Improved Road Design for Future Maintenance - Analysis of Road Barrier Repair Costs

The cost of a road construction over its service life is a function of the design, quality of construction, maintenance strategies and maintenance operations. Unfortunately, designers often neglect a very important aspect which is the possibility to perform future maintenance activities. The focus is mainly on other aspects such as investment costs, traffic safety, aesthetic appearance, regional development and environmental effects. This licentiate thesis is a part of a Ph.D. project entitled “Road Design for lower maintenance costs” that aims to examine how the life-cycle costs can be optimized by selection of appropriate geometrical designs for the roads and their components. The result is expected to give a basis for a new method used in the road planning and design process using life-cycle cost analysis with particular emphasis on road maintenance. The project started with a review of literature with the intention to study conditions causing increased needs for road maintenance, the efforts made by the road authorities to satisfy those needs and the improvement potential by consideration of maintenance aspects during planning and design. An investigation was carried out to identify the problems which obstruct due consideration of maintenance aspects during the road planning and design process. This investigation focused mainly on the road planning and design process at the Swedish Road Administration. However, the road planning and design process in Denmark, Finland and Norway were also roughly evaluated to gain a broader knowledge about the research subject. The investigation was carried out in two phases: data collection and data analysis. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews with expert actors involved in planning, design and maintenance and by a review of design-related documents. Data analyses were carried out using a method called “Change Analysis”. This investigation revealed a complex combination of problems which result in inadequate consideration of maintenance aspects. Several urgent needs for changes to eliminate these problems were identified. Another study was carried out to develop a model for calculation of the repair costs for damages of different road barrier types and to analyse how factors such as road type, speed limits, barrier types, barrier placement, type of road section, alignment and seasonal effects affect the barrier damages and the associated repair costs. This study was carried out using a method called the “Case Study Research Method”. Data was collected from 1087 barrier repairs in two regional offices of the Swedish Road Administration, the Central Region and the Western Region. A table was established for both regions containing the repair cost per vehicle kilometre for different combinations of barrier types, road types and speed limits. This table can be used by the designers in the calculation of the life-cycle costs for different road barrier types.

Estimated lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden using time-to-event analysis

Maintenance planning of road pavement requires reliable estimates of roads’ lifetimes. In determining the lifetime of a road, this study combines maintenance activities and road condition measurements. The scope of the paper is to estimate lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden with time to event analysis. The model used includes effects of pavement type, road type, bearing capacity, road width, speed limit, stone size and climate zone, where the model is stratified according to traffic load. Among the nine analyzed pavement types, stone mastic had the longest expected lifetime, 32 percent longer than asphalt concrete. Among road types, ordinary roads with cable barriers had 30 percent shorter lifetime than ordinary roads. Increased speed lowered the lifetime, while increased stone size (up to 20 mm) and increased road width lengthened the lifetime. The results are of importance for life cycle cost analysis and road management.

What factors affect the destination choice of Jordanian tourists?A panel data analysis

This paper investigates what factors affect the destination choice for Jordanian to 8 countries (Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon and Bahrain) using panel data analysis. Number of outbound tourists is represented as dependent variable, which is regressed over five explanatory variables using fixed effect model. The finding of this paper is that tourists from Jordan have weak demand for outbound tourism; Jordanian decision of traveling abroad is determined by the cost of traveling to different places and choosing the cheapest alternative.

ANALYSIS & STUDY OF AI TECHNIQUES FORAUTOMATIC CONDITION MONITORING OFRAILWAY TRACK INFRASTRUCTURE : Artificial Intelligence Techniques

