ERA-NET Plus project FASSTBRIDGE was launched aiming at developing a complete methodology to increase such structures life expectancy that includes a calculation method for assessing the remaining life of steel bridge in terms of fatigue, a design and applyication method for the strengthening intervention, and a strengthening system relying on the use of adhesively bonded CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer). The paper presents the FASSTbridge methodology, the developed strengthening system that has been specifically developed for the project and the application of the overall solution on a real composite bridge in Spain: Jarama bridge. Main results and conclusions are then presented to emphasize the advantages of the proposed solution.

CG4SR: Near Optimal Traffic Engineering for Segment Routing with Column Generation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:09:25 +0100

Segment Routing (SR) is a powerful tool to solve traffic engineering in large networks. It enables steering the traffic along any arbitrary network path while limiting scalability issues as routers do not need to maintain a global state. Mathematical programming approaches proposed so far for SR either do not scale well with the size of topology or impose a strong limit on the number of possible detours (typically at most one). Moreover they do not support Segment Routing fully by ignoring the adjacency segments. This paper leverages column generation, a widely used technique for solving large scale linear programs, combined with a novel dynamic program for solving the pricing problem. Our approach reaches near optimal solutions with gap guarantees by also computing a strong lower-bound tighter than the multi-commodity flow relaxation. It scales even on large topologies and exploits the full expressiveness of SR including adjacency segments. Our experiments compared with existing traffic engineering techniques on various topologies and demand matrices demonstrate the advantages of our approach in terms of scalability, any-time behavior and quality of the solutions.

Departure Interval Adjustment to Alleviate Bus Bunching under Dynamic Demand and Traffic Condition

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

The robustness of the round planning face to risks of road freight transport

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:04:43 +0100

International audience; Currently, over 90% of goods are transported by road terrestrial mode. To progress, companies of Road Freight Transport sector (RFT) are subject to a number of issues, whether economic, regulatory, environmental, societal, occupational health and safety ... The planner has a crucial role in achieving these challenges, it is he who undertakes the construction method of the tours, for the future of the company. Thus he bears a heavy responsibility on his shoulders. Its ability to integrate the company’s constraints and to master the balance between these issues in the construction of tour is vital. However, a list of risks is potentially present and can affect his planning. This lack of vision about risks impact prevents him to achieve his mission. Thus we propose in this article a mean to qualify the tours generated in relation to the issues mentioned but also in terms of potential hazards that could come impair the quality of tours. In this article, we propose an evaluation process of road transport of goods tours and an indicator to measure the robustness of touring.

Toward Efficient Simulation Platform for Platoon Communication in Large Scale C-ITS Scenarios

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:02:00 +0100

International audience; With recent technological advances made in the field of vehicular communications, a plethora of applications has emerged that aim to improve driver safety and traffic fluidity. The platooning application is expected to be a good first step to tame autonomous driving, especially traffic congestion problems in big cities. In this context, it is important to study a platoon of vehicles in its environment, sharing the road and wireless channel with other road users. For such a scenario, efficient simulation tools come in handy for studying vehicular communications in large scale environments. This paper presents a step toward improving iTETRIS simulation platform to simulate platoon communications in large-scale connected vehicles use case. To this end, a restricted communication zone, centered around the leading vehicle of the platoon, and in which vehicles can receive and send packets is introduced to limit the computational cost of communication simulation. The merits of the improved platform in term of time execution efficiency compared to iTETRIS are shown through extensive simulation using real mobility traces.

Capturing potential for active mobility: A multi-level survey analysis incorporating associated meanings

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:01:22 +0100

ve forms of mobility are important when it comes to tackling environmental challenges, improving the quality of human health and reducing road-traffic congestion and overcrowding in public transportation. Measures such as an enhancement of infrastructure or promotion through campaigns are regularly informed by mobility surveys which cover demographic data, mobility patterns, access to and usage of different modes of transport. To capture potential for active mobility, meanings associated with different modes of transport are presented to identify target groups for tailored campaigns promoting active mobility. By combining those associations with stated preferences more detailed insights into behavioural motivations are gained. The method is instantiated using survey-data from the 11th district of Vienna, Austria, to provide guidance to future survey based mobility studies.

Correction: Impact of Different Trajectory Option Set Participation Levels within an Air Traffic Management Collaborative Trajectory Option Program

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:57:52 +0100

Fluvial transportation as alternative solution for optimizing restaurant waste management

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:56:57 +0100

The population density in European cities and the increasing of car flows are the main reason of bottlenecks,"br" congestions in cities and disaggregation of quality of life in these cities. Road transportation is not the best way"br" for respecting environmental improvements. Cities like Paris, take political decisions for decreasing this high"br" level of road transportation and changing gasoil consumption. Economic advantages for alternative to road"br" transportation have to be shown to companies in order to accelerate their switching decision. This paper focuses"br" on the optimization of restaurant waste management by using fluvial transportation. The idea is to adapt complex"br" systems modeling to this case and show how this activity sector companies could be competitive. Formalisms"br" and tools of GRAI methodology has been used for elaborating appropriated concepts to this sector optimization."br" An example integrating real data (with a simulation by using Anylogic tool) will be presented for illustrating"br" theoretical propositions.

High Depolarization Ratios of Naturally Occurring Cirrus Clouds Near Air Traffic Regions Over Europe

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:56:37 +0100

Cirrus clouds have a large influence on the Earth's climate and anthropogenic activities such as aviation can alter their properties. Besides the formation of contrails, indirect effects on naturally occurring cirrus like increased heterogeneous freezing due to exhaust soot particles are discussed in the literature. However, hardly any observational study exists. In this work we present cirrus optical properties measured by an airborne lidar over Europe during the Midlatitude Cirrus experiment (ML-CIRRUS). One half of the cloud cases showed elevated depolarization ratios with a mode difference of 10 percentage points indicating differences in the clouds microphysical properties. Their origin can be traced back to highly frequented air traffic regions, and they show lower in-cloud ice supersaturations. Our analysis reveals no influence of embedded contrails and temperature. These results could be explained by an indirect aerosol effect where heterogeneous freezing is caused by aviation exhaust particles.

Implementation of a New Tool for Pipelines Integrity Evaluation: A Correlation Between Local Strains and Hardness

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:56:18 +0100

Due to external interference, pipelines used for onshore as well as offshore operations can present dent and gouge defects. As such defects can seriously impair facilities’ integrity and performance, it is necessary to evaluate the strains in the vicinity of these defects. The development of non-destructive approaches to assess defects severity remains an issue in the pipeline industry. In the present study, micro-hardness - strain relationships are established for three steel grades of pipeline materials: API X52 modern, API X52 vintage and API X63 vintage. The micro-hardness – strain correlations of the three pipe materials are analyzed in order to verify if they can be described by a master curve. For that purpose, Notched Tensile (NT) tests are performed in Longitudinal (L) and Transverse (T) directions for each grade in order to reach high strain values (up to 70%). The relationship proposed by Tabor was improved with the introduction of three new parameters that allow considering actual material behavior.

Asset information management for European roads using linked data

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:54:33 +0100

European National Road Authorities recognise that an inadequate or inaccurate information asset leads to higher capital and operational expenditure on physical assets. By gathering data throughout the life-cycle of assets, asset owners and managers create so-called ‘digital twins’, to enable them to optimise their assets’ performance and operation. With these virtual replicas of their assets they can liberate data from legacy/proprietary computer applications and thereby reuse it for making better decisions. The INTERLINK consortium seeks to enable this asset information challenge. This paper reports the first results of the ongoing INTERLINK project: the business and information needs of asset managers and the common principles for modelling so called object-type libraries. These principles will be tested in three cases and will lead to a basic version of a European road object-type library. This will allow for a new approach towards standardisation of information exchange and sharing in the industry, based on evolutionary, bottom-up development and reuse of best practice whenever possible.

