Scipedia: Collection of open thesis in transport research

Evaluating the Environmental Impact of a Product : Partial Life Cycle Assessment

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:10:19 +0100

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate how manufacturing organisations can decrease their environmental impact in the supply chain. To meet the purpose, two research questions were formulated: 1. How can a manufacturing organisation reduce its environmental impact caused by transportation? 2. How can a manufacturing organisation reduce its environmental impact caused by production? Method – To provide the opportunity to reach a conclusion and to create a basic understanding of the research area, a literature review was conducted, which formed the basis of the theoretical framework. Through a case study at a manufacturing organisation, interviews and document analyses were used as sources for empirical data. In order to develop solutions and recommendations, collected data and theoretical framework were analysed and discussed. Findings – The research findings indicate that there are several possible measures to implement to reduce an organisation's environmental impact in the supply chain. A decisive factor is creating a holistic and fundamental understanding of sustainability and enabling everyone involved to work according a common view and in the same direction. In addition, a requirement to pursue the same goal is that all stakeholders are involved where a prerequisite is a well-functioning internal communication. Implications – The research did not contribute to any new theories, but through the research analysis, statements and theories from previous research were strengthened. The research suggests actions that can be used for organisations to reduce their environmental impact, but also to increase the understanding of why actions should be implemented. Society has an important responsibility for motivating and provide conditions for manufacturing organisations to reduce their footprint. This research is considered to lead to an improved environment in the form of lower emission levels where both organisations and the entire community take responsibility for the planet. Limitations – The case study is designed as a single-case study which, from a validity perspective, is not considered as advantageous as a multiple case study because the results are difficult to generalize. In order to strengthen the study's reliability, several functional units and / or organisations could have been included in the study.

Studies on Travel Experience of Intra-city Buses: Supporting Service Design with Travel Experience Toolkit

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:11:05 +0100

Today, we live in a world where mobility is a part of the everyday life. At the same time, there is a global need for cities to be smart and sustainable. People spend increasing amounts of time traveling, and thus the development of public transportation services is central for advancing these goals. Transportation services include associated digital services – such as navigation and scheduling services, and various infotainment services. In order to make public transportation services desirable for wide audience, all aspects of the services need to be designed with a focus on the passengers’ and their needs and experiences. While there is a considerable amount of research conducted in the public transportation field, there is a lack of qualitative studies that contribute to the understanding of the travel experience of intra-city bus transportation from the User Experience (UX) point of view. This thesis contributes to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), with a more specific focus on User Experience (UX) and Human-Centered Design (HCD). In addition, the practical aspects of this research contribute to the field of service design. This thesis also provides a theoretical contribution to the travel experience and transportation field, viewing the topic from human-centered design perspective. This research was conducted over the period of three years between 2016-2019, as a part of the research project Living Lab Bus (LLB). LLB collaboration project with industrial partners. The research on user experience perspective of bus passengers resulted in five publications which form the basis of this compound thesis. This dissertation presents a series of qualitative studies conducted with Research for design approach to gain understanding of intra-city bus passengers’ travel experience. These studies involved a total of 68 bus passengers representing different age groups and backgrounds from two city regions in Finland: Tampere and Helsinki. The preliminary interview study involved 10 international students, a total of 24 international students participated in the idea generation workshops, and representatives of three different user groups: high school students, parents of young children, and pensioners took part to in-depth ideation workshops. A total of 20 people of different ages and backgrounds participated in the bus travel experience study. This study utilised the diary method to collect contextual data of bus passengers’ experience over a three-week period. The goal of this research is two-fold: first, to gain insights of bus passengers’ needs and expectations for intra-city bus related services and to create holistic understanding of the intra-city bus travel experience. This forms the theoretical contribution of the thesis. The second aim of the thesis work was to transform these insights into practical and visual format. This part of the research resulted in a set of design tools, enabling the findings of this research to be utilized by different stakeholders when developing and designing services for the public transportation context. This practical contribution is presented in the form of Travel Experience Toolkit (T-rEX), including four design tools that support the service development in different stages of the design process: 1. Bus Travel Experience Model for understanding the context, 2. Context Cards for diversifying ideation, 3. Passenger Journey Map for exploring service touchpoints, and 4. Experience Personas for getting to know the passengers. These tools bring Human-Centered Design knowhow to different stakeholders working in the transportation context, with the aim to enable the design and development of services that fulfill the needs and expectations of bus passengers. As a final study, we conducted a multi-stakeholder evaluation of T-rEX toolkit with four public transportation stakeholders, to gain understanding of how the toolkit serves different stakeholders in their public transportation service development. The theoretical and practical contributions advance the research and design of future digital services for passengers and can help make public transportation more attractive.

Improving mass transit service by using crowdsourcing and gamification : A study on how to develop and design an application that can be used to encourage Värmlandstrafik’s passengers to report problems and concerns

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:13:06 +0100

lication that combines crowdsourcing and gamification elements should be usable by as many passengers as possible, considering all the different smartphones available on the market and people with disabilities. Thus, most popular platforms for cross-platform mobile application development should be compared in order to choose the appropriate one for this project. Finally, application prototype should be further tested to gather more feedback about design and concept for improvements and future studies. Such solution is not meant to replace current methods of information gathering, but instead should be one of the available tools.

Engineering User-Centric Smart Charging Systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:13:37 +0100

Die Integration erneuerbarer Energiequellen und die Sektorenkopplung erhöhen den Bedarf an Flexibilität im Elektrizitätssystem. Elektrofahrzeuge koordiniert zu Laden bietet die Chance solche Flexibilität bereitzustellen. Allerdings hängt das Flexibilitätspotential von Elektrofahrzeugen davon ab in welchem Umfang sich die Nutzer der Fahrzeuge dazu entschließen intelligentes Laden zu nutzen. Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es Lösungen für intelligente Ladesysteme zu entwickeln, welche die Nutzer zu flexiblerem Laden anreizen und diese dabei zu unterstützen. Anhand eines Literaturüberblicks und einer Expertenbefragung werden zunächst Ziele identifiziert, welche Nutzer zu einer flexiblen Ladung motivieren können. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass neben finanziellen Anreizen auch die Integration erneuer-barer Energien und die Vermeidung von Netzengpässen einen Anreiz für das flexible La-den darstellen können. In der Folge wird untersucht, ob das Framing der Ladesituation hinsichtlich dieser Ziele die Ladeflexibilität von Elektrofahrzeugnutzern beeinflussen kann. Hierzu wird ein Online-Experiment mit Elektrofahrzeugnutzern evaluiert. Das sich ein Teil der Nutzer bei einem Umwelt-Framing flexibler verhält, macht Feedback darüber, wie die CO2-Emissionen von der bereitgestellten Flexibilität abhängen zu einem vielversprechenden Anreiz intelligentes Laden zu nutzen. Um solches Feedback zu er-möglichen werden als Nächstes die CO2-Einsparpotenziale eines optimierten Ladens im Vergleich zu unkontrolliertem Laden untersucht. Dazu werden die marginalen Emissions-faktoren im deutschen Stromnetz mithilfe eines regressionsbasierten Ansatzes ermittelt. Um Echtzeit-Feedback in realen Systemen zu ermöglichen wird darauf aufbauend eine Prognosemethode für Emissionsfaktoren entwickelt. Die Zielerreichung intelligenten Ladens hängt hauptsächlich von der zeitlichen und energetischen Flexibilität der Elektrofahrzeuge ab. Damit Nutzer diese Ladeeinstellungen nicht bei jeder Ankunft an der Ladestation von Hand eingeben zu müssen, könnten sie durch intelligente Assistenten unterstützt werden. Hierfür werden probabilistische Prognosen für die Flexibilität einzelner Ladevorgänge basierend auf historischen Ladevorgängen und Mobilitätsmustern entwickelt. Darüber hinaus zeigt eine Fallstudie, dass probabilistische Prognosen besser als Punktprognosen dazu geeignet sind die Ladung mehrerer Elektrofahrzeuge zu koordinieren.

Real-world data-driven decision support system for electric vehicle charging infrastructure development.

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:16:42 +0100

Trends show that the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) has increased significantly in recent years, bringing about changes not only in the transport industry but also in the economy and society. There are many obstacles for EVs to reach their full market potential, among which the underdevelopment of the charging station infrastructure is clearly highlighted. The main objective of this PhD thesis is to provide a data-driven approach for an intelligent management of the infrastructure of EV charging stations using data science methods in the interdisciplinary field of sustainable transport, business and energy informatics. This dissertation answers three research questions: (i) "Where should a provider of EV charging station infrastructure install / remove / relocate a charging station?", (ii) "How can the infrastructure management approach be determined in view of the development of the existing infrastructure?" and (iii) "How can the range anxiety in the use of electric vehicles be defined and measured?" using practical methods. The scientific contributions of the dissertation are: a model and computing system based on real-world data intended for the management of charging station infrastructure for electric vehicles, and a techno-economic framework that allows a technological action plan and the analysis of what-if scenarios for the development of charging stations for electric vehicles. Trendovi pokazuju kako se popularnost električnih vozila (EV) značajno povećala unazad par godina, uzrokovajući pritom promjene ne samo u transportnoj industriji već u poslovanju i društvu također. Postoje mnoge prepreke kako bi EV-ovi dosegli svoj potpuni tržišni potencijal među kojima se značajno ističe nerazvijenost infrastrukture punionica. Glavni cilj ove doktorske disertacije jest koristeći metode znanosti o podacima nad interdisciplinarnim područjem održivog transporta, ekonomije i energetske informatike, pružiti pristup temeljen na podacima za pametno upravljanje strukturom punionica EV-ova. Ova doktorska disertacija odgovara na tri istraživačka pitanja: (i) "Gdje pružatelj infrastrukture punionica za EV-ove treba postaviti/maknuti/premjestiti punionicu?", (ii) "Kako odrediti pristup upravljanja infrastrukturom s obzirom na razvijenost postojeće infrastructure?" te (iii) “Kako definirati I izmjeriti anksioznost dometa prilikom korištenja električnih vozila?” koristeći metodologije bazirane na podacima iz stvarnoga svijeta. Znanstveni doprinosi disertacije su: model i računalni sustav zasnovan na podacima namijenjen upravljanju infrastrukturom punionica za električna vozila te tehnološko-ekonomski radni okvir koji omogućuje tehnološki akcijski plan i analizu što-ako scenarija za razvoj infrastrukture punionica električnih vozila.

Optimization of a charging system for electric vehicles : A case study in Magangué, Colombia

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:16:58 +0100

To reduce the emissions from the transport sector, the electric vehicle (EV) is a promising alternative to the internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). An important aspect of implementing new transport systems in terms of EVs is the charging strategy, as many energy sources with different limitations can be utilized. Although various studies have investigated charging strategies for electric cars, there is a lack of optimized charging strategies for electric boats with specific considerations for these cases. In Colombia, the river transport sector plays an important role in areas with lack of access to other transport alternatives. This study presents an optimization of the charging strategy for an electric boat that is planned to traffic the Magdalena River in the region of Magangué, Colombia. The objective of the optimization model is to minimize the electricity bill while maintaining a desired transport service. The study considers solar photovoltaics (PV), the electric grid and battery storage for charging, and compares different battery sizes in a scenario analysis. Furthermore, the impact of the instability of the grid is included in terms of a sensitivity analysis of grid blackouts, together with varying battery investment costs. The results show that PV is a recommended investment as it lowers the charging cost and gives positive results in terms of economic feasibility. To further increase the economic feasibility, lower the charging costs and improve the reliability of the system, it is suggested to invest in energy storage. The techno-economic feasibility of storage is heavily affected by battery investment costs and number of grid blackouts affecting the boat charging. If the investment cost is low and the number of blackouts is high, a large storage is a suggested solution. För att minska utsläppen från transportsektorn är elfordon (EV) ett lovande alternativ till förbränningsmotorfordon (ICEV). En viktig aspekt vid implementering av nya transportsystem för EV:s är val av laddningsstrategi, eftersom många energikällor med olika begränsningar kan användas. Även om flertalet studier har undersökt laddningsstrategier för elbilar, saknas optimerade laddningsstrategier för elbåtar och som beaktar de specifika förhållandena för dessa fall. I Colombia spelar flodtransportsektorn en viktig roll i områden med brist på tillgång till andra transportalternativ. Denna studie presenterar en optimering av laddningsstrategin för en elbåt som är planerad att trafikera floden Magdalena i regionen Magangué, Colombia. Syftet med optimeringsmodellen är att minimera elräkningen samtidigt som en önskad transporttjänst bibehålls. Studien omfattar solceller (PV), elnätet och batterilagring för laddning, och jämför olika batteristorlekar i en scenarioanalys. Vidare inkluderas effekterna av elnätets instabilitet genom en känslighetsanalys av strömavbrott, tillsammans med varierande kostnader för batteriinvesteringar. Resultaten visar att PV är en rekommenderad investering eftersom den sänker laddningskostnaden och ger positiva resultat när det gäller ekonomisk lönsamhet. För att ytterligare öka den ekonomiska lönsamheten, sänka laddningskostnaderna och förbättra systemets tillförlitlighet föreslås det att investera i energilagring. Den teknisk-ekonomiska genomförbarheten för lagring påverkas starkt av kostnader för batteriinvesteringar och antalet strömavbrott som påverkar båtladdningen. Om investeringskostnaden är låg och antalet strömavbrott är högt är energilagring med stor kapacitet en föreslagen lösning.

Vertal HEX : Mobility for the future vertical cityscape

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:17:13 +0100

The project originated with the question "What is the future of urban mobility?" and the counterquestion "What is the future of urbanity?". To understand the future of mobility, we first need to try to understand more of the future context where it'll reside. Mobility and the context it exists within are two symbiotic yet constantly evolving elements. This project seeks to speculate about their respective state in the year of 2050. Our global population keeps on growing, and more people are moving into urbanized regions. Already today more 90% of the worlds population is concentrated on roughly 10% of our planets land surface, and the density keeps increasing. To cope with the expanding population, cities need to keep growing and create sustainable infrastructure. The trend in densely populated regions has been to grow in the vertical axis. Besides just residential spaces, modern cities are starting to distribute shops, utilities and other typical city content vertically as well. City blocks and their content that used to be spread out in the horizontal plane are now increasingly being housed within compact hubs over multiple levels vertically. This project proposes the idea of a prototype sub-city within a mega city in the South East Asian region, around the year of 2050. Created as a way to prototype solutions to challenges found in hyper densely populated regions ranging from urban planning and congestion to general liveability. The fictional district has a highly vertically oriented cityscape, consisting of many interconnected highrises and megastructures. Traversing the walls of the buildings, vertically and horizontally, are vehicles propelled through magnetic levitation technology on an inductive infrastructure retrofitted onto or built into the buildings in the region. The far future, visionary setting of the project intends to provoke thoughts and reflection about an urban lifestyle within a far more vertically oriented environment. The thesis also aims to paint a picture of a car free city hub where vehicles are bound to the vertical plane, and the horizontal plane is devoted to the community of the city. Whether it's on the ground level or multiple stories up in a luscious "sky garden", the horizontal planes belong to the people and are roamed by foot. The process behind the development of the project involved research into the future setting and emerging technologies. Creative development and ideation were done using analogue as well as digital sketching, brainstorm sessions and physical and digital mockuping. The final vizualisations and compositions were designed from storyboards describing typical use cases of the vehicle. After researching topics of future cityscapes, creating the future premise of the project and ideating and refining various ideas, the end result of the thesis is Vertal Hex. A maglev propelled shuttle targetting future businesses. Travelling along the walls of the interconnected megastructures making up the future cityscape and company campuses, it allows it's passengers to reach their destinations anywhere within the hub entering right at the floor of their destination.

An Evaluation of Automatic Test Case Generation strategy from Requirements for Electric/Autonomous Vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:21:08 +0100

Software testing is becoming more prominent within the automotive industry due to more complex systems, and functions are implemented in the vehicles. The vehicles in the future will have the functionality to manage different levels of automation, which also means that vehicles driven by humans will have more supportive functionality to increase safety and avoid accidents. These functionalities result in a massive growth in the number of test scenarios to indicate that the vehicles are safe, and this makes it impossible to continue performing the tests in the same way as it has been done until today. The new conditions require that the test scenarios and Test Cases both be generated and executed automatically. In this thesis, an investigation and evaluation are performed to analyze the Automatic Test Case Generation methods available for inputs from Natural Language Requirements in an automotive industrial context at NEVS AB. This study aims to evaluate the NAT2TEST strategy by replacing the manual method and obtain a similar or better result. A comparative analysis is performed between the manual and automated approaches for various levels of requirements. The results show that utilizing this strategy in an industrial scenario can improve efficiency if the requirements to be tested are for well-documented lower-level requirements.

Utilizing Data-Driven Approaches to Evaluate and Develop Air Traffic Controller Action Prediction Models

Scipedia content — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 08:37:13 +0100

traffic controllers (ATCos) monitor flight operations and resolve predicted aircraft conflicts to ensure safe flights, making them one of the essential human operators in air traffic control systems. Researchers have been studying ATCos with human subjective approaches to understand their tasks and air traffic managing processes. As a result, models were developed to predict ATCo actions. However, there is a gap between our knowledge and the real-world. The developed models have never been validated against the real-world, which creates uncertainties in our understanding of how ATCos detect and resolve predicted aircraft conflicts. Moreover, we do not know how information from air traffic control systems affects their actions. This Ph.D. dissertation work introduces methods to evaluate existing ATCo action prediction models. It develops a prediction model based on flight contextual information (information describing flight operations) to explain the relationship between ATCo actions and information. Unlike conventional approaches, this work takes data-driven approaches that collect large-scale flight tracking data. From the collected real-world data, ATCo actions and corresponding predicted aircraft conflicts were identified by developed algorithms. Comparison methods were developed to measure both qualitative and quantitative differences between solutions from the existing prediction models and ATCo actions on the same aircraft conflicts. The collected data is further utilized to develop an ATCo action prediction model. A hierarchical structure found from analyzing the collected ATCo actions was applied to build a structure for the model. The flight contextual information generated from the collected data was used to predict the actions. Results from this work found that the collected ATCo actions do not show any preferences on the methods to resolve aircraft conflicts. Results found that the evaluated existing prediction model does not reflect the real-world. Also, a large portion of the real conflicts was to be solved by the model both physically and operationally. Lastly, the developed prediction model showed a clear relationship between ATCo actions and applied flight contextual information. These results suggest the following takeaways. First, human actions can be identified from closed-loop data. It could be an alternative approach to collect human subjective data. Second, the importance of evaluating models before implications. Third, potentials to utilize the flight contextual information to conduct high-end prediction models.