Since the last decade the problem of surface inspection has been receiving great attention from the scientific community, the quality control and the maintenance of products are key points in several industrial applications.The railway associations spent much money to check the railway infrastructure. The railway infrastructure is a particular field in which the periodical surface inspection can help the operator to prevent critical situations. The maintenance and monitoring of this infrastructure is an important aspect for railway association.That is why the surface inspection of railway also makes importance to the railroad authority to investigate track components, identify problems and finding out the way that how to solve these problems. In railway industry, usually the problems find in railway sleepers, overhead, fastener, rail head, switching and crossing and in ballast section as well. In this thesis work, I have reviewed some research papers based on AI techniques together with NDT techniques which are able to collect data from the test object without making any damage. The research works which I have reviewed and demonstrated that by adopting the AI based system, it is almost possible to solve all the problems and this system is very much reliable and efficient for diagnose problems of this transportation domain. I have reviewed solutions provided by different companies based on AI techniques, their products and reviewed some white papers provided by some of those companies. AI based techniques likemachine vision, stereo vision, laser based techniques and neural network are used in most cases to solve the problems which are performed by the railway engineers.The problems in railway handled by the AI based techniques performed by NDT approach which is a very broad, interdisciplinary field that plays a critical role in assuring that structural components and systems perform their function in a reliable and cost effective fashion. The NDT approach ensures the uniformity, quality and serviceability of materials without causing any damage of that materials is being tested. This testing methods use some way to test product like, Visual and Optical testing, Radiography, Magnetic particle testing, Ultrasonic testing, Penetrate testing, electro mechanic testing and acoustic emission testing etc. The inspection procedure has done periodically because of better maintenance. This inspection procedure done by the railway engineers manually with the aid of AI based techniques.The main idea of thesis work is to demonstrate how the problems can be reduced of thistransportation area based on the works done by different researchers and companies. And I have also provided some ideas and comments according to those works and trying to provide some proposal to use better inspection method where it is needed.The scope of this thesis work is automatic interpretation of data from NDT, with the goal of detecting flaws accurately and efficiently. AI techniques such as neural networks, machine vision, knowledge-based systems and fuzzy logic were applied to a wide spectrum of problems in this area. Another scope is to provide an insight into possible research methods concerning railway sleeper, fastener, ballast and overhead inspection by automatic interpretation of data.In this thesis work, I have discussed about problems which are arise in railway sleepers,fastener, and overhead and ballasted track. For this reason I have reviewed some research papers related with these areas and demonstrated how their systems works and the results of those systems. After all the demonstrations were taking place of the advantages of using AI techniques in contrast with those manual systems exist previously.This work aims to summarize the findings of a large number of research papers deploying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for the automatic interpretation of data from nondestructive testing (NDT). Problems in rail transport domain are mainly discussed in this work. The overall work of this paper goes to the inspection of railway sleepers, fastener, ballast and overhead.

Load Adapted Solar Thermal Combisystems - Optical Analysis and Systems Optimization

In a northern European climate a typical solar combisystem for a single family house normally saves between 10 and 30 % of the auxiliary energy needed for space heating and domestic water heating. It is considered uneconomical to dimension systems for higher energy savings. Overheating problems may also occur. One way of avoiding these problems is to use a collector that is designed so that it has a low optical efficiency in summer, when the solar elevation is high and the load is small, and a high optical efficiency in early spring and late fall when the solar elevation is low and the load is large.The study investigates the possibilities to design the system and, in particular, the collector optics, in order to match the system performance with the yearly variations of the heating load and the solar irradiation. It seems possible to design practically viable load adapted collectors, and to use them for whole roofs ( 40 m2) without causing more overheating stress on the system than with a standard 10 m2 system. The load adapted collectors collect roughly as much energy per unit area as flat plate collectors, but they may be produced at a lower cost due to lower material costs. There is an additional potential for a cost reduction since it is possible to design the load adapted collector for low stagnation temperatures making it possible to use less expensive materials. One and the same collector design is suitable for a wide range of system sizes and roof inclinations. The report contains descriptions of optimized collector designs, properties of realistic collectors, and results of calculations of system output, stagnation performance and cost performance. Appropriate computer tools for optical analysis, optimization of collectors in systems and a very fast simulation model have been developed.

