Scipedia: Documents published in 2018

Reviewing and assessing existing innovations with high potential for higher public transport use, with special focus on Mobility as a Service

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:52:53 +0100

To attract more travelers in Public Transport, the European project Collective Innovation for Public Transport in"br" European Cities (CIPTEC) makes a contribution to a more marketing oriented PT-sector, that involves many intraand"br" intersectoral partnerships and uses innovativeness. CIPTEC identifies, among other things, potential"br" innovations that can be introduced in PT. One of the most potential innovations that came forward is Mobility as"br" a Service. This paper describes the CIPTEC project, gives an in-depth consideration of MaaS and describes a"br" practical application of MaaS in the Netherlands.

Weather Impact on Airport Performance

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:51:45 +0100

Weather events have a significant impact on airport performance and cause delayed operations if the airport capacity is constrained. We provide quantification of the individual airport performance with regards to an aggregated weather-performance metric. Specific weather phenomena are categorized by the air traffic management airport performance weather algorithm, which aims to quantify weather conditions at airports based on aviation routine meteorological reports. Our results are computed from a data set of 20.5 million European flights of 2013 and local weather data. A methodology is presented to evaluate the impact of weather events on the airport performance and to select the appropriate threshold for significant weather conditions. To provide an efficient method to capture the impact of weather, we modelled departing and arrival delays with probability distributions, which depend on airport size and meteorological impacts. These derived airport performance scores could be used in comprehensive air traffic network simulations to evaluate the network impact caused by weather induced local performance deterioration.

Document type: Article

Ajouter et réutiliser du contenu (Wikidata @ OpenStreetMap) : l'exemple de la rue Tamanian

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:50:14 +0100

International audience

Combining Terrier with Apache Spark to Create Agile Experimental Information Retrieval Pipelines

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:49:55 +0100

Experimentation using IR systems has traditionally been a procedural and laborious process. Queries must be run on an index, with any parameters of the retrieval models suitably tuned. With the advent of learning-to-rank, such experimental processes (including the appropriate folding of queries to achieve cross-fold validation) have resulted in complicated experimental designs and hence scripting. At the same time, machine learning platforms such as Scikit Learn and Apache Spark have pioneered the notion of an experimental pipeline , which naturally allows a supervised classification experiment to be expressed a series of stages, which can be learned or transformed. In this demonstration, we detail Terrier-Spark, a recent adaptation to the Terrier Information Retrieval platform which permits it to be used within the experimental pipelines of Spark. We argue that this (1) provides an agile experimental platform for information retrieval, comparable to that enjoyed by other branches of data science; (2) aids research reproducibility in information retrieval by facilitating easily-distributable notebooks containing conducted experiments; and (3) facilitates the teaching of information retrieval experiments in educational environments.

Travel time predictions: should one model speeds or travel times?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:49:36 +0100

Purpose Travel time predictions are of importance for individual trip planning as well as for logistics applications. Since travel time and travel speed have a one-one correspondence, the modeller has the choice to model travel times directly or model the corresponding travel speeds and infer the associated time from the speed predictions. A priori it is not clear which of these is the superior approach. In this paper we investigate the implications of the choice of the methodology for the accuracy of the travel time predictions. Methods For a selection of links, travel time prediction models, both in a direct way as well as indirectly via the implied link travel speeds, are obtained. The respective predictions are compared on a validation data set with respect to their accuracy as measured by mean error, root mean square error, mean percentage error as well as mean absolute percentage error. Additionally, the accuracy of route travel time predictions is evaluated based on the raw GPS data from the floating taxis. Results The empirical results overwhelmingly make the case for using direct modelling if the goal of prediction is to obtain a RMSE-optimal prediction. If the MAPE is to be minimized, however, the indirect method provides the better results. Conclusion Thus the goal of the prediction determines the better method of modelling: if one is interested in minimizing the RMSE, then, for the data investigated in this paper, the direct method should be selected. However, if one is interested in obtaining a small MAPE, the indirect method achieves better results.

Document type: Article

Text/Conference Paper

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:45:16 +0100

Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) are moving into the focus of road safety solutions, be it Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) deployed in cars or enhanced guidance systems in smart cities. We concentrate on bicyclists and study means for assessing the impact of such safety solutions on the bicyclists’ behavior. We just recently developed the Virtual Cycling Environment (VCE), which allows a bicyclist to ride in a virtual reality environment while sitting on a real bike connected with a simulated environment. In this paper, we present a method for measuring the cyclists’ visual attention. This is a fundamental requirement for advanced studies of VRU safety systems including their performance as well as acceptance. In a small empirical study, we assess the feasibility of our approach for conducting psychological experiments in a human-in-the-loop setup.

Impact of the Megatrend Digitalization on Maritime Logistics – Analysis of Opportunities and Threats

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:41:17 +0100

The environment of maritime logistics actors in general and seaports in particular is very dynamic. Major megatrends challenging maritime logistics actors include e.g. globalization and changing trade patterns and production systems, demographic change, or the overall demand for more sustainability. However, no trend affects complete industries more than the technological progress driven by the megatrend digitalization. This paper analyzes the challenges arising from changing framework conditions that force maritime logistics actors like seaports and inland ports to change their mindset towards a maritime logistics ecosystem thinking and to digitally interconnect with other maritime logistics actors. It elaborates the opportunities and threats arising from the megatrend digitalization that affect maritime logistics actors in general and seaports in particular. Finally, the paper brings maritime logistics in general and ports in particular into the context of the current scientific discussion on digitalization and Industrie 4.0. It transfers the Industrie 4.0 concept to the maritime sector, resulting in a Port 4.0.

Mobile Multi-functional Urban Logistics-Platforms with Electric Drive Train

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:40:25 +0100

Unconsolidated freight transport creates increasing problems in cities due to the use of public space and its negative environmental impact. The research project MULE analyzes if mobile multi-functional urban logistics platforms with electric propulsion in combination with a flexible two-stage city logistics concept can lift urban freight transport to a new level by using electric, (partially) autonomous utility vehicles that increase the efficiency of goods transport. To investigate its feasibility, the concept is modelled on vehicle level to investigate the electric drive-train as well as on logistics level. The feasibility of the holistic implementation of the MULE concept is realistic with regard to the concept’s cost economy and simultaneously has a high ecological potential. The cost saving potential is the result of combining automated loading concepts, a two-stage (multi-stage) city logistics system as well as vehicles with tailored electric drive trains using intermediate charging.

Road Users Characteristics And Their Willingness-to-Pay For Road Safety Improvement

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:39:44 +0100

The road risk perception varies between socio-economic and family environment, educational level and mobility experience. A good knowledge of the risk perception according to each social environment is essential for a better adapted and a better targeted prevention. One of the approaches used to understand this risk perception is the willingness to pay method. Moreover, much of the literature focused on estimating WTP for a reduction in the risk of fatal accident and on the calculation of the value or price of the risk, collectively named "the value of a statistical life”. In contrast, the present paper is interested in the valuation of more or less serious non-fatal injuries caused by traffic accidents. To do so, contingent valuation was conducted on the adult population (aged 18 years and older) of a French administrative Département (Rhône) during the year 2013. A telephone survey was conducted in 2013 with a sample of 2,216 inhabitants, randomly selected from the Rhône population. This study was based on the stated preference method. Respondents were asked their WTP to avoid diverse consequences of a road accident."br" Participants should consider contributing financially to the implementation of a local project to improve the safety of road users in the Rhône Département. To test the relationship between WTP and injury severity, three road safety projects were independently presented. Each was characterized by the types of injury against which it offered protection. For each project, respondents were asked whether they were willing to pay for the project to be implemented, if so, the maximum amount of money they were willing to pay each year. If not, zero WTP was assigned, and follow-up questions tried to identify the reasons for this choice; this allowed “genuine zero values”, consistent with an economic decision, to be distinguished from protest responses. A Tobit and a type-II Tobit model were estimated to identify factors for WTP. The results highlighted the significant and positive influence of injury severity on WTP. Experience of road traffic accidents seemed to play an important role, positively influencing valuation of non-fatal injury. The young people seemed to be more willing to invest in improving their road safety. As predicted by economic theory, the study confirms the positive relationship between WTP and income level. In this survey, we have taken into account all the determinants that affect willingness to pay, according to the literature: categories of road users, age groups and gender, family and social environments, (urban, peri-urban, rural), reasons for travel (professional or personal), experience of road traffic injury, etc. This suggests that these results can be transposed to any French or even European context.

Silicon and polyanionic chemistries and architectures of Li-ion cell for high energy battery

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:38:29 +0100

The development of highly efficient batteries is a critical need in automotive industry in order to enable the future success of Electric Vehicles (EV). Active material with higher insertion potential in association with a compliant electrolyte is a way to increase Li-ion cell energy density and so EV autonomy. Moreover, green process like aqueous process for positive electrode manufacturing allows significant reduction of battery cost. This work in the framework of the European SPICY project presents results obtained on polyanionic chemistry in association with sulfolane or adiponitrile electrolyte solvent and water soluble binder stable at high voltage. Results at cell level are also presented with 17 Ah cells having same components but different formats. Models for electrochemical and thermal behavior at the levels of particles, electrodes and cells are finally presented and allow identification of the optimized cell design in terms of loading and porosity.

Addressing the travel-related and organizational challenges to provide seamless, multi-modal, door-to-door journeys

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:37:48 +0100

Multi-modal mobility contributes, among other things, to accessibility and sustainability. New developments in"br" technology, sustainability and public transportation provide opportunities to take multi-modal mobility to the next"br" level. To do so however, one faces both travel-related and organizational challenges. The travel-related challenges"br" relate to providing what is necessary to create an attractive, pleasant and seamless journey from A to B for the"br" traveller, using different modes of transportation. The organizational challenges are more difficult to solve as the"br" organization of multi-modal mobility is generally spread across different organizations and departments with"br" different interests and resources. Two Dutch regions have faced both kinds of challenges and now serve as"br" examples in the field of multi-modal mobility. This paper will focus on how the challenges have been addressed"br" in these two cases to draw lessons for others who want to seize the opportunities that multi-modal mobility has to"br" offer.

Channel Characterization Tool (CCT): Distributed Network Performance Evaluation Framework for the Feasibility Study of Public IP Networks in Railway

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:35:59 +0100

Global System for Mobile Communications – Railway (GSM-R) is one of the most used radio technologies in railway network for transmitting control information. However, nowadays IP-based technology is quite up-to-date and mature. Since there are many approaches for providing support to IP mobility and adaptable communications, it is important first to measure and understand the performance of IP networks in current railway routes. This paper provides the details of a framework entitled Channel Characterization Tool (CCT), a distributed network performance evaluation framework for the feasibility study of public IP networks in railway network. This paper describes the architecture of CCT, and some results obtained in field testing, as the first step in the validation of the framework. Finally, future research lines and conclusions are drawn.

Quantification of Accident Probabilities for a Risk Observatory

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:35:19 +0100

Risk Observatory for the total aviation system is being developed in the scope of project 4 of the Future Sky Safety program. The goal of the risk observatory is to collect data from all involved domains in order to compute and monitor the operational risks as well as to derive risk mitigation or reduction measures to improve the safety level throughout the system. The focus of this present work is the Physical Model, which contributes to the buildup of the Risk Observatory. The Physical Models use the relationships of contributing and influencing factors with respect to the aircraft’s flight dynamics in order to simulate the flight operations from the operator’s point of view. The goal of the approach is to quantify the occurrence probability of runway excursions in order to use this as a safety performance indicator. Connections to other models used by other domains are shown as well as the contribution of the Physical Models to the Risk Observatory.