Analysis of possible measures for Peak Demand Reduction in a Smart Grid with high penetration of Photovoltaics and Electric Vehicles in Thailand in a Scenario up to 2040

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:21:35 +0100

Global electricity demand is increasing every year. New services appear on the market in order to make our daily life easier. Decarbonization in transport sector makes electric vehicles more popular. Those electric vehicles are considered new demand in electricity sector. New power plants are to be built in order to serve those increasing demand. Due to climate change and global warming, many countries tend to increase the share of renewable energy. Those renewable power plants such as wind and photovoltaic tend to be, not only unpredictable, but also, distributed generation. They tend to be a number of small-scale power plants which are installed close to the loads in order to reduce the transmission losses. This high number of small-scale power plants makes it more challenging to manage. With all these challenges, the electrical grid must be smarter in order to cope with the increasing demand and also be able to balance between power demand side and power supply side. It should be monitored and be able make real-time adjustment in order to deliver electricity efficiently with standard power security and power quality to consumers.There are various types of smart grid technologies that can contribute directly to the reduction of electricity production cost. The reduction of peak demand is the key. Smart grid technologies such as Home energy management system, utility-scale battery storage system, and vehicle-to-grid are investigated in this master thesis in order to reduce the peak demand. von Dechawat Tamaneewan Arbeit an der Bibliothek noch nicht eingelangt - Daten nicht geprüft Abweichender Titel nach Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers Technische Universität Wien, Masterarbeit, 2020 (VLID)4795383

Multimodal machine learning for intelligent mobility

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:22:34 +0100

div"Scientific problems are solved by finding the optimal solution for a specific task. Some problems can be solved analytically while other problems are solved using data driven methods. The use of digital technologies to improve the transportation of people and goods, which is referred to as intelligent mobility, is one of the principal beneficiaries of data driven solutions. Autonomous vehicles are at the heart of the developments that propel Intelligent Mobility. Due to the high dimensionality and complexities involved in real-world environments, it needs to become commonplace for intelligent mobility to use data-driven solutions. As it is near impossible to program decision making logic for every eventuality manually. While recent developments of data-driven solutions such as deep learning facilitate machines to learn effectively from large datasets, the application of techniques within safety-critical systems such as driverless cars remain scarce."/div""div"Autonomous vehicles need to be able to make context-driven decisions autonomously in different environments in which they operate. The recent literature on driverless vehicle research is heavily focused only on road or highway environments but have discounted pedestrianized areas and indoor environments. These unstructured environments tend to have more clutter and change rapidly over time. Therefore, for intelligent mobility to make a significant impact on human life, it is vital to extend the application beyond the structured environments. To further advance intelligent mobility, researchers need to take cues from multiple sensor streams, and multiple machine learning algorithms so that decisions can be robust and reliable. Only then will machines indeed be able to operate in unstructured and dynamic environments safely. Towards addressing these limitations, this thesis investigates data driven solutions towards crucial building blocks in intelligent mobility. Specifically, the thesis investigates multimodal sensor data fusion, machine learning, multimodal deep representation learning and its application of intelligent mobility. This work demonstrates that mobile robots can use multimodal machine learning to derive driver policy and therefore make autonomous decisions."/div""div"To facilitate autonomous decisions necessary to derive safe driving algorithms, we present an algorithm for free space detection and human activity recognition. Driving these decision-making algorithms are specific datasets collected throughout this study. They include the Loughborough London Autonomous Vehicle dataset, and the Loughborough London Human Activity Recognition dataset. The datasets were collected using an autonomous platform design and developed in house as part of this research activity. The proposed framework for Free-Space Detection is based on an active learning paradigm that leverages the relative uncertainty of multimodal sensor data streams (ultrasound and camera). It utilizes an online learning methodology to continuously update the learnt model whenever the vehicle experiences new environments. The proposed Free Space Detection algorithm enables an autonomous vehicle to self-learn, evolve and adapt to new environments never encountered before. The results illustrate that online learning mechanism is superior to one-off training of deep neural networks that require large datasets to generalize to unfamiliar surroundings. "/div""div"The thesis takes the view that human should be at the centre of any technological development related to artificial intelligence. It is imperative within the spectrum of intelligent mobility where an autonomous vehicle should be aware of what humans are doing in its vicinity. Towards improving the robustness of human activity recognition, this thesis proposes a novel algorithm that classifies point-cloud data originated from Light Detection and Ranging sensors. The proposed algorithm leverages multimodality by using the camera data to identify humans and segment the region of interest in point cloud data. The corresponding 3-dimensional data was converted to a Fisher Vector Representation before being classified by a deep Convolutional Neural Network. The proposed algorithm classifies the indoor activities performed by a human subject with an average precision of 90.3%. When compared to an alternative point cloud classifier, PointNet[1], [2], the proposed framework out preformed on all classes. "/div""div"The developed autonomous testbed for data collection and algorithm validation, as well as the multimodal data-driven solutions for driverless cars, is the major contributions of this thesis. It is anticipated that these results and the testbed will have significant implications on the future of intelligent mobility by amplifying the developments of intelligent driverless vehicles."/div

Validation of a Public Transport Model

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:23:30 +0100

During 2018, the Public Transport Administration (Trafikförvaltningen) in the Stockholm region spent approximately 2.2 billion SEK on new infrastructure investments related to the public transport system, many of which were based on their public transport models. The previously used method for validating these models has lacked scientific rigour, efficiency and a systematic approach, which has led to uncertainty in decision making. Furthermore, few scientific studies have been conducted to develop validation methodologies for large-scale models, such as public transport models. For these reasons, a scientific validation methodology for public transport models has been developed in this thesis. This validation methodology has been applied on the 2014 route assignment model used by Trafikförvaltningen, for the transport modes bus, commuter train and local tram. In the developed validation methodology, the selected validation metrics called MAPE, %RMSE and R^2 are used to compare link loads from a route assignment model with observed link loads from an Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) system. To obtain an overview of the performance of the route assignment model, eight different scenarios are set, based on whether the validation metrics meet acceptable thresholds or not. In the application of the developed validation methodology, the average link loads for the morning rush have been validated. To adjust the developed validation methodology to system-specific factors and to set acceptable metric thresholds, discussions with model practitioners have taken place. The validation has been performed on both lines and links, and for bus entire line number series have been validated as well. The validation results show that commuter train meets the set threshold values in a higher proportion than bus and local tram do. However, Trafikförvaltningen is recommended to further calibrate the route assignment model in order to achieve a better model performance. The developed validation methodology can be used for validation of public transport models, and can in combination with model calibration be used in an iterative process to fine-tune model parameters for optimising validation results. Finally, a number of recommendations are proposed for Trafikförvaltningen to increase the efficiency and quality of the validation process, such as synchronising model data with the observed data. Under 2018 spenderade Trafikförvaltningen ungefär 2,2 miljarder kronor på nya infrastrukturinvesteringar för kollektivtrafiksystemet i Stockholm, varav många av dessa baserades på deras kollektivtrafikmodeller. Den tidigare metoden för att valideras dessa modeller har saknat gedigen vetenskaplig grund, effektivitet och ett systematiskt tillvägagångssätt, vilket lett till osäkerhet gällande investeringsbeslut. Dessutom har få vetenskapliga studier genomförts för att ta fram valideringsmetodologier för storskaliga modeller, såsom kollektivtrafikmodeller. Av dessa skäl har en vetenskaplig valideringsmetodologi för kollektivtrafikmodeller tagits fram i detta examensarbete. Denna valideringsmetodologi har tillämpats på Trafikförvaltningens 2014 års nätutläggningsmodell, för trafikslagen buss, pendeltåg och spårväg. I den framtagna valideringsmetodologin har de valda valideringsmåtten vid namn MAPE, %RMSE och R^2 använts för att jämföra länkbelastningar från en nätutläggningsmodell med observerade länkbelastningar från ett Automatisk Trafikanträkning-system (ATR). För att ge en översikt över modellens precision har åtta scenarios satts baserat på om valideringsmåtten godkänns eller inte enligt tröskelvärden. I tillämpningen av den framtagna valideringsmetodologin har de genomsnittliga länkbelastningarna för morgonens rusningstrafik validerats. För att justera den framtagna valideringsmetodologin efter systemspecifika faktorer och för att sätta godkända tröskelvärden för valideringsmåtten, har diskussioner med trafikanalytiker hållits. Valideringen har utförts både på linjer och länkar, och för buss har även hela linjeserier validerats. Valideringsresultaten för pendeltåg har en högre andel godkända mätningar än buss och spårväg. Trafikförvaltningen rekommenderas dock att kalibrera nätutläggningsmodellen ytterligare för att uppnå ett bättre resultat. Den framtagna valideringsmetodologin kan användas för valideringar av kollektivtrafikmodeller, och kan i kombination med modellkalibrering användas i en iterativ process för att finjustera modellparametrar och därmed optimera valideringsresultaten. Slutligen föreslås ett antal rekommendationer för Trafikförvaltningen för att öka effektiviteten och kvaliteten på valideringsprocessen, till exempel att synkronisera modelldata med observerad data.

Automated Driving: Towards Trustworthy and Safe Human-Machine Cooperation

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:28:04 +0100

utomated vehicles are gradually entering the market and the technology promises to increase road safety and comfort, amongst other advantages. An important construct guiding humans' interaction with safety-critical systems is trust, which is especially relevant as most drivers are consumers rather than domain experts, such as pilots in aviation. The successful introduction of automated vehicles on the market requires to raise the trust of technology skeptics, but at the same time prevent overtrust. Overtrust is already suspected of having contributed to a couple of - even fatal - accidents with existing driving automation systems. Consequently, there is a need to investigate the topic of trust in the context of automated vehicles and design systems which maintain safety by preventing both distrust and overtrust, a process also called "trust calibration". As the possibility to engage in non-driving related tasks is an important consumer desire, this work proposes to consider drivers' multitasking demands already in the vehicle design process to prevent emerging trust issues. Therefore, a framework integrating theoretical considerations from the domains of trust, human-machine cooperation, and multitasking is proposed. By aligning overall goals between the operator and the system whilst supporting drivers in tasks at the strategical, tactical, and operation level of control, a more trustworthy cooperation should be achieved. A series of studies was conducted to identify important dimensions of trust in driving automation as well as scenarios leading to distrust and overtrust. Those scenarios were then used to demonstrate how the structured approach provided by the framework allows for designing in-vehicle interfaces. Three interaction concepts aiming to support drivers in the different levels of automation were designed and evaluated in driving simulator studies. Results highlight the potential of multimodal as well as attentive user interfaces (interruption management) to deal with overtrust, and augmented reality visualizations to raise acceptance of drivers distrusting the automation. All approaches confirmed to improve the subjective trust of the operator and demonstrate the structured approach provided by the framework can assist to design more trustworthy in-vehicle interfaces, which is important for a successful and safe implementation of driving automation systems. submitted by Dipl.-Ing. Philipp Wintersberger Universität Linz, Dissertation, 2020 (VLID)5108376

Evaluation of recycled warm asphalt mixtures using conventional and polymer modified binders

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:30:00 +0100

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES The growing concern with the environment, in recent years, awakens the study of new technologies in the field of paving. Less polluting technologies that minimize the degradation of the environment and that seek to meet sustainability measures are the guiding principle of many researches currently developed. Within this context, pavement recycling emerged as an alternative to reduce the amount of virgin aggregates needed in new pavements, and to reuse this material of great economic value, which was previously deposited on the environment, without adequate reuse. In order to meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, warm asphalt mixtures have emerged, which have brought a number of benefits when compared to conventional hot mixes, allowing the reduction of the machining and compacting temperatures usually employed, as well as the reduction of consumption decreasing the emission of pollutants and improving the working conditions of operators. Thus, the study of the warm recycled asphalt mixtures begins, which combine the insertion of the recycled pavement material with the technology of the warm mixtures, obtaining an expressive gain in the amount of material to be inserted in new asphalt masses, due to the lower reheating of the milled material. The aim of the present study was to conduct a study on warm recycled asphalt mixtures using conventional binders CAP 50/70 and modified by polymer CAP 60/85. Four asphalt mixtures were studied per binder, between conventional hot mix (reference), warm (no milling), and warm mixtures with 25 and 50% milling (replacing the total mass of virgin aggregates), totaling in eight blends surveyed. After being dosed by the Superpave methodology and analyzed for its volumetric and densification properties, the samples were evaluated for tensile strength (tensile strength by diametral compression and Flow Number), deformability (modulus of resilience and complex modulus) and adhesion and cohesion (Lottman Modified and wear resistance). The main results indicated that the performance of the warm asphalt mixtures is equivalent to the conventional hot mixes. There is also a significant improvement for blends with embedded milling, highlighting the gains obtained in the Flow Number test, which grows significantly as the milling content of the blend increases, as well as the results of adhesion and cohesion through Modified Lottman test, which proved to be positive, probably due to the milling used in the present research to have modified polymer binder (CAP 60/85) in its composition. As for the modified binder mixtures, it is possible to affirm that there is an expressive improvement of performance when compared to the mixtures with conventional binder. A crescente preocupação com o meio ambiente, nos últimos anos, desperta o estudo de novas tecnologias no ramo da pavimentação. Tecnologias menos poluentes, que minimizem a degradação do ambiente e que busquem atender as medidas de sustentabilidade são o fio condutor de muitas pesquisas desenvolvidas atualmente. Dentro deste contexto, a reciclagem de pavimentos surgiu como alternativa de reduzir a quantidade de agregados virgens necessários em novos pavimentos, e reaproveitar esse material de grande valor econômico, que antes era deposto sobre o meio ambiente, sem reutilização adequada. Buscando atender às premissas do Protocolo de Kyoto, de 1997, surgiram as misturas asfálticas mornas, que trouxeram uma série de benefícios, se comparadas às misturas convencionais a quente, permitindo a redução das temperaturas de usinagem e compactação usualmente empregadas, além da redução do consumo energético, diminuição da emissão de poluentes e melhoria nas condições de trabalho dos operadores. Dessa forma, tem início o estudo das misturas asfálticas recicladas mornas, as quais aliam a inserção do material reciclado de pavimento com a tecnologia das misturas mornas, obtendo um ganho expressivo na quantidade de material a ser inserido em novas massas asfálticas, devido ao menor reaquecimento do material fresado. Com esse intuito, o objetivo da presente pesquisa foi realizar um estudo sobre misturas asfálticas recicladas mornas, utilizando ligantes convencional CAP 50/70 e modificado por polímero CAP 60/85. Estudaram-se quatro misturas asfálticas por ligante, entre misturas convencional a quente (referência), morna (sem fresado), e morna com 25 e 50% de fresado (em substituição à massa total de agregados virgens), totalizando em oito misturas pesquisadas. Após dosadas pela metodologia Superpave e analisadas suas propriedades volumétricas e de densificação, as amostras foram avaliadas quanto às propriedades de resistência (resistência à tração por compressão diametral e Flow Number), deformabilidade (módulo de resiliência e módulo complexo) e adesão e coesão (Lottman modificado e resistência ao desgaste cântabro). Os principais resultados apontaram que o desempenho das misturas asfálticas mornas é equivalente às convencionais a quente. Existe também uma melhora significativa para as misturas com fresado incorporado, ressaltando os ganhos obtidos no ensaio de Flow Number, que cresce expressivamente à medida em que se aumenta o teor de fresado da mistura, assim como, os resultados de adesão e coesão, através do ensaio Lottman modificado, que se mostraram positivos, provavelmente, devido ao fresado utilizado na presente pesquisa dispor de ligante envelhecido modificado com polímero (CAP 60/85) em sua composição. Quanto às misturas com ligante modificado, é possível afirmar que existe uma expressiva melhora de desempenho quando comparadas às misturas com ligante convencional.

Mody : a smart commuting experience

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:36:03 +0100

Due to the current urbanization trend, people are spending more time than ever on their daily commute. However, commuting in megacities often results in irritating scenarios. Especially when using public transportation. This project tried to provide an alternative way of commuting that would allow people to refresh themselves during the journey and prepare for their activities in the best way possible. Rather than looking at the commute as a transition from A to B, this project tried to envision different scenarios of daily life and implement smart solutions that would enhance the experience through seamlessly integrated technologies—based on the technological expertise from the sponsor Huawei. In this concept, smart sensors combined with data collection would provide a tailored experience for the customer at different depth levels. The process includes brand research and topic selection to set up the design goal. Basing on the valuable material got from the first step, the design moved to the next step and tried to find the solution for the thesis topic. This is processed by gathering information from the website, brainstorming the ideation. Then the author built up the prototype by sketching, rendering, and 3D modeling. The user experience got developed basing on the robust design. The author started with user research and analyzed and set up personas. The result is an interior design concept with a particular focus on its interaction and user experience. The seating position supports the user experience by changing in harmony with individual preferences and time of the day. Three unique travel modes provide different levels of control over the overall experience based upon the user's request and their trust in the smart system.

Modeling and Forecasting of Electric Vehicle Charging, Solar Power Production, and Residential Load : Perspectives into the Future Urban and Rural Energy Systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:36:21 +0100

The urban and rural energy systems are undergoing modernization. This modernization is motivated by the need to increase sustainability in both systems. Some characteristics of this modernization include electrification of industries, transports, and heating and cooling loads. Additionally, there has been an increase in building-applied photovoltaic (PV) systems, and in the flexibility of customer loads. This thesis aims to progress the knowledge regarding the electric power production and consumption in the future urban and rural energy systems. In total, three models were developed and applied to case studies: a spatial electric vehicle (EV) charging model, a residential load forecasting model, and a clear-sky index (CSI) generative model. The results of the EV spatial model showed that there is an aggregation effect for the charging of the EVs. If all EVs charge opportunistically upon arrival using 3.7 kW, at most 19% of the EVs in a large area will charge simultaneously. Delaying the charging to after 22:00 will result in a significant increase in the simultaneity factor — to 59%. Two forecasting models were compared for the residential load. Both models achieved a root mean square error (RMSE) smaller than 4%. One model had a slightly sharper forecast than the other model — by 2.6% — and a variable prediction interval (PI) which decreased at night. As regards the spatiotemporal matching between PV power production and EV charging in rural and urban areas, the results showed that there were no correlations between the building type in each part of the city and the temporal matching. Both residential and workplace areas had similar temporal matching. This is because of the orientations of the roofs in the cities and the sizes of the parking lots. Considering the impacts of EV charging on the distribution grid of a Swedish municipality (Herrljunga), it is shown that 3.7 kW chargers will result in at most a 1% decrease in the voltage of the grid. No under-voltages were witnessed. In conclusion, the urban and rural energy systems can withstand the penetration of PV and EVs in the nearby coming years. Extreme scenarios might, however, require increasing the flexibility or performing upgrades to the systems.

Optimal operation of energy systems of groups of large buildings

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:38:31 +0100

The development of microgrids has enabled prosumers to develop optimal power management and demand response (DR) strategies. Based on this idea, virtual prosumers and microgrids can be created in a traditional city structure, exploiting microgrids’ ability to operate connected or disconnected to the grid. Therefore, the development of more complex energy control and management systems becomes necessary. In this thesis, an easy to apply and computationally efficient energy management system (EMS) has been developed in Matlab. It is based on a hierarchical multi-agent system aiming to minimize the operating cost of a microgrid, that consists of a group of buildings, renewable energy sources (RES), energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles (EVs). The examined optimization problem is solved using the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO), that ensures the optimum use of every microgrid’s component. Based on the results obtained by applying the algorithm to the operation of the microgrid, both in the time frame of one day and one week, cost savings of 40% can be achieved while all the microgrid’s energy needs and operation constraints are met.

Last mile deliveries of e-commerce orders: a cross analysis of consumers' ans carriers' perceptions.

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:45:14 +0100

Não recebi financiamento The evolution of e-commerce has triggered a true revolution in the market. Due to that, the increase of deliveries changed the urban freight pattern flows and vehicles’ traffic in the cities. These changes have consequences in technological, economic, environmental and social aspects. It is important to highlight that the adoption of good practices and strategies in e-commerce last mile distribution can influence positively the society in general. According to the literature, there is a high potential to use new technologies in the last mile to increase the customer experience, reduce costs, increase security, and support city environmental when delivering e-commerce purchases. Therefore, the aim of this study is to diagnose the e-commerce last mile delivery evaluating new technology solutions proposed by the literature and considering the perceptions from customers and e-commerce carriers. The used method was survey questionnaires applied to consumers and carriers in order to get different perceptions between them in São Paulo city. This region was chosen due to its relevance in the Brazilian demand and complexity in last mile delivery related to productivity, security and urban mobility. Customers and carriers consider more relevant performance and convenience aspects in relation to e-commerce delivery. However, carriers have a greater concern than customers with the points of infrastructure and environment. Demographic and risk data from São Paulo were also analysed and the results support the strategy definition to have pick up points being used to delivery e-commerce purchases in the São Paulo city, predominantly in the most distant areas of the city center. A evolução do comércio eletrônico desencadeou uma verdadeira revolução no mercado. Por isso, o aumento das entregas mudou o padrão de fluxo de frete urbano e tráfego de veículos nas cidades. Essas mudanças têm consequências em aspectos tecnológicos, econômicos, ambientais e sociais. É importante destacar que a adoção de boas práticas e estratégias no comércio eletrônico na distribuição de ultima milha pode influenciar positivamente a sociedade em geral. De acordo com a literatura, existe um alto potencial para usar novas tecnologias na última milha para aumentar a experiência do cliente, reduzir custos, aumentar a segurança e suportar a cidade em aspectos ambientais ao entregar compras de comércio eletrônico. Portanto, o objetivo deste estudo foi diagnosticar a entrega de última milha do e-commerce avaliando novas soluções tecnológicas propostas pela literatura e considerando as percepções de clientes e operadoras de comércio eletrônico. O método utilizado foi a aplicação de questionários em consumidores e transportadoras para diferenciar percepções entre eles na cidade de São Paulo. Esta região foi escolhida devido à sua relevância na demanda e complexidade no contecto Brasil na entrega de última milha relacionada a produtividade, segurança e mobilidade urbana. Clientes e transportadoras consideram aspectos de desempenho e conveniência mais relevantes em relação a entrega no comércio eletrônico. No entanto, as transportadoras têm uma preocupação maior do que os clientes com o pontos de infraestrutura e meio ambiente. Dados demográficos e de risco de São Paulo também foram analisados e os resultados apóiam a definição da estratégia de pontos de coleta usados para entrega de compras de comércio eletrônico na cidade de São Paulo, predominantemente nas áreas mais distantes do centro da cidade.

Exploring the Potential of Crowdfunding for EV-Charging Infrastructure Development : A Strategy for Collaborative Financing of EV Charging Points in Sweden

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:50:47 +0100

over the world, raising concerns about energy conservation and the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas emissions has promoted the development of a sustainable mobility transition. Successful electric vehicle (EV) deployment plays a vital role in this manner but is still facing obstacles, where public charging infrastructure is one of them. Additionally, digitization is transforming and introducing new industries worldwide, contributing with new constructs to be used in the evolving transition. Simultaneously, technology is surpassing the competition, and is one of the most potent transformational force affecting customer relations in the energy sector, leading to customers anticipating more from the power utility companies. To attain a long-termsustainable competitive advantage, firms have to retain, sustain, and nurture their customer base. To do so, corporations have comprehended the value of embracing customer-centric incentives, enabling them to capture more indirect business values. Furthermore, this thesis was done in collaboration with a power utility company, referred to as ‘Org X’ or ‘the CPO’. Influenced by the reasoning above, it investigated the opportunity to create indirect business values through a demand-driven roll-out of the national charging infrastructure with the use of crowdfunding. This was achieved by adopting an exploratory methodology approach, where a mixed inductive-deductive design was used. A multi-method qualitative data collection was made; consisting mainly of semi-structured-, and unstructured interviews with experts in the field. Thus, a profound perspective of the EV-charging market landscape was attained, which enabled adequate reasoning when proposing a strategy approach for the cause. Additionally, quantitative secondary data was used to develop a tool for an initial location evaluation, that is part of the recommended approach. This tool was also used to enhance the understanding of the national EV-charging market landscape, the customer segments, as well the potential market for a co-creating platform. The findings suggest that the perceived readiness level of crowdfunding charging infrastructure varies depending on what aspect that is being accommodated. A platform that connects stakeholders is encouraged by actors in the field, but crowdfunding through solely end-users is questioned as close proximity to the end-user’s location is a key-factor regarding motivation to fund a charging point. A ‘Tier based framework’, that facilitates this transition was therefore developed and evaluated. Additionally, the framework was considered in the market analysis case study, which further included a recommended implementation and communication approach. If used accordingly, this framework could bring both indirect- and direct business values to the power utility company in question, as well as the involved stakeholders. Oro över energieffektiviseringar och miljökonsekvenser från utsläpp av växthusgaser världen över har främjat utvecklingen av ett hållbart energisystem. En framgångsrik marknadspenetration av elbilar (EVs) har en viktig roll i denna aspekt, men står fortfarande inför hinder där publik laddningsinfrastruktur är en del av problemet. Digitaliseringen leder till transformation och nya industrier vilket bidrar med ytterligare konstruktioner som används i övergången till ett mer hållbart samhälle. Samtidigt driver teknikutvecklingen till ökad konkurrens och har en kraftfull påverkan på vad kunderna förväntar sig från företagen. För att uppnå mer långsiktigt hållbara konkurrensfördelar måste företag sträva efter att behålla, upprätthålla och ta hand sin kundbas. Företag börjar förstå det ökade värde som finns i att utöva mer kundcentrerade incitament och strategier, vilket potentiellt bidrar till mer indirekta affärsvärden. Denna uppsats är i samarbete med ett Svenskt energiföretag, följaktligen refererat till som 'Org X' eller 'CPO'. Baserat på resonemanget ovan, har möjligheten att skapa indirekta affärsvärden genom verkställandet av en mer efterfrågedriven utveckling av den nationella elbilsladdning infrastruktur med hjälp av crowdfunding undersökts. Detta uppnåddes genom att använda ett utforskat tillvägagångssätt, där en blandad induktiv-deduktiv design användes. En kvalitativ datainsamling gjordes på flera sätt; huvudsakligen bestående av semistrukturerade och ostrukturerade intervjuer med experter inom området. Således uppnåddes ett djupgående perspektiv på av elbilsladdning marknaden vilket möjliggjorde sakliga resonemang kring den presenterade och rekommenderade strategin. Ytterligare användes kvantitativ sekundärdata för att utveckla ett verktyg för en initial plats bedömning, vilket är en del av den rekommenderade strategin. Detta verktyg användes dessutom för att öka förståelsen för den nationella elbilsladdning marknaden, kundsegmenten, liksom den potentiella marknaden för en samskapande plattform. Resultaten tyder på att den upplevda beredskapsnivån att crowdfunda laddningsinfrastruktur varierar beroende på plats och kundgrupp. En plattform som ansluter intressenter uppmuntras av aktörer på marknaden, men crowdfunding genom enbart slutanvändare ifrågasätts då närhet till slutanvändarens läge är en nyckelfaktor när det gäller motivationen att medverka i finansieringen. Därav har ett tier based framework utvecklats och presenterats, som bör underlätta transformationen mot en mer kunddriven affärsmöjlighet. Dessutom beaktades ramverket i fallstudien för marknadsanalysen, som ytterligare inkluderade en rekommenderad strategi för implementering och kommunikation. Om den används i enlighet bör ramverket ge både indirekta och direkta affärsvärden till det aktuella energi företaget, liksom till berörda intressenter.