Road Design for Future Maintenance : Life-cycle Cost Analyses for Road Barriers

The cost of a road construction over its service life is a function of design, quality of construction as well as maintenance strategies and operations. An optimal life-cycle cost for a road requires evaluations of the above mentioned components. Unfortunately, road designers often neglect a very important aspect, namely, the possibility to perform future maintenance activities. Focus is mainly directed towards other aspects such as investment costs, traffic safety, aesthetic appearance, regional development and environmental effects. This doctoral thesis presents the results of a research project aimed to increase consideration of road maintenance aspects in the planning and design process. The following subgoals were established: Identify the obstacles that prevent adequate consideration of future maintenance during the road planning and design process; and Examine optimisation of life-cycle costs as an approach towards increased efficiency during the road planning and design process. The research project started with a literature review aimed at evaluating the extent to which maintenance aspects are considered during road planning and design as an improvement potential for maintenance efficiency. Efforts made by road authorities to increase efficiency, especially maintenance efficiency, were evaluated. The results indicated that all the evaluated efforts had one thing in common, namely ignorance of the interrelationship between geometrical road design and maintenance as an effective tool to increase maintenance efficiency. Focus has mainly been on improving operating practises and maintenance procedures. This fact might also explain why some efforts to increase maintenance efficiency have been less successful. An investigation was conducted to identify the problems and difficulties, which obstruct due consideration of maintainability during the road planning and design process. A method called “Change Analysis” was used to analyse data collected during interviews with experts in road design and maintenance. The study indicated a complex combination of problems which result in inadequate consideration of maintenance aspects when planning and designing roads. The identified problems were classified into six categories: insufficient consulting, insufficient knowledge, regulations and specifications without consideration of maintenance aspects, insufficient planning and design activities, inadequate organisation and demands from other authorities. Several urgent needs for changes to eliminate these problems were identified. One of the problems identified in the above mentioned study as an obstacle for due consideration of maintenance aspects during road design was the absence of a model for calculating life-cycle costs for roads. Because of this lack of knowledge, the research project focused on implementing a new approach for calculating and analysing life-cycle costs for roads with emphasis on the relationship between road design and road maintainability. Road barriers were chosen as an example. The ambition is to develop this approach to cover other road components at a later stage. A study was conducted to quantify repair rates for barriers and associated repair costs as one of the major maintenance costs for road barriers. A method called “Case Study Research Method” was used to analyse the effect of several factors on barrier repairs costs, such as barrier type, road type, posted speed and seasonal effect. The analyses were based on documented data associated with 1625 repairs conducted in four different geographical regions in Sweden during 2006. A model for calculation of average repair costs per vehicle kilometres was created. Significant differences in the barrier repair costs were found between the studied barrier types. In another study, the injuries associated with road barrier collisions and the corresponding influencing factors were analysed. The analyses in this study were based on documented data from actual barrier collisions between 2005 and 2008 in Sweden. The result was used to calculate the cost for injuries associated with barrier collisions as a part of the socio-economic cost for road barriers. The results showed significant differences in the number of injuries associated with collisions with different barrier types. To calculate and analyse life-cycle costs for road barriers a new approach was developed based on a method called “Activity-based Life-cycle Costing”. By modelling uncertainties, the presented approach gives a possibility to identify and analyse factors crucial for optimising life-cycle costs. The study showed a great potential to increase road maintenance efficiency through road design. It also showed that road components with low investment costs might not be the best choice when including maintenance and socio-economic aspects. The difficulties and problems faced during the collection of data for calculating life-cycle costs for road barriers indicated a great need for improving current data collecting and archiving procedures. The research focused on Swedish road planning and design. However, the conclusions can be applied to other Nordic countries, where weather conditions and road design practices are similar. The general methodological approaches used in this research project may be applied also to other studies.

Immigration, security and the public debate on US language policy : a critical discourse analysis of language attitudes in the United States of America

The narrative of the United States is of a "nation of immigrants" in which the language shift patterns of earlier ethnolinguistic groups have tended towards linguistic assimilation through English. In recent years, however, changes in the demographic landscape and language maintenance by non-English speaking immigrants, particularly Hispanics, have been perceived as threats and have led to calls for an official English language policy.This thesis aims to contribute to the study of language policy making from a societal security perspective as expressed in attitudes regarding language and identity originating in the daily interaction between language groups. The focus is on the role of language and American identity in relation to immigration. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach combining language policy studies, security theory, and critical discourse analysis. The material consists of articles collected from four newspapers, namely USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle between April 2006 and December 2007.Two discourse types are evident from the analysis namely Loyalty and Efficiency. The former is mainly marked by concerns of national identity and contains speech acts of security related to language shift, choice and English for unity. Immigrants are represented as dehumanised, and harmful. Immigration is given as sovereignty-related, racial, and as war. The discourse type of Efficiency is mainly instrumental and contains speech acts of security related to cost, provision of services, health and safety, and social mobility. Immigrants are further represented as a labour resource. These discourse types reflect how the construction of the linguistic 'we' is expected to be maintained. Loyalty is triggered by arguments that the collective identity is threatened and is itself used in reproducing the collective 'we' through hegemonic expressions of monolingualism in the public space and semi-public space. The denigration of immigrants is used as a tool for enhancing societal security through solidarity and as a possible justification for the denial of minority rights. Also, although language acquisition patterns still follow the historical trend of language shift, factors indicating cultural separateness such as the appearance of speech communities or the use of minority languages in the public space and semi-public space have led to manifestations of intolerance. Examples of discrimination and prejudice towards minority groups indicate that the perception of worth of a shared language differs from the actual worth of dominant language acquisition for integration purposes. The study further indicates that the efficient working of the free market by using minority languages to sell services or buy labour is perceived as conflicting with nation-building notions since it may create separately functioning sub-communities with a new cultural capital recognised as legitimate competence. The discourse types mainly represent securitising moves constructing existential threats. The perception of threat and ideas of national belonging are primarily based on a zero-sum notion favouring monolingualism. Further, the identity of the immigrant individual is seen as dynamic and adaptable to assimilationist measures whereas the identity of the state and its members are perceived as static. Also, the study shows that debates concerning language status are linked to extra-linguistic matters. To conclude, policy makers in the US need to consider the relationship between four factors, namely societal security based on collective identity, individual/human security, human rights, and a changing linguistic demography, for proposed language intervention measures to be successful.