DLHub: Model and Data Serving for Science

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:34:17 +0100

While the Machine Learning (ML) landscape is evolving rapidly, there has been a relative lag in the development of the "learning systems" needed to enable broad adoption. Furthermore, few such systems are designed to support the specialized requirements of scientific ML. Here we present the Data and Learning Hub for science (DLHub), a multi-tenant system that provides both model repository and serving capabilities with a focus on science applications. DLHub addresses two significant shortcomings in current systems. First, its selfservice model repository allows users to share, publish, verify, reproduce, and reuse models, and addresses concerns related to model reproducibility by packaging and distributing models and all constituent components. Second, it implements scalable and low-latency serving capabilities that can leverage parallel and distributed computing resources to democratize access to published models through a simple web interface. Unlike other model serving frameworks, DLHub can store and serve any Python 3-compatible model or processing function, plus multiple-function pipelines. We show that relative to other model serving systems including TensorFlow Serving, SageMaker, and Clipper, DLHub provides greater capabilities, comparable performance without memoization and batching, and significantly better performance when the latter two techniques can be employed. We also describe early uses of DLHub for scientific applications.

Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, conference paper

Internalisation of external costs of transport in Flanders

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:29:25 +0100

In this study we calculate the private costs, marginal external costs, and degree of internalization for all modes in"br" Flanders for the period 2000-2014, with an outlook towards 2016. The private costs are the costs for the user."br" For road transport these include the vehicle purchase costs, insurances, maintenance, fuel costs, etc. For transport"br" services (bus, train, plane) this is the ticket price. Marginal external costs are the costs the user does not take into"br" account when deciding to make a trip. They are called marginal as we focus on the additional effect of that one"br" trip. We considered congestion, environment (air pollution and greenhouse gasses), noise, safety, infrastructure"br" wear & tear and health."br" The internalization of external costs determines the extent to which the user does take into account part of these"br" external costs via taxes and levies. In the case of full internalization, the user pays for all the costs he causes via"br" taxes and levies. Today, in most cases, the user does not pay the full costs he causes."br" Based on our calculations we assessed the evolution of the degree of internalization over time. Is Flanders"br" heading towards the “polluter pays principle”? Which steps are needed to evolve to a better pricing? We found"br" that over the years the level of internalisation is mainly driven by changes in external costs rather than by a"br" targeted adjustment of taxes. Recent changes in taxation such as the changes in the car registration tax, the yearly"br" road tax and the km charge for trucks did lead to an increase in internalisation, but we are still far from full"br" internalisation. Moreover, it would be better to differentiate taxes not only on environmental performance but"br" also on time and place. The levels of internalisation are also very different – not only between modes but also"br" within the road mode.

Hydrogen Production and Storage by Oxidation and Reduction of Iron-based Oxygen Carriers

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:29:04 +0100

The fixed-bed chemical-looping hydrogen (CLH) process offers the possibility of decentralised small-scale hydrogen production and storage from local available renewable hydrocarbon sources like biogas. The detailed process simulation indicated the ability of converting a broad range of different bio-based feedstocks into hydrogen."br" Experiments for hydrogen production in a lab-scale reactor showed the ability to release high-pressurized hydrogen with up to 50 bar from the fixed-bed production system without an additional gas compression step. Hydrogen with a purity up to 99.999% was produced in the performed lab-scale experiments to meet the stringent requirements for FCEVs. Detailed process simulations for combined loading and unloading of the oxygen carrier with a typical biogas feedstock are presented. The thermodynamic analyses revealed a high influence of the reformer synthesis gas composition and also of the internal recirculation on the overall process efficiency."br" The previously loaded oxygen carrier is appropriate as process-integrated storage solution to cover fluctuating demands during the day i.e. for use in fuel stations. A long-term storage and distribution is possible due to the easy handling and the very high volumetric storage capacity compared to conventional tube trailer transportation.

A Smart-Home IoT Infrastructure for the Support of Independent Living of Older Adults

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:27:55 +0100

Part 4: HEALTHIOT; International audience; Although the healthcare sector has been hugely benefited from the advantages made in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) domain in the recent years, the emerging technology breakthrough of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), in which all devices and services are collaborating while reducing human intervention, promises new solutions that will enable users to have a more home-centric healthcare, and a sustainable active and healthy ageing. This paper is proposing a smart-home IoT infrastructure for the support and extension of the independent living of older adults in their living environments that responds also to real needs of caregivers and public authorities. The proposed infrastructure seamlessly utilizes health and monitoring devices for the provision of a safe environment for an elderly, the mitigation of frailty and the preservation of quality of life and autonomy. It also provides a mechanism for easy setup and testing of the installed equipment and a decision support system that offers advanced data analytics and visual analytics mechanisms to the formal and informal caregivers of the elderly for the efficient monitoring of their health and activity status.

Document type: Conference object

A Comparative Evaluation of the Safety Performance of Median Barriers on Non-urban Roads in Israel

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:27:35 +0100

This study compared the safety of road sections with various median barriers, namely: Step-shaped in-situ barriers, pre-cast concrete barriers and steel guardrails, as new barrier types (that satisfy the requirements of EN 1317 in Europe), and old NJ-shaped in-situ barriers. The study included 558 km of non-urban Israeli roads. Negative-binomial regression models were fitted for predicting crashes, and differences in crash expectancy were evaluated for various barrier types, while controlling for other road and traffic characteristics. On dual-carriageway roads, sections with Step-barriers showed a better safety level relative to those with NJ-barriers and, sometimes, to other barrier types. On motorways, the safety level of sections with Step-barriers was better or similar to that with NJ-barriers, with no difference compared to the pre-cast barriers, while sections with steel guardrails had a better safety level, particularly at traffic volumes over 40,000 vehicles. The economic evaluation showed benefits for replacing the old NJ-barrier by a Step-barrier, on dual-carriageway roads, and by steel barriers, on motorways.

The daily odyssey of the delivery workers in pedestrianized zones

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:25:32 +0100

International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (13th. 2019. Gijón)

Analysis of selected types of advertisement influencing the driver’s attention in real road traffic

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:24:27 +0100

One of the probable causes of road accidents may be a high density of information which may cause the driver to miss a fact significant for dealing with an individual road traffic situation. In particular failure or distraction of the driver's attention often leads to a late recognition of the risk or insufficient information processing. The primary task of advertisement is to attract attention of consumers. Advertisements near the road undoubtedly belong to substantial distractors. In 2017, a change in the legal regulation was made in the Czech Republic. Placement of advertising facilities has been directly prohibited in the protection zone of motorways and first-class roads. Existing advertising facilities must be removed from the vicinity of these roads. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the advertising equipment will be moved to the vicinity of the local roads, especially in the urban areas. In-depth analysis of the security risks associated with the installation of advertisement at the border of the road transport zone is an important potential for implementing new corrective actions to reduce the incidence of driver interference. The aim of this article is to present the results of the analysis of the impact of advertisement on the driver's attention in real road traffic. For the analysis of the selected types of advertisement equipment (small advertising equipment, billboards, bigboards and megaboards) the eyetracking methods have been used. Most of currently realized studies have analysed the influence of advertising device under simulated conditions. Therefore, this measurement has been realized in real traffic. Measurement has been carried out with 30 drivers, on 3 different routes in the city. Achieved results illustrate the negative impact of advertisement on the driver’s visual attention that has been observed and confirmed.

Road infrastructure support levels for automated driving

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:22:56 +0100

This paper is a joint work of ASFINAG and ABERTIS AUTOPISTAS, two European road operators that already maintain a digital infrastructure on which many aspects of AD support can be built on. It presents, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt to define a classification scheme to harmonize the capabilities of the infrastructure to support AD. It is based on the idea of gradual steps towards full digitalization of the infrastructure and the information that can be delivered to AVs in order to support driving and effectively performing traffic management tasks for the coming highway automation.

Possibilities and barriers in ride-sharing in work commuting – a case study in Sweden

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:22:37 +0100

To understand possibilities and barriers for ride-sharing in work commuting, 451 persons living in the same suburban area and working at the same site were invited to join a ride-sharing program and use a mobile application. Two quantitative web surveys and 16 in-depth interviews have been performed. The results have been analysed using social practice theories as an analytical lens. The participants understood the benefits with the ride-sharing practice, but out of the 451 invited participants, only 8 downloaded the required mobile application for the ride-sharing program. Different to previous results in the literature, trust and security were not seen as issues in this case. Instead the expected loss of flexibility was seen as the main barrier. The participants found a meaning in “being a green commuter” and understood that ride-sharing could contribute to decrease challenges of congestion, environmental impact, and overfull parking places. However, they rated their own current flexibility and convenience in commuting higher than the expected benefits from ride-sharing.

The role of Bangladeshi seaports in connecting 21st century maritime silk road and silk road economic belt to implement OBOR ( One Belt, One Road) initiative of China

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:19:56 +0100

The strategic place of Bangladesh in the proposed 21st century maritime Silk Road will attract the international traders where port transport service may offer to the neighbor countries for establishing industry also reducing shipping cost significantly. The objective of the OBOR initiative that proposed by China is to address the common needs of transport access for all and launch a new global transport networks by the combination of surface and water transportation system. In the aim of connecting two transport modes of OBOR, intermodal freight transportation system has a role to join two nodes of two modes to cover the line from Bangladesh to China and bid maritime logistics to the adjacent industry and offer for setting new industry to follow the easy access of seaports in Bangladesh. In this connection, Bangladesh has opportunity to draw lines from its seaports to China economy road by direct road haulage, road and rail, water and road combination to facilitate the port transport service. To follow the intermodal freight transportation system, it is possible to connect with India, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar where Bangladesh can do transport business with them and able to develop the area of those countries that are landlocked especially seven sisters of India and south-west part of China and southern part of Myanmar predictably. Recent initiative of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh’s motor vehicles agreement (BBIN) is indicating cargo movement among the four South Asian neighbors for a common transport policy to develop the region where OBOR will play a vital role to connect all countries of the South Asia especially cost effective maritime access through Bangladeshi seaports. This paper tried to find out the secure access to and from the Bangladeshi seaports by all means of transport as per OBOR initiative of China by following two-fold research methodology qualitative and quantitative.

Effectiveness of Rumble Strips Positioned at Different Lateral Distances to the Edge Line to Avoid Run-Off-Road Accidents

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:18:49 +0100

Epidemiological studies have shown that the share of single vehicle run-off-road accidents caused by inattention, distraction and drowsiness ranges between 20% up to 60%. One measure to avoid these accidents is the installation of rumble strips at or close to the edge line of the hard shoulder. Even though one percent of vehicles drive on the hard shoulder and thus pass the edge line without the drivers being inattentive, distracted or drowsy. Hence the installation of rumble strips would result in unnecessary noise pollution to the people living close to the road."br" This study shows at which position to the edge line rumble strips could be installed at the hard shoulder to avoid unnecessary noise pollution and still potentially reduce run-off-road accidents. The analysis of real accidents showed an effectiveness reducing run-off-road accidents with rumble strips of approximately 41% if rumble strips are positioned directly on the edge line. The effectiveness of rumble strips is not influenced much by varying the distance of up to 0.5 m to the edge line. Still approximately 37% of run-off-road accidents might be avoided.