Diffusion of Battery Electric Vehicles : The Role of Total Cost of Ownership

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:56:18 +0100

Due to their high efficiency, zero tailpipe emissions and possibilities of using renewable electricity, Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) have been proposed as a way to alleviate the negative consequences of transport. However, as with other energy-efficient innovations market uptake or diffusion of BEVs have so far been limited. Three main barriers for BEV diffusion have been identified in the literature: limited range, lack of charging and high purchase price. Range and charging have been extensively studied. The high purchase price and other ownership costs of BEVs has not received the same amount of attention. The focus of this thesis is to go beyond the purchase price of BEVs, that in general is higher than for Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs). This thesis will center on costs; as the low running cost of BEVs validates further investigations regarding the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to ICEVs. The aim of this thesis is therefore to investigate the TCO of BEVs for both private and professional use-cases relative to the TCO of ICEVs, and further, to explore to which degree TCO is incorporated in the vehicle choice process. The main theoretical underpinnings of this thesis are innovation diffusion theory, a set of theories that describes the process by which an innovation is adopted among the members of a social system. In a narrower consumer behavior setting, rational choice and the emerging literature in behavior economics also forms an important theoretical basis for this thesis. The method choices in the four studies included in this thesis reflects the complex socio-technical system that BEVs inhabits. A mix of quantitative (e.g. surveys and driving data) and qualitative (interviews) methods have been used. The results of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) computations in this thesis indicate that the actual cost of BEVs can be lower than for equivalent ICEVs. This has been validated for different contexts and use-cases in both private and professional settings. However, the actual TCO of BEVs is likely to have a small influence on vehicle choice. The results indicate that only a small minority (4 %) of mainstream vehicle buyers conducted a complete TCO analysis and that the majority (58 %) did not calculate any ownerships costs into their vehicle choice process. In addition, vehicle buyers have a poor understanding of on-going vehicle ownership costs of their present vehicle. Thus, they are uninformed about vehicle costs in general and of TCO in particular. Calculating TCO is a challenging task for consumers, requiring both cognitive efforts and time. It can be suspected that vehicle buyers instead use purchase price as a proxy for TCO. Approximation of costs through purchase price could yield significant overestimation in the cost of owning and operating a BEV. This thesis argues that the market introduction of BEVs requires a new approach to evaluate vehicle costs among the stakeholders involved. The relationship between high effort costs and unknown ownership cost is radically altered due to the low ownership costs of BEVs. The potential rewards of being attentive to TCO are thus larger in the case of BEVs compared to ICEVs. Several aspects have been found to correlate to being more TCO attentive: higher income, higher educational level, having a larger comparison set of vehicles and increased stated importance of TCO in vehicle choice. However, vehicle buyers receive little assistance from vehicle salespeople in estimating TCO of BEVs. Vehicle salespeople often focus on purchase price instead of taking the time to estimate TCO. Lower financial incentives for selling BEVs could be an underlying cause for vehicle salespeople not to emphasize the potential cost superiorities of BEVs in relation to ICEVs. In addition, the results allude that additional barriers related to BEV diffusion remains important. This is exemplified in the professional use-case of taxis that was investigated in this thesis, where range and charging limitations of BEVs negatively affected work conditions. Four main conclusions can be drawn based on the results of this thesis: BEVs can be TCO competitive with ICEVs, TCO is rarely applied in the vehicle choice process, the market introduction of BEVs requires a new approach to evaluate vehicle costs among the stakeholders involved, and that improved understanding and application of vehicle TCO would improve the diffusion outlook of BEVs by improving their relative advantage. Based on these conclusions it is recommend that industry and public policy address the apparent misalignment between perceived and actual TCO of BEVs. This can be done by: improving knowledge of TCO among vehicle buyers, creating a comprehensive yet simple to use TCO computational tool and increasing the financial incentives of selling BEVs for vehicle salespeople. Transportsektorn står idag för en stor del av världens miljöproblem, både genom utsläpp som bidrar till dålig luftkvalitet och till den globala uppvärmningen. En möjlig väg för att minska transportsektorns negativa konsekvenser är en övergång till mer effektiva bilar. Batterielbilar som endast drivs av elektricitet har hög energieffektivitet, nollutsläpp i brukarfasen och kan laddas med förnyelsebar elektricitet. Batterielbilar kan därmed motverka transportsektorns negativa konsekvenser. I likhet med andra energieffektiva innovationer har dock batterielbilar hittills haft en begränsad diffusion, dvs låga marknadsandelar. Tidigare forskning har identifierat tre huvudbarriärer som hindrar batterielbilar att nå större marknadsandelar: begränsad räckvidd, brist på laddning och höga inköpspriser. Både forskare och industrin har hittills främst fokuserat på problematiken rörande räckvidd och laddning. Det höga inköpspriset och andra ekonomiska aspekter som ägandekostnader har inte fått samma uppmärksamhet. Denna avhandling adresserar detta forskningsgap genom att undersöka de ekonomiska aspekter som kan påverka försäljningen av batterielbilar. Inköpspriset är generellt högre för batterielbilar jämfört med förbränningsmotorbilar. Batterielbilar har dock erkänt lägre driftskostnader, vilket gör det intressant att flytta fokus bortom inköpspriset och istället undersöker och jämför den totala ägandekostnaden för batterielbilar och förbränningsmotorbilar. Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka hur totalkostnaden för batterielbilar står sig mot totalkostnaden för förbränningsmotorbilar och vilken betydelse totalkostnadsbedömningar har i valet av bil och därmed för batterielbilens diffusion på marknaden. Både privata och professionella bilköpare samt olika aspekter av köpprocessen har undersökts. En viktig aspekt har varit huruvida totalkostnaden beaktas i bilvalsprocessen hos bilköpare. Den huvudsakliga teoretiska bakgrunden till avhandlingen är innovationsdiffusionsteori, vilket är en samling teorier som beskriver processen för hur innovationer köps och sprids av medlemmarna i ett socialt system. Ytterligare teorier som utgör en viktig bakgrund för avhandlingen berör konsumentbeteende från ett rationellt eller beteendeekonomiskt perspektiv. Metodvalen i de fyra studierna som ingår i avhandlingen återspeglar det komplexa socio-tekniska system som batterielbilar befinner sig i. En blandning av kvantitativa (t.ex. enkät och kördata) och kvalitativa (intervjuer) metoder har använts. Resultaten av studierna som undersökte totalkostnaden för ägande (TCO (dvs Total Cost of Ownership)) indikerar att den faktiska kostnaden för batterielbilar kan vara lägre än för motsvarande förbränningsmotorbilar. Dessa resultat har validerats för olika användningsfall i både den privata och den professionella kontexten. Den faktiska totalkostnaden för batterielbilar har dock troligen ett relativt litet inflytande i valet av bil hos bilköpare. Resultaten visar att endast en minoritet (4 %) av bilköparna genomför en fullständig totalkostnadsanalys och att majoriteten av bilköparna (58%) inte har beräknat någon av de olika ägandekostnader under bilvalsprocessen. Dessutom har bilköpare en dålig förståelse av de löpande kostnaderna för ägande av deras nuvarande bil. Således verkar bilköpare vara oinformerade om bilkostnader i allmänhet och om totalkostnaden i synnerhet. Att beräkna TCO kräver dock både tid och kognitiva ansträngningar, vilket delvis kan förklara detta beteende. Istället för att beräkna totalkostnaden verkar bilköpare använda inköpspriset som en representation för vad bilen kommer att kosta under ägandet. En tänkbar konsekvens av denna typ av ungefärlig kostnadsbedömning via inköpspriset är en överskattning av totalkostnaden för batterielbilar. Denna avhandling visar att marknadsintroduktionen av batterielbilar kräver nya tillvägagångssätt för att utvärdera bilkostnaderna hos de berörda intressenterna. De lägre ägarkostnaderna för batterielbilar gör att en bedömning av kostnader baserat på inköpspriset ofta blir missvisande. De potentiella fördelarna med att vara uppmärksamma på TCO är därmed större när det gäller batterielbilar jämfört med förbränningsmotorbilar. Det finns emellertid ett antal aspekter som korrelerar med en högre beräkningsbenägenhet av totalkostnaden, dessa är: högre inkomst, högre utbildningsnivå, fler bilar som jämförs i bilvalsprocessen samt den uttryckta betydelsen av TCO i bilval. Det kan även tilläggas att bilförsäljare inte spelar en betydande roll i att informera eller assistera bilköpare rörande totalkostnaden. Istället fokuserar bilförsäljare ofta på inköpspriset. En underliggande orsak för varför bilförsäljarna inte betonar de potentiella kostnadsbesparingarna för batterielbilar i förhållande till förbränningsmotorbilar kan vara sämre ekonomiska incitament för att sälja batterielbilar. Dessutom bekräftar resultaten att befintliga marknadshinder för batterielbilar är fortsatt viktiga. Detta exemplifieras i det professionella användningsfallet (taxi) som undersöktes i avhandlingen. I taxiverksamhet har batterielbilars begränsade räckvidd och laddningsmöjligheter en stark negativ inverkan på förarnas arbetsmiljö och villkor. Följande fyra slutsatser kan dras från resultaten i avhandlingen: batterielbilar kan vara ekonomiskt konkurrenskraftiga mot förbränningsmotorbilar om de jämförs utifrån totalkostnaden; totalkostnaden appliceras generellt inte i bilvalsprocessen; marknadsintroduktionen av batterielbilar kräver nya tillvägagångssätt för att korrekt kunna uppskatta den verkliga kostnaden och en ökad förståelse och applikation av totalkostnaden i bilvalsprocessen skulle förbättra batterielbilars relativa fördelar med ökad försäljning som följd. För att adressera dessa slutsatser förslås ett antal rekommendationer som syftar att minska gapet mellan faktiskt och upplevd totalkostnad för batterielbilar. Det kan göras genom att öka kunskapen om totalkostnad hos bilköpare; skapa en heltäckande men användarvänlig totalkostnadskalkylator samt öka de finansiella incitamenten för att sälja batterielbilar hos bilförsäljare.

Flera Föreställningar av den Fossilfria Framtiden : Biogas och El i Svensk Stadstrafik

Scipedia content — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 14:17:30 +0100

IIn the wake of the climate crisis, it has become increasingly evident that the fossil fuel-based transport system must undergo a global transformation. Numerous renewable fuel alternatives have been suggested, accompanied by imaginaries of how these technologies will contribute to a better future. These imaginaries have a wide-ranging impact because the implementation of each alternative technology will require the build-up of multifarious socio-technical ensembles that support their use. As a result, replacing fossil fuels with these renewable alternatives is likely to be a complex process. This dissertation considers the emergence of two such visions of renewable fuels studying imaginaries of biogas and electricity in the Swedish context. Biogas has a long history of use as a transport fuel in Sweden, where although it makes up a small percentage of total fuel use it also forms the basis of numerous municipal public transport systems. Meanwhile, electric vehicles have become increasingly attractive as more actors subscribe to an imaginary that sees the future of vehicles as shared, autonomous, and electric. This interaction is exemplified in urban public transportation as many municipalities begin to implement electric buses in an attempt to increase energy efficiency and reduce pollution. This thesis follows three case studies where the imaginaries of biogas and electric vehicles interact: urban public transport in the municipalities of Linköping and Malmö and analysis of a comprehensive national policy document Fossil fuel freedom on the road. It contributes to a wider understanding of how visions can influence obduracy and change of transport alternatives within the wider transformation to a fossil fuel free future.

Innovation Adaptation in Urban Light-Rail Transport: Adapting Pricing and Infrastructural Innovations using Frugal Approach in Ethiopia and Nigeria

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:08:05 +0100

The chicken-and-egg electric vehicle dilemma of British Columbia: EV policy recommendations for the modernization of the Cowichan Valley Regional District official community plan and zoning bylaws

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:15:33 +0100

Electric vehicle (EV) ownership has risen exponentially over the last couple of years in Canada. British Columbia has seen nearly the same amount of EV sales in the last 15 months as the last 4 years combined! Despite the tremendous improvements in charging station accessibility in urban areas, rural and sub-urban areas have been mostly overlooked thus far. A lack of charging stations has created range anxiety for potential buyers who are not within the city core or wish to take regular trips for recreation and travel. How can we help alleviate this range anxiety and improve the viability of the electric car for all geographic locations? It starts with well-written policy that is supplemented with extensive community consultation and collaboration. Thesis/major project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Community Planning in the Department of Community planning, Faculty of Social Sciences. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/23302/BrietzkeProject.pdf?sequence=3

Evaluation of acceleration characteristics on operational eco - driving

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:16:29 +0100

Text in English; Abstract: English and Turkish Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-58) ix, 53 leaves Greenhouse gasses is a main thread for global warming and there are several strategies that reducing GHG gasses especially in developing countries as using alternative fuel types, dealing with the congestion, maintaining the steady traffic flow, dealing with the maintenances of vehicle, managing desired speed and the acceleration rates and so on. Eco-Driving is indicating any implementations which enables driving more economic and ecologic style. One of the main concepts of eco-driving is configuring driving behaviour to reduce consumption and emissions. In this thesis, impact of driver's behaviour tried to be investigated by using an instantaneous emission modelling to obtain minimum acceleration deceleration rate in generically created urban network. Sera gazları küresel ısınmanın ana tehdididir ve özellikle gelişmekte olan ülkelerde alternatif yakıt türlerini kullanmak, trafik sıkışıklığını önlemek, trafiğin akıcı bir şekilde devam etmesini sağlamak, araç bakımlarını yönetmek, istenilen hızı çıkmayı yönetmek ve bu hızda devam etmek gibi çeşitli stratejiler ile bu sera gazlarının ulaştırma sektöründe düşürülmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Eko-Sürüş, daha ekonomik ve ekolojik sürüşü mümkün kılan uygulamaların bir bütünüdür. Eko-sürüşün operasyonel olarak temel kavramlarından birisi de sürücü davranışlarının yakıt tüketimi ve emisyonu azaltıcı şekilde düzenlemektir. Bu tezde, kentsel ağdaki bir sürüş parkurunu taklit edici bir parkur dizayn edilerek ve emisyon modeli kullanılarak minimum düzeyde yakıt tüketimi ve emisyon elde edebilmek için burada hızlanma eğrilerinin etkileri değerlendirilmiştir.

Second-life electric vehicle batteries in the Norwegian power system : a feasibility study

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:22:13 +0100

a result of the acknowledgment of climate change and the agreements set forth to combat it, the share of renewable energies in our power systems is growing. Due to the interlinking of the European power systems, imbalances can be expected to increase in the Norwegian grid as well as in other European countries. Combined with the rising amount of distributed energy production and the electrification of the Norwegian society, it is evident that new solutions are needed. This thesis investigates the use of used electric vehicle batteries in second-life battery systems, with the goal of determining its feasibility in the Norwegian power system. Several aspects are examined in a literature review: suitability, availability, costs, laws and regulations, and the repurposing process. In addition, an in-depth use case is conducted for the peak shaving application in south-eastern Norway. The use case employed consumption data from one substation and its associated consumer nodes and explored peak shaving in both households and at the associated substation. Household peak shaving was achieved, but to what degree was dependent on the individual consumption patterns. The cost of the battery system was too high for it to be reasonable for households to implement these systems at current electricity prices. Substation peak shaving was most efficiently accomplished by using one large battery at the substation, although the collected peak shaving of the households also shaved the peaks at the substation. The cost of one large battery is expected to be considerably lower than the aggregated cost of the household batteries needed to achieve the same peak shaving effect as one larger battery, but it is not necessarily profitable in comparison to upgrading the substation. The literature study revealed promising results with regards to capabilities, availability of batteries, and an increasing experience level. However, some questions remain regarding the second-life aging and lifespan. Lifespans of 4-29 years have been suggested, depending on the application. Also, guidelines and clearer regulations are needed to ensure safe handling during processing. How feasible or profitable a second-life battery system is, depends on the application, battery price, and repurposing cost. Balancing services and frequency regulation might be feasible applications today, while others could become feasible within the decade. In conclusion, second-life battery systems could have a future in the Norwegian power system, given some conditions and developments. However, it is not likely until 2025 at the earliest. Som et resultat av målsetningene til ulike klimaavtaler, er en økende andel fornybar energi på vei inn i kraftsystemene. Det europeiske kraftsystemet knyttes stadig mer sammen og resulterer i utfordringer for nettet, både i Norge og i Europa for øvrig. Dette, kombinert med en økende andel av distribuert kraftproduksjon og elektrifiseringen av det norske samfunnet, gir opphav til et behov for nye løsninger. Denne masteroppgaven har som hovedmål å finne ut om gjenbrukte elbilbatterier har en fremtid i det norske kraftsystemet. For å avgjøre dette, er flere faktorer blitt undersøkt i en litteraturstudie: egnethet, tilgjengelighet, kostnader, lover og forskrifter og hvordan slike batterier kan gjenbrukes. I tillegg til litteraturstudiet er det uført en case-studie for såkalt "peak shaving" i Hvaler, sør-øst i Norge. Case-studiet er basert på forbruksdata fra en nettstasjon og dens tilknyttede kunder, og undersøker peak shaving ved hjelp av simuleringer for både husholdninger og nettstasjonen de er knyttet til. Forbrukskutt ble oppnådd i varierende grad for husholdningene, avhengig av forbruksmønster. Kostanden til batterisystemet viste seg å uansett være for høy til at det vil lønne seg for husholdningskunder. Den samlede effekten av forbrukskutt hos husholdningene førte til redusert forbruk hos nettstasjonen også, men ett enkelt stort batteri gjorde jobben mer effektivt. I tillegg er kostnaden forventet å være betydelig lavere, men ikke nødvendigvis et mer lønnsomt alternativ til en eventuell oppgradering av nettstasjonen. Litteraturstudiet ga lovende resultater når det kom til egnethet og tilgjengelighet av batterier. Kunnskapsnivået ser også ut til å være stigende. På den andre siden gjenstår en del spørsmål angående aldring og levetid for gjenbrukte batterier. En levetid på 4-29 år har blitt foreslått, avhengig av bruksområde. Det er også behov for tydeligere retningslinjer og forskrifter for håndtering av brukte elbilbatterier. Lønnsomheten til disse batterisystemene avhenger av batteripris, prosesseringskostnader og bruksområde. Systemer brukt i nettjenester, som frekvensregulering, kan være levedyktige allerede i dag. Andre bruksområder kan bli lønnsomme innen dette tiåret. Altså kan gjenbrukte elbilbatterier ha en fremtid i det norske kraftsystemet, gitt noen forutsetninger. Likevel virker det ikke sannsynlig at dette skjer før tidligst 2025. M-MF

Crew Planning at Netherlands Railways: Improving Fairness, Attractiveness, and Efficiency

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:22:29 +0100

xtabstractThe development and improvement of decision support voor crew planning at Netherlands Railways (NS)

Nonholonomic Motion Planning for Automated Vehicles in Dense Scenarios

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:23:18 +0100

Growth strategy for EV's charging network

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:25:15 +0100

Improvements in seismic imaging and migration-velocity model building

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:25:52 +0100

Seismic imaging methods have been widely used in the petroleum industry for hydrocarbon exploration and reservoir monitoring. The principle of seismic imaging methods is employing elastic waves generated by seismic source to obtain images of the subsurface. In seismic acquistion, the emitted seismic waves propagate down into the Earth, and are reflected and refracted at each lithostratigraphic boundary. Those reflected waves are recorded by sensors near the surface within a defined time period, and are subsequently processed in order to image the subsurface structures, predict the types of rocks encountered and determine the presence of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). With the progress of exploration and production, the petroleum industry has moved into exploring fields that have ever more complex geological structures, such as the salt deposits in the Nordkapp Basin in the Norwegian Barents Sea and pre-salt discoveries in the Santos Basin in Brazil. The conventional seismic processing and imaging methods have challenges with the quality of resolution, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or accuracy of the image in such geological scenarios. This thesis focuses on the development of improved high-resolution seismic imaging techniques, in combination with the iterative, 3D velocity model-building approach, in order to address velocity modelling and depth imaging in complex geological scenarios. As a result of this work, three main contributions have been made to improved seismic imaging: (1) A fast and robust seismic wavefront, or Common-Reflection-Surface (CRS), attributes estimation method in CRS stacking to provide improved SNR in seismic images of complex subsurface geological structures. (2) An improved Fourier mixed-domain prestack depth migration technique to image vertical transversely-isotropic (VTI) media with large lateral contrasts and complex structures. (3) A new time-migration velocity estimation algorithm using nonlinear mapping of seismic wavefront attributes based on the kinematic time migration and demigration schemes.