Analyzing Urban Residents’ Appraisal of Ridepooling Service Attributes with Conjoint Analysis

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:52:18 +0100

Public ridepooling systems could contribute to the reduction of traffic volume and emissions in cities by decreasing the number of rides by private car while increasing the average number of passengers per vehicle. Yet, it is unknown how urban travelers value different attributes of the ridepooling&rsquo

s operational concept. Which characteristics of ridepooling concepts are most important to the users? In order to obtain a deeper understanding of travelers&rsquo

preferences concerning a ridepooling system, choice-based Conjoint Analysis was performed. Based on a literature review and a focus group, six relevant attributes of the operational concept of ridepooling systems were determined: fare, walking distance, time of booking, shift of departure time, travel time, and information provision. Data from 237 German city dwellers were analyzed with the help of Cox regression. Except for time of booking, all service attributes significantly affected the respondents&rsquo

choice. Besides the high relevance of fare, the results underline the particular importance of the attribute walking distance to the pick-up point for elderly. The results give guidance for the creation of user-centered public transport systems that meet the requirements of the prospective passengers and thus might contribute to the development of shared passenger transport systems for sustainable urban mobility.

Document type: Article

Resource-Efficient Transmission of Vehicular Sensor Data Using Context-Aware Communication

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:50:37 +0100

Upcoming Intelligent Traffic Control Systems (ITSCs) will base their optimization processes on crowdsensing data obtained for cars that are used as mobile sensor nodes. In conclusion, public cellular networks will be confronted with massive increases in Machine-Type Communication (MTC) and will require efficient communication schemes to minimize the interference of Internet of Things (IoT) data traffic with human communication. In this demonstration, we present an Open Source framework for context-aware transmission of vehicular sensor data that exploits knowledge about the characteristics of the transmission channel for leveraging connectivity hotspots, where data transmissions can be performed with a high grade if resource efficiency. At the conference, we will present the measurement application for acquisition and live-visualization of the required network quality indicators and show how the transmission scheme performs in real-world vehicular scenarios based on measurement data obtained from field experiments.

Building Strategic Conformal Automation for Air Traffic Control Using Machine Learning

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:47:23 +0100

nce of automation has been a bottleneck for successful introduction of automation in Air Trac Control. Strategic conformal automation has been proven to increase automation acceptance, by creating a better match between automation and operator decision-making. In this paper strategic conformal automation for Air Trac Control is designed using machine learning techniques. Rather than having pre-dened control strategies, which do not always match with individual operator decision-making, the automation is based on the operator's decision-making. Results show that when operators demonstrate"br/"their control strategies, machine learning techniques can identify these strategies and use them to learn similar control strategies. Apart from mimicking control strategies in iden tical trac scenarios is it possible to use machine learning to solve similar, yet dierent con icts by applying similar control strategies, without the need of human demonstrations for that particular conict scenario. Future research should be done to investigate whether strategic conformal automation indeed increases automation acceptance, as well to investigate how the approach taken in this study can be applied to real-life trac scenarios.

Exploring user needs for climate risk assessment in the transport sector: how could global high-resolution climate models help?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:46:50 +0100

Climate change is an issue relevant for all modes of transport. The interconnected nature of transport systems – and their dependence on other key services such as energy – mean that the transport sector must account for both direct and indirect effects of climate change in sector-focused climate risk assessments."br" To respond to sector-focused climate information needs in Europe, the “PRIMAVERA” project aims to provide useful and usable climate information, derived from high-resolution, global climate models. The model simulations will be evaluated to assess their ability to simulate key climate processes and hence to add value to existing climate risk assessment methods."br" PRIMAVERA is engaging with users and stakeholders across sectors, including transport. Here we give information on transport users’ needs for climate risk assessment. We outline how PRIMAVERA could address these needs, and how it will share relevant outcomes with users and stakeholders, including those in transport. This article is © Crown copyright Met Office, 2018.

Innovative automated unloading of parcels

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:46:12 +0100

In modern powerful logistics the courier express and parcel market (CEP) is of special interest. Same-day and one-hour-delivery are demanding for providers to efficiently handle large piece goods volumes nowadays even in bulk form. Loading and unloading of vehicles within the CEP-sector is the most crucial part in the whole process, with sorting and conveying working sufficiently nowadays."br" The authors describe a completely new solution to unload vehicles, developed by simulation, tested in laboratories and implemented in real processes. The device is to be installed in trailers/trucks with minimal effort and connects automatically to a stationary device within a typical CEP-hub at a loading/unloading bay. Identifying bulky amounts of piece goods therein was proven with RFID. Furthermore the within this bmvit funded project developed prototype "EAGLE" was realized within the laboratories at Graz University of Technology. Project partners from RFID-business (TAGpilot) as well as from parcel business (Österreichische Post AG) were engaged in the whole project. Lab tests showed great performance and a decreasing unloading time, compared to the actual manual unloading, by 70%."br" The contribution outlines main steps within the development, where an extensive use of simulation methods powered a broad variation in design. Specially engineered methods for simulating motion behaviour of large amounts of piece goods were the scientific output of the project. The lab tests are described by depicting innovative measuring methods for bulky piece goods. Furthermore broad fields of different parcels and piece goods were used to analyse their behaviour at the virtual prototype for DoE. A performance analysis concludes the paper outlining possible fields of installation in the CEP-sector.

Transport and Mobility Services to Support Active Ageing

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:43:52 +0100

ve ageing is the process of optimising opportunities for health, participation, and security in order to enhance the quality of life as people age. Provision of adequate mobility services is essential to enable older people, including those with illness or disability, to participate in society. In the past, much effort has been made to make public transport more accessible for older people or to provide specific door-to-door transport services. Transport and mobility services to support ageing society should look into new technologies which can support the elderly in their driving tasks, either using privately owned cars, shared vehicles, or various mobility services to provide door-to-door transport solutions through Mobility as a Service (MaaS), shared mobility, etc. Various driver assistance and vehicle automation technologies which can reduce driver workload and enhance safety will offer viable solutions for the mobility needs of an ageing population. MaaS, which can provide a one-stop solution to access and payment for all types of transport modes, would be an excellent solution for older travellers. This paper aims to provide a forward thinking analysis of transport policy for an ageing population.

Mathematical Model for Safety Score Calculation for Validation of Coach Operators in the UK

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:43:23 +0100

Coaches are considered the safest mode of road transport for school trips. In the last decade alone, 1191 children were injured in 371 coach crashes in the UK. Consequently, the UK government enforced strict regulations on coach operators to reduce accidents. During 2016, 137 coach operator licenses have been revoked due to operator non-compliance. To increase safety of children travelling by coaches, we previously proposed a safety transport model for validation of coach operators. In this paper, a mathematical model for calculation of safety scores is presented. Real data from two transport organisations was used to test the model. Results show that, the proposed mathematical model works very well, as illustrated in this paper.

Safe and Secure Truck Parking Area in the framework of a unified single freight window

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:42:15 +0100

With ICT advances, more information on truck and freight position, safety, energy consumption, emissions is"br" available in the supply chain. Efficient management and integration of the increasing amount of data is a key"br" challenge in freight transport and logistics. This paper builds a framework for a unified single freight window,"br" integrating administrative and technical procedures. The window can serve as freight transport facilitator for"br" improved coordination of multimodal operations at transfer hubs by providing static and real-time digital"br" information on key characteristics, e.g. travel time, energy efficiency, GHG emissions. Its interface requirements"br" are to be standardized so that expansion into new processes is facilitated. A logic and services for the Safe and"br" Secure Truck Parking Area (SSTPA) component of unified window are also developed. The logic employs training"br" data from Egypt and Greece. The feasibility, capabilities, vulnerabilities and monitoring of SSTPA are tested in"br" project CROCODILE2. Test results reveal the positive effect of the new services on truck time and energy budgets.

Big data analytics in e-commerce logistics: Findings from a systematic review and a case study

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:42:00 +0100

Digital evolution has significantly changed consumer shopping habits and expectations resulting in a major growth of e-commerce. The immediate outcome of this growth was the creation of a dynamic and turbulent environment with increasing density of the distribution network. This environment consists of many delivery points, multiple delivery channels and last-mile delivery requirements. Due to its complexity and the proliferation of data challenges, e-commerce logistics is an area where the application of Big data analytics can be proven to be extremely fertile. Despite the growing interest, there are limited studies that investigate the role of Big data. By using a design science approach, we clarified the current e-commerce logistics practices as well as the envisioned ones that can, to a large extent, be supported by appropriate big data technologies. We concluded to a set of business requirements that express the needs towards the e-commerce logistics. Then, the requirements were translated into a set of use case scenarios to demonstrate how they could be supported by big data analytics. We conclude by proposing a conceptual architecture of a big data analytics artefact that could cover the e-commerce logistics requirements.