Reproducible Data Analysis Pipelines for Precision Medicine

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:18:23 +0100

Precision medicine brings the promise of more precise diagnosis and individualized therapeutic strategies from analyzing a cancer’s genomic signature. Technologies such as high-throughput sequencing enable cheaper data collection at higher speed, but rely on modern data analysis platforms to extract knowledge from these high dimensional datasets. Since this is a rapidly advancing field, new diagnoses and therapies often require tailoring of the analysis. These pipelines are therefore developed iteratively, continuously modifying analysis parameters before arriving at the final results. To enable reproducible results it is important to record all these modifications and decisions made during the analysis process."/jats:p""jats:p"We built a system, "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace", to support reproducible analyses for iteratively developed analysis pipelines. The approach is based on our experiences developing and using deep analysis pipelines to provide insights and recommendations for treatment in an actual breast cancer case. We designed "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace" for the single servers or small compute clusters typically available for novel treatments in the clinical setting. "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace" leverages software containers to provide reproducible execution environments, and integrates with modern version control systems to capture provenance of data and pipeline parameters."/jats:p""jats:p"We have used "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace" to analyze a patient’s primary tumor and adjacent normal tissue, including subsequent metastatic lesions. Although we have used "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace" for specialized analyses of whole-exome sequencing datasets, it is a general data analysis tool that can be applied in a variety of scientific disciplines. We have open sourced "jats:monospace"walrus"/jats:monospace" along with example data analysis pipelines at "jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://github.com/uit-bdps/walrus""github.com/uit-bdps/walrus."/jats:ext-link

Fault Injection Framework for Time Triggered Ethernet

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:17:53 +0100

Time-Triggered Ethernet (TTEthernet) is increasingly being deployed in avionics, space applications and other safety-critical systems. The main reasons are its real-time determinism, support for mixed-criticality and certification. Due to the application in these safety-critical systems, TTEthernet was equipped with various fault-tolerance capabilities such as anti-masquerading and a guardian functionality. Consequently a challenge for this kind of system is the realistic and effective validation that can evaluate multiple implementations from different vendors including the protocol itself using Fault Injection (FI). This paper presents an FI framework for TTEthernet using an FPGA which is connected to the network under test and injects faults according to a cut-through paradigm. The proposed solution improves previous FI systems, since it addresses time-aware networks and has the capability to target individual traffic classes such as Rate Constrained (RC) and Time Triggered (TT) frames. This provides better controllability, including the ability of the framework to target TTEthernet synchronisation mechanism.

Innovative Railway Traction System

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:16:56 +0100

This article describes the future Alstom railway traction systems developed as part of “Shift2rail”. This"br" innovative system is based on silicon carbide (SiC) high power density converters, high efficiency transformers,"br" increased speed motors to improve the whole traction system efficiency. SiC semiconductors (MOSFET) have"br" lower losses than silicon IGBT and will operate at higher junction temperature (175°C). The reduction of the"br" power converters’ losses (-50% total losses) enables the cooling system to be simplified and compacted."br" Globally, we expect important achievements in terms of train energy consumption (-10% at train level), mass"br" and volume reduction, positive impact regarding the reliability (elimination of cooling pumps and fans), better"br" availability and noise reduction, in order to design innovative, environmentally friendly, economy efficient rail"br" solutions.

Human-Machine Interaction Assessment by Neurophysiological Measures: A Study on Professional Air Traffic Controllers

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:16:03 +0100

International audience; This study aims at investigating the possibility to employ neurophysiological measures to assess the human - machine interaction effectiveness . Such a measure can be used to compare new technologies or solutions, with the final purpose to enhance operator’s experience and increase safety. I n the present work, two different interaction modalities (Normal and Augmented) related to Air Traffic Management field have been compared , by involving 10 professional air traffic controllers in a control tower simulated environment . Experimental task consisted in locating aircrafts in different airspace positions by using the sense of hearing. In one modality (i.e. “Normal”), all the sound sources (aircraft s ) had the same amplification factor . I n the “Augmented” modality , the amplification factor of the sound sources located al ong the participant head sagittal axis was increased, while the intensity of sound sources located outside this axis decreased . In other words, when the user oriented his head toward the aircraft position, the related sound was amplified. Performance data , subjective questionnaires (i.e. NASA - TLX) and neurophysiological measures (i.e. EEG - based) related to the experienced workload have been collected. Results showed higher significant performance achieved by the users during the “Augmented” modality with respect to the “Normal” one, supported by a significant decreasing in experienced workload, evaluated by using EEG - based index. In addition, Performance and EEG - based workload index showed a significant negative correlation. On the contrary , subjective workload analysis did not show any significant trend. This result is a demonstration of the higher effectiveness of neurophysiological measures with respect to subjective ones for Human - Computer Interaction assessment.

The concept of using the mobile robot for telemechanical wires installation in pipelines

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:10:56 +0100

The use of waste glass in asphalt concrete

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:07:10 +0100

The study investigates the use of waste glass as filler in asphalt concrete. Waste glass constitutes a significant proportion of the waste generated in both developed and developing countries. Successful utilization of the waste glass in asphalt will reduce/solve the problem faced by environmental agencies at ensuring safe disposal of the non-biodegradable waste and may improve the asphalt properties. In the study, waste glass in form of filler was introduced into the asphalt mix at 8%, 10%, 12%, 14%, 16%, 18% and 20% of the total mix. The asphalt concrete samples with and without waste glass as filler were subjected to Marshall test to determine the stability, flow, air voids, void in mix aggregate and void filled with bitumen. The Marshall test results show that the stability increases with increasing glass filler up to 18%, although the values were lower than that of asphalt concrete without waste glass. This implies improved resistance to fatigue for higher waste glass content. Also, the flow increases with increasing glass filler, which implies the resistance to permanent deformation did not improve. Also, other properties were found to give mixed results.

Looking for a new approach to categorize urban streets - insights and recommendations from a comparative analysis of innovative approaches in Europe

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:04:30 +0100

Categorization of the road network is a foundation of transport planning and traffic engineering, however, the paradigm shift towards “Planning for People” is often not reflected in technical standards. New approaches are needed to unlock efficiencies in the planning and design of urban streets. This paper looks at the state of the art and compares implemented innovative approaches from several European cities."br" No individual case could be identified, which incorporates all envisionable dimensions of urban street categorization. In-depth analysis did reveal several best practices which were deemed highly transferable and allowed compiling of recommendations.

Introducing the circular economy in road infrastructure development. Challenges and dilemmas in designing circular roads.

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:02:46 +0100

The throwaway culture has for years been the hallmark of our economic system. We produce, use and throw"br" away what is left as waste. A circular economy assumes that materials are part of a closed system of subsequent"br" loops, where the output of one loop is the input of the next loop. Ideally, resources are used over and over again"br" without becoming waste. Currently, there is a growing political and societal pressure to reduce the use of basic"br" materials and to prevent creating waste. For example, Dutch government decided in 2016 that the whole Dutch"br" economy - including road construction - should be circular in 2050! The road construction industry is infamous"br" for its’ major use of energy resources and materials. Road constructions are usually constructed for a 50 to 100"br" years’ lifetime and are then supposed to be written off as waste. Under the above mentioned political and societal"br" pressure also the road infrastructure sector is strongly challenged to become circular. But, how to design and"br" realize a circular road for multiple lifecycles? The paper will discuss this question by mirroring theory about"br" circular design to the first circular designed highway viaduct in The Netherlands. The aim is to understand"br" circular design in highway development and to explore general design principles.

Positive Drive, a gamified tracking campaign to uncover human mobility behavior in an urban business district

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:54:11 +0100

The majority of commuting trips of employees working in Luxembourg are made by car. Cross-border workers coming from France, Belgium or Germany work in 40% of the available jobs in the country and heavily rely on individual motorized modes for their home-to work journey. As major employers have a partial responsibility in the home-to-work trip of their employees, measures to mitigate the negative externalities of these trips have to be implemented together with them. In a specific campaign in partnership with seven major employers of a Luxembourgish developing business district, the Cloche d’Or, we are aiming at tackling local mobility problems. In April 2017, IMS - Inspiring More Sustainability - and LuxMobility have gathered the major employers in the Cloche d’Or area representing 7800 workers to participate in a gamified mobility campaign with the application “Positive Drive”, an online survey and a series of focus groups. In this practitioners’ paper, we explain how we set up our campaign and we present selected findings as well as concrete recommendations for the companies.

DATEX II profiling and validation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:48:23 +0100

This paper deals with DATEX II profiling and validation aspects in the context of data modelling requirements coming from the European Commission’s Delegated Regulations."br" Since the DATEX II traffic data exchange standard has been established in many EU Member States, interoperability in terms of traffic data exchange even on an international level (between different European road operators) becomes more relevant in terms of enabling real-time based road management operations."br" Even though DATEX II is an open, commonly available standard for traffic data exchange, interoperability between two or more DATEX II systems can only be achieved having data elements commonly specified. With this respect, analyses of already existing DATEX II deployments have shown that there is a special need for harmonizing especially DATEX II generated data content profiles in order to ease bilateral traffic information exchange. Already when deploying DATEX II based traffic services, interoperability issues have to be considered from the very beginning, allowing smooth running traffic data exchange procedures. Therefore DATEX II profiling support is required in order to provide a harmonised exchange complying with different traffic data domains covering the Delegated Regulations as well."br" In detail a dictionary (middleware specification) providing a matching between Priority Action c (safety related), e (truck parking related) and b (real-time related) data categories and DATEX II data elements was elaborated within the CROCODILE project (co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility) providing a minimum set of DATEX II elements to be used for harmonised profile generation. In order to allow DATEX II developers to check individually generated DATEX II profiles against a commonly defined minimum set of data (also referred to as ‘profile’), an online based DATEX II reference and validation tool was developed. The tool itself provides validation and parsing rules to be used for obtaining a high-quality compliance check. In other words, the testing tool (also referred to as DATEX II Test Center) provides a simple and harmonised procedure for validating individually generated DATEX II profiles against provided Delegated Regulation based traffic data domains and thus allowing basic profile consistency checks for harmonised data exchange."br" Based on the DATEX II Test center, DATEX II users and developers are able to check anonymously and voluntarily DATEX II profiles against predefined set of data elements to be commonly used. Thus a simple self-assessment is provided by the tooling.

Research on the Relationship between Air Transport Capacity Upgrading and Economic Growth from the Perspective of Externality -- Take Guizhou Province for Example

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:44:38 +0100

Integral Failure Analysis of Pipelines in Flood Defenses

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:42:58 +0100

The presence of pipelines in flood defenses presents a challenge for assessing the probability of flooding. To prevent costly structural measures compensating for the possible negative effects of pipeline failure, we developed a framework for an integral failure analysis of pipeline and dike failure. The assessment framework is based on an event tree with several scenarios or paths resulting in failure of the flood defense and subsequent flooding of the hinterland. The event tree allows us to combine the probability and consequences of pipeline failure with the failure mechanisms of the flood defense and the possibility of detecting and repairing the damage before a flood or other hydraulic loading. The framework has proven to be effective in preventing costly structural measures for a pipeline in the crest of a dike in Amsterdam.