Auditory alerts and driving : Susceptibility to audio during (automated) driving

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:33:15 +0100

This thesis investigated susceptibility of the human brain to auditory signals under different (driving) conditions and the ability of humans to act on alerts in specific contexts In Part I, three experiments were conducted to answer the main question: “How susceptible are humans to auditory stimuli?” To answer this question, we measured electroencephalogram (EEG) Event-Related Potential (ERP) responses in an oddball paradigm in (automated) driving tasks and cognitive load inducing tasks. The main finding was that automated driving and cognitive load inducing tasks can both reduce susceptibility to auditory alerts. Given this observation that auditory susceptibility is sometimes reduced and, more generally, to explore ways to support accurate human behavior while driving, in Part II, we explored interventions that might alleviate the associated potential problems. In the first experiment, we introduced early warnings, or pre-alerts, to allow drivers to anticipate a later acute imperative alert for an upcoming transition of control from the car to the human driver. The results showed that pre-alerts can support safer transitions of control. In the second experiment, we tested an intervention where visual in-car warnings were presented to indicate an upcoming, necessary lane change. Results showed that, on average, drivers were able to change lanes in time. However, at the same time, there are occasionally some drivers that did not respond in a timely manner.

Passenger well-being in highly automated vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:27:56 +0100

Technical advances in vehicle automation make highly automated driving a realistic possibility within the next decade. With higher levels of vehicle automation, the driver will be able to transfer the driving task and supervision to the vehicle for extended periods and can engage in non-driving related tasks. The different driver/passenger behavior will change user requirements for automated vehicles and may increase the importance of a holistic view of the passengers’ experience in an automated vehicle. One way to view the automated driving experience more holistically from a passenger perspective is to focus on passenger well-being. This work investigates the concept of passenger well-being in automated driving and explores reliable and valid subjective and objective measures to gauge passenger well-being in study settings and during real-world automated driving experiences. Based on these findings and prior findings in transportation research, a model of determinants of passenger well-being is developed. Empirical user studies are utilized to investigate the role of each element. The resulting model considers physical and technical features that affect passenger well-being through a dual processing mechanism. The features may have a direct effect (peripheral pro-cessing) or a mediated effect (central processing) on passenger well-being. Nine passenger needs categorized as utilitarian or hedonic needs act as mediators depending on the features. The impact of features on passenger well-being is further moderated by non-driving related tasks engaged in during the drive and by passenger characteristics. The resulting model is partially validated with two empirical studies. The model of determinants of passenger well-being in automated driving provides a framework for a user-centered development of automated vehicles. Further, this work yields implications and recommendations for the design of such vehicles.

How Certain Are You of Getting a Parking Space? : A deep learning approach to parking availability prediction

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:32:30 +0100

Traffic congestion is a severe problem in urban areas and it leads to the emission of greenhouse gases and air pollution. In general, drivers lack knowledge of the location and availability of free parking spaces in urban cities. This leads to people driving around searching for parking places, and about one-third of traffic congestion in cities is due to drivers searching for an available parking lot. In recent years, various solutions to provide parking information ahead have been proposed. The vast majority of these solutions have been applied in large cities, such as Beijing and San Francisco. This thesis has been conducted in collaboration with Knowit and Dukaten to predict parking occupancy in car parks one hour ahead in the relatively small city of Linköping. To make the predictions, this study has investigated the possibility to use long short-term memory and gradient boosting regression trees, trained on historical parking data. To enhance decision making, the predictive uncertainty was estimated using the novel approach Monte Carlo dropout for the former, and quantile regression for the latter. This study reveals that both of the models can predict parking occupancy ahead of time and they are found to excel in different contexts. The inclusion of exogenous features can improve prediction quality. More specifically, we found that incorporating hour of the day improved the models’ performances, while weather features did not contribute much. As for uncertainty, the employed method Monte Carlo dropout was shown to be sensitive to parameter tuning to obtain good uncertainty estimates.

Psychological processes in the formation and calibration of trust in automation

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:33:53 +0100

Fuel-Efficient Look-Ahead Control for Heavy-Duty Vehicles with Varying Velocity Demands

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:34:08 +0100

The fuel consumption of heavy-duty vehicles can be reduced by using information about the upcoming road section when controlling the vehicles. Most manufacturers of heavy-duty vehicles today offer such look-ahead controllers for highway driving, where the information consists of the road grade and the velocity only has small variations. This thesis considers look-ahead control for applications where the velocity of the vehicle has large variations, such as distribution vehicles or vehicles in mining applications. In such conditions, other look-ahead information is important, for instance legal speed limits and curvature. Fuel-efficient control is found by formulating and solving the driving missions as optimal control problems. First, it is shown how look-ahead information can be used to set constraints in the optimal control problems. A velocity reference from a driving cycle is modified to create an upper and a lower bound for the allowed velocity, denoted the velocity corridor. In order to prevent the solution of the optimal control problem from deviating too much from a normal way of the driving, statistics derived from data collected during live truck operation are used when formulating the constraints. It is also shown how curvature and speed limits can be used together with actuator limitations and driveability considerations to create the velocity corridor. Second, a vehicle model based on forces is used to find energy-efficient velocity control. The problem is first solved using Pontryagin's maximum principle to find the energy savings for different settings of the velocity corridor. The problem is then solved in a receding horizon fashion using a model predictive controller to investigate the influence of the control horizon on the energy consumption. The phasing and timing of traffic lights are then added to the available information to derive optimal control when driving in the presence of traffic lights. Third, the vehicle model is extended to include powertrain components in two different approaches. In a first approach, a Boolean variable is added to represent open or closed powertrain. This enables the vehicle to freewheel, in order to save fuel by reducing the losses due to engine drag. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer quadratic program. In a second approach, the full powertrain is modeled including a fuel map and a model of the gearbox losses, both based on measurements on real components. The problem is solved using dynamic programming, with transitions between states including gear shifts, freewheeling, and coasting in gear. Forth, the optimal control framework is used to implement an optimal control-based powertrain controller in a real Scania truck. The problem is first solved offline resulting in trajectories for velocity and freewheeling. These are used online in the vehicle as references to the existing controllers for torque and gear demands. Experiments are performed with fuel measurements, resulting in 16% fuel savings, compared to 18% savings by solving the optimal control problem. Bränsleförbrukningen för tunga fordon kan sänkas genom att använda information om framtida vägförhållanden för att styra fordonen. De flesta fordonstillverkare erbjuder idag prediktiva farthållare för motorvägskörning, där information består av data för väglutning och fordonets hastighet endast har små variationer. Denna avhandling behandlar körfall där hastighetsvariationerna är stora, som för t.ex. fordon i distributionsdrift eller gruvfordon. För sådana fordon är andra typer av information viktiga, som t.ex. hastighetsbegränsningar och kurvatur. Genom att formulera köruppdraget som ett optimalt styrproblem, tas bränsleeffektiv styrning fram. För det första visas hur framförhållningsinformation kan användas för att sätta bivillkor i det optimala styrproblemet. Utifrån en hastighetsreferens från en körcykel skapas en hastighetskorridor, vilken består av en övre och en undre gräns för den tillåtna hastigheten. För att förhindra att hastigheten i lösning avviker för mycket från ett normalt körsätt används data från verklig lastbilskörning när bivillkoren sätts. Här visas också hur kurvatur och hastighetsbegränsningar kan användas tillsammans med begränsningar på fordonets aktuatorer och anpassning för körbarhet när hastighetskorridoren skapas. För det andra används en fordonsmodell baserad på krafter för att hitta energiminimerande hastighetsstyrning. Styrproblemet löses med hjälp av Pontryagins maximum princip för att undersöka energibesparingarna för olika inställningar på hastighetskorridoren. Problemet formuleras sedan på receding-horizon form och en modellprediktiv regulator används för att undersöka horisontlängdens inverkan på energiförbrukningen. Tid och fas för trafikljus läggs sedan till den tillgängliga informationen för att hitta den optimala körstrategin vid körning bland trafikljus. För det tredje utökas fordonsmodellen till att innehålla drivlinekomponenter via två olika ansatser. I den första ansatsen används en Boleansk variabel för att representera huruvida drivlinan är öppen eller stängd. Detta gör att fordonet kan frirulla, vilket sparar bränsle genom att minska släpförlusterna i motorn. Problemet formuleras som ett blandat kvadratiskt heltalsproblem. I den andra ansatsen modelleras hela drivlinan, med en bränslemussla för motorn och förlustmodell för växellådan baserade på tidigare mätningar. Problemet löses genom dynamisk programmering med övergångar mellan tillstånd genom växlingar, frirullning och släpning. För det fjärde används optimal styrning för att implementera en regulator för drivlinestyrning i en Scania-lastbil. Problemet löses först offline, vilket ger trajektorier för hastighet och frirullning. Dessa används sedan online i fordonet som referens till befintliga regulatorer för momentstyrning och växelval. Experiment med bränslemätning ger 16% uppmätt bränslebesparing mot 18% besparing från lösningen till det optimala styrproblemet. "p"QC 20200518

Using Unreal Engine as an engineering tool for traffic simulation and analysis

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:48:49 +0100

This project studies the aggravating problem of road traffic and congestion, and some of its solutions: autonomous cars and traffic simulation software. Unreal Engine is presented as a new option for simulating a traffic environment. An application is programmed that allows the user to create and edit roadtracks by clicking and dragging in the editor, along with autonomous vehicle models to populate them with. The simulator is tested using different scenarios and obtaining relevant data. Finally, the obtained conclusions are mentioned, along with ideas and guidelines for future developmen

Probabilistic Motion Planning for Automated Vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:52:10 +0100

This thesis targets the problem of motion planning for automated vehicles. As a prerequisite for their on-road deployment, automated vehicles must show an appropriate and reliable driving behavior in mixed traffic, i.e. alongside human drivers. Besides the uncertainties resulting from imperfect perception, occlusions and limited sensor range, also the uncertainties in the behavior of other traffic participants have to be considered. Related approaches for motion planning in mixed traffic often employ a deterministic problem formulation. The solution of such formulations is restricted to a single trajectory. Deviations from the prediction of other traffic participants are accounted for during replanning, while large uncertainties lead to conservative and over-cautious behavior. As a result of the shortcomings of these formulations in cooperative scenarios and scenarios with severe uncertainties, probabilistic approaches are pursued. Due to the need for real-time capability, however, a holistic uncertainty treatment often induces a strong limitation of the action space of automated vehicles. Moreover, safety and traffic rule compliance are often not considered. Thus, in this work, three motion planning approaches and a scenario-based safety approach are presented. The safety approach is based on an existing concept, which targets the guarantee that automated vehicles will never cause accidents. This concept is enhanced by the consideration of traffic rules for crossing and merging traffic, occlusions, limited sensor range and lane changes. The three presented motion planning approaches are targeted towards the different predominant uncertainties in different scenarios, while operating in a continuous action space. For non-interactive scenarios with clear precedence, a probabilistic approach is presented. The problem is modeled as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). In contrast to existing approaches, the underlying assumption is that the prediction of the future progression of the uncertainty in the behavior of other traffic participants can be performed independently of the automated vehicle's motion plan. In addition to this prediction of currently visible traffic participants, the influence of occlusions and limited sensor range is considered. Despite its thorough uncertainty consideration, the presented approach facilitates planning in a continuous action space. Two further approaches are targeted towards the predominant uncertainties in interactive scenarios. In order to facilitate lane changes in dense traffic, a rule-based approach is proposed. The latter seeks to actively reduce the uncertainty in whether other vehicles willingly make room for a lane change. The generated trajectories are safe and traffic rule compliant with respect to the presented safety approach. To facilitate cooperation in scenarios without clear precedence, a multi-agent approach is presented. The globally optimal solution to the multi-agent problem is first analyzed regarding its ambiguity. If an unambiguous, cooperative solution is found, it is pursued. Still, the compliance of other vehicles with the presumed cooperation model is checked, and a conservative fallback trajectory is pursued in case of non-compliance. The performance of the presented approaches is shown in various scenarios with intersecting lanes, partly with limited visibility, as well as lane changes and a narrowing without predefined right of way.

Enhancing Geospatial Preparedness for Disaster Management through the work of development organisations

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:53:48 +0100

thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management Depending on the complexity of a disaster and the local capacities, international organizations and multidisciplinary response teams might be involved in the response. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used for coordination and information sharing. However, geospatial preparedness is necessary: reliable up to date geodata, tools, and people with the knowledge to use those tools. In least-developed countries the lack of geospatial preparedness, particularly geospatial pre-disaster information, hinders disaster response. In those places, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs creates a framework for cooperation with the Coordinated Data Scramble Initiative where Information Management Officers (IMOs) from different organisations are supported by volunteers and technical communities to provide ad-hoc datasets and infrastructure to use GIS. Nevertheless, long-term solutions are needed. Before the disaster, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) might already be using GIS to implement development projects. Based on the theoretical concept of disaster management and development as a learning circle, this investigation proposes the engagement of development NGOS working in disaster-prone areas to enhance geospatial preparedness. The research was based on a multi-method approach including the study of the body of literature, authoritative reports, and repositories and databases, monitorization of the tools used during responses to real emergencies, and semi-structured interviews to IMOs. Finally, the study concluded with an online survey with a worldwide sample of more than 200 development NGOs. The result show that disaster response requires reliable and up to date geodata which is not always the case. Humanitarian missions often rely on OpenStreetMap as a source of information to overcome this limitation. Therefore, improving OpenStreetMap would improve geospatial preparedness. Many development NGOs use digital geographic information, mostly open-data. They could indeed improve geospatial preparedness allowing community empowerment while conveying relevant pre-disaster datasets to the humanitarian missions. This bottom-up approach would allow for the inclusion of information relevant to the community in the disaster response decision-making process. There is, however, a limitation; most of these development NGOs are not familiar with the platform used by the humanitarian community (i.e., OpenStreetMap). Therefore, the sustainability of this synergic approach requires further harmonization between development and humanitarian organizations working for the wellbeing of the same communitie

Transition Towards Fixed-Line Autonomous Bus Transportation Systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:55:17 +0100

In the last years the steady development of autonomous driving technology has enabled the deployment of more mature autonomous vehicles. These vehicles have been applied in several pilot projects worldwide, most commonly in the form of small buses. At the same time, the amount of people traveling in especially urban areas is continuously growing, resulting in more trips in the transportation system. An efficient transportation system is therefore required to serve the growing passenger demand. Autonomous buses (AB) are assumed to have lower operational costs and with that public transport (PT) systems can potentially be designed more efficiently to facilitate the increased demand better. In this study, an AB specific simulation-based optimization framework is proposed which allows analyzing the impacts AB have on line-based PT systems. The thesis focuses on the transition from existing PT systems towards line-based PT systems operated partially or exclusively by AB. Existing work on PT service design is extended so that realistic AB systems can be investigated. This is achieved by (i) using AB specific operator cost formulations, (ii) integrating infrastructure costs required for AB operations, (iii) utilizing a dynamic, stochastic and schedule-based passenger assignment model for the simulation of PT networks and by (iv) formulating a multi-objective optimization problem allowing to investigate the stakeholder-specific impacts of AB. In Paper I the effects of AB, concerning service frequency and vehicle capacity, on fixed-line PT networks are investigated. Among other metrics, the changes are evaluated based on differences in level of service and passenger flow. Additionally, the sequential introduction of AB in existing PT systems is studied. The framework addresses a case study in Kista, Sweden. The study confirmed the initial hypothesis that the deployment of AB leads to an increase in service frequency and a marginal reduction in vehicle capacity. Furthermore, it could be seen that the deployment of AB increases the passenger load on AB lines and that passengers can shift from other PT modes towards the AB services. Paper II incorporates a multi-objective heuristic optimization algorithm in the simulation framework. The study investigates changes in transport network design based on the deployment of AB. The differences in user-focused and operator-focused network design are analyzed and the impact of AB on these is quantified. This study is applied to a case study in Barkarby, Sweden where a full-sized, line-based PT network is designed to exclusively operate AB. Among other findings, we show that the autonomous technology reduces the number of served bus stops and reduces the total PT network size. Additionally, average passenger waiting time can be reduced when deploying AB on user-focused PT networks, which in turn leads to a further reduction of user cost. De senaste årens framsteg inom autonom körteknik har lett till mer mogna autonoma fordon. Dessa fordon har setts tillämpas i flera pilotprojekt över hela världen, oftast i form av små bussar. Samtidigt växer mängden människor som reser, särskilt i stadsområden, kontinuerligt vilket resulterar i fler resor i transportsystemet. Därför krävs ett effektivt transportsystem för att tillgodose det växande antalet passagerare. Autonoma bussar (AB) antas ha lägre driftskostnader och därmed kan system för kollektivtrafik (public transport, PT) potentiellt utformas mer effektivt för att underlätta den ökade efterfrågan bättre. I denna studie föreslås ett AB-specifikt simuleringsbaserat optimeringsramverk som gör det möjligt att analysera effekterna AB har på linjebaserade PT-system. Avhandlingen fokuserar på övergången från befintliga PT-system till linjebaserade PT-system som delvis eller uteslutande drivs av AB. Befintligt arbete med PT-tjänstdesign utvidgas så att realistiska AB-system kan undersökas. Detta uppnås genom att (i) använda AB-specifika operatörskostnadsformuleringar, (ii) integrera infrastrukturkostnader som krävs för AB-verksamhet, (iii) använda en dynamisk, stokastisk och schemabaserad modell för att tilldela passagerare vid simulering av PT-nät samt genom att (iv) formulera ett multifunktionellt optimeringsproblem som gör det möjligt att undersöka AB: s intressespecifika effekter. I artikel I undersöks effekterna av AB, med avseende på servicefrekvens och fordonskapacitet, på fasta linjer i PT-nät. Förändringar utvärderas bland annat utifrån skillnader i servicenivå och passagerarflöde. Dessutom studeras den sekventiella introduktionen av AB i befintliga PT-system. Det föreslagna ramverket tillämpas på en fallstudie i Kista, Sverige. Studien bekräftade den initiala hypotesen att utplaceringen av AB leder till en ökning av servicefrekvensen och en marginell minskning av fordonens kapacitet. Vidare kunde man se att utplaceringen av AB ökar passagerarbelastningen på AB-linjer och att passagerare kan skifta från andra PT-former mot AB-tjänsterna. Artikel II integrerar en multifunktionell heuristisk optimeringsalgoritm i ramverket för simuleringen. Studien undersöker förändringar i transportnätverkets design baserat på implementeringen av AB. Skillnaderna i användarfokuserad och operatörsfokuserad nätverksdesign analyseras och AB: s inverkan på dessa kvantifieras. Denna studie tillämpas på en fallstudie i Barkarby, Sverige, där ett fullstort linjebaserat PT-nät är utformat för att exklusivt driva AB. Vi visar bland annat att den autonoma tekniken reducerar antalet använda busshållplatser och reducerar den totala PT-nätstorleken. Dessutom kan implementeringen av AB på användarfokuserade PT-nät ytterligare förbättra servicenivån främst genom att minska den genomsnittliga väntetiden per passagerare.

Contributions to sustainable urban transport : decision support for alternative mobility and logistics concepts

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:58:30 +0100

Increasing transport activities in cities are a substantial driver for congestion and pollution, influencing urban populations’ health and quality of life. These effects are consequences of ongoing urbanization in combination with rising individual demand for mobility, goods, and services. With the goal of increased environmental sustainability in urban areas, city authorities and politics aim for reduced traffic and minimized transport emissions. To support more efficient and sustainable urban transport, this cumulative dissertation focuses on alternative transport concepts. For this purpose, scientific methods and models of the interdisciplinary information systems domain combined with elements of operations research, transportation, and logistics are developed and investigated in multiple research contributions. Different transport concepts are examined in terms of optimization and acceptance to provide decision support for relevant stakeholders. In more detail, the overarching topic of urban transport in this dissertation is divided into the complexes urban mobility (part A) in terms of passenger transport and urban logistics (part B) with a focus on the delivery of goods and services. Within part A, approaches to carsharing optimization are presented at various planning levels. Furthermore, the user acceptance of ridepooling is investigated. Part B outlines several optimization models for alternative urban parcel and e-grocery delivery concepts by proposing different network structures and transport vehicles. Conducted surveys on intentional use of urban logistics concepts give valuable hints to providers and decision makers. The introduced approaches with their corresponding results provide target-oriented support to facilitate decision making based on quantitative data. Due to the continuous growth of urban transport, the relevance of decision support in this regard, but also the understanding of the key drivers for people to use certain services will further increase in the future. By providing decision support for urban mobility as well as urban logistics concepts, this dissertation contributes to enhanced economic, social, and environmental sustainability in urban areas.