A framework for performance evaluation of image approximation in a closed-loop system

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:37:34 +0100

Image Processing (IP) applications have become popular with the advent of efficient algorithms and low-cost CMOS cameras with high resolution. However, IP applications are compute-intensive, consume a lot of energy and have long processing times. Image approximation has been proposed by recent works for an energy-efficient design of these applications. It also reduces the impact of long processing times. The challenge here is that the IP applications often work as a part of bigger closed-loop control systems, e.g. advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). The impact of image approximations that tolerate certain error on these image-based control (IBC) systems is very important. However, there is a lack of tool support to evaluate the performance of such closed-loop IBC systems when the IP is approximated. We propose a framework - for both software-in-the-loop (SiL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) simulation - for performance evaluation of image approximation on a closed-loop automotive IBC system (IMACS). Both simulation setups model the 3D environment in 3ds Max, and simulate the system dynamics, camera position and environment in V-REP. Our SiL setup simulates the system software in C++ or Matlab. Here, V-REP runs as a server and the software as a client in synchronous mode. Our HiL simulation setup runs the system software in the NVIDIA Drive PX2 platform and communicates to V-REP using application programming interfaces (APIs) for synchronous execution. We show the effectiveness of our framework using a vision-based lateral control example.

Mitigating the impact of roadworks through Travel Demand Management measures

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:36:04 +0100

Roadworks schemes present a nuisance for road users as they lead in some cases to temporarily reduced road capacity and increased congestion. The introduction of Travel Demand Management (TDM) techniques during roadworks has the potential to reduce the associated negative impacts of temporary reduced capacity, increased journey time and poor customer satisfaction. TDM measures refer in this paper to a wide range of interventions that have the potential to change travel route, time, mode, and/or need. They include measures that promote the use of environmentally sustainable transport modes (e.g. Public Transport, Active Transport, and Shared Mobility) as well as measures that aim to manage traffic within roadworks zones and the surrounding affected areas. This paper presents the processes implemented and outcomes achieved by two ongoing TDM pilots in the UK developed to mitigate the negative impact of roadworks schemes on national and local road networks.

Evaluating CO2-reduction potential of EV incentives across European Cities and Regions

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:35:49 +0100

The challenge facing Europe to reduce GHG emissions is considerable. Increasing the proportion of electric vehicles (EVs) is considered a viable solution. However, EVs primarily offers a societal benefit and their uptake has been limited. Incentivisation is one approach to increasing the number of EVs on the road and one that has been adopted by a number of European member states and European cities with varying degrees of success. The Intelligent Energy Europe funded ICVUE project developed a decision support model (DSM) that related incentive to EV uptake and CO2 emission reduction based on local and regional conditions. This paper describes the methodology used in exploring the relationship between incentive and acceptance, the development of the DSM and the work done in partnership with the cities of London, Vienna, Stuttgart and Barcelona on evaluating EV uptake and CO2 reduction potential. The results show that benefit of an incentive needs to be viewed by how it interacts with the system into which it is deployed in addition to any measurement of its value in isolation. Furthermore, the results show an effectivity bonus (additional EVs / reduction in CO2) from bundling of incentives compared to considering them in isolation.

Determination And Evaluation Of Structural Remaining Substance Of Asphalt Roads - Asphalt Analysis

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:34:54 +0100

Especially in Germany in the future road construction will be shaped less by the new construction but rather through"br" the maintenance and renewal. Because the existing road substance is used up in growing ever stronger and quicker"br" measure. With reference to the steadily rising traffic load and for a qualified maintenance planning the knowledge of"br" the real structural condition of an asphalt pavement gets more and more important. The present paper presents an"br" approach that forecasts the remaining service life of an asphalt pavement on the basis of asphalt parameters"br" determined by laboratory tests. Therefore asphalt samples were taken from existing asphalt pavements which are"br" already bearing many years of traffic load and their specific asphalt properties such as stiffness and fatigue"br" resistance were determined by tests. The asphalt material properties of an asphalt road for several cross-sections (all"br" required cores about a length of 10m) and several sections (required cores with a distance between 100m and 150m"br" to each other) are determined and evaluated. Likewise, the volumetric properties of the asphalts and the material"br" properties from the individual components in the asphalt mix are considered in the analysis and evaluation. With"br" these results of the asphalt studies in the laboratory together with a forecasting method based on the analytical"br" design of asphalt pavements the possibility exists to give statements to the expected remaining service life of asphalt"br" pavements.

Modelling and control of innovative car sharing services based on stackable electric vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:34:41 +0100

Car sharing is one the pillars of an innovative transportation infrastructure, as it is expected to reduce traffic"br" congestion, parking demands and pollution in our cities. However, drawbacks in terms of high deployment and"br" operational costs (from the car sharing operators’ perspective), as well as unreliable vehicle availability (from the"br" customers’ perspective), are currently hindering their massive deployment and popularity. In this work, we discuss"br" the solutions proposed with the H2020 ESPRIT project to address the above issues, with special focus on what it"br" can be done in terms of demand and operational modelling.

Supplying system abrasive material with automatic dosing control

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:33:59 +0100

The article examines the work and key elements of the automated system for supplying abrasive material using a managed pneumatic dispensing. Proposed to manage the flow of abrasive material using continuous (for the case of emergency braking) and pulse form of dosing. Using the pulse form that allows dosing of abrasive material in a wide range, providing a number of additional options to control the sand system. Developed a functional diagram of the automatic flow of abrasive material supply system, which provides control over the flow of abrasive material and its comparison with the reference case, according to the gradation performance of the system (algorithm of dosing). The main elements of the developed system are analyzed.

Document type: Article

Why Disable the Autopilot?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:33:08 +0100

The number of systems in commercially available vehicles that assist or automate driving tasks is rapidly increasing. At least for the next decade, using such systems remains up to the discretion of the user. In this paper, different reasons why drivers may disengage the autopilot are investigated. This was done through a simulator study in which the system could drive fully automated, but where participants could also disengage the system. Qualitative data were collected about why participants disengaged the autopilot. The analysis of the data revealed six themes covering the reasons why participants disabled the autopilot: The speed maintained by the autopilot, the behavior of the autopilot in relation to overtaking other vehicles, onset of boredom, onset of sleepiness, lack of trust in the autopilot, and enjoyment of manual driving. On the basis of the results, design opportunities are proposed to counteract the tendency to not use automated driving systems.

SRM drives an alternative for E-traction : Presentation of the workshop

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:32:38 +0100

Electrification of road vehicles is one of the most consistent initiatives to achieve a clean, environmentally friendly and efficient transport system. The choice of the electric machine for the powertrain is an important consideration, nowadays tilted towards permanent magnet synchronous machines. However, rare earth permanent magnet supply drawbacks open up new prospects for other types of machines, such as switched reluctance machines (SRM). This Workshop, Switched reluctance motor drives an alternative for E-traction, aims to deepen into the potential of SRM for electric traction, to be a meeting point for groups that are currently working on the development of SRM drives and an opportunity to establish future collaborations. The Workshop consists of two parts. In the first part, participants will present papers about issues related with switched reluctance machines for electric traction applications. In the second part, they will discuss what aspects slow down the application of SRM drives for electric traction and their possible solutions.

Leader-Follower Approach to Gas-Electricity Expansion Planning Problem

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:31:25 +0100

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a method for sequential gas and electricity networks expansion planning problem. A leader-follower approach performs the expansion planning of the joint gas and electricity networks. Electric system operator under adequacy incentive decides about investment in capacity addition to the generation and transmission levels while considers the limitations on fuel consumption. On the other hand gas operator decides about investment in gas pipelines expansions considering the demanded gas by the electricity network. In this planning model for a joint gas-electricity network, supply and demand are matched together while adequacy of fuel for gas consuming units is also guaranteed. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method Khorasan province of Iran is considered as a case study which has a high penetration level of gas-fired power plants (GFPP). Results are compared with the integrated gas-electricity networks expansion planning method.