What evolutions and technological solutions are necessary for sustainable land transport systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:41:59 +0100

Starting with a glimpse of how mobility and traffic have been evolving in Europe in recent decades, and also with a comparison of motionless communications, the paper considers what mobility and logistics require today, in terms of general trends. In order to try to answer to this question properly, the constraints on transport systems in this first half of the twenty-first century are examined, as far as sustainability is concerned. From such a comprehensive perspective, it is possible to infer solutions for mobility and logistics within urban contexts and for extra-urban transport systems. The conclusions summarise the technological evolutions that can be expected according to the premises, which are therefore compliant with the current and expected environmental constraints and goals.

Document type: Article

A Speed Planner Approach Based On Bézier Curves Using Vehicle Dynamic Constrains and Passengers Comfort

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:34:38 +0100

This paper presents a speed profile generation approach for longitudinal control of automated vehicles, based on quintic Bézier curves. The described method aims to increase comfort level of passengers based on the ISO2631-1 specification, while taking into account vehicle dynamics and traffic rules to keep high safety levels. The algorithm has been tested in an in-house tool for high accuracy vehicle dynamics simulations, called Dynacar. The considered scenario is a closed circuit inside Tecnalia facilities. The resulting profile has better properties (for example, rate of change) than a raw input based on traffic speed limits. When used as reference for the speed controller, it improves both comfort and safety. This work is partly supported by the H2020 project UnCoVerCPS with grant number 643921, and the H2020 Project STEVE with proposal identification number 769944.

ComfRide: A smartphone based system for comfortable public transport recommendation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:33:51 +0100

Passenger comfort is a major factor influencing a commuter's decision to avail public transport. Existing studies suggest that factors like overcrowding, jerkiness, traffic congestion etc. correlate well to passenger's (dis)comfort. An online survey conducted with more than 300 participants from 12 different countries reveals that different personalized and context dependent factors influence passenger comfort during a travel by public transport. Leveraging on these findings, we identify correlations between comfort level and these dynamic parameters, and implement a smartphone based application, ComfRide, which recommends the most comfortable route based on user's preference honoring her travel time constraint. We use a 'Dynamic Input/Output Automata' based composition model to capture both the wide varieties of comfort choices from the commuters and the impact of environment on the comfort parameters. Evaluation of ComfRide, involving 50 participants over 28 routes in a state capital of India, reveals that recommended routes have on average 30% better comfort level than Google map recommended routes, when a commuter gives priority to specific comfort parameters of her choice.

Longitudinal Model Predictive Control with comfortable speed planner

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:32:44 +0100

Guaranteeing simplicity and safety is a real challenge of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), being these aspects necessary for the development of decision and control stages in highly automated vehicles. Considering that a human-centered design is generally pursued, exploring comfort boundaries in passenger vehicles has a significant importance. This work aims to implement a simple Model Predictive Control (MPC) for longitudinal maneuvers, considering a bare speed planner based on the curvature of a predefined geometrical path. The speed profiles are constrained with a maximum value at any time, in such way that total accelerations are lower than specified constraint limits. A double proportional with curvature bias control was employed as a simple algorithm for lateral maneuvers. The tests were performed within a realistic simulation environment with a virtual vehicle model based on a multi-body formulation. The results of this investigation permits to determine the capabilities of simplified control algorithms in real scenarios, and comprehend how to improve them to be more efficient. Authors want to acknowledge their organization. This project has received funding from the Electronic Component Systems for European Leadership Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 737469 (AutoDrive Project). This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Romania, Norway. This work was developed at Tecnalia Research & Innovation facilities supporting this research.

Business case for electric road

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:22:10 +0100

Electrified roads have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector. Where long-distance heavy traffic is concerned, there is actually no cheaper alternative which is equally energy-efficient, has such low carbon dioxide emissions and for which the energy supply is assured in Sweden and the rest of Europe. Many questions nevertheless remain."br" In this preliminary study we have focussed on the business ecosystem likely to be built up alongside an electrified road. This has been done by means of interviewing interested parties and a thorough review of previous publications. On the basis of this background information, a computation model has been developed to be able to analyse the influence of various parameters. The stretch of 120 kilometre long road between Gävle and Borlänge has been used as a case study but an attempt to find other applicable stretches has also been undertaken. The model has a solid footing with the parties involved in the project and with people who have good insight into financial computations previously undertaken in relation to electrified roads."br" The computation model that has been developed is primarily thought of as a model for overall surpluses or deficits for all stakeholders in the business ecosystem. It is not, therefore, a complete socio-economic model, which would include considerably more consequences for society at large, such as the influence on local and national businesses, increased employment and so forth. The model has been developed on the assumption that all prices and values are given for a point in time when the solution is in an ’early commercialisation phase’."br" In comparison with diesel routes, it generally applies for electrified roads that every kilometre of road and every vehicle adds extra costs and that every kilometre driven creates savings. Thus for an electrified road system to be profitable, the stretch of electrified road must comprise a significant percentage of the overall distance driven by a truck. Nor must the stretch of road be too short, for then too much time is spent loading/unloading and too few kilometres (where the savings occur) are driven. Following familiarisation with various scenarios, a coherent, highly qualitative judgment, based on the electrified road computation model, would suggest that the suitable characteristics for such roads would be:"br"  A distance of at least twenty kilometres"br"  Annual average daily traffic (AADT) for electrified road trucks should be around two times as many as the number of electrified kilometres"br"  The electrified stretch should comprise 60% percent or more of the trucks’ overall distance driven each year."br" For the case of Gävle-Borlänge (120 km), it appears that the stretch will be able to pay for itself, for example, when 190 electrified trucks complete the stretch an average of 4 times per day throughout the year (back and forth twice a day 365 days a year), amounting to 92% of the vehicles’ overall distance being driven on electrified road.

A Preparedness System for Natural Hazards Management on Norwegian Roads

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:18:45 +0100

In Norway, in both mountainous and coastal areas, roads are exposed to natural hazards such as snow avalanches, landslides and floods. Each year 1500-3000 landslides and snow avalanches are registered on public roads. Over the years, The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) has developed a preparedness system for natural hazard management, based on close cooperation with other governmental agencies and an open data policy. This paper aims at presenting how the NPRA manages its road network in the context of natural hazards, with an emphasis on communication between contractors and the NPRA through the ELRAPP application, which allows contractors to assess and report natural hazards. The application has contributed to an increase in both the contractors’ and the NPRA’s awareness on natural hazards in general, and snow avalanches in particular. More awareness and knowledge on landslides and other natural hazards is called for.

Reducing noise pollution of urban areas: new advances for railway vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:17:34 +0100

In the framework of the Shift2Rail initiative, Alstom has worked on the development of advanced prediction"br" methodologies for the noise emissions of traction chain elements of rolling stock vehicles. The two main noise"br" generation mechanisms treated here are aeroacoustic noise due to cooling fans and noise of electromagnetic"br" origin; the main source of interest is the traction motor but other sources can be treated with the methodologies"br" here developed. This paper presents the current status of these investigations, the expected noise reduction and"br" the impact this could have at train level. The special case of urban vehicles is discussed more in detail as these"br" improvements are of particular relevance for urban areas and their citizens.

Integrated, sustainable planning of urban logistics - a joint system of objectives

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:15:32 +0100

Urban logistics is increasingly facing the need to transform its system design in urban areas. Not just the global megatrends of urbanization and global warming, but also severe local challenges of each city like high levels of congestion and a critical air pollution are forcing municipalities and logistics service providers (LSP) to reconfigure layout, means of transport, nodes and the service design [1] of the logistics systems within a city. Nevertheless LSPs are playing a dominant role in this respect, municipalities and corresponding stakeholders are highly influencing this planning by centralized urban planning and decentralized stakeholder individual actions, shaping the urban form in which logistics takes places and is determined by.

Reconfigurable asynchronous pipelines: From formal models to silicon

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:13:04 +0100

Dataflow pipelines are widely used in the design of high-throughput computation systems. Real-life applications often require dynamically reconfigurable pipelines to differently process data items or adjust to the current operating mode. Reconfigurable synchronous pipelines are known since 1980s and are well supported by formal models and tools. Reconfigurable asynchronous pipelines on the other hand, have neither a formal behavioural model, nor mature EDA support, making them unattractive to industry. This paper presents a model and an open-source tool for the design and verification of reconfigurable asynchronous pipelines, and validates this approach in silicon.

Machine learning techniques for modeling ships performance in waves

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:10:32 +0100

This paper presents a design of a system for monitoring and recording the influence of a running sea on a vessel"br" in motion. Our approach is based on machine learning techniques that relate measured wave parameters (encounter"br" angle, wave height and wave amplitude) with measured motion characteristics of the vessel. High quality GRIB"br" data for wave measurements are available for some regions (e.g. North Sea and Adriatic) and we use those for"br" generating training sets. We store this correlation in a neural net and use this information in conjunction with the"br" targeted performance indicator (RMS of linear acceleration, RMS of roll or pitch angle, fuel consumption) to create"br" historical directed performance charts for the vessel in consideration. We use this information for rational route"br" planning and optimization. We report on the conclusions of experiments.

Design and management of a LNG distribution network for sea traffic in the Mediterranean Area

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:09:45 +0100

In order to reduce the dependence on oil and mitigating the environmental impact in the transport sector, European Union establishes minimum requirements for the construction of infrastructures for alternative fuels, which include, among others, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). By 31 December 2025, ports should be equipped with a suitable number of LNG supply points, in order to allow the navigation of LNG-powered ships in both inland waterways and sea. In this scenario, the problems of designing and managing the infrastructure for LNG distribution, consisting of coastal and inland supply points, are of primary importance. In the paper, the problem of designing an infrastructure for LNG distribution in the Mediterranean Area is taken into consideration, and the specific problem of assigning and managing such local resources as bunker-ships, tank trucks and trains (that can be moved to/from and between the supply points to increase the capacity to satisfy the LNG demand), is dealt with and formalized as a mathematical programming problem.

Impact of innovative technologies on highway operators: Tolling Organizations' perspective

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 04:04:41 +0100

Highways play a vivacious role in a country’s economic growth, by facilitating movement of both goods and"br" people from one place to another. Over a short period of time, innovation in automobile and information"br" technology has seen an unprecedented growth and this exploratory research highlights the impact of advent of"br" innovative technologies like Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, Internet of Things applications and Big Data"br" analytics on highway operators, as reflected in the opinions of organizations around the world (highway operators,"br" toll agencies, suppliers, consultants and associations). The opinions were collected on a Likert scale type online"br" survey, which was later tested for its empirical significance with non-parametric Binomial and Wilcoxon signed"br" rank tests, supported by descriptive analysis. The research results clearly indicate that these technologies and"br" products are not far from realization and while on one hand they would facilitate highway operations on the other"br" hand they may pose some serious challenges for operators.