System for improvement of the QoE in public transportation

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:59:32 +0100

Due to the increase of the greenhouse effect and consequent climate changes, over the years, plans for reducing carbon emissions have been presented and discussed. One of the best ways for reducing and neutralizing carbon emissions is to use of collective transports, which is also one of the most accessible forms of contribution for the general public. However, it is not always simple or appealing. Therefore, one of the main goals of this work was to contribute in reducing the carbon emissions and to increase the sustainability of the urban areas. With that purpose in mind, a system that provides real-time information to the user was implemented, in order to encourage more people to use public transportation — and its impact was measured. The selected information was the following: real-time location of the bus, estimated time of arrival of the bus, route mapping, information about each stop. This information is presented to the user through dynamic signaling at main stops and internet services for computers and mobile phones. The developed work, in order to achieve the objectives mentioned, was to create a complete system of real-time information for public transportation in the Centro Region of Portugal, including a mobile app, a website and the backend for all the service and communications. The impact was measured by conducting surveys, presenting the project to the common population on an early state and, posteriorly, demonstrating and encouraging the use of the functional prototype. Devido ao aumento do efeito de estufa e consequentes alterações climáticas, ao longo dos anos, têm-se vindo a apresentar e a debater planos para a redução das emissões de carbono. Um dos caminhos indicados para a redução e neutralização do carbono é o uso de transportes coletivos, sendo também uma das formas de contribuição mais acessível ao público geral. Porém, nem sempre é algo simples ou apelativo. Assim, um dos grandes objetivos deste trabalho foi contribuir para reduzir as emissões de carbono e aumentar a sustentabilidade nas áreas urbanas. Com este propósito em mente, foi implementado um sistema que fornece informação ao utilizador em tempo real, de forma a encorajar mais pessoas a utilizarem os transportes públicos — e o impacto final foi medido. A informação selecionada foi a seguinte: localização em tempo real do autocarro, tempo estimado de chegada do autocarro, mapa da rota, informação sobre cada paragem. Esta informação é apresentada ao utilizador através de sinalização dinâmica nas paragens principais e de serviços de internet para computador e telemóvel. O trabalho desenvolvido, de forma a atingir os objetivos mencionados, consistiu em criar um sistema em tempo real completo para transportes públicos na Região Centro de Portugal, incluindo uma aplicação móvel, um website e um servidor backend para estabelecer os serviços e comunicações. O impacto foi medido através de inquéritos, apresentando o projeto à população numa fase inicial e, posteriormente, demonstrando e incentivando o uso do protótipo funcional. Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

Parking management in smart built environment: Evaluation of METU Campus

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:00:54 +0100

With the ever-increasing number of vehicles and technological advancements, transportation-related social problems are addressed with more systematic and smarter solutions, as a part of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) services. Parking management is an ITS application area, where limited parking capacities can be efficiently and fairly utilized by more road users. However, detection of the true nature of parking demand and supply limits as well as the expected response to any policies and technology tools to be employed, is necessary prerequisite step. Middle East Technical University (METU) campus is a built environment that suffers from parking-related problems due to limited parking supply capacity despite the increase in the demand. Thus, parking violations have been increasing lately due to high number of cars in the campus. Besides the negative environmental impacts, parking violations have started to threaten the flow and safety of the campus traffic due to traffic congestion and loss of road network capacity at critic locations. This thesis focuses on estimation of the type and level of parking utilization and violations in METU Campus, so that smart parking management strategies can be recommended for development of a more sustainable campus transportation policies. Smart parking management requires an understanding of land use, parking supply and demand, driver needs, behaviors, and perception of the commuters, in the scope of parking management. Thus , within the study, parking space inventory, parking survey were conducted and a smart campus transportation survey was utilized. After this comprehensive evaluation, a campus-wide parking management strategy plan that promote smart mobility within the campus was proposed within the campus, in 7 stages . In addition, a regional strategy plan, including the locations, and application of the proposed parking pricing strategy, and the areas where parking should be prohibited, has been created. Giderek artan araç sayısı ve teknolojik gelişmelerle birlikte, ulaşımla ilgili sosyal problemler; Akıllı Ulaşım Sistemleri’nin bir parçası olan sistematik ve akıllı çözümlerle ele alınmalıdır. Park yönetimi, sınırlı otopark kapasitelerinin daha fazla yol kullanıcısı tarafından verimli ve adil bir şekilde kullanılabildiği Akıllı Ulaşım Sistemleri uygulama alanıdır. Ancak; otopark arzının ve parklanma talebinin kapsamının, ayrıca kullanılacak olan herhangi politika ve teknolojik ürüne verilmesi beklenen karşılığın belirlenmesi gerekli ön şarttır. Yapılı çevre olan Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (ODTÜ) kampüsü parklanmaya olan talebin artmasına rağmen, içerisindeki park yeri kapasitesinin sınırlı olmasından dolayı, parklanma ile ilgili problemlerle yüzleşmektedir. Son zamanlarda park ihlalleri, kampüste araç sayısının fazlalığından dolayı artmaktadır. Olumsuz çevresel etkilerin yanı sıra park ihlalleri; kritik konumlarda trafik sıkışıklığı ve karayolu ağı kapasitesinin kaybı oluşturması nedeniyle. kampüs trafiğinin akışını ve güvenliğini azaltmaya başlamıştır. M.S. - Master of Science

Méthodes d'optimisation basée sur la simulation pour le covoiturage dynamique

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:04:59 +0100

The main goal of this dissertation is to answer one of the critical questions about dynamic ride-sharing services: Can dynamic ride-sharing reduce congestion? In this thesis, we propose a simulation-based optimization framework for dynamic ridesharing. Then using this framework, we assess the dynamic ride-sharing impact on two different network scales to find the answer to this question. When assessing the dynamic ride-sharing problem, two important points should be considered. First, how the ridesharing system serves the network demand and second, how the ride-sharing system is impacted by the network and in particular by congestion. Then we can assess the impact of such a service on the network. Most of the existing approaches focus on the first point, i.e., designing the demand matching while using basic assumptions for the second point, mainly constant travel times. The proposed method in this thesis can outperform the existing methods in the literature. The optimization algorithm can provide high-quality solutions in a short time. Our solution approach is designed to be exact for small samples. Then, to be able to handle the large-scale problems, it is extended with several heuristics that keep the general design for the solution method but significantly reduce its computation time. In the simulation component, a "Plant Model" is applied based on the "Trip-based Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD)" to represent the traffic dynamics reality and a "Prediction Model" is applied based on the mean-speed to be used during the assignment process. We perform an extensive simulation study (based on real-world traffic patterns) to assess the influence of dynamic ride-sharing systems on traffic congestion. In the medium-scale (Lyon 6 + Villeurbanne), the results showed that ride-sharing could not significantly improve the traffic situation. High levels of market-share add additional travel distance and travel time to the trips and lead to more traffic in the network. In large cities, the results are entirely different from those in small and medium-sized cities. In large-scale (Lyon city in France) simulations, the proposed dynamic ride-sharing system can significantly improve traffic conditions, especially during peak hours. Increasing the market-share and the number of sharing can enhance this improvement. Therefore, the proposed dynamic ride-sharing system is a viable option, alleviating stress on existing public transport, to reduce the network traffic in populated and large-scale cities.; The main goal of this dissertation is to answer one of the critical questions about dynamic ride-sharing services: Can dynamic ride-sharing reduce congestion? In this thesis, we propose a simulation-based optimization framework for dynamic ridesharing. Then using this framework, we assess the dynamic ride-sharing impact on two different network scales to find the answer to this question. When assessing the dynamic ride-sharing problem, two important points should be considered. First, how the ridesharing system serves the network demand and second, how the ride-sharing system is impacted by the network and in particular by congestion. Then we can assess the impact of such a service on the network. Most of the existing approaches focus on the first point, i.e., designing the demand matching while using basic assumptions for the second point, mainly constant travel times. The proposed method in this thesis can outperform the existing methods in the literature. The optimization algorithm can provide high-quality solutions in a short time. Our solution approach is designed to be exact for small samples. Then, to be able to handle the large-scale problems, it is extended with several heuristics that keep the general design for the solution method but significantly reduce its computation time. In the simulation component, a "Plant Model" is applied based on the "Trip-based Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD)" to represent the traffic dynamics reality and a "Prediction Model" is applied based on the mean-speed to be used during the assignment process. We perform an extensive simulation study (based on real-world traffic patterns) to assess the influence of dynamic ride-sharing systems on traffic congestion. In the medium-scale (Lyon 6 + Villeurbanne), the results showed that ride-sharing could not significantly improve the traffic situation. High levels of market-share add additional travel distance and travel time to the trips and lead to more traffic in the network. In large cities, the results are entirely different from those in small and medium-sized cities. In large-scale (Lyon city in France) simulations, the proposed dynamic ride-sharing system can significantly improve traffic conditions, especially during peak hours. Increasing the market-share and the number of sharing can enhance this improvement. Therefore, the proposed dynamic ride-sharing system is a viable option, alleviating stress on existing public transport, to reduce the network traffic in populated and large-scale cities.

User Acceptance of Automated Vehicles in Public Transport

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:12:18 +0100

The acceptance of automated vehicles is a necessary condition for realizing the benefits of road vehicle automation. The objective of the thesis was to examine the acceptance of automated vehicles feeding public transport. The thesis investigated the factors contributing to user acceptance, as well as the interrelations of those factors. It was also investigated how acceptance differs across socio-demographic groups and countries. Online questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, a systematic literature review, and accompanied test rides were performed. Participants were asked to imagine the use of automated vehicles (Chapter 2) or physically experienced them in mixed traffic environments in Berlin (Germany) and Trikala (Greece) (Chapters 3–5, 7–8)....

Advantages of pre-cast concrete in airport construction

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:15:44 +0100

refabrication in infrastructural development with a focus on airport construction and its necessity for the project's short duration. The technology of precast panels is explained in the first part of the thesis including the specifics of different areas (structures) of the airports and their various needs. A comparison between precast and cast-in-place methods is performed regarding the construction time and financial aspects. Case study of the planned expansion and a hypothetical reconstruction at the Barcelona El Prat airport is analyzed and consequent conclusions and recommendations are made. Incoming

Raisonnement sémantique pour une plateforme d’assistance intelligente orienté bien-être et santé numérique

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:25:51 +0100

Connected objects of everyday living have made their way into our lives. Known as Internet of Things, the various technologies inspire a vast variety of applications. One of the pioneer applications is the concept and development of a smart home. This is now spreading outdoors; making vehicles, buildings, and even large cities smart. Moreover, the technology is getting more personal as well – as wearing smart clothes and other self-tracking devices become increasingly common and popular. This is often referred to as the quantified self.One particular case of a smart environment is ambient assisted living, which is designed to enhance elderly people’s day-to-day life. Such a ubiquitous and unobtrusive computer system can also be ported to other domains and age groups. For instance, the tracking of daily activities can also help younger adults to improve their lifestyle. Everyone can be encouraged to maintain a healthy lifestyle, perform sufficient physical activity, and make more informed decisions about their mobility. These are direct factors in preventing health risks, such as metabolic diseases like the type 2 diabetes, and allow a better control over respiratory diseases like the asthma.Driven by these ideas, this thesis explores the possibilities of a web-based platform with a semantic rule-based reasoning. The thesis details the work on technical improvements, enhancements in activity recognition, extensions for data analysis, and a mobility-oriented application.Following a user-centric approach, a real life deployment of the described technologies is necessary. Two use cases are examined. First, I enhanced and built upon a pre-existing system, which consists of sensors and a gateway placed into elderly participants' homes. The second use case is the deployment of a mobile phone application for active mobility assistance. Collecting relevant and timely data, the application then outputs a level of recommendation for every type of mobility. The recommendations are based on each user’s exercise tracking device, which incorporates their goals, their profiles, and other publicly available data sources such as weather and air quality.This thesis describes the outcomes and lessons learnt from these deployments. In addition, this thesis provides an in-depth discussion as well as analytical insights on the results of the deployments.; Les objets connectés de la vie courante ont trouvé leur chemin dans notre quotidien. Connu sous le terme d'Internet des choses, une pluralité de technologies inspire une vaste variété des cas d'utilisation. Une des applications innovatrices est le concept et le développement de la maison intelligente. Actuellement, ce concept est en train de s'étendre vers l'extérieur ; il rend futés des véhicules, bâtiments et même des villes entières. De plus, la technologie devient aussi plus personnelle - comme le port des vêtements futés et d'autres appareils pour l'autosurveillance personnelle devient de plus en plus courant et populaire. Ce phénomène est souvent appelée le soi quantifié.Un cas particulier de l'environnement futé est l'assistance à l'autonomie à domicile (ambient assisted living) conçue pour améliorer la qualité de la vie quotidienne des personnes âgées. Un tel système informatique, omniprésent et discret, peut être porté dans d'autres domaines et tranches d'âge. Par exemple, le suivi des activités du quotidien peut aider jeune adultes à améliorer leur mode de vie. Tout le monde peut être encouragé à maintenir un mode de vie sain, à exercer une activité physique suffisante et prendre les décisions fondées quant à la mobilité. Ce sont les facteurs direct contribuant à la prévention des risques de santé, tel que les maladies métaboliques comme le diabète de type 2 ; et permettent un meilleur maîtrise des maladies respiratoires comme l'asthme.Dirigée par ces idées, cette thèse explore les possibilités d'une plate-forme web avec un raisonnement sémantique basé sur les règles. La thèse détaille le travail sur les améliorations techniques, avancements dans la reconnaissance d'activités, les extensions pour l'analyse des données et une application orientée mobilité.Suivant l'approche centrée utilisateur, un déploiement dans les conditions réelles est necessary. Deux cas d'utilisation sont abordés. Le premier est l'amélioration du système existant, consistant des capteurs et d'une passerelle tous placés dans le domicile de la personne âgée. Le deuxième cas est le déploiement d'une application pour téléphones portables pour l'assistance à la mobilité active. En collectant les donnés relevantes et actuelles, l'application affiche un niveau de recommandation personnalisée pour chaque type de mobilité. Ces recommandations sont basées sur l'appareil de soi quantifié qui incorpore les objectifs personnels, le profil et autres données librement accessible, tel que la météo ou la qualité d'air.Cette thèse décrit les sorties et les leçons tirées des déploiements de ces technologies. Cette thèse apporte une discussion et des analyses des résultats de ces déploiements.

Evaluation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Control Using Traffic Simulation : A case study in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:29:33 +0100

One of the most significant urban transport problems is traffic congestion. All major cities both in developed and developing countries are facing the problem due to increasing travel demand caused by increasing urbanization and the attendant economic and population growth. Recognizing the growing burden of traffic congestion, community leaders and transportation planners in Addis Ababa are still actively promoting large-scale road constructions to alleviate traffic congestion. Although Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS) applications seem to have the potential to improve signalization performance, highly congested intersections in Addis Ababa are still controlled by a timed signal and manual operation. Moreover, these pre-timed signal controls are functioning sub-optimally as they are not being regularly monitored and updated to cope with varying traffic demands. Even though the benefits are well known theoretically, at the time of writing of this thesis, Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers (ATSC) haven’t been deployed in Ethiopia and no research has been conducted to demonstrate and quantify their effectiveness. This master’s research thesis, therefore, intends to fill the identified gap, by undertaking a microscopic traffic simulation investigation, to evaluate the benefits of adopting a Traffic-responsive Urban Control (TUC) strategy and optimizing traffic signal timings. For the purpose of this study, an oversaturated three-intersection test corridor located in the heart of Addis Ababa city is modeled in VISSIM using real-world traffic data. After validating the calibrated model, the corridor was evaluated with the existing pre-timed, TRANSYT optimized pre-timed plan and TUC strategy. Multiple simulation runs were then made for each scenario alternatives and various measures of effectiveness were considered in the evaluation process. Simulation evaluation has demonstrated an average delay reduction of 24.17% when the existing pre-timed alternative is compared to TRANSYT optimized plan and 35% when compared to the TUC strategy. Overall evaluation results indicate that deploying the TUC strategy and optimizing the aging pre-timed signal plans exhibits a significant flow improvement. It is expected that the result of the thesis work will be an input for future comprehensive policy development processes.

DEVELOPMENT OF A SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR A TYPICAL COLLEGE CAMPUS

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:35:34 +0100

Evaluation of different machine learning models for the prediction of electric or hybrid vehicle buyers and identification of the characteristics of the buyers in the EU

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:36:50 +0100

The main goal of this thesis is to evaluate different machine learning models in order to classify buyers of an electric or a hybrid vehicle and to identify the characteristics of the buyers in the European Union. Machine learning algorithms and techniques were adopted to analyze the dataset and to create models that could predict, with a certain accuracy, the customer’s willingness to buy an EV. Identification of the characteristics of the buyers were based on the identified most important features from the machine learning models and statistical analysis. The research consisted of exploratory and explanatory methods (mixed method) with quantitative and qualitative techniques. Quantitative technique was applied to convert categorical values to ordinal and nominal numeric values, to establish cause and effect relationship between the variables by using statistical analysis and to apply machine learning methods on the dataset. The quantitative results were then analyzed by using quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to identify the characteristics of the buyers. The data analytics part relied on a publicly available large dataset from the EU containing transport and mobility related data. From the experiments with logistics regression, support vector machine, random forest, gradient boosting classifier and the artificial neural network it was found that ANN is the best model to identify who won’t buy an EV and gradient boosting classifier is the best model to identify who would like to buy and EV. ML based feature importance identification methods (MDI, permutation feature importance) were used to analyze the characteristics of the buyers. The major buyer’s characteristics found in this thesis are environmental concern, knowledge on car sharing, country of residence, education, control traffic, gender, incentive, education and location of residence. Authors have recommended green marketing as the potential enablers towards a faster and larger adoption of electrical vehicles in the market as environmental impact was found as the most significant behavior of the buyer. Finally, for the future researchers, the authors have recommended fine-tuning the algorithms extensively in order to achieve better accuracy and to collect primary data based on the most important features identified in this thesis.

The impact of Thailand's high-speed railways (HSR) development plan on overnight stays in a tourism promotional city

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:37:24 +0100

A STUDY OF U.S. ROUTE 17-92 CORRIDOR, ORANGE CITY, FLORIDA

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:38:05 +0100

The City of Orange City, Florida is located approximately midway between Daytona Beach and Orlando, Florida. Therefore, it is directly situated in the mecca of Florida tourism. Orange City has had a long and rich history, including the st, Johns and Blue Springs which were the site of more Civil War battles than any other locality as well as having contained one of the most nationally renowned natural springs. In fact, Orange City once contained one of the largest orange groves. However, population surges in the City as well as surrounding Communities over the past forty years, has contributed to vast commercial development, and in turn greater automobile usage. This has resulted in increased highway travel, thereby impacting the primary highway traversing Orange City, namely us Route 17-92. The purpose of this study is to define precisely what the problems were affecting us Route 17-92, and in turn the quality of life in Orange City. An assessment of these problems were obtained through various sources, including discussions with Orange City and Volusia County staff. However, great insight was acquired from Orange City residents and business owners located along us Route 17-92, by means of two surveys. Information was obtained from Orange City residents through a telephone survey, and procured from businesses located on us Route 17-92 through a personally hand-delivered survey. From the findings of the above analysis, the following problems were identified; traffic congestion, high number of accidents, deteriorated City and County streets, unfriendly pedestrian environment and limited pedestrian amenities, as well as an unattractive appearance. The last problem included limited landscaping, vast unbuffered frontage oriented parking lots, haphazard commercial signage and unappealing City signage. After identifying these problems, the study formulated recommendations using the results of both the resident and business owners surveys. Three categories of recommendations were devised. First, recommendations to reduce the existing highway hazards. Second, recommendations to establish a pedestrian-friendly environment. Lastly, recommendations to address the aesthetics of the project area.

Selection factors for behavioral intention regarding electric vehicles in Norway

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:39:01 +0100

Master's thesis in Economics Norway has acted as a laboratory for electric vehicles. It has taken a leading role in the introduction of electric vehicles and the development of a sustainable electric vehicle market. According to a recent report from the Norwegian Electric Vehicles Association (NEVA), electric vehicles in Norway have enjoyed increasing sales of almost one-third per year. Given this staggering rise, the purpose of this study is to identify the variables that impact people’s intent on electric vehicle adoption in Norway. An online survey is conducted to determine the selection factors for the behavioral intentions of 280 individuals towards electric vehicles in Norway. Applying multiple regression analysis, the study finds that environmental concern, subjective norms, reception of economic benefits, and overall perception of electric vehicles have a statistically significant influence on people’s behavioral intention to buy an electric vehicle. The regression analysis concludes that the direct effect of the reception of economic benefit (β = 0.309) is more significant than the direct effect of subjective norms (β = 0.291) and the perception of electric vehicles (β = 0.241). Our findings provide a better understanding of Norwegian consumers’ motivations in buying electric vehicles and should guide the government, electric vehicle manufacturers, and investors in Norway to better marketing and incentivization decisions.