Supply Chain Linked Sustainability Assessment of Electric Vehicles: the Case for Qatar

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:29:04 +0100

Electric vehicles are important technologies to reduce adverse environmental impacts stemming from transportation. In this paper, we investigated the environmental, social, and economic impacts of electric vehicles in Qatar, where the electricity generation is currently 100% natural gas. As electric vehicles is expected replace the internal combustion engine vehicles and each vehicle type has different supply chain for the fuel, the sustainability impacts in the upstream of fuel supply-chain can be significantly different. Hence, a supply-chain based approach is developed to capture impact shift from petroleum sector to electricity generation sector in the supply chain of electricity and petroleum. Results revealed that electric vehicles can save up to 28% of life cycle cost, 71% of Greenhouse gas emissions, 51% of photochemical oxidant formation, and 63% of human health impacts. This paper is an output of a project supported by Qatar University, grant number QUSD-CENG-2018\\2019-2. Scopu

Analysis of the effects of establishing affordable annual tickets in Vienna

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:28:51 +0100

The city of Vienna currently has more than 1.84 million inhabitants living on a settlement and traffic area of about"br" 208 sq. km. The inhabitants of Vienna cover 73 % of their routes via ecomobility. The share of public transport in"br" the modal split amounts 39 %. In May 2012, Austria’s capital introduced the Viennese model, which led to a"br" considerable reduction of prices for annual and monthly public transportation tickets while prices for other tariffs"br" increased."br" This paper intends to assess the effects of the tariff measures implemented in the Viennese Model. For this purpose,"br" at first the traffics development of the city of Vienna over the past 10 years is outlined, analysed and interpreted"br" regarding its cause-and-effect relationships. Furthermore, extensive analyses have been conducted to identify and"br" quantify significant effects on passenger growth in Vienna. The paper concludes with indications for transferability"br" of the Viennese model to other cities.

Automatic prediction of maintenance intervention types in transport linear infrastructures using machine learning

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:28:37 +0100

This article presents a methodology to automate the prediction of maintenance intervention alerts in transport linear infrastructures. It combines current and predicted asset conditions with operational and historical maintenance data, to predict the needed tasks to avoid later severe degradation. By means of data analytics and machine learning models, a prioritised listing ranked on severity level corresponding to the alerts generated for all assets of the infrastructure is inferred. The scientific part presents: a discussion on relevant data to train machine learning algorithms in order to generate reliable predictions of the interventions to be carried out in further time scenarios, a schematic flow chart of the automatic learning procedure, and the self-learning rules from automatic learning from false positive/negatives. The empirical part describes a road network pilot case, the available historical data information, measurements, maintenance interventions, and a selected set of outcomes.

Big-Data framework-based visualization solution for performance analysis of positioning systems in railway environments

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:27:04 +0100

The on-board positioning system provides not only the location estimation but also additional information about the certainty or quality of the provided estimation. Additionally, when developing the positioning system itself and evaluating the performance of the system, it is useful to thoroughly analyze the input parameter values used by the positioning system for each of the location estimates. A visualization platform based on Big-Data frameworks was highly demanded in this context and several alternatives were analyzed. This paper describes the approaches that have been tested and implemented, describes the difficulties and advantages of the alternatives and provides detailed steps for adapting the open-source Big-Data framework-based solutions to other application areas.

Hydrogenization of road transport in Poland – European Project HIT-2-Corridors

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:26:49 +0100

Two of the major international projects concerning hydrogenization of motor transport are in Europe: HyFIVE"br" “Hydrogen For Innovative Vehicles” and “Hydrogen Mobility Europe” - creating the European visio for"br" hydrogen transport project – H2ME. The hydrogenization of motor transport is the subject of many"br" international research projects, e.g. „Clean Hydrogen In European Cities” – CHIC. Of special interest is the"br" lecture regarding the plans of hydrogenisation of the British road transport prepared with E4tech project. As a"br" result of verification, under Polish conditions (European Project HIT-2-Corridors), of the original method"br" developed for determining the initial location of the hydrogen refueling station in Poland, in the precommercial"br" phase (2020 - 2030), the said location has been indicated along with the order of investment,"br" taking into account above all the freedom to move around Poland of cars powered by hydrogen visiting"br" Poland and transiting our country between other EU countries.

The road and its influence on bicycle accidents in Denmark

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:25:42 +0100

The National accident database is often used as basis when designing and prioritizing safety initiatives for cyclists."br" Due to the very low reporting rate this is not optimal. The purpose of this study is to get a better understanding of"br" factors influencing the occurrence of cyclist accidents with a particular focus on the influence of the condition of"br" the road. The study is based on data on cyclist injuries reported to the hospital and merged with road data, including"br" information on road condition and existence of bicycle lane. The data is analyzed using a Latent Class Clustering"br" approach for pattern recognition. The analysis uncovers patterns of road maintenance and cyclists accidents and"br" reveals 11 clusters. The results identify the road condition as a significant factor for many of the accidents,"br" especially for accidents involving less experienced cyclists. In addition, the analysis confirms that the use of"br" medical records together with road maintenance data leads to new insight of the occurrence of bicycle accidents,"br" which is relevant for the prioritization of preventive efforts.

Document type: Conference object

Egocentric Vision-based Future Vehicle Localization for Intelligent Driving Assistance Systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:24:49 +0100

Predicting the future location of vehicles is essential for safety-critical applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. This paper introduces a novel approach to simultaneously predict both the location and scale of target vehicles in the first-person (egocentric) view of an ego-vehicle. We present a multi-stream recurrent neural network (RNN) encoder-decoder model that separately captures both object location and scale and pixel-level observations for future vehicle localization. We show that incorporating dense optical flow improves prediction results significantly since it captures information about motion as well as appearance change. We also find that explicitly modeling future motion of the ego-vehicle improves the prediction accuracy, which could be especially beneficial in intelligent and automated vehicles that have motion planning capability. To evaluate the performance of our approach, we present a new dataset of first-person videos collected from a variety of scenarios at road intersections, which are particularly challenging moments for prediction because vehicle trajectories are diverse and dynamic.

Comment: To appear on ICRA 2019

The ESRA survey: cross national initiative to monitor road users' attitudes and self-declared behaviours

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:24:34 +0100

The overall aim of the ESRA project is to provide scientific support to road safety policy by generating comparable national data on the current road safety situation. The first ESRA survey was conducted online using representative samples (N=1,000) of the national adult populations in 25 countries across the world. The field work was carried out in two waves: (1) June/July 2015, and (2) November 2016. In total, the first ESRA survey covers almost 27,000 respondents, among which more than 16,000 regular car drivers. The subjects covered in the survey are, amongst others: ‘self-declared behaviour in traffic’, ‘acceptability of unsafe traffic behaviour’, and ‘support for road safety policy measures’. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of some key results of this survey. The ESRA project has shown the feasibility and the added value of joint data collection by a network of road safety organisations. The intention is to extend the ESRA survey to an increasing number of countries and to repeat it on a triennial basis.

ODAS – An anti-collision assistance system for light rail vehicles and further development

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:24:04 +0100

In the last three years, Bombardier Transportation and its partners have developed and brought to market ODAS"br" (Obstacle Detection Assistance System), the world-wide first anti-collision system for light rail vehicles (LRV),"br" which is homologated and commercially operated on tramway fleets. The motivation was a further safety"br" increase in LRV operation by reducing the risk for collisions. Important milestones for the complex development"br" and industrialization process are presented. The ODAS system architecture and its assistive operating principle"br" are based on stereo vision as sensor input. Thus, the system is capable of deriving all information necessary for"br" detecting obstacles in the driveway of the LRV and estimating a level for collision risk solely from images that"br" are produced by three cameras mounted in the vehicle front. This makes the concept well suited for retro-fitting"br" existing tramway fleets. Current investigations are targeting new functions and applications derived from the"br" current ODAS technology such as cartography-based localization and automatic overspeed protection.