An analysis of the aspects attracting medical tourists : a case study in Seoul, South Korea

Many countries recognized the potential of medicaltourism as an alternative source of economic growth. Especially after theeconomic crisis many Asian countries joined medical tourism in hopes to escapethe severe financial difficulty. However, yet only few countries have managedto become a famous medical tourism destination. With growing number ofcompetitors, newly joined countries of medical tourism, face the difficulty inintroducing them self as attractive medical tourism destination. South Koreaas a new medical tourism destination, should consider what to offer to themedical tourists to attract them. The aim of the thesis was to investigate aspects influencing the participationof medical tourists to discover how South Korea could develop anattractive medical tourism destination. After examining the casestudy and results from the text analysis, researcher reached to the conclusionthat quality, cost and accessibility to treatment are the major reasons toparticipate in medical tourism. Also in the fierce competition, it is importantto develop differentiated offers from other destinations. Therefore, Koreashould concentrate on specialized treatments and ICT system to become anattractive medical tourism destination.

A Consumer Surplus Estimate of Peace & Love festival in Borlänge : A Travel Cost Approach

This thesis uses zonal travel cost method (ZTCM) to estimate consumer surplus of Peace & Love festival in Borlänge, Sweden. The study defines counties as zones of origin of the visitors. Visiting rates from each zone are estimated based on survey data. The study is novel due to the fact that mostly TCM has been applied in the environmental and recreational sector, not for short term events, like P&L festival. The analysis shows that travel cost has a significantly negative effect on visiting rate as expected. Even though income has previously shown to be significant in similar studies, it turns out to be insignificant in this study. A point estimate for the total consumer surplus of P&L festival is 35.6 million Swedish kronor. However, this point estimate is associated with high uncertainty since a 95 % confidence interval for it is (17.9, 53.2). It is also important to note that the estimated value only represents one part of the total economic value, the other values of the festival's totaleconomic value have not been estimated in this thesis.

Solar PV Powered Air Conditioner Analysis for an Office/Classroom in a Tropical Climate

This thesis focuses on using photovoltaic produced electricity to power air conditioners in a tropical climate. The study takes place in Surabaya, Indonesia at two different locations the classroom, located at the UBAYA campus and the home office, 10 km away. Indonesia has an average solar irradiation of about 4.8 kWh/m²/day (PWC Indonesia, 2013) which is for ideal conditions for these tests. At the home office, tests were conducted on different photovoltaic systems. A series of measuring devices recorded the performance of the 800 W PV system and the consumption of the 1.35 kW air conditioner (cooling capacity). To have an off grid system many of the components need to be oversized. The inverter has to be oversized to meet the startup load of the air conditioner, which can be 3 to 8 times the operating power (Rozenblat, 2013). High energy consumption of the air conditioner would require a large battery storage to provide one day of autonomy. The PV systems output must at least match the consumption of the air conditioner. A grid connect system provides a much better solution with the 800 W PV system providing 80 % of the 3.5 kWh load of the air conditioner, the other 20 % coming from the grid during periods of low irradiation. In this system the startup load is provided by the grid so the inverter does not need to be oversized. With the grid-connected system, the PV panel’s production does not need to match the consumption of the air conditioner, although a smaller PV array will mean a smaller percentage of the load will be covered by PV. Using the results from the home office tests and results from measurements made in the classroom. Two different PV systems (8 kW and 12 kW) were simulated to power both the current air conditioners (COP 2.78) and new air conditioners (COP 4.0). The payback period of the systems can vary greatly depending on if a feed in tariff is awarded or not. If the feed in tariff is awarded the best system is the 12 kW system, with a payback period of 4.3 years and a levelized cost of energy at -3,334 IDR/kWh. If the feed in tariff is not granted then the 8 kW system is the best choice with a lower payback period and lower levelized cost of energy than the 12 kW system under the same conditions.

Ubiquitous computing in education : a SWOT analysis by students and teachers

Learning from anywhere anytime is a contemporary phenomenon in the field of education that is thought to be flexible, time and cost saving. The phenomenon is evident in the way computer technology mediates knowledge processes among learners. Computer technology is however, in some instances, faulted. There are studies that highlight drawbacks of computer technology use in learning. In this study we aimed at conducting a SWOT analysis on ubiquitous computing and computer-mediated social interaction and their affect on education. Students and teachers were interviewed on the mentioned concepts using focus group interviews. Our contribution in this study is, identifying what teachers and students perceive to be the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of ubiquitous computing and computer-mediated social interaction in education. We also relate the findings with literature and present a common understanding on the SWOT of these concepts. Results show positive perceptions. Respondents revealed that ubiquitous computing and computer-mediated social interaction are important in their education due to advantages such as flexibility, efficiency in terms of cost and time, ability to acquire computer skills. Nevertheless disadvantages where also mentioned for example health effects, privacy and security issues, noise in the learning environment, to mention but a few. This paper gives suggestions on how to overcome threats mentioned.