Framing policy on low emissions vehicles in terms of economic gains : might the most straightforward gain be delivered by supply chain activity to support refuelling?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:55:24 +0100

The work reported here is a result of the EPSRC Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research Hub research programme (Grant ref. EP/J016454/1). A core theme of the UK Government's new Industrial Strategy is exploiting opportunities for domestic supply chain development. This extends to a special ‘Automotive Sector Deal’ that focuses on the shift to low emissions vehicles (LEVs). Here attention is on electric vehicle and battery production and innovation. In this paper, we argue that a more straightforward gain in terms of framing policy around potential economic benefits may be made through supply chain activity to support refuelling of battery/hydrogen vehicles. We set this in the context of LEV refuelling supply chains potentially replicating the strength of domestic upstream linkages observed in the UK electricity and/or gas industries. We use input-output multiplier analysis to deconstruct and assess the structure of these supply chains relative to that of more import-intensive petrol and diesel supply. A crucial multiplier result is that for every £1million of spending on electricity (or gas), 8 full-time equivalent jobs are supported throughout the UK. This compares to less than 3 in the case of petrol/diesel supply. Moreover, the importance of service industries becomes apparent, with 67% of indirect and induced supply chain employment to support electricity generation being located in services industries. The comparable figure for GDP is 42%. Publisher PDF Peer reviewed

Document type: Article

A Social Equity Analysis of Swedish and Scottish National Transport Policy

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:55:04 +0100

The topic of social equity in transport planning has been dealt with in particular by authors such as Martens (2012) and Martens and Golob (2012) using a social justice based approach. However, such an approach, whilst valuable and analytically rigorous (based as it is on accessibility modelling), does not consider a wide range of possible other social impacts of transport, as set out in a framework first put forward by Geurs et al (2009). This paper uses Geurs’ analytical framework to consider two empirical case studies: the National Transport Strategy for Scotland, adopted in January 2016, together with associated national level spending plans; and Sweden’s 2014-2025 National Transport Plan. The paper will first summarise the contents of each document before analysing them in relation to the categories of social impact that Geurs (2009) identify, and assessing how in relation to each category of impact various social groups will benefit or disbenefit. This analysis will then indicate the degree to which the two national plans/strategies are working towards, or away from, social equity in their distributional impacts.

Costs related to serious road injuries

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:54:47 +0100

Costs related to serious injuries constitute an important input variable to assess the cost-efficiency of road safety measures, which is one of the objectives of the H2020 EU project SafetyCube. A survey collecting crash costs in European countries showed considerable variation in the costs related to serious injuries. The applied methodology to estimate human costs appeared to have a large influence. Other potential explanations are the applied definition, the registration procedure of crashes with serious injuries and the cost components that are included. Detailed analyses of medical costs and production loss showed the importance of assessing medical costs on the long term and taking into account the variation of these costs for different subgroups of traffic victims. To estimate monetary values for human costs, most countries use the Willingness To Pay method. While having a sound theoretical background, this method is rather limited in the specification of injuries. The use of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) gives the possibility to provide values for a larger diversity of injury types.

Defect Based Risk Assessment Model for Prioritizing Inspection of Sewer Pipelines

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:53:50 +0100

In presence of financial constraints and dire need for inspecting deteriorated sewer pipelines, inspection prioritization tools are required. This paper presents a defect based risk assessment model for prioritizing inspection of sewer pipelines. Different defects that could be present in sewer pipelines are used to build a deterioration model that employs dynamic Bayesian belief network from which the probability of a pipeline to be in a certain condition state with respect to age can be determined. The consequence of failure for sewer pipelines are studied from a cost benefit analysis point of view, where the costs resulting from sewer pipelines failure are studied, and the benefits from avoiding such failures are analyzed. Sugeno-fuzzy inference system is used to integrate both the probability and consequence of failure. It is expected that the resulting risk map would help key personnel in municipalities to identify sewer pipelines that require immediate interventions and would assist in better planning for inspection programs especially in cases of limited funds. - 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers. Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Scopu

New ways for roadway design – Using driving simulation to restructure the Finkenwerder Ring in the Port of Hamburg aiming at enhanced traffic safety and reliability

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:53:15 +0100

The „Finkenwerder Ring“ is an important traffic junction in the Port of Hamburg – however, a lot of accidents per year impair traffic safety and reliability. The current traffic management, the signage, and the high number of lanes might be causal for the many crashes. Therefore, a requirements analysis was conducted to investigate the current traffic situation of the Finkenwerder Ring. Based on these results possible countermeasures were identified and subsequently implemented in a reproduction of the Finkenwerder Ring in a driving simulation. Four variations of the Finkenwerder Ring were realized which differ in signage and roadway geometry and were evaluated in a driving simulator study with N=30 participants. Even a small implementation like a modification of signage is able to have positive effects on drivers’ evaluations. However, a quite expensive and complex solution (the separation of traffic streams via an additional traffic light) shows the largest effect. These results show the benefit of driving simulation as a tool for roadway design.

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SYMMETRIC KEY CIPHERS IN LINEAR AND GRID BASED SENSOR NETWORKS

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:52:51 +0100

The linear and grid based Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are formed by applications where objects being monitored are either placed in linear or grid based form. E.g. monitoring oil, water or gas pipelines; perimeter surveillance; monitoring traffic level of city streets, goods warehouse monitoring. The security of data is a critical issue for all such applications and as the devices used for the monitoring purpose have several resource constraints (bandwidth, storage capacity, battery life); it is significant to have a lightweight security solution. Therefore, we consider symmetric key based solutions proposed in the literature as asymmetric based solutions require more computation, energy and storage of keys. We analyse the symmetric ciphers with respect to the performance parameters: RAM, ROM consumption and number of CPU cycles. We perform this simulation analysis in Contiki Cooja by considering an example scenario on two different motes namely: Sky and Z1. The aim of this analysis is to come up with the best suited symmetric key based cipher for the linear and grid based WSN.

Comment: Cryptography and Information Security (CRIS-2018)

Advances and applications in low-power phased array X-band weather radars

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:49:44 +0100

Low-cost, low-power X-band phased array radar (LPAR) is an enabling technology for future deployment of distributed short-range radar networks. Such networks offer the potential for superior and lower altitude surveillance of atmospheric and airborne events compared with today's larger, long range national radar networks. Two dimensionally steered (phase-phase steering, without motors or other moving parts) phased array radars are complex systems comprising multiple subsystems including several thousand transmit/receive (T/R) channels, beam steering computers, thermal management. Owing to this complexity and the associated cost, phased array technology has not historically been used in weather and air traffic control radars. Competition for the frequency spectrum traditionally reserved for long-range radars is motivating the search for new approaches to national air surveillance; this has motivated R&D investment in two-dimensional X-band LPAR over the past decade, to the point where prototype systems are now emerging in several application settings including, for the first time, the university research setting. Two-dimensional high-speed (inertia-less) beam steering combined with dual polarization, programmable/adaptive waveforms, and the ability to combine multiple radars into networks is leading to new atmospheric science research opportunities related to hazardous storm forecasting and response, understanding cloud physics, water resource management, monitoring the movement and dispersal of hazardous plumes, and other areas.

Turnaround succeeded! Analysis of impacts of sustainable transport policies in Vienna and four other European capital cities

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:48:09 +0100

Some of the economic advanced European cities appear to have decoupled the correlation between economic growth a car ownership and car use. The research project CREATE funded by the European Commission is aimed at identifying the reasons and framework conditions for this turnaround by analyzing historic data of five European capital cities (Vienna, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Berlin). Each of these cities implemented different strategies to achieve a more sustainable transport network influencing the mobility behavior, in particular, car use. The City of Vienna, for example, changed their transport policies from a more car-oriented transport masterplans in the past to a push-and-pull strategy by improving the public transport supply, mainly based on the extension of the underground network, and at the same time implementing pedestrian areas and parking restrictions in the city, which are still enlarged continuously. The mode share of car use (driver and passenger) decreases from 40 % early in the 1990’ies to 27 % in 2014. However, the ambiguous goal of the current city development plan is to reach a share of car use of 20 % in 2025. However, despite these core elements of transport policies a lot of supporting transport measures and other framework conditions need to be considered. This paper presents the analysis of cause and effects in the City of Vienna and a cross-comparison among all five European cities analyzed in the CREATE project.

Diffractors: a fascinating alternative to noise screens?

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:46:34 +0100

recent invention by the University of Twente in the Netherlands – diffractors – might be an interesting alternative for noise screens for shielding certain areas from traffic noise. Diffractors basically consist of a series of slits in the ground or mounted on a low shield which are parallel to the road. The sound waves passing over the slits cause standing sound waves in them with a maximum amplitude on the edge, where they interact with the sound wave passing over, causing the sound energy to bend upwards. As each slit resonates at a particular frequency, a series of slits is foreseen with varying depths, each resonating at a different frequency, in order to deal with the broad band traffic noise. Numerical simulations by the inventors and measurements ordered by them look very promising and suggest that a device of about 0,5 m high and 1 m wide would have the same effect as a 4 m high noise screen. An independent team has been formed by the Belgian Road Research Centre and the Flemish Agency for Traffic and Roads which has done “Controlled Pass By” measurements with a car and a lorry at a prototype installation (diffractors on a low screen) along a secondary road in Losser near Enschede in the East of the Netherlands. One measured at different distances from the road. This contribution summarizes the findings of these measurements and gives an answer if diffractors are a valid alternative for noise screens or not.

Evaluation of Energy Cost Index for an Electric Vehicle Motor Over a Particular Drive Cycle with Recycled Magnet Concept

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:45:46 +0100

International audience; Nowadays, in automotive applications, theelectric vehicle motors generally utilize permanent magnetmotors due to their various advantages like high torque density,high efficiency, compactness and ease of control. In this paperemphasis is given to the evaluation of energy cost index for anEV motor over a particular drive cycle during motorsoperational lifetime. Performance evaluation over the entiredrive cycle, instead of at rated conditions, provides a better ideaof the efficiency and energy consumption of an electric motor.Therefore, energy cost evaluation for the urban part of NewEuropean Driving Cycle i.e. ECE-15 is selected in this study andthe energy cost index is evaluated for an EV motor for virginand recycled magnets utilized in the machine. The comparisonshows that utilizing recycled magnets can provide economicaladvantage over using virgin magnets albeit under certainassumptions.

Document type: Conference object

Towards an integrated European platform for monitoring and analysing transport research and innovation (TRIMIS)

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:45:25 +0100

The European Commission has outlined future transport research and innovation (R&I) priorities to decarbonise the European transport sector in its Strategic Transport Research and Innovation Agenda (STRIA) that includes seven roadmaps in seven priority areas that cut across transport modes. In order to support the implementation of STRIA, a Transport Research and Innovation Monitoring and Information System (TRIMIS) has been developed. This paper reviews the features and added value of TRIMIS as an integrated analytical support tool and platform that monitors transport R&I and provides feedback to policy and decision makers. TRIMIS is an open-access information and knowledge management system, and includes a database of transport projects and programmes, as well as an inventory of transport technologies and innovations. It goes beyond previously available tools by providing a holistic assessment of emerging technologies and R&I capacities in the transport sector in all seven priority areas, and by developing analytical tools on the European transport sector.

Senskin deformable silicone-elastomer sensors for structural health monitoring: assessment of strain sensitivity and correction for thermal expansion

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:44:46 +0100

Within the framework of SENSKIN EU project (grant No. 635844), we have developed a soft capacitive sensor using silicone dielectric elastomer for Structural health monitoring (SHM). This sensor has a thin layer of stretchable silicone dielectric film and soft silicone electrodes as the active layer, which transduces strain signal into the easy-monitored capacitance change. The sensor output is measured as a ration of the sensor’s capacitance to the known value of the reference capacitor. The capacitive output of the sensor showed a linear response upon stretching in the strain range of 4.5 % to 5.5% with a pre-strain of 5.0 %. The sensor output increased by 0.01 when the strain was increased by 1.0 %. The sensor was exposed to a temperature change from -35 oC to 55 oC (the supposed working temperature range) with a ramping of 0.2 oC/min and, as a result, it showed a linear temperature dependence behavior with a slope of -0.001 sensor output per oC. Therefore, with the help of the embedded Platinum-1000 temperature sensor, the thermal expansion effect on the capacitive output can be excluded from the actual strain-induced capacitance change. These results provide practical reference to the application of the silicon-elastomer sensor for the SHM systems.