Friction after polishing – a new performance orientated test method in situ

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:23:50 +0100

Friction of pavement surfaces and skid resistance are major functional requirements which have to be fulfilled"br" over the service time of pavements. The skid resistance in situ on a pavement surface is measured by non"br" destructive continuous measurement systems at traffic speed like SKM in Germany. To determine decisive"br" performance characteristics it is necessary to develop test methods which simulate the in-situ performance"br" realistically. So the question arises how to predict pavement performance concerning skid resistance for type"br" testing in laboratory. In Germany the test system of the Wehner/Schulze machine offers the possibility to"br" determine the friction of aggregates as well as the friction of real asphalt samples in laboratory. It is furthermore"br" possible to submit the specimen to accumulated polishing procedures to evaluate the changes in friction due to"br" simulated loading of the surface. The aim is to use this test method to evaluate friction performance in laboratory"br" to predict the performance of skid resistance over the service life of a pavement in situ."br" In Europe today the resistance to polishing is only described by the resistance of aggregates against polishing by"br" determining the polish stone value (EN 1097-8). The influence of bitumen and the grading curve of aggregates"br" used for the asphalt mixture are herewith not taken into account. By using the Wehner Schulze machine and the"br" use of asphalt specimen in the friction after polishing test (FAP, EN 12697-49) a first step was made to tie"br" aggregates performance up to pavement performance in situ. With the new testing machine of BASt FAP test are"br" able to perform in situ on test sites. So in future is will be possible to survey pavements’ friction performance"br" over the service life of a pavement. This enables a realistic correlation of pavement performance in situ to"br" laboratory trials with simulated loading by polishing the specimen."br" With the test method Friction after Polishing a test method is available to evaluate the performance of asphalt"br" with regard to friction already in laboratory to design an asphalt mixture with resists reliable the loading in situ"br" over its service life.

Modelling Urban Logistics Business Ecosystems - An Agent-based Model Proposal

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:22:34 +0100

Using Pavements to Generate Electricity

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:20:06 +0100

part of developing a safe, efficient, and sustainable transportation infrastructure, health monitoring of pavements and bridges, as well as the monitoring of real-time roadway conditions for safety, have become increasingly important. The sensors, data acquisition, and data transmission equipment needed for such monitoring require electricity that is often unavailable, in short supply, unreliable, or a combination of the three. The development of a more robust and capable health and safety monitoring equipment will be greatly facilitated by a more ample, reliable source of electricity than is currently available. This investigation explores the concept of using pavements as thermoelectric generators to produce and supply electricity, using the temperature differential that exists between a pavement's surface and its underlying layers. A thermoelectric module was placed within a hot-mix asphalt pavement system and a Portland cement concrete pavement system in the laboratory and subjected to full-spectrum lights. The amount of electricity generated was measured, and the results indicated that electricity can be generated. Initial power generation suggests that one square meter pavement surface area may be capable of providing about 62000 microwatts, enough power for 620 wireless transmitters and the accompanying sensor. It is estimated that it may be possible to produce up to 300 W/lane-km. - 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Scopu

Safety and availability of road infrastructure during extreme natural and man-made events

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:19:10 +0100

Extreme natural and man-made events can harm the road infrastructure facilities with substantial economic"br" damages. The research presented in this paper focuses on the quantification of the availability and safety of road"br" infrastructure during the occurrence of extreme events. It presents the first results of the implementation of"br" Resilience Engineering to road infrastructure. This work is carried out within the framework of the BMVI"br" Network of Experts of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure as part of the"br" research ‘Quantification and prognosis of the availability and safety of road infrastructure in extreme events’"br" which is a component of the topic ‘Increasing the reliability of transport infrastructures’ lead by the Federal"br" Highway Research Institute (BASt).

Developing an open-source platform for the evaluation of intelligent traffic control algorithms

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:18:37 +0100

Intersection management is a key component of road transport systems. Envisaging a new age of road transport systems accommodating intelligent, connected, and autonomous vehicles, many novel intersection control algorithms have been proposed in the literature. These algorithms are often implemented using bespoke software and tested over custom built network models because of their complexity and the lack of freely accessible software tools. This in turn makes them difficult to evaluate and benchmark."br/"To solve this issue, in this paper, we present the Traffic Control Test Bed project, the objective of which is to develop an open source microsimulation platform for the evaluation of intersection control algorithms. The platform provides a library of road network models together with an intuitive synthetic road network generator for user-defined layouts. It facilitates and streamlines the parallel execution of simulations. Outputs and performance indicators are monitored and visualised by the platform both during runtime and at post processing stage. We demonstrate the usage of the platform with a case study evaluating two simple signal optimisation methods. As well as being an arena for traffic control algorithms, the open source property of the platform also invites contributions from the wider research community to improve execution validity and efficiency of traffic control systems.

Side-channel security of superscalar CPUs: Evaluating the Impact of Micro-architectural Features

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:17:47 +0100

Side-channel attacks are performed on increasingly complex targets, starting to threaten superscalar CPUs supporting a complete operating system. The difficulty of both assessing the vulnerability of a device to them, and validating the effectiveness of countermeasures is increasing as a consequence. In this work we prove that assessing the side-channel vulnerability of a software implementation running on a CPU should take into account the microarchitectural features of the CPU itself. We characterize the impact of microarchitectural features and prove the effectiveness of such an approach attacking a dual-core superscalar CPU.

REFINET - Transport Infrastructure (TI) Technology & Innovation Clustering Tool

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:17:05 +0100

In the framework of the REFINET Coordination and Support Action (GA 653789 - http://www.refinet.eu/), in"br" order to maximize the exploitation of the various project outcomes, a Transport Infrastructures (TIs) technology"br" platform – the TI-TechMapper - has been developed. The platform is a unique instrument that makes use of all"br" data collected within the project (e.g. the catalogue of best practices in design, operation and maintenance) and"br" presents them in a dynamic format that can be used to provide a support in analysis, decisions, planning to"br" various stakeholders in TIs. Indeed the aim of the platform is to: provide an easy-to-use decision support"br" instrument to the different stakeholders in accessing classified and clustered information (e.g. technologies, best"br" practices) that are applicable to TIs; visualize the aforementioned data in interactive maps/layers, featuring the"br" possibility to combine different information related to different aspects (e.g. technological); allow search, query"br" and analysis so that to identify which data (e.g. best practice) is more applicable, according to predefined criteria,"br" to the purpose of the investigation, for the selected asset, with specific boundaries (e.g. KPIs)."br" The paper provides a synthetic but comprehensive description of the main functionalities of the platform,"br" together with the description of two typical usage scenarios for European TIs stakeholders.

Towards a microeconomic theory of For-Hire Services

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:16:43 +0100

For-hire services have emerged as promising solutions to meet mobility demand in customized ways. Yet, they still have to achieve profitability: this requires developing the service quality to achieve attractiveness to potential users. Among quality factors, the availability in time of space of modal resources such as vehicles and parking slots is prominent. It follows that models targeted to aid decision-making in the planning and management of for-hire services have to deal with availability as an endogenous property that varies over time and space and depends on the real-time disaggregate conditions of resource occupancy and trip demand."br" This paper brings about a microeconomic model of supply and demand for a for-hire service in which availability is represented explicitly. The specific function is formulated under a particular form related to a stylized urban area. After providing the model formulation, which involves probabilistic assumptions and calculus, we use it to investigate the issues of demand-supply equilibrium, service profitability and business model optimization.

Reduced-scale power hardware-in-the-loop simulation of a hybrid railway power substation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:09:41 +0100

With the growth of the passenger flow in railway transportation system in France, some railway substations are"br" approaching their power limits, thus have difficulty to reinforce the power supply. The substation upgrade"br" usually requires changing power transformers and connecting cables, thus costly. The integration of renewable"br" energies and storage system to form a hybrid railway power substation (HRPS) could be a good solution, which"br" can satisfy the power requirement with smaller investment, and also opens an opportunity to participate into the"br" electricity market. Instead of build the prototype directly, this paper proposes a reduced-scale power hardwarein-"br" the-loop (HIL) simulation platform to verify the technical availability of HRPS.