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION PLANNING IN SOUTHEASTERN CONNECTICUT: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE MAC

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:39:34 +0100

This project analyzed a regional transportation planning process in Southeastern Connecticut. For two years, the Multi-Modal Advisory Committee (known as the MAC) met, under the direction of a transportation consultant and a facilitator, to address the region ' s traffic congestion. Specifically, their efforts comprised a Major Investment Study (MIS) which is a predecessor to an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The MAC's goal was to reach consensus on which transportation alternatives the consultant should further study in the EIS. This group did not reach consensus. The study looked at two types of factors that may have affected the outcome of the MAC: internal factors and external factors. Internal factors are those which occurred during the process. This entailed an analysis of the groups' common understanding of the problem and objectives, the groups' defined expectations, member' s participation, and the role of the project team. The study found that the MAC lacked agreement on the problem at hand and on many aspects of the process. Additionally , the facilitator and project team did not appear to respond accordingly to address these problems. To assess the effects of external factors , the study analyzed the history of regional cooperation in the study area, regional capacity, power, local politics, and public influence on the process. The findings indicated that a lack of power and funding discouraged the members of the MAC. Also, the group could not separate other problems in the region from the process. The project concludes with recommendations for Southeastern Connecticut and future transportation planning processes. More time should be spent on clarifying the details during the process, such as definitions, evaluation criteria, and the scope of

What´s the extra mile for consumers´ adoption of electric vehicles? : a netnographic study on electric vehicles online communities

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:39:52 +0100

The progress of the global agenda for sustainable development, as well as increased concerns over climate change and global resource storage, are in the centre of this century discussions and concerns. Such concerns foster the demand for electric vehicles as these contribute to a more sustainable transportation system by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The present dissertation aims to study online communities of electric vehicles enthusiasts, understanding their attitudes, behaviours and opinions towards electric vehicles purchase intentions. Hence, netnography is considered the most appropriate qualitative research method to conduct this research. Results demonstrate that electric vehicles purchase intentions are affected by the consumers weighting of drivers, barriers, and mostly, perceived self-image. Further, this research shows that purchase intentions of electric vehicles are highly motivated by social influence. This study contributes to current academic discussion on the influential factors of this technology diffusion, unveiling interesting findings regarding the pre-eminence of perceived self-image and vehicle performance over environmental concerns, on purchase intentions. The desired change of behaviours and attitudes towards a more sustainable lifestyle, should be enticed at a societal level through Social Marketing. Governments should promote a more sustainable behaviour on the transportation paradigm by investing in the development of charging infrastructures and promoting the adoption of electric vehicles through stricter policies and incentives. Conspicuously, companies should leverage on governments actions and policies by advocating the futuristic and innovative technology, enhancing consumers perceived self-image to hasten electric vehicles diffusion O progresso da agenda global para o desenvolvimento sustentável e o armazenamento de recursos globais, estão no centro das discussões e preocupações deste século. Estas preocupações estão a fomentar a procura de veículos elétricos, uma vez que estes favorecem a redução de emissões de gases com efeito estufa e contribuem para um sistema de transporte mais sustentável. A presente dissertação visa, por isso, analisar comunidades online de entusiastas de veículos elétricos e compreender as suas atitudes, comportamentos e opiniões em relação às intenções de compra de veículos elétricos. Deste modo, netnografia é considerado o método de investigação qualitativo mais adequado para esta investigação. Os resultados demonstram que as intenções de compra de veículos elétricos são afetadas pela forma como os consumidores avaliam motivações, barreiras e percecionam autoimagem. Adicionalmente, as intenções de compra são fortemente motivadas pela influência social. Este estudo contribui para a atual discussão académica sobre os fatores influentes na difusão desta tecnologia, revelando a preeminência da perceção da autoimagem e do desempenho dos veículos em detrimento de preocupações ambientais na intenção de compra. A desejada mudança de comportamentos e atitudes para um estilo de vida mais sustentável deve ser fomentada através do Marketing Social. Os governos devem promover um comportamento mais sustentável no sistema de transporte, promovendo a adoção de veículos elétricos e investindo no desenvolvimento de infraestruturas de carregamento. Seguidamente, as empresas devem aproveitar as ações e políticas dos governos, promovendo tecnologia futurista e inovadora, potenciando a autoimagem dos consumidores para acelerar a difusão de veículos elétricos.

DESIGNING EFFECTIVE MESSAGES FOR INCREASING READINESS TO USE ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:41:09 +0100

The use of single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) has had a profound impact on human health and the environment. In order to change the impact our travel behavior has on both the environment and our health, change needs to occur at an individual level. The purpose of this study was to determine effective framing strategies that will encourage individuals to use alternative, or sustainable transportation (ST), i.e. commuting by means other than SOV, and to compare the efficacy of this intervention to that of a “green” eating (GE) intervention. Using the Transtheoretical model (TTM) and its key constructs, self-efficacy and decisional balance, data were collected from 134 undergraduate students at the University of Rhode Island measuring their attitudes towards ST and GE, respectively. The intervention consisted of a pretest survey, four educational modules, tailored messaging and finally, a posttest. Data from the pretest survey contained each participant’s Stage of Change reflecting attitudes toward ST and GE. After the pretest, participants were randomized into the GE group or the ST group. Participants in the GE and ST groups received educational modules over the course of three weeks. Between each educational module, participants received motivational messages tailored to their respective stage, as determined in the pretest. Results from tests revealed that there were small positive shifts in stages in each of the treatment groups as well as small increases in decisional balance and self-efficacy as a result of the ST intervention.

A traffic-based method for safety impact assessment of road vehicle automation

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:41:40 +0100

Identifying and evaluating the safety performance of road vehicle automation is one of the major challenges still to solve before market introduction of these functions. The assessment of these functions is highly challenging due to the increasing complexity of algorithms for environment perception and decision-making. In addition, the achievable level of safety is still an open question. To evaluate the achievable level of safety, this thesis introduces a new data-driven framework for safety impact assessment of road vehicle automation. The presented framework features human driver performance as a reference for assessment. The developed framework comprises a three-step approach: First, the effectiveness fields, the accidents and situations potentially addressed by the automated driving functions, are identified and clustered in the input data into driving scenarios. The considered driving scenarios are derived from the accident type catalogue built on decades of experience in accident research and thus covering all physically possible accident constellations. It is assumed that these accident constellations do not change with road vehicle automation, while their frequency of occurrence and their severity may change. Second, the change of frequency of occurrence of driving scenarios can be determined for mixed traffic conditions using traffic simulations with novel driver behaviour models representing human errors in the traffic simulations. In a third step, the change in severity within driving scenarios is assessed using human driver performance models as a reference. Simulator studies showed that human driver performance is based on feedforward control in incident situations while reaction time and reaction intensity are gamma-distributed in the selected driver population. The distinction of the human driving behaviour in these two models is particularly sensible as driver behaviour models influence the number, hence the frequency of incident driving scenarios, while driver performance models reflect the behaviour within an incident, thus the severity of a driving scenario. In consequence, this partitioning reflects the structure of the overall assessment approach. Finally, the resulting assessment of changed frequency and severity within the classified scenarios can be scaled-up by using accident statistics. The novel framework is exemplarily applied to investigate the level of safety of two different automated driving functions operating in motorway- and urban domain. This proves that the developed approach is applicable to automated driving functions of all automation levels (SAE 1- 5) and operation domains.

Simplified Life Cycle Assessment Approaches and Potential Impact Shifts

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:51:12 +0100

Road transport contributes to approximately one quarter of all EU greenhouse gas emissions and is the leading cause of air pollution in cities. There are significant measures aimed at the reduction of use phase environmental impacts; in the EU, these strategies focus on the decarbonisation of road transport, such as through the prioritization of low- and zero-emission vehicles. Electric vehicles are seen as one of the primary measures for reducing road transport impacts. However, the introduction of new technology includes new challenges throughout the vehicle life cycle, such as the need for critical raw materials, high-energy manufacturing, charging electricity, and waste management; this, in turn, leads to a risk of impact shifts between life cycle phases and impact categories. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one way to analyse environmental impacts. Applying LCA and life cycle thinking in research and industry allows for the detection of impact shifts and environmental sub-optimisation. A full LCA study is demanding in terms of both data collection efforts and user expertise requirements. The need to simplify the process and results of an assessment in order to support decision-making was identified in the early days of LCA development. There are numerous simplification approaches in LCA. Previously, the most prominent simplification terms were screening and streamlined LCA; now, a multitude of names and approaches have emerged. There is no consensus in the LCA community about LCA simplifications. In some cases, the line between what should be considered an LCA, simplified LCA or neither is fuzzy. The haphazard application of simplifications in LCA studies undermines the transparency and confidence in results. The aim of this thesis is to use the life cycle perspective guided by simplified LCA approaches to increase our understanding of the risk of impact shifts, resulting from measures to reduce vehicle environmental impacts. Four appended publications present five LCA studies of road vehicles. All appended studies are simplified using different approaches. The studies examine different impact reduction measures such as changing drivetrains, reducing particulate emissions from braking, and the scrapping of old vehicles. A fifth publication is a literature review that explores the common understanding of simplifications used in published LCA studies. The review identifies and investigates the types of simplifications used and discusses how these might be categorised. The appended LCA studies examine both impact shifts from one life cycle phase to another and between impact categories. It is difficult to determine whether a decrease in a life cycle phase or impact category could offset an increase in another and, therefore, to be able to determine if an impact shift is an acceptable compromise. New smart materials are expected to solve many environmental impact issues; however, there are risks associated with insufficient life cycle inventory data, limitations in knowledge about potential environmental impacts, and inefficient regulations covering new materials. The analysis of simplification approaches and case studies indicates that most simplifications are motivated by the lack of primary data. Additionally, study findings strengthen concerns about the significant inconsistency in LCA simplification terminology and how well approaches are described in individual studies. There is a need for a common simplification terminology and reporting standard. Due to the wide variety of purposes, scenarios, and products assessed, it is impossible to devise a one-size-fits-all approach for simplifications, especially if the aim is to identify potential impact shifts. Vägtransporter orsakar ungefär en fjärdedel av EUs totala utsläpp av växthusgaser och är den ledande orsaken till luftföroreningar i städer. Betydande åtgärder syftar till att minska användningsfasens miljöpåverkan. EUs strategier fokuserar på att minska vägtransporters koldioxidutsläpp, t.ex. genom att prioritera fordon med låga eller inga användning-utsläpp. Elektriska fordon ses som en av de främsta åtgärderna för att minska miljöpåverkan från vägtransport. Dock innebär introduktionen av ny teknik nya utmaningar längs fordonets livscykel, t.ex. behov av kritiska råmaterial, högenergiproduktion, ökad el-behov vid laddning och avfallshantering. Det finns en risk för förskjutning av miljöpåverkan mellan livscykelfaser och påverkanskategorier. Livscykelanalys (LCA) är ett sätt att analysera miljöpåverkan. Möjligheten att upptäcka förskjutning av miljöpåverkan och ineffektiva åtgärder för miljön är en anledning till att tillämpa LCA och livscykeltänkande inom forskning och industri. En fullständig LCA-studie kräver både betydande datainsamlingsinsatser och krav på användarexpertis. Behovet av att förenkla processen och utvärderingsresultaten för att stödja beslut identifierades redan tidigt under utvecklingen av LCA. Det finns en betydande mängd av LCA förenklingar. De mest framträdande förenklingstillvägagångssätten var tidigare ”screening” och ”streamlined” LCA, dessutom har en mängd andra namn och tillvägagångssätt dykt upp. Det finns ingen konsensus inom LCA-världen om hanteringen av LCA förenklingar. I vissa fall är gränsen luddig mellan vad som ska betraktas som en LCA, förenklad LCA och ingendera. Godtycklig tillämpning av förenklingar i LCA-studier undergräver transparensen och förtroendet för resultaten. Syftet med denna avhandling är att öka förståelsen för risken för förskjutning av miljöpåverkan, vid åtgärder för att minska fordonens påverkan, genom att använda livscykelperspektivet stödd av förenklad LCA. De fyra publikationerna inkluderar fem LCA-studier av vägfordon och fordonskomponenter. Alla fem studierna är förenklade genom olika tillvägagångssätt. Studierna undersöker olika miljöåtgärder så som att byta drivlina, minska partikelutsläpp vid bromsning och skrotning av gamla fordon. En femte publikation undersöker också den gemensamma förståelsen för LCA förenklingar, genom en litteraturöversikt av publicerade LCA-studier. Litteraturöversikten identifierade och undersökte vilka förenklingar som används och hur dessa skulle kunna kategoriseras. De inkluderade LCA-studierna exemplifierade både förskjutning av miljöpåverkan mellan livscykelfaser och påverkanskategorier. Det är svårt att avgöra om en minskning i en livscykelfas eller påverkanskategori kan kompensera för en ökning i en annan. Detta betyder att det är komplicerat att kunna avgöra om en förskjutning av miljöpåverkan är en acceptabel kompromiss. Nya smarta material förväntas vara lösningen för många miljöproblem. Det finns emellertid risker med otillräcklig LCI-data, kunskapsbegränsningar angående potentiella miljökonsekvenser och ineffektiva regler gällande nya material. Analysen av förenklingstillvägagångssätt och fallstudier indikerade att de flesta förenklingar styrdes av brist på primärdata. Dessutom stärktes anledningen till oro gällande den betydande inkonsekvens i LCA-förenklingsterminologin och hur väl tillvägagångssätten beskrivs i enskilda studier. Det finns ett behov av en gemensam terminologi och rapporteringsstandard för LCA förenklingstillvägagångssätt. På grund av studiers varierande syften, scenarier och analyserade produkter är det omöjligt att utforma ett generellt tillvägagångssätt för alla LCA förenklingar, särskilt om syftet är att identifiera potentiella förskjutningar av miljöpåverkan.

Comparing technologies and algorithms behind mapping and routing APIs for Electric Vehicles

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:00:02 +0100

The fast-developing industry of electric vehicles is growing, and so is the driver community, which puts pressure on the electric charging grid. The purpose of this thesis is to simplify for the drivers of electric cars to charge their cars during trips. The research questions investigated are” How do the technologies and algorithms behind navigation APIs differ from each other?” and “What information is provided by the charging station APIs and how do they collect data about new stations?”. Information for the thesis was collected by reading and analyzing both documentation and previous work, as well as by conducting experiments. The study was limited to purely electric vehicles. We created an application to conduct experiments on the API combination Mapbox and Open Charge Map, we call it ChargeX. We compare, TomTom, Tesla, Plugshare, Google Maps and ChargeX. The most common shortest-path algorithms are Dijkstra’s, A* and Bidirectional A*. They provide reasonable solutions to the shortest path problem. The algorithms can be improved by considering traffic flow, travel time and distance between origin and destination and apply it as weights on the edges. What has the largest impact on the final route is the choice of charging stations. The algorithm for picking charging stations can be optimized in several ways for example by considering real time availability information of the charging stations, prioritize highways, calculate the temperature and altitude impact on the battery or prioritize faster chargers such as superchargers for Tesla.

Simulation and optimization of a multi-agent system on physical internet enabled interconnected urban logistics.

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:06:00 +0100

Miljøpåvirkninger fra produksjon og bruk av hydrogen i maritim transport

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:10:56 +0100

I denne studien er hydrogen foreslått som et alternativt drivstoff for maritim transport. Miljøpåvirkninger fra å erstatte konvensjonelle fossile brensler i sjøtransport med hydrogen vurderes ved å utføre en livssyklusvurdering av hele transportlivssyklusen. Systemet dekker påvirkninger knyttet til både infrastruktur, fartøy og drivstoff. Bare fullstendige referanser av fyringsoljer, flytende naturgass og hydrogen har vært mulig å oppdrive og begrenser derfor studiet. Batterier blir også vurdert, men bare som en ekstra kraftgenererende enhet i hybridsystemer, da de har en mangel på energi per vektenhet sammenlignet med andre drivstoff. LCAen som er gjennomført i denne studien involverer flere påvirkningskategorier inkludert: forsuring, abiotisk uttømming (av fossilt brensel), overgjødsling, økotoksisitet (gjelder både ferskvann, sjø og land), globalt oppvarmingspotensial, menneskelig toksisitet, nedbryting av ozonlag og fotokjemisk oksidasjon. Energibruk for de forskjellige drivstoffene blir undersøkt ved beregning av kumulativt energibehov. Som resultatene antyder, kan erstatning av deler av den nåværende drivstoffblandingen i sjøtransport med hydrogen føre til en betydelig mindre innvirkning på miljøet. Nytten av å bruke hydrogen i sjøtransport er imidlertid sterkt avhengig av tilgangen til et rent drivstoff. Siden produksjonsnivåene er lave i tillegg til sikkerhetsrisikoer for bruk av hydrogen ombord på skip, er det nødvendig å fortsette å utvikle hydrogenteknologien på både en kostnadseffektiv og energieffektiv måte for å konkurrere med velutviklede teknologier. Masteroppgave i energi ENERGI399 MAMN-ENERG

Bus performance enhancement by means of the of traffic light control optimization

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:11:45 +0100

Second Life Batteries Faciliating Sustainable Transition in the Transport and Energy Sectors? : An Exploratory Field Study in Colombia

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:12:03 +0100

The increasing number of vehicles in Colombian cities have resulted in alarmingly low quality of air, further resulting in increasing health issues. One potential solution to this issue could be a shift from ICEVs (internal combustion engine vehicles) to EVs (electric vehicles). However, EVs in Colombia are still very expensive, an issue that needs to be addressed in order for the EV market to increase enough to be able address the issue of low air quality in cities. One way of overcoming these cost barriers could be through implementation of a market for SLB (second life batteries), meaning that a battery retired from usage in EVs would be remanufactured, resold and reused in another application. Through SLB, the owner cost of EVs could potentially be decreased. SLB could also help improve the case for nondispatchable renewable energy sources by providing low cost BESS (battery energy storage solutions). Thus, SLB has the potential to facilitate sustainable transition within both the transport and the energy sector. This thesis aims to assess the potential of SLB in Colombia. This is done through a literature review where the current state of SLB is investigated, several interviews with potential stakeholders for a SLB market in Colombia, and a techno-economic assessment of four potential BESS applications in Colombia. The literature review provides with current knowledge and state of SLB in general. The interviews provide important insight to potential stakeholders’ view on SLB for the specific case of Colombia. The techno-economic assessment includes a sensitivity analysis aiming to provide insights in which factors, such as e.g. battery purchasing price or charging cost, that that gives rise to the largest impact on feasibility of SLB. Findings from the interviews shows a strong collective commitment from the interviewees to working towards cleaner air, resulting in high engagement and collaborative efforts between stakeholders for the SLB case. The main issue highlighted by stakeholders regards technoeconomic uncertainties of SLB. Findings from the techno-economic assessment indicates that SLB is viable for larger applications such as BESS at solar farms, but not for smaller applications such as backup power in residential buildings. However, SLB is not deemed to be a game changer for either application, and there are still many uncertainties regarding both technological and economic aspects that needs to be further investigated. The sensitivity analysis shows that the factors resulting in the highest impact on feasibility of SLB is battery SOH (state of health) at the beginning of SLB usage, and battery and repurposing cost. It will be hard to address both of these factors simultaneously due to a higher SOH would render higher battery prices, and vice versa. The findings from the thesis shows that SLB can facilitate sustainable transition within both the transport and energy sectors but is not to be considered a game changer for these sectors. However, even though SLB’s contribution to sustainable transition is not revolutionary, it is still necessary from a sustainability perspective. Given the environmental footprint of EV batteries and the amount of hazardous waste retired EV batteries will give rise to, circular economy must be pursued. Det ökande antalet fordon i colombianska städer har resulterat i oroväckande låg luftkvalitet, vilket ytterligare resulterat i ökande hälsoproblem. En potentiell lösning på det problemet kan vara en övergång från ICEVs (förbränningsmotorfordon) till EV (elfordon). EVs i Colombia är fortfarande väldigt dyra, en fråga som måste adresseras för att EV-marknaden ska kunna öka tillräckligt för att kunna ge en inverkan på problemet med låg luftkvalitet i städer. Ett sätt att övervinna dessa kostnadshinder skulle kunna vara genom att implementera en marknad för SLB (second life-batterier), vilket innebär att ett batteri som bedömts inte längre uppfylla kraven för användning i EVs, och därmed byts ut, skulle kunna byggas om, säljas vidare och återanvändas i andra applikationer. Genom SLB kan ägarkostnaderna för EVs potentiellt sänkas. SLB skulle också kunna användas för att tillhandahålla billigare BESS (batterilagringslösningar) hos icke-reglerbara förnyelsebara kraftverk, såsom solkraftverk. Således har SLB potentialen att underlätta för hållbara förändringar inom både transportsektorn och energisektorn. Den här uppsatsen ämnar att utvärdera SLBs potential i Colombia. Detta görs genom en litteraturöversikt där det nuvarande tillståndet av SLBs undersöks, flera intervjuer med potentiella intressenter för en SLB-marknad i Colombia, och en tekno-ekonomisk bedömning av fyra potentiella BESS-applikationer i Colombia. Litteraturöversikten samlar aktuell kunskap och status inom SLB i allmänhet. Intervjuerna ger viktig insikt om potentiella intressenters syn på SLB för det specifika fallet i Colombia. Den tekno-ekonomiska bedömningen inkluderar en känslighetsanalys som syftar till att ge insikter i vilka faktorer, som t.ex. batteriets inköpspris eller laddningskostnad, som ger upphov till den största effekten på SLBs genomförbarhet. Resultat från intervjuerna visar ett starkt kollektivt engagemang från de intervjuade att arbeta mot renare luft, vilket resulterar i högt engagemang och samarbete mellan intressenterna. Det största problemet med SLB från intressenternas synpunkt berör tekno-ekonomiska osäkerheter. Resultat från den tekno-ekonomiska bedömningen indikerar att SLB är ekonomiskt försvarbart för större applikationer som BESS vid solkraftverk, men inte för mindre applikationer som t.ex. för reservenergi i bostadshus. SLB anses dock inte vara ett genombrott för användning vid någon av applikationerna, och det finns fortfarande många osäkerheter när det gäller både tekniska och ekonomiska aspekter som måste undersökas ytterligare. Känslighetsanalysen visar att de faktorer som resulterar i den högsta påverkan på genomförbarheten av SLB är batteriets SOH (hälsotillstånd) i början av SLB-användning och kostnaden för batteri och ombyggnad av batterier. Det kommer dock att vara svårt att hantera båda dessa faktorer samtidigt på grund av att högre SOH skulle ge högre batteripriser, och vice versa. Resultaten från uppsatsen visar att SLB kan underlätta för hållbara förändringar inom både transport- och energisektorerna, men att det inte ska betraktas som något fantastiskt genombrott för dessa sektorer. Även fast SLBs bidrag till hållbara förändringar är inte revolutionerande, är det fortfarande en nödvändig faktor ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv. Med tanke på miljöavtrycket för EV-batterier och mängden av farligt avfall som EV-batterier kommer att ge upphov till då de inte längre är önskvärda, måste cirkulär ekonomi bedrivas i största möjliga mån.