Travel Demand Estimation for Cable Car Transport in the Urban Areas Shown for the Moderate-sized City of Graz, Austria

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:44:28 +0100

This paper aims to determine the potential demand for a cable car as an integrated part of public transport (PuT) as shown by the example of the City of Graz. Graz is a moderate-sized city with high population growth. PuT-systems (trams and buses) in the city area are already reaching capacity limits but the transport infrastructure, especially in the city centre, can hardly be extended. Although the transport capacity of cable car systems cannot compete with an underground system, it could represent a cost efficient and effective alternative for dealing with the PuT capacity restrictions in the historic city centre. The results of coordinated mobility surveys present the reactions of potential user groups concerning an additional hypothetical transport system, respectively a cable car. The results extend the data base for the demand modelling of the mobility behaviour within a multimodal transport model. A nested logit approach was used to integrate the cable car into the demand model. The modelled passenger trips confirm a satisfactory demand potential for a cable car within the multimodal transport system of Graz.

Modelling and Controller Design for Self-adjusting Railway Track Switch System

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:44:12 +0100

Rail vehicles are directed along different routes through track switch systems. These switches are subjected to"br" high loads and vibrations which may introduce misalignment in the switch layout. The objective of the current"br" project is to develop a simulation model of a ‘self-adjusting’ switch. The switch should be able to detect the"br" existence of any misalignment (within a predefined range) between the stock rails and switch rails and will be"br" able to re-align itself. The first phase of the project is to model a working track switch system, High Performance"br" Switch System (HPSS), which is in operation in the UK. The multi-body simulation software Simpack is used to"br" model the switch panel and Simulink is used for modelling the actuator mechanism of HPSS. A co-simulation"br" environment is created in Simulink to construct the complete model of the switch system. The model has been"br" validated with the data available from the working switches. The second phase of the project will be to create"br" misalignment in the switch layout and develop a control strategy which will be able to adjust the misalignment.

New certification system for enhanced fire safety of vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:42:52 +0100

RISE has initiated and developed a certification scheme for the vehicle industry that will enable manufacturers, operators and service centres (workshops) to certify their fire risk mitigation process. The fire risk management required in the certification is a key safety element, used to identify and evaluate fire hazards. For best results, it is important that manufacturers, operators and service centres are equally dedicated to solve the fire problem. Vehicle fire investigations reveal that design, production, operation and maintenance can all be responsible, however, most important is to ensure that information and experiences from fire incidents and identified fire hazards are linked to relevant personnel, practices, manuals, and quality procedures. The certification cannot guarantee the elimination of vehicle fires, but can ensure that manufacturers, operators and service centres will operate at the front line of vehicle fire safety engineering.

Contact Pressure Measurement of a Small-Scale Wheel Tracking Device for Different Surface Types

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:39:09 +0100

In pavement engineering design, the pressure under a tyre is assumed to be a circular vertical contact pressure for analytical design methods. The true contact pressure and area is very difficult to predict due to the complexity of the system. A normal test that is undertaken to understand an asphalt’s performance for near surface rutting is the small-scale wheel tracker. The contact pressure and area of the tyre for different loads and surface types is not known. This is an area that needs to be addressed to better understand the contact pressures in this crucial test for asphalt rutting. Different pavement surface material slabs were made all with different surface textures for testing in the small-scale wheel tracker. A device was chosen to measure contact pressure between the tyre and these different surfaces. The device deforms around the surface aggregates and gives a very good understanding of the forces between the tyre and the pavement surface. It was shown that there is a great deal of variability between the different surface types. It is recommended that pavement loading for design should have a factor based on the contact pressure characteristics of a pavement surface.

A METHODOLOGY TO SUPPORT DECISIONS TOWARDS ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN PUBLIC CONTEXTS: APPLICATION TO HAND-DRYING OPTIONS

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:37:26 +0100

The European Roadmap 2025 for Mobility as a Service

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:37:05 +0100

This paper is based on a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) project, Mobility as a Service for Linking Europe"br" (MAASiFiE), conducted for the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR). MaaS is an emerging"br" concept aiming to offer user-oriented, multimodal transport services on a one-stop-shop principle utilizing"br" digitalization and mobile applications. This paper presents the main result of the project: the European MaaS"br" Roadmap 2025 defining short- (1-3 years) and medium-term (4-9 years) actions and transitions needed to reach"br" the vision formed in the project. The Roadmap is divided into four functional perspectives: drivers, markets, MaaS"br" services and enablers. Furthermore, each perspective presents the results using the following classification:"br" Academy and R&D, Business, Infrastructure & built environment, Policy & regulation, Technology & data, and"br" Social & culture. This paper concentrates on Policy & regulation aspects, as well as on the role of National Road"br" Administrations (NRAs) in MaaS development.

Simulation platform of electric road systems – a Swedish case study

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:35:18 +0100

Electric Road System (ERS) is a key technology to achieve the electrification in the long haulage application due"br" to battery limitations. Before deciding on large scale investments in ERS, it is important to analyse what road"br" segments that benefit the most of such a system. A model of a hybrid powertrain configured as a long haulage"br" truck is developed with the possibility for dynamic charging. Simulations are performed to analyse a region in"br" Sweden where an ERS demonstration is built, to investigate how different ERS configurations affect the energy"br" consumption of the vehicle. It is found that the fuel consumption is decreased by 66% when the full road is"br" electrified, and the travel time decreased by 7%, compared to a conventional vehicle. Simulations also indicate"br" that it is beneficial to only electrify parts of the road and using the battery in the vehicle as energy buffer."br" Furthermore, different data sources for road elevation and vehicle speed data have been evaluated. It is shown that"br" Google data and speed limit data can be useful for initial studies, but measured vehicle speed data and laser scanned"br" data increase the accuracy in the simulations.

Challenges and opportunities of open science in transport research

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:35:00 +0100

The current technological advances and the rapid development of new collaborative tools have endorsed an on- going transformation of transport research enabling research information sharing. This systematic change of transport research covers a wide range of aspects, from evaluation of research, open access to research results, and relevant data infrastructures, all aiming at making science more efficient, better reproducible and more responsive to societal and economic expectations. In an attempt to address the above, this paper presents an action list of the different main aspects of Open Science in transport research of the European area exploiting previous initiatives and mapping among research areas with longer experience and more “mature” research fields. The novelty of the proposed action list is to contribute in implementing Open Science approaches in transport research enabling stakeholders to share and use all available knowledge at an earlier stage in the research process. The focus is given on the identification of guidelines that transport research stakeholders have to use to integrate open science in their current operations. This opening up of science and research is expected to lead to a European community of transport research stakeholders willing to work together and speed up the path from research to innovation and promote citizen’s engagement in the scientific process.

Iterative Learning of Speech Recognition Models for Air Traffic Control

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:34:41 +0100

utomatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has recently proved to be a useful tool to reduce the workload of air traffic controllers leading to significant gains in operational efficiency. Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems in operation rooms around the world generate large amounts of untranscribed speech and radar data each day, which can be utilized to build and improve ASR models. In this paper, we propose an iterative approach that utilizes increasing amounts of untranscribed data to incrementally build the necessary ASR models for an ATC operational area. Our approach uses a semi-supervised learning framework to combine speech and radar data to iteratively update the acoustic model, language model and command prediction model (i.e. prediction of possible commands from radar data for a given air traffic situation) of an ASR system. Starting with seed models built with a limited amount of manually transcribed data, we simulate an operational scenario to adapt and improve the models through semi-supervised learning. Experiments on two independent ATC areas (Vienna and Prague) demonstrate the utility of our proposed methodology that can scale to operational environments with minimal manual effort for learning and adaptation.

Mobility as a service' in practice and urban development - Jointly contributing to low-car, and low-carbon and affordable housing: the Bremen Hulsberg case (H2020 project SUNRISE)

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:33:04 +0100

Providing innovative mobility services within urban housing developments bears the opportunity to reduce"br" dependence on a car for the residents – and to low-carbon, low car and low-cost housing. The Bremen Hulsberg"br" development for about 2.500 new residents represents an inner city development – going for mobility"br" management instead of conventional provision of car-parking. Only 4 car-parking spaces are planned per 10"br" apartments but cycle parking and mobility management will be integrated. At the same time, the surrounding"br" neighbourhood with its narrow streets and high parking pressure is subject of a co-creation based mobility"br" management plan – exploiting the potential to reclaim street space for sustainable modes, social and ecological"br" functions."br" A recent survey of 13,000 users of the two Bremen car sharing systems unveiled their preference: easy"br" procedures, reliability and nearness of stations. The Bremen strategy of a dispersed network of small car sharing"br" stations in the inner city neighbourhoods is confirmed by a high satisfaction level. “Trendy” cars are low on the"br" demand list of the users. The survey also shows that the Bremen car sharing users do more grocery shopping in"br" the neighbourhood than the reference group, confirming the thesis that car sharing supports the local economy.

Car-to-Cloud Communication Traffic Analysis Based on the Common Vehicle Information Model

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:23:21 +0100

hough connectivity services have been introduced already today in many of the most recent car models, the potential of vehicles serving as highly mobile sensor platform in the Internet of Things (IoT) has not been sufficiently exploited yet. The European AutoMat project has therefore defined an open Common Vehicle Information Model (CVIM) in combination with a cross-industry, cloud-based big data marketplace. Thereby, vehicle sensor data can be leveraged for the design of entirely new services even beyond traffic-related applications (such as localized weather forecasts). This paper focuses on the prediction of the achievable data rate making use of an analytical model based on empirical measurements. For an in-depth analysis, the CVIM has been integrated in a vehicle traffic simulator to produce CVIM-compliant data streams as a result of the individual behavior of each vehicle (speed, brake activity, steering activity, etc.). In a next step, a simulation of vehicle traffic in a realistically modeled, large-area street network has been used in combination with a cellular Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to determine the cumulated amount of data produced within each network cell. As a result, a new car-to-cloud communication traffic model has been derived, which quantifies the data rate of aggregated car-to-cloud data producible by vehicles depending on the current traffic situations (free flow and traffic jam). The results provide a reference for network planning and resource scheduling for car-to-cloud type services in the context of smart cities.

Challenges and error propagation of PM sensor-based DPF diagnostics

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

Monitoring the filtration efficiency of Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF), is a legislative requirement for minimizing PM emissions from diesel engines of passenger cars and heavy-duty vehicles. To reach this target On Board Diagnostics (OBD) implementation in real-time operation is necessary. These systems in passenger cars are often utilizing a PM sensor, models for PM emissions simulation and algorithms for diagnosis. Their performance is associated with a series of challenges related with the accuracy and effectiveness of involved models, algorithms and hardware. This paper analyzes the main influencing factors and their impact on the effectiveness of the OBD system. Error propagation analysis is being performed to quantify the error of detection. The comparison results in conclusions on the performance of the sensor based OBD model and its ability to fulfil legislative requirements.