Power Electronics Converters for an Electric Vehicle Fast Charging Station with Storage Capability

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:07:52 +0100

Fast charging stations are a key element for the wide spreading of Electric Vehicles (EVs) by reducing the charging time to a range between 20 to 40 min. However, the integration of fast charging stations causes some adverse impacts on the Power Grid (PG), namely by the huge increase in the peak demand during short periods of time. This paper addresses the design of the power electronics converters for an EV DC fast charging station with local storage capability and easy interface of renewables. In the proposed topology, the energy storage capability is used to smooth the peak power demand, inherent to fast charging systems, and contributes to the stability of the PG. When integrated in a Smart Grid, the proposed topology may even return some of the stored energy back to the power grid, when necessary. The accomplishment of the aforementioned objectives requires a set of different power electronics converters that are described and discussed in this paper. This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and by FCT within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. This work is financed by the ERDF – COMPETE 2020 Programme, and FCT within project SAICTPAC/0004/2015‐POCI‐01‐0145–FEDER‐016434 and FCT within project PTDC/EEI-EEE/28813/2017. Mr. Luis A. M. Barros is supported by the doctoral scholarship PD/BD/143006/2018 granted by the Portuguese FCT agency. Mr. Tiago Sousa is supported by the doctoral scholarship SFRH/BD/134353/2017 granted by the Portuguese FCT agency.

Analysing the effect of rainfall on railway embankments using fragility curves

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:07:18 +0100

Many railway embankments across Europe were constructed over 150 years ago. These embankments were not subject to rigorous design practice but instead were crudely constructed using end tipping techniques. As a result, the majority of these embankments are overly steep and far in excess of the design angles recommended in Eurocode 7. Over recent years, increased incidence of failure has been witnessed on these slopes following periods of prolonged or intense precipitation. This paper develops fragility curves to investigate how sensitive these steep slopes are to shallow translational failure when subjected to prolonged or abnormally intense rainfall. Rainfall intensity and condition are both considered for a range of slope angles. The significance of the findings are discussed in the context of transport slope asset management and risk assessment. The approach is a logical expansion on probabilistic slope stability analysis and could be used to interpret how vulnerable the transport network is to changing climatic condition.

LCA Based Estimation of Environmental Effects of the Global Electric Vehicles Fleet - Facts&Figures from the IEA Technology Collaboration Program on Hybrid&Electric Vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:05:19 +0100

There is an international consensus that the environmental effect of electric vehicles can only be assessed with life cycle assessment (LCA) including production, operation and end of life treatment. Since 2011 a group of international experts working on the LCA of Electric Vehicles in the Technical Collaboration Program on “Hybrid&Electric Vehicles of the International Energy Agency (IEA), continuously estimates the environmental effects of the growing worldwide electric vehicle fleet (BEV, PHEV), currently of about 1.3 million in 35 countries. The environmental effects assessed for electric vehicles are greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, ozone formation, particle matter emissions and primary energy consumption compared to the substituted conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. The global assessment shows substantial environmental improvements, e.g. 25% to 30%GHG-reduction, 40% to 50% PM reduction, 50% to 60% ozone reduction, 15% to 20% total primary energy reduction. The broad estimated range of environmental effects are mainly due to variation in the emissions of national electricity production, the electricity consumption of the EV fleet in daily real driving conditions, and the fuel consumption of substituted conventional ICEs.

Semantic 3D Models from Real World Scene Recordings for Traffic Accident Simulation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:03:35 +0100

We propose a novel extension to traffic accident simulation by means of semantic 3D environment information allowing for a broader view by incorporating the entire close-by environment. In this course, the effect of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) can be simulated, as well as the visibility of objects from people’s perspectives. We present an enclosed pipeline generating 3D objects, their extents and relative positions as well as their semantic class from a combination of photogrammetric recordings and LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) scans. By adjusting the desired level of detail, these objects are suitable for both direct integration into the 3D scene reconstruction for use in the accident simulation software PC-Crash, as well as for fine tuning parameters in traffic flow simulations and for convincing visualization and presentation of simulation results, be it in courts or to policy makers in urban planning.

Logistics Projects in the Czech Republic

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:53:21 +0100

Logistics is becoming a fast-growing industry with an endless amount of logistics projects. We find such a definition just with Polish authors. Domestic and other authors do not use the concept of logistics projects, but we find in the specific literature terms such as city logistics project, urban logistics project, or reverse logistics project. These concepts are about projects which focus on logistics in the cities than in the total concept of logistics projects. The paper will deal with the idea of logistics projects regarding business firms in the Czech Republic. The main objective of the paper is defining logistics projects. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

DxNAT — Deep neural networks for explaining non-recurring traffic congestion

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:51:43 +0100

Non-recurring traffic congestion is caused by temporary disruptions, such as accidents, sports games, adverse weather, etc. We use data related to real-time traffic speed, jam factors (a traffic congestion indicator), and events collected over a year from Nashville, TN to train a multi-layered deep neural network. The traffic dataset contains over 900 million data records. The network is thereafter used to classify the real-time data and identify anomalous operations. Compared with traditional approaches of using statistical or machine learning techniques, our model reaches an accuracy of 98.73 percent when identifying traffic congestion caused by football games. Our approach first encodes the traffic across a region as a scaled image. After that the image data from different timestamps is fused with event- and time-related data. Then a crossover operator is used as a data augmentation method to generate training datasets with more balanced classes. Finally, we use the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to tune the sensitivity of the classifier. We present the analysis of the training time and the inference time separately.

Parking management as a means of decreasing air pollution in cities

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:51:16 +0100

Cruising for parking increases fuel consumption thus additionally polluting the environment: on one hand due to increased travel time, and on the other due to undesirable engine operation mode during parking search as a result of low speeds and frequent stops. Considering that in the recent decades sustainable development, including environmental protection have become important, more and more researchers are dealing with the parking search phenomena aiming to address or mitigate the problem. This paper examines and quantifies possible parking policy contribution to decrease air pollution through reduction in parking search. In order to achieve this goal, three models were used in the paper: first, multinomial logit model that links the parking policy with the demand, i.e. volume and occupancy; then ordinal regression model that links parking occupancy with an average parking search time; and finally, Copert model which determines, based on total search time (obtained by models one and two) and a referent car, the reduction in polluters’ emissions. Results prove significant impact of parking policy (time limit and price levels) on the emission of polluters, which verifies the initial hypotheses. This paper can assist policy makers in a transparent decision-making process on the basis of empirical data and modelling results.

Impact of railway track parameters on energy consumption and GHG production of passenger train operation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:45:53 +0100

Constantly increasing of the people mobility requires ensuring of the sustainable transport operation. One of the priorities in this area is a reduction of the energy consumption and the GHG production by transport. Emission limits are currently applied mainly to the transport vehicles. However, technical characteristics of the transport infrastructure may also affect the energy consumption and the GHG production of the transport operation. The article analyses the impact of the changes in the railway infrastructure parameters on the change in the energy consumption of the train operation and on the GHG production in railway passenger transport. The analysis is based on the simulation in the Dynamics program at the different slope ratios of the railway track. The calculation is made for the diesel traction of the vehicles. The aim of the article is to highlight how designing of the new or reconstructing of the older track lines could affect the energy consumption and GHG production of the future railway transport system.

The Mobility as a Service Maturity Index: Preparing the Cities for the Mobility as a Service Era

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:43:56 +0100

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the use of a “digital interface to source and manage the provision of transport"br" related services” which meet peoples mobility requirements. The implementation of a MaaS based transport"br" system is dependent on a city possessing a number of characteristics. Before planning for MaaS it is important"br" for decision makers to understand how close a city is to fulfilling these characteristics. Therefore, the aim of this"br" study is to develop the ‘MaaS Maturity Index’. This measures a cit’s readiness for MaaS implementation based"br" on characteristics across five dimensions: 1. Transport operators data sharing and openness, 2. Citizen familiarity"br" and willingness, 3. Policy, regulation and legislation, 4. ICT infrastructure, and 5. Transport services and"br" infrastructure. The index has been applied to two metropolitan areas in the UK; London and the West Midlands."br" The results indicate that, as expected, London is slightly more ready for MaaS than the West Midlands, but that"br" both cities have lots of room for improvement.

Document type: Conference object

Quantifying the impact of crisis on bus user satisfaction and perceptions. Evidence from Athens, Greece.