Towards an Improved Safety Benefit Assessment for Heavy Trucks - Introduction of a framework for the combination of different data sources

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:13:12 +0100

hough heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) were only involved in 4.4% out of more than 1 million crashes that occurred on European roads in 2017, their share in crashes with fatal outcome was almost three times larger (12%). Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have the potential to mitigate the consequences of these crashes or avoid them altogether. In order to prioritise the most promising system, several types of safety benefit assessment are performed separately and independently of each other. These assessments miss however a combination into a common output, i.e. they are not able to provide a holistic overview but only show compartmentalised results. The first objective of this thesis is to provide a framework that can incorporate multiple data sources and combine their results into one common safety benefit output. The proposed framework within this thesis is based on Bayesian modelling and can update prior information (e.g. simulation results of a new ADAS) with new observations (e.g. test track results of the ADAS). The framework can incorporate additional information such as user acceptance and market penetration of the ADAS for an improved benefit assessment. The output of the framework can easily be incorporated as prior knowledge in new safety benefit assessments, e.g. when new data is available. The second objective is to prepare the application of the framework for the assessment of the safety benefit associated to the introduction of new ADAS for long-haul trucks. In order to specify the most critical crash scenarios for HGVs in Europe, a detailed, three-level analysis of crashes involving long-haul trucks was performed, starting on a general European level and going to in-depth crash data. The identified target scenarios are (a) rear-end crashes with the truck as the striking vehicle, (b) crashes between a right-turning truck and adjacent cyclist and (c) crashes between a truck and a pedestrian crossing in front of the truck. These three scenarios should be the basis for ADAS development and further addressed by driver behaviour modelling in the future. Future work will focus on improving simulation results by incorporating more accurate driver models, that are better able to represent truck driver behaviour, e.g. brake or steering reactions. These models will help to obtain more valid simulation results, and thereby increase the output quality of the framework.

Human-automation teamwork : Current practices and future directions in air traffic control

Scipedia content — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 11:16:42 +0100

This dissertation explores the topic of human-automation teamwork in Air Traffic Control (ATC). ATC is a high stakes environment where complex automation is being introduced while the human operator has the legal responsibility. With increasing demands on productivity in various industries (as also in ATC), automation is introduced for efficiency, maintaining safety, and to keep the workload of the human operator within acceptable limits. However, previous research has shown that automation may cause negative effects on the human operator and performance, such as forcing the operator out of the control loop, which might lead to problems or confusion. Previous research suggests a need for strengthening human-automation collaboration where automation is seen as a team member to keep the operator in the loop. In order to achieve such teamwork, the design of the automation needs to be human-centred, i.e. that the automation is designed for the underlying need of the operator. The aim of this dissertation is to explore teamwork in ATC from several angles to understand how the air traffic controllers are working in current ATC environments and how automation could be designed to support human-automation teamwork. The included studies rely on interviews, simulations, and questionnaires, all with operational air traffic controllers as participants. The results indicate that for both human-human teamwork and human-automation teamwork, teamwork factors such as adaptability and mutual performance monitoring (knowing what the other team members are doing) are important for the work performance in current ATC environments, where mutual performance monitoring is especially important during stressful situations. When designing automation, lessons learned from human-human teamwork should be considered. The work within the scope of this dissertation identifies and concerns two human-automation teamwork aspects: boundary awareness and implicit communication. These are proposed to support the operatorâs knowledge about the automation and the communication flow between the operator and the automation. Boundary awareness is the operatorâs knowledge of the automationâs abilities, its boundaries (what it can or cannot manage), and about consequences if it would go outside of these boundaries. Implicit communication is the unspoken or implied small cues that the operator and the automation can use to communicate with each other. It is proposed that implicit communication can be based on the work patterns of the operator. The knowledge gained through the work in this dissertation can be used as a foundation for further research and design of automation regarding operator knowledge about the automation boundaries and the communication within the team. Denna avhandling utforskar teamwork mellan mÃ¤nniska och automation inom flygtrafikledning. Flygtrafikledning Ã¤r en hÃ¶griskmiljÃ¶ dÃ¤r komplex automation introduceras samtidigt som den mÃ¤nskliga operatÃ¶ren har det juridiska ansvaret. Med Ã¶kade krav pÃ¥ produktivitet inom olika industrier (och Ã¤ven inom flygtrafikledning) sÃ¥ introduceras automation fÃ¶r effektiviteten, fÃ¶r att bibehÃ¥lla sÃ¤kerheten och fÃ¶r att hÃ¥lla arbetsbelastningen fÃ¶r den mÃ¤nskliga operatÃ¶ren inom acceptabla grÃ¤nser. Tidigare forskning har dÃ¤remot visat att automationen kan orsaka negativa effekter pÃ¥ den mÃ¤nskliga operatÃ¶ren och pÃ¥ prestationen, som till exempel att tvinga ut operatÃ¶ren utanfÃ¶r kontrolloopen vilket leder till problem och fÃ¶rvirring. Tidigare forskning fÃ¶reslÃ¥r ett starkare samarbete mellan mÃ¤nniska och automation dÃ¤r automationen Ã¤r sedd som en teammedlem fÃ¶r att behÃ¥lla operatÃ¶ren i loopen. FÃ¶r att uppnÃ¥ ett sÃ¥dant samarbete behÃ¶ver automation vara mÃ¤nnisko-centrerad, att automation med andra ord Ã¤r designad fÃ¶r operatÃ¶rens underliggande behov. Syftet med denna avhandling Ã¤r att utforska teamwork frÃ¥n olika vinklar inom flygtrafikledning fÃ¶r att fÃ¶rstÃ¥ hur flygledare jobbar i nuvarande flygtrafikledningsmiljÃ¶er och fÃ¶r att fÃ¶rstÃ¥ hur automation skulle kunna designas fÃ¶r att stÃ¶dja teamwork mellan mÃ¤nniska och automation. Studierna som denna avhandling bygger pÃ¥ har anvÃ¤nt sig av intervjuer, simuleringar och enkÃ¤ter, alla med operativa flygtrafikledare som deltagare. Resultatet tyder pÃ¥ att fÃ¶r bÃ¥de mÃ¤nniska-mÃ¤nniska teamwork och mÃ¤nniska-automations teamwork sÃ¥ Ã¤r teamwork faktorer sÃ¥ som flexibilitet och Ã¶msesidig Ã¶vervakning av teammedlemmarnas prestationer viktiga dÃ¤r Ã¶vervakning av teammedlemmarnas prestationer Ã¤r speciellt viktigt under stressiga situationer. NÃ¤r man designar automation bÃ¶r man ta lÃ¤rdom frÃ¥n teamwork mellan mÃ¤nniskor. Vidare sÃ¥ identifierar och behandlar arbetet inom denna avhandling tvÃ¥ aspekter gÃ¤llande teamwork mellan mÃ¤nniska och automation: grÃ¤nsmedvetenhet och implicit kommunikation. Dessa aspekter Ã¤r fÃ¶reslagna vi att stÃ¶tta operatÃ¶rens kunskap om automationen och kommunikationsflÃ¶det mellan operatÃ¶ren och automationen. GrÃ¤nsmedvetenhet Ã¤r operatÃ¶rens kunskap om automationens fÃ¶rmÃ¥gor, dess grÃ¤nser och dess konsekvenser nÃ¤r automation gÃ¥r utanfÃ¶r dessa grÃ¤nser. Implicit kommunikation Ã¤r de outtalade eller implicita ledtrÃ¥dar som operatÃ¶ren och automationen kan anvÃ¤nda fÃ¶r att kommunicera med varandra. Det Ã¤r fÃ¶reslaget att implicit kommunikation kan baseras pÃ¥ arbetsmÃ¶nster frÃ¥n operatÃ¶ren eller frÃ¥n prediktioner frÃ¥n automationen. Kunskapen frÃ¥n denna avhandling kan anvÃ¤ndas som ett underlagfÃ¶r vidare forskning och design av automation gÃ¤llande operatÃ¶rers kunskap om automationens grÃ¤nser och kommunikationen inom teamet.

Learning to Predict Pedestrians for Urban Automated Driving

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:22:32 +0100

Navigating through densely populated urban areas is one of the most important challenges for self-driving vehicles. Accurate predictions are required to enable safe and efficient interactions with other road users. Pedestrians in particular pose major problems for current state of the art prediction systems. Apart from well-understood short-term predictions, used for Automatic Emergency Braking Systems, long-term predictions remain largely unresolved. In this thesis, we aim to advance pedestrian prediction systems to enable human- understandable automated driving. In view of a vehicle-centred road infrastructure with high vehicle speeds and scarce pedestrian crossings, early detection of pedestrian intentions and movements are the key to enabling such behaviour. These detections can enable automated vehicles to perform light brake manoeuvres at an early stage in order to let a pedestrian pass. This can eliminate the need to stop, which could significantly improve traffic flow and at the same time increase overall safety. Long-term full trajectory predictions are both costly and error-prone. Therefore we propose a hierarchical prediction system that splits the prediction into multiple simplified sub-problems using domain knowledge. Each sub-problem is designed to predict a meaningful part of pedestrian movement and to detect and remove pedestrians that are irrelevant for the current scenario as early as possible. Utilizing the given road geometry to identify crosswalks we first predict the pedestrians’ hidden intent to cross the road. For all crossing pedestrians we then propose a sparse motion prediction, providing a small set of key figures instead of a full trajectory. We claim that these domain-specific key figures, namely a time-to- cross and designated crossing point, are more than sufficient to describe future pedestrian motions for the planning system of an automated vehicle. To overcome problems from over-confident single value predictions we propose to utilize Quantile Regression techniques to predict reasonable uncertainties. Our evaluations show that we are able to robustly classify the pedestrians’ hidden intent using both standard and deep learning algorithms. Additionally we show that our hierarchical prediction system, including the sparse motion prediction, is suitable for a real-time system integration. With our large real-world dataset, featuring recordings from different crosswalks and days, we provide an evaluation regarding prediction accuracy, computational load and generalizability. During this analysis, we also found indications that it might be possible to transfer trained models to previously unseen pedestrian crossings if the road geometry has at least approximately the same pavement dimensions. Furthermore, we show how our sparse motion prediction can be integrated into a situation-based planning approach to allow safe and efficient real-time interactions with other traffic participants. For this we evaluate different interaction scenarios regarding safety, time efficiency and comfort impairment. We were able to show that in most of the scenarios it is possible to minimize movement jerks and eliminate the need to stop. The overall performance is only limited by very high traffic densities.

Apoio à Decisão para o Planeamento de uma Infraestrutura de Carregamento de um sistema de Autocarro de Trânsito Rápido

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:28:09 +0100

Dissertação de Mestrado em Energia para a Sustentabilidade apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia Atualmente, uma das maiores preocupações mundiais é a mudança climática e seus efeitos irreversíveis no equilíbrio dos ecossistemas da Terra. Portanto, várias instituições, organizações e governos estão desenvolvendo políticas, medidas e tecnologias para mitigar esses efeitos. Nesse contexto, a eletrificação dos sistemas de transporte público desempenha um papel decisivo em termos de atenuação das emissões de gases de efeito estufa. Além disso, os veículos elétricos possuem muitas vantagens quando comparados aos seus equivalentes de combustíveis fósseis, incluindo melhoria da qualidade do ar, redução de ruído e melhoria da eficiência energética. Apesar desses benefícios, os veículos elétricos ainda sofrem com a baixa autonomia e recargas demoradas da bateria. Para fornecer soluções para esses problemas e aumentar a viabilidade da mobilidade elétrica, o desenvolvimento de tecnologias nas infraestruturas de carregamento, métodos de controle e capacidade de baterias torna-se crucial. Neste contexto, a presente pesquisa fornece uma abordagem para o planejamento da infraestrutura de carregamento de um sistema de Autocarro de Trânsito Rápido (BRT), que trata da minimização dos custos de implementação das estações de carregamento rápido. O trabalho apresenta inicialmente um estudo de Análise de Decisão Multicritérios afim de avaliar quais tipos de sistemas de trânsito rápido podem oferecer uma solução mais conveniente em áreas metropolitanas. O principal objetivo desta análise é avaliar se um sistema de BRT pode ser uma solução viável para esse fim, quando comparado a outros sistemas de trânsito rápido. Em seguida, um modelo de Programação Linear Inteira Mista é desenvolvido para otimizar a localização das estações de carregamento rápido em uma rede BRT, considerando o custo de implementação, número de carregadores, tempo total de carregamento e ciclo de vida da bateria. Nowadays, one of the biggest concerns worldwide is Climate Change and its irreversible effects on the balance of the Earth's ecosystems. Therefore, several institutions, organizations, and governments are developing policies, measures, and technologies to mitigate such effects. In this context, the electrification of public transportation systems plays a decisive role in greenhouse gas emissions attenuation. Moreover, electric vehicles have many advantages when compared to their fossil fuel counterparts, including air quality improvement, noise reduction, and energy efficiency enhancement. Despite those benefits, electric vehicles still suffer from the low driving range, and the time-consuming battery recharges. To provide solutions to those issues and to increase the feasibility of electric mobility, the development of technologies in charging infrastructures, control methods, and battery capacity becomes crucial. In this context, the present research provides a framework for the planning of the charging infrastructure of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system dealing with the minimization of the implementation costs of fast-charging stations. The work initially presents a Multi-criteria Decision Analysis study to assess which types of rapid transit systems can offer a more convenient solution for metropolitan areas. The main objective of this analysis is to evaluate whether a BRT system can be a viable solution for this purpose when compared to other rapid transit systems. Then a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model is developed to optimize the location of fast-charging stations in a BRT network, considering the cost of implementation, number of chargers, total charging time, and battery life cycle.

Impact of traffic incident duration and road characteristics on traffic flow performance

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:29:59 +0100

Text in English; Abstract: English and Turkish Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-214) xx, 230 leaves Non-recurrent events that occur in any part of the highway such as accident, vehicle breakdown,fire, scattering of substances like load, fuel oil etc. on the road which disrupt the traffic flow are defined as traffic incidents. Traffic Incident Management is the planned and coordinated utilization of all human and institutional resources in order to reduce the negative effects of these incidents and to ensure the safety of the drivers, pedestrians, all other victims and response teams. Incidents generally causes congestion and yields in increased travel time which imposes costs to road users, either economic loss or reduced quality of life and mobility. This thesis presents the recent literature review on the traffic incident management theory and practice along with the traffic incident simulation models. The thesis study is comprised of two parts; a data collection and analysis and a simulation experiment phase. Firstly, Traffic incident data from Istanbul Metropolitan Area is collected and analyzed. Secondly, a microscopic traffic simulation model was developed to simulate different types of incidents and traffic demand and also various geometric characteristics of highway. The analyses are performed taking total travel time, queue length and the speed as performance measures. Lastly, to evaluate and compare the performance of the cases, statistical tests are applied. The results show that there is a linear relationship between the incident duration and the average flow speed. The increase in incident duration causes the decrease in average speed up to 11.8% for overall traffic flow and up to 29.6% for the traffic flow of the post-incident process. The longest average queue length is observed in incidents in the middle lane. The shortest average queue length is observed in incidents in the right lane. In incidents in the middle lane, queue length increases up to 34.6% compared to the incidents in the right lane for overall traffic flow. In cases where the number of vehicles per lane is the same, the increase in the number of lanes causes a decrease in average speed up to 6.4% for the traffic flow of the post-incident process. According to the results of the applied statistical tests, when overall simulation periods are analyzed, statistically different results are seen only in incident duration, vehicle input, and lane width changes. When post-incident processes are analyzed, statistically different results are seen only in incident duration and lane width changes. The results of this thesis could be used by the traffic control authorities to reduce incident duration, congestion, secondary incidents, and the associated human and economic losses. Karayolunun herhangi bir kesiminde meydana gelen kaza, araç arızası, yangın, yük, akaryakıt vb. maddelerin yola saçılması gibi trafik akımını bozan tekrarsız durumlar trafik olayları olarak tanımlanır. Trafik Olay Yönetimi, bu olayların olumsuz etkilerini azaltmak; sürücülerin, yayaların, diğer tüm mağdurların ve müdahale ekiplerinin can güvenliğini sağlamak için insani ve kurumsal bütün kaynakların planlı ve koordineli bir biçimde kullanılmasıdır. Olaylar genellikle yol kullanıcılarına, ekonomik kayıp veya düşük yaşam kalitesi ve hareket kabiliyeti gibi maliyetler getiren seyahat süresinde artışa neden olan tıkanıklığa sebep olurlar. Bu tez, trafik olayı simülasyon modelleri ile birlikte trafik olay yönetimi teorisi ve uygulaması hakkındaki güncel literatür incelemesini sunmaktadır. Tez çalışması; veri toplama ve analizi ile simülasyon deney aşaması olmak üzere iki bölümden oluşmaktadır. İlk olarak, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi sınırları içinden trafik olayı verileri toplanmış ve analiz edilmiştir. İkinci olarak, farklı olay türlerini ve trafik talebini ve ayrıca karayolunun çeşitli geometrik özelliklerini simüle etmek için mikroskobik bir trafik simülasyon modeli geliştirilmiştir. Analizler performans ölçütü olarak toplam seyahat süresi, kuyruk uzunluğu ve hız dikkate alınarak yapılmıştır. Son olarak, bu durumların performansını değerlendirmek ve karşılaştırmak için istatistiksel testler uygulanmıştır. Tez sonuçları göstermektedir ki olay süresi ile ortalama akım hızı arasında lineer bir ilişki vardır. Olay süresindeki artış ortalama hızda genel trafik akımı için %11.8'e varan, olay sonrası sürecin trafik akımı içinse %29.6'ya varan azalmaya sebep olmaktadır. En uzun ortalama kuyruk boyu orta şeritte meydana gelen olaylarda gözlemlenmektedir. En kısa ortalama kuyruk boyu sağ şeritte meydana gelen olaylarda gözlemlenmektedir. Genel trafik akımı için orta şeritte meydana gelen olaylarda sağ şeritte meydana gelen olaylara kıyasla kuyruk boyu %34.6'ya kadar artmaktadır. Şerit başına düşen araç sayısının aynı olduğu durumlarda, şerit sayısındaki artış, olay sonrası sürecin trafik akımı için ortalama hızda %6.4'e varan bir azalmaya neden olmaktadır. Uygulanan istatistiksel testlerin sonuçlarına göre, genel simülasyon periyotları incelendiğinde, istatistiksel olarak farklı sonuçlar sadece olay süresi, araç girdisi ve şerit genişliği değişikliklerinde görülmüştür. Kaza sonrası süreçler incelendiğinde ise, sadece olay süresi ve şerit genişliği değişimlerinde istatistiksel olarak farklı sonuçlar görülmüştür. Bu tezin sonuçları trafik kontrol yetkilileri tarafından olay süresini, tıkanıklığı, ikincil olayları ve ilgili insani ve ekonomik kayıpları azaltmak için kullanılabilir.

Driving solar : Integrating photovoltaic systems, electric vehicles, and consumer behaviour in models of smart energy systems

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:31:07 +0100

Large-scale adoption of clean energy technologies, such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs), is key for ensuring a sustainable future. However, integrating clean energy technologies in the existing electricity grid is challenging for grid management. Aligning EV charging demand with PV power production via smart charging or using EVs as electricity storage in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems can reduce the impact of both technologies on the grid. Realizing the potential of such systems requires consumers to adopt these technologies, shift EV charging demand, and allow for discharging of EVs; a radical change from current energy behaviours. The extent to which consumers will do so is a major source of uncertainty in assessing the future of sustainable energy systems. This thesis analyses and qualifies this uncertainty by developing simulation models that incorporate technical as well as social aspects of smart charging and V2G. This multi-disciplinary approach allows to study how consumer behaviour could shape sustainable energy systems. Furthermore, the thesis analyses large datasets on actual diffusion and use of PV solar panels and EVs in the Netherlands. The results show that there can be great benefits for grid management in combining intermittent renewable energy sources with EVs via smart and/or V2G. However, this can only be a partial solution for load balancing in scenarios with high renewable energy uptake. Furthermore, consumer adoption and charging behaviour varies greatly, which influences the extent to which the envisioned benefits of smart charging and V2G can be realized in certain regions and neighbourhoods.

Innovation Adaptation in Urban Light-Rail Transport: Adapting Pricing and Infrastructural Innovations using Frugal Approach in Ethiopia and Nigeria: Innovatie en aanpassing in stedelijk light-rail vervoer: Aanpassing van beprijzing- en infrastructuurinnovaties met behulp van een sobere aanpak in Ethiopië en Nigeria

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:31:31 +0100

The potential impact of ride-hailing services on BYD

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:38:06 +0100

Shared mobility, including ride-hailing services, has been on the rise, enabled by emerging technologies, and allowing for more convenient and flexible travel. The Chinese market is particularly attractive for ride-hailing as the country pushes to relieve its transportation problems, namely traffic congestion and subjacent economic implications. This study aims to measure the impact of ride-hailing services on BYD’s share price performance. Three different scenarios of disruption were analyzed, quantifying the potential decrease in revenues. Moreover, an alternative view was considered, taking into consideration the depreciation suffered by society as a whole and the rate of substitution of vehicles.