Multimodal Information Screen – Towards an Awareness Raising for the Use of Public Transport

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:18:18 +0100

The intention of our Multimodal Information Screen is to promote public transport and to visualize healthy alternatives to motorized individual transport. This paper describes the development of a new traffic information screen which is designed to make public transport more accessible by displaying real-time traffic data on frequently viewed screens. The first prototype of our application was developed for the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien. After further developments, it has become highly customizable and can be provided for any location within Vienna. Apart from the available public transport connections in the immediate vicinity and their departures in minutes, the display includes a map of the surroundings, the amount of free city bikes of the next stations, as well as current weather information. Our smart mobility application uses real-time data and a variety of Open Data provided by the City of Vienna and aims to raise awareness of alternative modes of transport.

Fast Charging Station with Battery Storage System for EV: Grid Services and Battery Degradation

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:16:53 +0100

International audience; Electric Vehicles (EVs) will be in a near future a non-negligible part of the world's car fleet. Nevertheless, a dense network of Fast Charging Stations (FCS) on highways is needed to enable EVs to be competitive with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles for long distances. FCS require high power from the grid to charge EVs in less than 30 minutes. Such high power will generate negative impacts on the power grid and will necessitate high investment costs for grid connection. A Battery Electric Storage System (BESS) inside the FCS could alleviate those negative impacts. The presence of a BESS then permits to offer grid services and to increase the profits of the FCS operator. However, the deployment of grid services with BESS is often faced to concerns on additional battery degradation. In this paper, we propose a FCS model including grid services and a study of battery degradation under different circumstances, and an economic comparison is done with the net present value.

Analysis of Artificial Intelligence-Based Metaheuristic Algorithm for MPLS Network Optimization

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:12:24 +0100

Multiprotocol label switched (MPLS) networks were introduced to enhance the network’s service provisioning and optimize its performance using multiple protocols along with label switched based networking technique. With the addition of traffic engineering entity in MPLS domain, there is a massive increase in the networks resource management capability with better quality of services (QoS) provisioning for end users. Routing protocols play an important role in MPLS networks for network traffic management, which uses exact and approximate algorithms. There are number of artificial intelligence-based optimization algorithms which can be used for the optimization of traffic engineering in MPLS networks. The paper presents an optimization model for MPLS networks and proposed dolphin-echolocation algorithm (DEA) for optimal path computation. For Network with different nodes, both algorithms performance has been investigated to study their convergence towards the production of optimal solutions. Furthermore, the DEA algorithm will be compared with the bat algorithm to examine their performance in MPLS network optimization. Various parameters such as mean, minimum /optimal fitness function values and standard deviation.

WAVE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD AND MOVING LOADS FOR THE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF RAILWAY TRACKS

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:10:35 +0100

International audience; Based on the finite element method, the wave finite element method (WFE) permits to analyze the dynamics of a periodic structure by using a wave decomposition of one period. This method reduces the number of DOF and it has advantages in calculation time. However, it cannot be applied easily to a railway track because this structure is subjected by moving loads which are not considered in a classical WFE. In this article, we present a technique to deal with moving loads applying in a railway track where the track components are modeled by 3D continuous media. By using the classical WFE for one track period in frequency domain, we can rewrite the vector of DOF and loads in a wave base. Then, we can calculate the wave amplitudes of the moving loads from their representation in this base. Thereafter, we apply the wave analyze of WFE to the hold structure. The result shows that the moving loads lead to a sum of wave amplitudes. Finally, we apply this method for a railway track subjected to constant moving loads with numerical application. The new technique permits to analyze the dynamic of railway tracks by considering only one track period.

MDP-Based Resource Allocation Scheme Towards a Vehicular Fog Computing with Energy Constraints

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:09:47 +0100

International audience; As mobile applications deliver increasingly complex functionalities, the demands for even more intensive computation would quickly transcend energy capability of mobile devices. On one hand and in an attempt to address such issues, fog computing paradigm is introduced to mitigate the limited energy and computation resources available within constrained mobile devices, by moving computation resources closer to their users at the edge of the access network. On another hand, most of electric vehicles (EVs), with increasing computation, storage and energy capabilities, spend more than 90% of time on parking lots. In this paper, we conceive the basic idea of using the underutilized computation resources of parked EVs as fog nodes in order to provide on-demand computation at the vicinity of the access network. The proposed Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) architecture aggregates the abundant unused resources of parked vehicles, and uses it to serve mobile users' demands. The resource allocation problem is formulated as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and dynamic programming is used to solve the underling decision problem. Extensive simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach by improving the global reward value by 51% and scoring an energy gain of 66% compared to two other models.

Speed Advisory System Evaluation along Signalized Rural Arterial Corridors

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:06:58 +0100

This study evaluates the deployment of a speed advisory system (Energy Efficient Intersection Service) along a 12km signalized rural arterial corridor, which connects the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, with the suburbs of Peraia, using the traffic simulation software Aimsun. The system uses the SPaT (Signal Phase and Timing) information to estimate fuel optimal speed advices that reduce emissions by minimizing idling time. Nine simulation scenarios were tested for different service activation distances, penetration rates of the dynamic eco-driving technology, traffic demand levels and posted speed limits. A microscopic emissions model integrated into Aimsun was used for the calculation of CO2 emissions. The speed advice system reduces CO2 emissions by 3% on the local level, and 0.56% network-wide. Maximum CO2 emission reduction occurs for longer activation distances and high penetration rates (≥90%) under light traffic conditions. Finally, it was observed that the system indirectly improves the environmental footprint of conventional vehicles as well.

Integrated concept of lightweight wagon with cargo condition monitoring capabilities and predictive maintenance solutions

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:06:32 +0100

The article presents a novel wagon concept that integrates innovative solutions relating to the identified major challenges for the freight vehicles of the future, namely: i. cargo condition monitoring; ii. Lightweight wagon design; and iii. Predictive maintenance. These three essential areas are addressed by three subsequent work streams of the INNOWAG project, which is funded by the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the EU’s H2020 programme. INNOWAG aims to respond to major rail freight competitiveness challenges regarding the increase of transport capacity, logistic capacity and improved RAMS and lower LCC, by developing an autonomous self-powered sensor system for cargo tracing and monitoring, along with a predictive maintenance approach to enable efficient use of both condition monitoring and historical data for further implementation of predictive models and tools in freight vehicle maintenance, and to integrate the aforementioned innovations on a novel concept of modular and lightweight wagon, developed through an optimised structural design using lightweight materials.

Automotive LiDAR performance verification in fog and rain

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:05:54 +0100

This article focuses on testing and investigating further development needs for LiDARs in self-driving cars in adverse weather. The article compares two different LiDARs (Ibeo Lux and Velodyne PUCK), which both use the 905 nm wavelengths, which are used in more than 95% of currently available LiDARs. The performance was tested and estimated in stabilized fog conditions at Cerema fog chamber facilities. This provides a good basis for repeating the same validation procedure multiple times and ensuring the right development decisions. However, performance of the LiDARs suffers when the weather conditions become adverse and visibility range decreases. A 50% reduction in target detection performance was observed over the exhaustive tests. Therefore, changing to higher wavelengths (1550 nm) was considered using redesigned 'pre-prototype LiDAR'. The preliminary results indicate that there is no reason to not use 1550 nm wavelength, which due to eye safety regulations gives an opportunity to use 20 times more power compared to the traditional 905 nm. In order to clarify the expected benefits, additional feasibility studies are still needed.

Monitoring and inventory of road signs and road markings. State of the art – a review of existing methods and systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:05:08 +0100

This paper is a review of different methods and systems for monitoring and inventory of road signs and markings across Europe. The motorization rate has grown rapidly in recent years and traffic increases. Moreover, autonomous vehicles are being developed and it is expected that vehicles with conditional automation are driving on motorways from 2019. One of the greatest challenges for advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) is Environment detection, perception and prediction – the capability to perceive a vehicle’s environment using sensor ADAS systems use a variety of sensors and cameras to observe its surroundings, to locate itself on the road and help it to drive safely. Cameras e.g. detect road signs and Lidar and Radar sensors help to detect the edges of roads and identify lane markings. These developments have implications for road operators too. Road marking and road signs need to be consistently inventoried; their condition needs to be in a reliable state to allow a trusting use by humans and automated cars. Measurement of surface characteristics as skid resistance, evenness, texture and deterioration with high-speed systems and emerging equipment are well established, while others for monitoring and inventory of road signs and markings are not. So far, very little attention has been paid to the condition of these two road assets. The purpose of this paper is to review different methods and devices for inventory and condition data collection of road signs and markings across Europe. Measurement systems and experience are reported and the gaps in the existing methods were identified. In addition, the necessary inventory data for project level and network level are determined. Taken together, these results suggest methods and systems for collecting condition and inventory data for road signs and markings.

Interdisciplinary Education and Knowledge Transfer in Merging the Mobility and the Energy Transitions

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:04:50 +0100

The “Forschungscampus Mobility2Grid” research project is currently working on solutions to merge the mobility sector and the energy transition by using electric vehicles’ batteries as energy storages in decentralized urban micro smart grids to balance fluctuations in energy production. This will only work if all stakeholders are informed and educated about the technical, economic, and social implications – as well as the challenges and benefits – of the energy and mobility transitions. In pursuit of this goal, one of the project’s working groups, “Education and Knowledge Transfer”, develops and tests different interdisciplinary educational formats. This article gives an introduction to the project and presents its initial experiences with the formats. To fulfil the needs of business and to adapt solutions to existing concepts and products, it has been found that formats need to be compact, flexible, and modular while being praxis-oriented and specific to the target group. One of the main factors of success for the formats is the living lab approach of using the EUREF-Campus in Berlin as a showcase for realization.

A Probe into the Socio-economic Benefits of Bicycle Sharing

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:03:55 +0100

Comparative Analysis of Transportation Flow Regulating Systems in Oil Pipelines

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:02:41 +0100

Advanced Flight Efficiency Key Performance Indicators to support Air Traffic Analytics: Assessment of European flight efficiency using ADS-B data

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 03:00:42 +0100

DASC 2018: 37th Digital Avionics Systems Conference, London, England, UK, 23-27 September 2018

LLama-SLAM: Learning High-Quality Visual Landmarks for Long-Term Mapping and Localization

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:59:04 +0100

The precise localization of vehicles is an important requirement for autonomous driving or advanced driver assistance systems. Using common GNSS the ego position can be measured but not with the reliability and precision necessary. An alternative approach to achieve precise localization is the usage of visual landmarks observed by a camera mounted in the vehicle. However, this raises the necessity of reliable visual landmarks that are easily recognizable and persistent. We propose a novel SLAM algorithm that focuses on learning and mapping such visual long-term landmarks (LLamas). The algorithm therefore processes stereo image streams from several recording sessions in the same spatial area. The key part within LLama-SLAM is the assessment of the landmarks with quality values that are inferred as viewpoint dependent probabilities from observation statistics. By adding solely landmarks of high quality to the final LLama Map, it can be kept compact while still allowing reliable localization. Due to the long-term evaluation of the GNSS measurement during the sessions, the landmarks can be positioned precisely in a global referenced coordinate system. For a first assessment of the algorithm's capabilities, we present some experimental results from the mapping process combining three sessions recorded over two months on the same route.