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:40:25 +0100

This paper continues the research effort that the authors begun in 2008 on the quality factors that affect adoption"br" of public transportation and retention of its users. The objective of this paper is to explore the impacts of the deep,"br" 7-year economic crisis, on the perceptions of public transport users, with bus as their main transport mode, about"br" service quality. Data from three user-satisfaction surveys that were conducted in Athens in 2008 (pre-crisis), 2013"br" (mid-crisis) and 2017 (deep-crisis) are used for the analysis. Mann Whitney/Wilcoxon test is applied for the"br" distribution comparison of the responses between the pairs of consecutive years (2008-2013 and 2013-2017), in"br" order to measure the change in users’ preferences. Ordered logit models are developed for the user satisfaction and"br" shift to public transportation after the beginning of the crisis."br" The results of the analysis indicate that the satisfaction about quality attributes, such as service frequency,"br" conditions at the stations and information provision, are important contributors of the total satisfaction, verifying"br" the results of Tyrinopoulos and Antoniou (2008) and Efthymiou et al. (2014), but their impact varies over time."br" Despite the general decrease of commuting activities due to increase of unemployment, the shift to public"br" transportation has increased. More specifically, demographic characteristics, such as age, occupation and gender,"br" as well as qualitative factors, such as overall quality of service, service production, transfer quality, ticket services"br" and environmental consciousness, have affected the decision of people to shift to and from public transportation.

A Cloud Manufacturing Application for Additive Manufacturing Methods

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:33:37 +0100

Over the past years, the manufacturing industry has witnessed a great enhancement in the field of Additive Manufacturing that allows forming an inchoate market to produce custom-made products with low unit costs. At the same time, everyone may be a designer as well. However, the required equipment is only accessible for all the people. The Cloud Manufacturing aims to resolve this challenge by connecting the customers to the manufacturers. Therefore, this paper introduces a practical fabrication method for 3D printers which can bring flexibility and benefits to cloud manufacturing scheme. A model of this integration is provided and implemented on two types of 3D printers. Further, by printing sample specimens, the advantages of this approach such as using low memory size for operating each printer and the ability of changing the design during the fabrication process is described in details.

Introduction of Battery Electric Buses in European Cities – Economic Comparison of Novel Technological Concepts

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:29:05 +0100

Nowadays, the conversion of diesel fueled public bus fleets into those powered by electricity is one of the most important tasks for public transport operators. In the frame of European Commission funded projects (“Eliptic” [Commission, 2015], “ZeEUS” [Commission, 2014]), there are at the moment several demonstrations in different European (big) cities. Besides purely demonstrating the general technical functionality, finding Business Cases is also a crucial task, since the operation with the new technology should be at least not significantly more expensive than compared to Diesel, besides having clear societal and environmental benefits."br" Within this context, the presented work focuses on the detailed comparison of two novel technological concepts of electric buses which are currently demonstrated in several European cities in the frame of the “Eliptic”-project:"br" 1) Opportunity-charging of battery electric buses taking energy from local DC tram grid"br" 2) Trolley-Hybrid buses (Buses being fed by overhead catenary and being able to cover parts of their routes by on-board batteries)"br" The investigations are based on already existing and potential future electric bus network and real operation in different cities and are performed in direct cooperation with the respective public transport operators to obtain meaningful results. A technical, economic and ecological presentation and comparison of the different approaches is the main target of the work."br" For this purpose, detailed analyses are performed in order to calculate the Total-Cost of Ownership (TCO). This comprises all relevant technical investment- and running costs over a certain period under consideration. Sine it is representing an important cost-factor of the new system, the battery is particularly considered regarding the expected lifetime in different operation scenarios.

An integrated dynamic ridesharing dispatch and idle vehicle repositioning strategy on a bimodal transport network

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:22:19 +0100

In bimodal ridesharing, a private on-demand mobility service operator offers to drop off a passenger at a transit"br" station, where the passenger uses the transit network to get to another transit station, and the service operator"br" guarantees picking up the passenger to drop them off at the final destination. Such collaborations with public"br" transport agencies present a huge potential to increase the ridership. However, most existing studies on dynamic"br" dial-a-ride/ridesharing mainly focus on mono-modal cases only. We consider dynamic bimodal ridesharing"br" problems where real-time information is available to anticipate future demand. A new non-myopic vehicle"br" dispatching and routing policy based on queueing-theoretical approach is proposed and integrated with a nonmyopic"br" idle vehicle repositioning strategy to solve the problem. Several experiments are conducted to test the"br" effectiveness of this integrated solution method and measure the benefit of bimodal cooperation. The proposed"br" model and solution algorithm provides useful tools for real-time operating policy design of shared mobility

The AutoMat CVIM - A Scalable Data Model for Automotive Big Data Marketplaces

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:21:55 +0100

In the past years, connectivity has been introduced in automotive production series, enabling vehicles as highly mobile Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and participants. The Horizon 2020 research project AutoMat addressed this scenario by building a vehicle big data marketplace in order to leverage and exploit crowd-sourced sensor data, a so far unexcavated treasure. As part of this project the Common Vehicle Information Model (CVIM) as harmonized data model has been developed. The CVIM allows a common understanding and generic representation, brand-independent throughout the whole data value and processing chain. The demonstrator consists of CVIM vehicle sensor data, which runs through the different components of the whole AutoMat vehicle big data processing pipeline. Finally, at the example of a traffic measurement service the data of a whole vehicle fleet is aggregated and evaluated.

Productivity of Railway Stations: Case Study - New Delhi Railway Station

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:21:32 +0100

Railway stations, an important component of urban transport infrastructure, remains a lot to be desired in developing countries resulting in their poor productivity. Very little research has been carried out in the field of critically analyzing the causative factors of poor performance of stations in India. Delhi, the national capital of India, has six major railway station terminals besides 29 smaller stations cumulatively handling 1.195 million passengers per day. The present paper is an attempt to assess the performance of the largest railway station of Delhi i.e. New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS), with daily passenger footfall of 0.5 million, as the case study and evolve alternate strategies to improve its productivity. The study reveals that the track-side peripheral areas are most critical in terms of level of service (LOS). The study estimated the utilization levels of all platforms over 24 hours period. Two alternate strategies were proposed and evaluated, namely “staggering of train schedule” & “crowd management” scenarios which result in 8% & 47% improvement in the performance level respectively.

Vulnerability Of Charging Infrastructure, A Novel Approach For Improving Charging Station Deployment

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:20:06 +0100

Since the first uptake of electric vehicles, policy makers are questioning how to rollout public charging infrastructure in an efficient manner, such that user convenience balances with costs of investment. In some metropolitan areas, the first phase of rollout has been passed, meaning an optimized deployment of future charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) becomes important to improve the charging infrastructure and ensure customer satisfaction and sufficient service provision. Complex system literature shows that network vulnerability is an important metric, yet, charging infrastructure has not yet been a subject of these simulation models so far. This research, based on real-world data, provides a novel approach for improving the roll-out strategy of municipalities, by treating the charge infrastructure as a complex network of charging stations and defining vulnerability in respect to the availability of its surrounding charging stations within relevant walking distance.

Compilation of a geo-hazard map for slope instabilities and landslides along the German railway infrastructure

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:19:40 +0100

In Germany and Europe infrastructure managers are already undertaking massive efforts to reduce the risks and effects of mass movements on railway infrastructure. Supporting these efforts and adding the future perspective, we present the results of ongoing project developing a nationwide landslide susceptibility map along the German railway network."br" Mechanisms and parameter-interactions that trigger mass movements are complex and related to local conditions regarding, e.g. geology, topography, land use, and climate. In a first step, open source geodata sets, e.g. digital elevation models, geological maps, and digital landscape models were combined within two parallel approaches (i) geotechnical knowledge based, and (ii) artificial neural network (ANN), compared to each other and verified with documented landslide events. To access the future landslide geo-hazard potential along railways under the influence of climate change, the most promising landslide susceptibility map will be enhanced by integrating climate scenario data. Additionally, the resolution of the input datasets will be improved, systematically."br" The results obtained within this project will be integrated into the risk assessment tool that will be developed parallel within the BMVI Network of Experts and finally provide decision support to users across the railway sector.