Urban logistics in Sao Paulo city: a comparison between Top of the Pyramid and Base of the Pyramid regions

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:40:59 +0100

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) The fast expansion of urban areas poses challenges for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies who want to provide products to small retailers, especially in the last-mile delivery, which is a complex process that is hindered by factors such as transit regulations; city infrastructure; and safety. These factors have different levels of impact, between high-income and low-income neighborhoods and are more evident in megacities in developing countries, where it exists a clear division between classes. On one hand, governments do not attend low-income neighborhoods, where it exists a strong presence of unsafe areas, lack of planning, and infrastructure that hinders the deliveries of FMCG. On the other hand, traffic regulations in high-income neighborhoods make the delivery process more complex. This study aims to analyze the urban logistics by comparing lowincome and high-income neighborhoods in Sao Paulo city, by taking into account local businesses, buying consumer behavior, and the distribution process. To achieve this, a questionnaire in loco will be applied to the stakeholders involved (consumers, small retailers, and carriers). The data will be analyzed by employing descriptive statistics in an exploratory and descriptive way. The results from small retailers, consumers, and carriers reveal that in their point of view the delivery of products is different between BOP and TOP. Factors such as the infrastructure of the neighborhoods hinder the delivery of products from companies to small retailers in TOP regions, while in BOP regions small retailers' security and infrastructure are the major problems in the point of view of the actors. The fast expansion of urban areas poses challenges for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies who want to provide products to small retailers, especially in the last-mile delivery, which is a complex process that is hindered by factors such as transit regulations; city infrastructure; and safety. These factors have different levels of impact, between high-income and low-income neighborhoods and are more evident in megacities in developing countries, where it exists a clear division between classes. On one hand, governments do not attend low-income neighborhoods, where it exists a strong presence of unsafe areas, lack of planning, and infrastructure that hinders the deliveries of FMCG. On the other hand, traffic regulations in high-income neighborhoods make the delivery process more complex. This study aims to analyze the urban logistics by comparing lowincome and high-income neighborhoods in Sao Paulo city, by taking into account local businesses, buying consumer behavior, and the distribution process. To achieve this, a questionnaire in loco will be applied to the stakeholders involved (consumers, small retailers, and carriers). The data will be analyzed by employing descriptive statistics in an exploratory and descriptive way. The results from small retailers, consumers, and carriers reveal that in their point of view the delivery of products is different between BOP and TOP. Factors such as the infrastructure of the neighborhoods hinder the delivery of products from companies to small retailers in TOP regions, while in BOP regions small retailers' security and infrastructure are the major problems in the point of view of the actors. CNPJ00.394.445/0191-12

Quantifying Traffic Congestion in Nairobi

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:43:34 +0100

This thesis aims to give insight into a novel approach for quantifying car traffic in developing cities. This is necessary to improve efficiency in resource allocation for improvements in infrastructure. The project took form of a case study of neighborhoods in the city of Nairobi, Kenya. The approach consists of a method which relies on topics from the field of Topological Data Analysis, together with the use of large data sources from taxi services in the city. With this, both qualitative and quantitative insight can be given about the traffic. The method was proven useful for understanding how traffic spreads, and to differentiate between levels of congestion: quantifying it. However, it failed to detect the effect of previous improvements of infrastructure. Målet med rapporten är att ge insikt i en innovativ ansats för att kvantifiera biltrafik i utvecklingsstäder. Detta kommer som en nödvändighet för att kunna förbättra resursfördelning i utvecklandet av infrastruktur. Projektet utspelade sig som en fallstudie där stadsdelar i Nairobi, Kenya studerades. Ansatsen innefattar en metod som bygger på tekniker från topologisk dataanalys (eng. \\textit{Topological Data Analysis}), tillsammans med stora datakällor från taxitjänster i staden. Detta hoppas ge både kvalitativ och kvantitativ information om trafiken i staden. Metoden visade sig vara användbar för att förstå hur trafik sprider sig och att differentiera mellan nivåer av trafik, alltså att kvantifiera den. Tyvärr så misslyckades metoden visa sig användbar för att mäta förbättringar i infrastruktur.

Map-aided localization for autonomous driving using a particle filter

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:46:01 +0100

Vehicles losing their GPS signal is a considerable issue for autonomous vehicles and can be a danger to people in their vicinity. To circumvent this issue, a particle filter localization technique using pre-generated offline Open Street Map (OSM) maps was investigated in a software simulation of Scania’s heavy-duty trucks. The localization technique runs in real-time and provides a way to localize the vehicle safely if the starting position is known. Access to global localization was limited, and the particle filter still succeeded in localizing the vehicle in the vicinity of the correct road segment by creating a graph of the map information and matching the trajectory to the vehicle’s sensor data. The mean error of the Particle filter localization technique in optimal conditions is 16m, which is 20% less than an optimally tuned dead reckoning solution. The mean error is about 50% larger compared to a Global Positioning System. The final product shows potential for expansion but requires more investigation to allow for real-world deployment. Att fordon kan mista sin GPS-signal är ett stort problem för autonoma fordon och kan vara en fara för människor i dess närhet. För att undvika detta problem föreslås en icke-global lokaliseringsteknik som använder Open Street Maps-kartor (OSM) och ett partikelfilter för att lokalisera fordonet i en mjukvarusimulation. Implementering körs i realtid och anger fordonets position med en tillräcklig träffsäkerhet för att det inte ska utgöra någon fara om dess startposition är känd. Globala lokaliseringsmöjligheter var begränsade, och partikelfiltret lyckades lokalisera fordonet till rätt vägsegment genom att konstruera en graf över den kartinformation den läst in och para ihop fordonets nuvarande färdväg med denna. Resultatet ger en lösning som optimalt har ett medelfel på 16m, vilket är 20% mindre än medelfelet jämfört med optimiserad dödräkning. Lösningen har ca 50% större medelfel än positionering med GPS. Slutresultatet visar en potential att användas i verkliga situationer, men kräver mer undersökningar.

Equity research - Fiat-Chrysler automobiles

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:50:26 +0100

This Equity Research aims at analysing Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles in order to assess the potential capital and dividend gains of holding the stock during 2020. It starts with a brief company description and macroeconomic overview. Afterwards, the automotive sector and its tendencies are analysed. Thereafter, the past performance of each operating segment is summarized to set the context for the valuation. The valuation resorts primarily to the DCF method. Nevertheless, the APV method as well as Multiples are employed to evaluate the results’ accuracy. Finally, a recommendation is, in addition to the associated expected gains and returns with the transaction.

Urban Design Study for Downtown Taunton, Massachusetts

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:51:17 +0100

This project is an urban design study that encompasses the Downtown area of Taunton, Massachusetts. The boundaries for the study area include the Mill River along the western boundary, Washington Street along the north, Pleasant Street, Leonard Street and Fruit Street along the east, and Church Green and Spring Street along the south boundary. Downtown Taunton is a very well defined and preserved city center that is centered on the Taunton Green and possesses a large number of historic structures. In recent years the downtown has suffered from increasing traffic congestion, the slow destruction of the area' s historic character as modem buildings are constructed on the outskirts of the downtown and in some cases in the downtown itself, and empty storefronts due to a variety of factors. The challenge in completing this study is to develop a plan that will preserve the downtown' s historic character, create a more viable business environment, and create a safer and more attractive environment for pedestrians and motorists. The study is composed of five parts. These include an introduction followed by a short history of the city and downtown area, the structure of city government and a brief profile of the city' s economic and demographic makeup. Part three is an analysis of the downtown to determine assets and liabilities. Part four outlines recommendations to improve the downtown and the last part outlines an implementation strategy to improve the study area functionally and aesthetically. In completing the study the built environment is analyzed to identify the assets and deficiencies of the built environment. In performing this analysis, techniques such as figure/ ground, lynch, and linkage analyses are being used in conjunction with windshield surveys, reviews of existing regulations and studies and interviews with city officials and business owners in the study area. This analysis is then used to develop recommendations to address aspects of the downtown such as zoning, traffic flow, parking, landscaping, street furniture and other amenities, aesthetics, facade treatments, signs and open spaces in an effort to improve the downtown. This study also takes the recommendations one step further by including an implementation strategy that identifies responsible persons, groups, or departments, possible funding sources and assigns a priority to each of the recommendations. The analysis of the study area illustrated the strong base and potential that exists in the downtown in terms of the areas character, layout, architectural beauty, parks, and location. Many of the deficiencies identified are cosmetic in nature although some substantial changes such as traffic flow and the renovation of Court Street are needed. The goal is to provide a built environment that is uniquely and effectively designed, that possesses it own character, is attractive to behold, and convenient and safe to frequent. This creates a sense of place and economic vitality. Downtown Taunton already possesses many of these qualities and the implementation of this plan will move the Downtown closer to fully achieving the above stated goal.

Long-term prediction using grid based environment models for urban autonomous driving

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:52:05 +0100

Evaluation of the efficiency of mainline and ramp metering in highway traffic management

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:01:32 +0100

Text in English; Abstract: English and Turkish Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-72) xi, 72 leaves In the study, the effects of the mainline and ramp control theories on the highway traffic flow are investigate. In order to eliminate to alleviate the traffic congestion problem, which has become a problem in high-population cities, the mainline and ramp controls are considered as a solution, and control networks are emphasized. Examples of applications and results in the world are given. The applicability of the methods to be used by examining the previous studies was first examined on a general model and then on a selected highway network. In the models prepared, vehicle speeds, travel times, flow (volume) concepts, and relationships between them are mentioned. In addition, general information about highway management was also provided before. Control models were examined with the Microscopic Simulation Program, the purpose and types of models applied were compared. The traffic simulation model of the region between K-8 and K-11 on the O-2 highway from Asia to Europe has been created and the effects created by the control have been examined by applying both ramp and mainline metering. Analysis results; It has been observed that the control of ramp and mainline scenarios provides benefits compared to uncontrolled situations. Among the benefits provided; when the analysis of the basic model and mainline metering is applied, it is seen that there is an increase of 20.76% in travel times and an increase of 19.78% in vehicle speeds. Nevertheless, the implications of these control scenarios should be thoroughly investigated. Simulation results show that Ramp Metering (RM) and Mainline Metering (MM) controls can be an effective method in the management of highway-highway connections. In this regard, it is recommended that the control strategies mentioned in intensive highway-to-highway participations be tested in real life in order to increase efficiency. Hazırlanan çalışmada ana yol ve katılım kontrol teorilerinin otoyol trafik akımı üzerindeki etkileri araştırılmıştır. Yüksek nüfuslu şehirlerde bir problem haline gelen trafik tıkanıklığı sorunu, geçiş sırasında oluşan tıkanıklığın ortadan kaldırılması ya da hafifletilmesi amacıyla ana yol ve katılım kontrolleri bir çözüm olarak görülmekte olup kontrol şebekeleri üzerinde durulmuştur. Dünyadaki uygulamalar ve sonuçlarından örnekler verilmiştir. Önceki çalışmalar incelenerek kullanılacak metotların uygulanabilirliği öncelikle genel bir model üzerinde sonrasında da seçilmiş bir otoyol ağı üzerinden uygulanarak incelenmiştir. Hazırlanan modellerde yol ağı ile ilgili araç hızlarına, seyahat sürelerine, akım (hacim) kavramlarına ve aralarındaki ilişkilere değinilmiştir. Ayrıca otoyol yönetimi ile ilgili genel bilgiler de öncesinde sunulmuştur. Kontrol modelleri Mikroskobik Simülasyon Programı ile incelenmiş, amacı, uygulanan model çeşitleri kıyaslamalı olarak anlatılmıştır. Asya Avrupa yönünde O-2 otoyolunda K-8 ile K-11 arasında kalan bölgenin trafik benzetim modeli oluşturulmuş ve hem katılım hem de ana yol kontrolü uygulaması yapılarak, kontrolün yarattığı etkiler incelenmiştir. Analiz sonuçları katılım ve ana yol senaryolarının kontrolünün, kontrolsüz durumlara göre fayda sağladığı görülmüştür. Sağlanan faydalar arasında temel model ve ana yol kontrolünün uygulandığı analizler karşılaştırıldığında; ana yol kontrolünün seyahat sürelerinde % 20,76 kazanç ve araç hızlarında ki % 19,78'lik yükseliş sağladığı görülmektedir. Bununla birlikte, bahsi geçen kontrol senaryoları uygulandığında doğuracağı sonuçlar kapsamlı bir şekilde araştırılmalıdır. Yapılan simülasyon sonuçları katılım (RM) ve anayol (MM) kontrollerinin Otoyol-otoyol bağlantılarının yönetiminde etkili bir yöntem olabileceğini göstermektedir. Bu doğrultuda, verimlilik artışı sağlamak üzere yoğun otoyol-otoyol katılımlarında bahsi geçen kontrol stratejilerinin etkinliğinin gerçek hayatta da sınanması önerilmektedir.

Models and algorithms for network optimization with segment routing

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:04:21 +0100

Optimizing the way traffic is routed over networks has been of interest since we first started using computer networks to communicate and exchange information. Network technologies are constantly evolving and so do the underlying problems that need to be solved. This thesis focus on studying the recently proposed segment routing technology. In a traditional IP network, packets are routed using shorted paths according to weights that are configured on the network links. Segment routing offers a new way of routing traffic by allowing packets to do some detours on their way. Between these detours, traditional shortest path routing is used, making this technology have almost no usage overhead. We aim at providing a mathematical formalization of segment routing and showcase several of its use cases. We believe that such a formalization is going to help advance the research of the algorithmic aspects of segment routing by providing a solid mathematical foundation and notations which can serve as a starting point for others to research this topic. We leverage segment routing to solve traffic engineering problems, perform network monitoring and provide traffic duplication services that are robust to link failures. (FSA - Sciences de l'ingénieur) -- UCL, 2020

Holistic Temporal Situation Interpretation for Traffic Participant Prediction

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:06:29 +0100

For a profound understanding of traffic situations including a prediction of traf- fic participants’ future motion, behaviors and routes it is crucial to incorporate all available environmental observations. The presence of sensor noise and depen- dency uncertainties, the variety of available sensor data, the complexity of large traffic scenes and the large number of different estimation tasks with diverging requirements require a general method that gives a robust foundation for the de- velopment of estimation applications. In this work, a general description language, called Object-Oriented Factor Graph Modeling Language (OOFGML), is proposed, that unifies formulation of esti- mation tasks from the application-oriented problem description via the choice of variable and probability distribution representation through to the inference method definition in implementation. The different language properties are dis- cussed theoretically using abstract examples. The derivation of explicit application examples is shown for the automated driv- ing domain. A domain-specific ontology is defined which forms the basis for four exemplary applications covering the broad spectrum of estimation tasks in this domain: Basic temporal filtering, ego vehicle localization using advanced interpretations of perceived objects, road layout perception utilizing inter-object dependencies and finally highly integrated route, behavior and motion estima- tion to predict traffic participant’s future actions. All applications are evaluated as proof of concept and provide an example of how their class of estimation tasks can be represented using the proposed language. The language serves as a com- mon basis and opens a new field for further research towards holistic solutions for automated driving.

Passenger Influence on Dwell Time : A Case Study on the Light Rail Transit Line Tvärbanan in Stockholm

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:09:32 +0100

This thesis conducts research on the light rail transit (LRT)-line Tvärbanan in Stockholm regarding punctuality of dwell time (DT), focusing on the influence passengers have on the mean and the variance of DT. The eight major stops during rush-hours are analyzed through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. DT is proved to be affected by many factors in a complex setting, with vast differences between stops and between train types, proving that the infrastructure, the platform design, and the train design is important factors. The overall core problem is the non-uniformity of passengers, which is caused mainly by (1) the platform layout, especially the locations of entrances/exits, (2) placement of the train doors in relation to platform obstacles, (3) connections to other means of public transportation, and (4) the overall placement of the entrances/exits at other stops in the same direction. Stop-specific measures and suggestions of overall improvements are proposed in order to reduce the mean and the variation of DT. Detta examensarbete undersöker hur uppehållstid påverkas av passagerare på light rail-linjen Tvärbanan i Stockholm, vilket har haft en historia av höga och oförutsägbara uppehållstider. De åtta största hållplatserna under rusningstid är analyserade genom en kombination av kvalitativa och kvantitativa studier. Uppehållstiden beror på många faktorer i en complex miljö, där stora skillnader finns mellan de olika hållplatserna och de olika tågtyperna, vilket är ett bevis att infrastrukturen, plattformsdesignen och tågdesignen är viktiga faktorer. Grundproblemet är att passagerare är ojämnt fördelade på plattformarna, vilket är orsakat av (1) plattformsdesignen, speciellt vart ingångar/utgångar är placerade, (2) vart tågdörrarna stannar i relation till objekt på plattformen, (3) förbindelser till annan kollektivtrafik och (4) hur ingångar/utgångar är placerade över hela linjen i samma riktning. Övergripande och hållplatsspecifika åtgärder för att minimera uppehållstiden presenteras i rapporten.

Mobility analytics: plan and improve public transportation services though a business intelligence model and dashboards

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:11:58 +0100

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence Intelligent traffic planning, the promotion of public transport and the improved interconnectedness of all road users in a city-wide communication infrastructure comprise the mobility characteristics of a smart city. Living in an era of Smart Cities emerging, we can make use of all the data available nowadays to better serve our lives with the best services. All the data generated every day by the Vehicles can be used to get a better insights to improve the quality of the available service as the creation of new routes, increase supervision on problematic areas, among others. This document intends to detail the project carried out at Carris, a public transportation company which operates Lisbon's buses, trams, and funiculars. The master thesis project aims to create a Business Intelligence solution to support planning decisions though the use of a Dashboard by presenting information about all relevant data collected on a bus daily route by the driver in order to get a better understating of a public transportation service and how can the organization improve them to rebuild schedules, create or eliminate routes, do some inspection on tickets validations inside the vehicles, etc. This project is supported by a Microsoft tool called Power BI that enables all the extraction, transformation and loading of data processes, based on an Azure SQL Data Warehouse based on Cloud services. The Business Dashboards are divided in 4 main areas inside the organization and will support Onboard Sales, Ticket validations, Route Planning and Onboard issues reported by the driver.

Data-driven smart mobility as an act to mitigate climate change, a case of Hangzhou

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:17:37 +0100

The transport sector is responsible for a significant and growing proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. The urgent actions are required to take in the transport sector facing the challenge of growing global change. The major trends, including global urbanization, widespread application of digital technologies, and broad demand for sustainable development, have provided new opportunities for data-driven smart mobility in the future. This research aims to explore potentials of data-driven smart mobility in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11.2, “provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all,” and Sustainable Development Goal 13.2, “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” and “integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning” reducing greenhouse gas emissions every year. In order to meet this aim, this research explores the understandings and innovations of data-driven smart mobility in achieving decarbonization in urban, as well as barriers during the current practices. Hangzhou, as the capital city in Zhejiang Province in China, has been selected for the case study to examine data-driven smart mobility approaches. The research results show that the potentials of the data to tackle climate issues lie in the efficient transport operation and travel behaviors change. Data technologies have been widely applied to improve the integration of travel modes and the efficiency of transport management to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in road traffic. However, there are few drivers to mine data resources for travel behavior change. Moreover, data-driven smart mobility initiatives applied in urban areas involve multiple stakeholders but with limited access to data sharing and opening. Considering disruptive effects and potential promises brought by the big data technologies, the implementation of smart mobility requires for public data strategy with a holistic view of the complex urban challenges and global climate change.

Data-Driven Anomaly and Precursor Detection in Metroplex Airspace Operations

Scipedia content — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:24:38 +0100

div"The air traffic system is one of the most complex and safety-critical systems, which is expected to grow at an average rate of 0.9% a year -- from 51.8 million operational activities in 2018 to 62 million in 2039 -- within the National Airspace System. In such systems, it is important to identify degradations in system performance, especially in terms of safety and efficiency. Among the operations of various subsystems of the air traffic system, the arrival and departure operations in the terminal airspace require more attention because of its higher impact (about 75% incidents) on the entire system's safety, ranging from single aircraft incidents to multi-airport congestion incidents."/div""div""br""/div""div"The first goal of this dissertation is to identify the air traffic system's degradations -- called anomalies -- in the multi-airport terminal airspace or metroplex airspace, by developing anomaly detection models that can separate anomalous flights from normal ones. Within the metroplex airspace, airport operational parameters such as runway configuration and coordination between proximal airports are a major driving factor in aircraft’s behaviors. As a substantial amount of data is continually recording such behaviors through sensing technologies and data collection capabilities, modern machine learning techniques provide powerful tools for the identification of anomalous flights in the metroplex airspace. The proposed algorithm ingests heterogeneous data, comprising the surveillance dataset, which represents an aircraft’s physical behaviors, and the airport operations dataset, which reflects operational procedures at airports. Typically, such aviation data is unlabeled, and thus the proposed algorithm is developed based on hierarchical unsupervised learning approaches for anomaly detection. This base algorithm has been extended to an anomaly monitoring algorithm that uses the developed anomaly detection models to detect anomalous flights within real-time streaming data."/div""div""br""/div""div"A natural next-step after detecting anomalies is to determine the causes for these anomalies. This involves identifying the occurrence of precursors, which are triggers or conditions that precede an anomaly and have some operational correlation to the occurrence of the anomaly. A precursor detection algorithm is developed which learns the causes for the detected anomalies using supervised learning approaches. If detected, the precursor could be used to trigger actions to avoid the anomaly from ever occurring."/div""div""br""/div""div"All proposed algorithms are demonstrated with real air traffic surveillance and operations datasets, comprising of departure and arrival operations at LaGuardia Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Newark Liberty International Airport, thereby detecting and predicting anomalies for all airborne operations in the terminal airspace within the New York metroplex. Critical insight regarding air traffic management is gained from visualizations and analysis of the results of these extensive tests, which show that the proposed algorithms have a potential to be used as decision-support tools that can aid pilots and air traffic controllers to mitigate anomalies from ever occurring, thus improving the safety and efficiency of metroplex airspace operations."/div