Data as an asset: EMT open platform for transport data in Madrid

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:58:13 +0100

EMT Madrid (Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid S.A.) is at the forefront of Intelligent Transport Systems and Customer Information Systems use. On this regard, EMT adopted an active open data policy back in 2006, and developed also a new open data portal in 2011, which has allowed us to innovate and improve user’s information, letting third parties to develop apps and services specifically oriented to users."br" Furthermore, at EMT we have developed an open and standard platform (framework) with the purpose of building applications and developing services, that allows the subscription and events exchange system for mobility data in the context of Smart Cities, including Internet of Things and MAAS."br" The main achievement has been to allow the unification under one single infrastructure of the different elements that handle the information on traffic and transport in the city. It has been developed in a quite innovative way as well, as a mobility lab has been created in order to work on this topic.

Instrumentation for real time monitoring of the overhead contact line acceleration

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:55:16 +0100

In any railway power supply system, the contact line is considered one of the most important component influencing the life cycle of the system. The analyses, which estimates the wearing of the contact line but also of the pantograph contact strips, are based on the value of the contact force, which defines the interaction between pantograph, as external component, and overhead contact line. The instrumentation solutions, developed in time of the same project, provide two systems focused for acquisitioning the acceleration and displacement information of the overhead contact line."br" The first developed system uses sensor devices hanging by the contact line, having as objective to collect acceleration information at the contact point of the moving pantograph; the system is described in this paper."br" The second developed system uses one high speed video camera, placed aside the rail track, which register the movements of the contact line. Being a very different technology this system will make subject of other article."br" The both systems have main focus to determine, indirectly, the value of the contact force, but also to optimise a list of controllable factors.

Diffusion and Disappearance of Traffic Congestion under Steady State in a Graph Network

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:53:39 +0100

Sustainable superstructure with Under Sleeper Pads

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:50:48 +0100

With the help of Under Sleeper Pads (USP) a further step towards a sustainable, and durable superstructure in railway engineering can be achieved. The development of USP within the classic components used in the construction of permanent ways can bring defined elasticity into the track. They are installed on the bottom surface of the sleeper and thereby increase the degree of vertical elasticity in the track superstructure. The objective is to transmit the loads from the vehicles through the rails, rail fasteners and the sleepers into the superstructure and the subgrade in the smoothest, safest and most evenly distributed manner possible. With the use of USP not only the bending line of the rail is activated and the load is distributed to more sleepers but also the contact area of the sleepers with the ballast is widely increased – and vibrations can be mitigated. A normal concrete sleeper shows a contact area of around 2-8% of the sleeper’s bottom area towards the ballast meanwhile the use of polyurethane USP show up to 35 % contact area. Therefore, next to other positive effects, ballast wear will be reduced in a great manner and looking on the sustainability and life cycle analysis the tamping cycles can be reduced up to 2.5 times. Looking back on more than 25 years of USP in track, turnouts and transition zones for ballast protection, improved track stability or vibration isolation, a vast number of projects are evaluated and the long term benefits can be seen in tracks all over the world."br" With the ongoing development of new materials and improvements of the existing products the technology of Under Sleeper Pads is up-to-date and ready to react on upcoming challenges.

Low-cost radio network based system for monitoring mechanical and electromechanical rail interlocking equipment

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:46:31 +0100

This paper describes an innovative implementation of digital solutions for rail infrastructure aiming at enhancing the traditional electromechanical rail interlocking equipment. The research sources from the outputs of the NeTIRail-INFRA European project that gravitates around the continental trend to move the majority of passenger and merchandise transport to rail. Growing train traffic leads to the increased use of secondary rail lines that, in various countries in Europe, are still equipped with old mechanical and electromechanical interlocking systems having inappropriate safety levels. This paper presents the principle, general structure and early tests of a new digital system, based on current electronic and computer technologies, that is able to increase the utility and safety of existing mechanical and electromechanical rail interlocking equipment by using low-cost wireless control of two-position elements. Tests conducted thus far validated the system’s features and indicated that possible further developments and upgrades will have additional beneficial effect.

Intelligent Analysis of Data Systems for Defects in Underground Gas Pipeline

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:46:15 +0100

method of functioning of intelligent software and hardware complex for monitoring system of an underground gas pipeline and cathodic protection devices using data and knowledge bases is proposed.

Consideration of IEEE 802.11p and proposed 5G for holograms in vehicular communication.

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

© Institution of Engineering and Technology.All Rights Reserved. Vehicular communication is the technology that allows vehicles to exchange information with other cars and its surroundings to enhance safety and efficiency of transportation systems. Informative communication, which includes vehicle's position, velocity, and location, enables the sensing of hazards and traffic congestion. In this paper, two vehicular communication standards, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11p and the proposed next-generation cellular network 5G are compared for vehicular networking. A detailed comparative study of the standards concerning latency, coverage, scalability, and mobility. The results indicate that IEEE 802.11p offers acceptable performance with limited mobility support. Whereas, 5G meets most of the vehicular application requirements regarding latency, coverage, scalability, and mobility. 3D holographic communication in 5G would allow users to experience live and interactive meetings. The bandwidth requirement of 3D holograms is predicted to be in terabyte level. With compression techniques, the delivery of real-time holograms has been researched to require 10Gbps or higher.

Machine learning based context-predictive car-to-cloud communication using multi-layer connectivity maps for upcoming 5G networks

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:42:11 +0100

While cars were only considered as means of personal transportation for a long time, they are currently transcending to mobile sensor nodes that gather highly up-to-date information for crowdsensing-enabled big data services in a smart city context. Consequently, upcoming 5G communication networks will be confronted with massive increases in Machine-type Communication (MTC) and require resource-efficient transmission methods in order to optimize the overall system performance and provide interference-free coexistence with human data traffic that is using the same public cellular network. In this paper, we bring together mobility prediction and machine learning based channel quality estimation in order to improve the resource-efficiency of car-to-cloud data transfer by scheduling the transmission time of the sensor data with respect to the anticipated behavior of the communication context. In a comprehensive field evaluation campaign, we evaluate the proposed context-predictive approach in a public cellular network scenario where it is able to increase the average data rate by up to 194% while simultaneously reducing the mean uplink power consumption by up to 54%.

Road transport management in Australasia

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:38:53 +0100

ustroads, the peak organisation of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies, has identified the lack of an agreed road transport management framework across the member organisations. Underpinned by key principles, such framework based on contemporary leading practices and techniques will enable an integrated and harmonised approach to strategic planning, network operations, road safety, asset management and land use planning along with transport and vehicle technology."br" Through stakeholder consultation and workshops, 15 guiding principles have been developed within a broader scope of managing and balancing mobility, safety, infrastructure and transport technology requirements to achieve the goal of enabling a safe, efficient, reliable and sustainable road transport system. This paper offers a discussion and analysis of the interconnectivity of the multifaceted principles within a road transport management framework.

Forwarders' perceptions of the Silk Route: The case of Finland

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:38:18 +0100

The Silk Route is an emerging transportation initiative that aims to connect Europe and Asia by rail link–"br" landbridge. This study investigates freight forwarders’ perceptions of potential benefits for Finland from"br" developing Silk-Route-based transportation solutions. Ten semi-structured interviews with eight freight"br" forwarding and carrier companies in Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, and China were conducted. The study findings"br" show that there is a demand to transport cargo via the landbridge between China and Europe. Block trains have"br" been running from Germany and Finland to China, suggesting that there is a demand as well as a potential for"br" developing this route. Despite the challenge of a relatively small economy, there is potential for Finland to"br" benefit by its engagement in the Silk Route. A Scandinavian hub in Finland would ensure sufficient volumes to"br" fill block trains, which is the only profitable option for long-distance railway transportation.

In-wheel axial-flux SRM drive for light electric vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:37:43 +0100

Revenues from global sales of light electric vehicles are expected to grow from $ 9.3 billion in 2017 to $ 23.9 billion in 2025. In order to boost this growth electric drives with better features and lower costs have to be developed. This paper presents a new in-wheel axial-flux switched reluctance motor with double rotor and a particular disposition of the stator and rotor poles that provides short flux path without flux reversal. The magnetic active parts of the stator and the rotor are built using soft magnetic composites. The motor is fed from batteries trough a on purpose designed electronic power controller. Simulation of the whole drive, using Matlab-Simulink coupled with the results of the three dimensional finite analysis of the motor is carried out. Simulation results prove that the proposed in-wheel axial-flux switched reluctance motor drive is adequate for the propulsion of electric light vehicles.

BTCI: A new framework for identifying congestion cascades using bus trajectory data

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:37:11 +0100

The knowledge of traffic health status is essential to the general public and urban traffic management. To identify congestion cascades, an important phenomenon of traffic health, we propose a Bus Trajectory based Congestion Identification (BTCI) framework that explores the anomalous traffic health status and structure properties of congestion cascades using bus trajectory data. BTCI consists of two main steps, congested segment extraction and congestion cascades identification. The former constructs path speed models from historical vehicle transitions and design a non-parametric Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) function to derive a measure of congestion score. The latter aggregates congested segments (i.e., those with high congestion scores) into traffic congestion cascades by unifying both attribute coherence and spatio-temporal closeness of congested segments within a cascade. Extensive evaluations on 11.8 million bus trajectory data show that (1) BTCI can effectively identify congestion cascades, (2) the proposed congestion score is effective in extracting congested segments, (3) the proposed unified approach significantly outperforms alternative approaches in terms of extended precision, and (4) the identified congestion cascades are realistic, matching well with the traffic news and highly correlated with vehicle speed bands.

Business Models Analysis Of Construction Consolidation Centres

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:34:52 +0100

The SUCCESS project, financed by the European Union under the H2020 program, aims to contribute to the reduction of negative impacts of the freight distribution caused by the construction sector in urban areas. This technical paper includes some of the results obtained during the project, aiming to improve the current understanding of the functioning of the Construction Consolidation Centres (CCCs). For this purpose, the CANVAS Business Model has been used to assess the business models of several alternatives of CCCs. A CANVAS is a structured methodology that considers nine basic building blocks that cover the main areas of any business. The results obtained from the analysis pointed out that, even though several cities face the similar problems regarding the urban logistics, the level of intensity of these problems vary in each of them. Consequently, the most adequate business models capable of solving each case may also vary. This work will present several CCCs business models proposed by the partners of the SUCCESS project that can be easily adapted to any city aiming to improve its urban logistic

Integration of Absolute Orientation Measurements in the KinectFusion Reconstruction Pipeline

Scipedia content — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:34:31 +0100

In this paper, we show how absolute orientation measurements provided by low-cost but high-fidelity IMU sensors can be integrated into the KinectFusion pipeline. We show that integration improves both runtime, robustness and quality of the 3D reconstruction. In particular, we use this orientation data to seed and regularize the ICP registration technique. We also present a technique to filter the pairs of 3D matched points based on the distribution of their distances. This filter is implemented efficiently on the GPU. Estimating the distribution of the distances helps control the number of iterations necessary for the convergence of the ICP algorithm. Finally, we show experimental results that highlight improvements in robustness, a speed-up of almost 12%, and a gain in tracking quality of 53% for the ATE metric on the Freiburg benchmark.

Comment: CVPR Workshop on Visual Odometry and Computer Vision Applications Based on Location Clues 2018