Traffic safety culture in three countries – example of a new conceptual analysis

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:18:07 +0100

In the course of the project ‘TraSaCu’, which received funding from EU’s Horizon 2020 MSC-RISE programme, various aspects of applying the construct of safety culture to road safety have been scrutinized. One aim was to sound out the potential of using an analytic framework derived from aviation safety to assess and compare traffic safety cultures in three countries. Four dimensions – political concern, social control, realistic and adequate information as well as situational awareness and perception – were used to describe and compare Albania, Austria and the state of Virginia (USA). Quantitative data (historic, societal, road safety indicators etc.) was complemented with qualitative data from interviews with local practitioners, researchers as well as governmental and administrative authorities involved in road safety. As the case of Albania, with its short history of motorization, shows, this approach is especially suitable to contrast cultures with very different levels of safety. Furthermore, qualitative analysis demonstrates the importance of considerations beyond mere numbers to address road safety.

Automatic Grammar Augmentation for Robust Voice Command Recognition

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:16:38 +0100

This paper proposes a novel pipeline for automatic grammar augmentation that provides a significant improvement in the voice command recognition accuracy for systems with small footprint acoustic model (AM). The improvement is achieved by augmenting the user-defined voice command set, also called grammar set, with alternate grammar expressions. For a given grammar set, a set of potential grammar expressions (candidate set) for augmentation is constructed from an AM-specific statistical pronunciation dictionary that captures the consistent patterns and errors in the decoding of AM induced by variations in pronunciation, pitch, tempo, accent, ambiguous spellings, and noise conditions. Using this candidate set, greedy optimization based and cross-entropy-method (CEM) based algorithms are considered to search for an augmented grammar set with improved recognition accuracy utilizing a command-specific dataset. Our experiments show that the proposed pipeline along with algorithms considered in this paper significantly reduce the mis-detection and mis-classification rate without increasing the false-alarm rate. Experiments also demonstrate the consistent superior performance of CEM method over greedy-based algorithms.

Weather Classification: A new multi-class dataset, data augmentation approach and comprehensive evaluations of Convolutional Neural Networks

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:15:22 +0100

Weather conditions often disrupt the proper functioning of transportation systems. Present systems either deploy an array of sensors or use an in-vehicle camera to predict weather conditions. These solutions have resulted in incremental cost and limited scope. To ensure smooth operation of all transportation services in all-weather conditions, a reliable detection system is necessary to classify weather in wild. The challenges involved in solving this problem is that weather conditions are diverse in nature and there is an absence of discriminate features among various weather conditions. The existing works to solve this problem have been scene specific and have targeted classification of two categories of weather. In this paper, we have created a new open source dataset consisting of images depicting three classes of weather i.e rain, snow and fog called RFS Dataset. A novel algorithm has also been proposed which has used super pixel delimiting masks as a form of data augmentation, leading to reasonable results with respect to ten Convolutional Neural Network architectures.

Development of weather application for enhancing sea safety and rescue operations

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:15:01 +0100

mong many issues which affect the marine-related daily activities, the weather conditions are considered one of the most important. In this study, all the tools and the methods were used to develop a modern weather application which is able to support the quality of vessel services in the sea safety and rescue operations, is presented. The weather application can operate using as basic data source continuous measurements from a mobile meteorological station on a pilot vessel. The meteorological station records automatically all the measurements of its sensors while appropriate modules in the internal structure of the system analyze the initial information and provide final outputs. In the framework of the LINCOLN Project where new concepts of added-value specialized vessels and relative automated services, are developed and promoted, this application is intended to provide accurate and on-site information about weather conditions.

Practical remote survey applications for improved geotechnical asset management on England's strategic road network

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:03:23 +0100

Highways England operates, maintains and improves England’s strategic road network (SRN). The SRN is supported by 50,000 geotechnical assets comprising embankments, cuttings and natural slopes. Delays and congestion on the SRN have significant economic impacts. Therefore, well maintained geotechnical assets, through proactive monitoring, are key to a safe, serviceable and smooth running network. Geotechnical asset condition, assessed through visual inspection, is costly, time consuming and can impact on safety. This paper assesses the application of remote survey techniques for monitoring geotechnical assets on the SRN using several pilot studies. Techniques investigated include LiDAR, InSAR, hyperspectral imaging and aerial photography. Combinations of techniques show promise for geotechnical asset management, with some being limited in their potential application. Conclusions presented will provide Highways England and others understanding of which remote survey techniques provide greatest practicality, benefit and cost effectiveness for day-to-day management of geotechnical assets and ultimately ensure a more resilient and safer road network.

Life-Cycle Assessment based optimization model for asphalt pavements

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:03:01 +0100

This paper describes the application of an integrated pavement management optimization model that includes both Life-cycle assessment and Life Cycle Cost Analysis, on a road network. The objective of this paper is to find an optimal maintenance plan at the network level that minimizes the total cost to society, which is the sum of: (i) the environmental impact cost during the entire pavement life-cycle; (ii) agency costs (i.e. cost of pavement maintenance and improvement works); and (iii) user costs (or vehicle operating cost, VOC). The model explores the relative significance of each phase of a pavement Life-cycle assessment on the overall environmental footprint of a road, namely: (i) production of materials, (ii) transportation, (iii) placement and maintenance activities, (iv) usage, and (v) the end-of-life. The paper also shows how change in components such as traffic or unit price of CO2 may have an impact on the overall results.

Using the Product Impact Tool for Prospective Thinking

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:00:18 +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.

Cooperation across transport modes to develop common research objectives for the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:56:31 +0100

Greater cooperation across transport modes in research and development activities has the potential to develop systems thinking, optimise use of resources and improve services for customers. This paper presents the findings of a Horizon 2020 project called Users, Safety, Security and Energy in Transport Infrastructure (USE-iT) which aimed to encourage greater cross-modal collaboration, through the identification of common challenges and development of a cross-modal research roadmap to address these. USE-iT and its sister project FOX identified more than 300 technologies, processes and systems that could benefit from a cross-modal approach. The involvement of industry was an integral part of this process, and a key objective of the project was to bring together stakeholders from all modes to facilitate knowledge transfer and develop a network for future cooperation. The paper focuses on research supporting the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions across transport modes, which was one of four topic areas addressed by USE-iT.

Can bus users' preferences bolster low emission bus schemes? Lessons from Europe's largest hydrogen bus fleet

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:54:26 +0100

In the United Kingdom city buses are the most common form of public transport within urban areas. Most buses are powered using diesel fuel, the combustion of which contributes to climate change and the deterioration of air quality in town centres. Low Emission Buses (LEBs) can help mitigate this. Moreover their introduction is costly and funding is limited. The majority of existing LEB schemes are isolated pilot projects consisting of small fleets (less than 5 buses) whose long-term viability is uncertain. At present little is known about bus users’ preferences for emission reduction to justify the introduction or expansion of LEB schemes. This study uses a Discrete Choice Experiment set around the Aberdeen Hydrogen Bus Project – Europe’s largest hydrogen bus fleet – to estimate a probabilistic model that determines what type of bus service a particular bus user prefers. Findings provide evidence that LEB experience results in a higher value for the environmental performance of the bus, compared to bus users who regularly use diesel buses only. Results show LEB schemes can be partly funded by the user, either through increased fares or deviating resources from certain characteristics of the bus service that consumers are willing to forego in exchange for a less emitting bus. Results also provide evidence that justify the use of pilot LEB schemes are an efficient stepping stone to widespread introduction, as increased exposure to LEBs results in higher valuations for emission reduction amongst bus users. Some implementation strategies are presented.

Improving Traffic Conditions Around Pedestrian Zone Using Microsimulation Software – Case Study: Town of Ruma

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:53:13 +0100

Microsimulation software packages in the field of traffic and transportation have considerably facilitated designing traffic arteries and traffic objects and the analysis of the conditions for traffic in the existing road network. These software packages have been especially useful in urban conditions where the road network is complex and heterogeneous. Besides, the feature of a traffic flow in the street network is changed over time due to the change of the purpose of the existing surfaces, their design, building commercial structures or other attractive facilities, etc. However, the most important feature of microsimulation software packages is in the case of interventions on the street network and the change in traffic mode. Typical analysis procedures in these situations cannot process different variations simply or take into consideration all relevant influences on the conditions for traffic taking place in changed conditions. This paper represents the application of the microsimulation software Trafficware Synchro applied to the town of Ruma and a way for improving traffic conditions in the urban network, in case of closing one traffic artery in the town. Furthermore, apart from the existing conditions, traffic conditions in the planning period of 20 years have been forecasted.