Factors explaining urban transport systems in large European cities: A cross-sectional approach

The paper analyses the link between human capital and regional economic growth in the European Union. Using different indicat The importance of effective and efficient mobility in large cities is becoming essential for planners and citizens due to its impact in terms of social, economic and geographic development. The aim of this research is to determine factors explaining urban transport systems by estimating aggregate supply and demand equations for 45 large European cities. Supply and Demand equations are separately and jointly determined using OLS and SUR estimation models. On one hand, our findings suggest the importance of economic variables on the supply of public transport. On the other, we highlight the role of those factors influencing the generalized cost of transport as main drivers of demand for public transit. Additionally, regional variables are introduced to capture institutional heterogeneity in this service, and we find that regional patterns are powerful explanatory determinants of urban transportation systems in Europe.

Visual SLAM for 3D large-scale seabed acquisition employing underwater vehicles

This paper presents a novel technique to align partial 3D reconstructions of the seabed acquired by a stereo camera mounted on an autonomous underwater vehicle. Vehicle localization and seabed mapping is performed simultaneously by means of an Extended Kalman Filter. Passive landmarks are detected on the images and characterized considering 2D and 3D features. Landmarks are re-observed while the robot is navigating and data association becomes easier but robust. Once the survey is completed, vehicle trajectory is smoothed by a Rauch-Tung-Striebel filter obtaining an even better alignment of the 3D views and yet a large-scale acquisition of the seabed

Local map update for large scale SLAM

A technique for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) for large scale scenarios is presented. This solution is based on the use of independent submaps of a limited size to map large areas. In addition, a global stochastic map, containing the links between adjacent submaps, is built. The information in both levels is corrected every time a loop is closed: local maps are updated with the information from overlapping maps, and the global stochastic map is optimised by means of constrained minimisation

Assessment of Environmental Impacts of Power Generation

Through indisputable evidence of climate change and its link to the greenhouse gas emissions comes the necessity for change in energy production infrastructure during the coming decades. Through political conventions and restrictions energy industry is pushed toward using bigger share of renewable energy sources as energy supply. In addition to climate change, sustainable energy supply is another major issue for future development plans, but neither of these should come with unbearable price. All the power production types have environmental effects as well as strengths and weaknesses. Although each change comes with a price, right track in minimising the environmental impacts and energy supply security can be found by combining all possible low-carbon technologies and by improving energy efficiency in all sectors, for creating a new power production infrastructure of tolerable energy price and of minor environmental effects. GEMIS-Global Emission Model for Integrated Systems is a life-cycle analysis program which was used in this thesis to make indicative energy models for Finland’s future energy supply. Results indicate that the energy supply must comprise both high capacity nuclear power as well as large variation of renewable energy sources for minimization of all environmental effects and keeping energy price reasonable.

Technology roadmap for new sales support and management system for crane manufacturing company

Sales configurators are essential tools for companies that offer complicated case specifically crafted products for customers. Most sophisticated of them are able to design an entire end product on the fly according to given constraints, calculate price for the offer and move the order into production. This thesis covers a sales configurator acquisition project in a large industrial company that offers cranes for its customers. The study spans the preliminary stages of a large-scale software purchase project starting from the specification of problem domain and ending up presenting the most viable software solution that fulfils the requirements for the new system. The project consists of mapping usage environment, use cases, and collecting requirements that are expected from the new system. The collected requirements involve fitting the new sales system into enterprise application infrastructure, mitigating the risks involved in the project and specifying new features to the application whilst preserving all of the admired features of the old sales system currently used in the company. The collected requirements were presented to a number of different sales software vendors who were asked to provide solution suggestions that would fulfil all the demands. All of the received solution proposals were exposed to an evaluation to determine the most feasible solutions, and the construction of evaluation criteria itself was a part of the study. The final outcome of this study is a short-list of the most feasible sales configurator solutions together with a description of how software purchase process in large enterprises work, and which aspects should be paid attention in large projects of similar kind.

Maritime transportation in the Gulf of Finland in 2007 and in 2015

The Gulf of Finland is said to be one of the densest operated sea areas in the world. It is a shallow and economically vulnerable sea area with dense passenger and cargo traffic of which petroleum transports have a share of over 50 %. The winter conditions add to the risks of maritime traffic in the Gulf of Finland. It is widely believed that the growth of maritime transportation will continue also in the future. The Gulf of Finland is surrounded by three very different national economies with, different maritime transportation structures. Finland is a country of high GDP/per capita with a diversified economic structure. The number of ports is large and the maritime transportation consists of many types of cargoes: raw materials, industrial products, consumer goods, coal and petroleum products, and the Russian transit traffic of e.g. new cars and consumer goods. Russia is a large country with huge growth potential; in recent years, the expansion of petroleum exports has lead to a strong economic growth, which is also apparent in the growth of maritime transports. Russia has been expanding its port activities in the Gulf of Finland and it is officially aiming to transport its own imports and exports through the Russian ports in the future; now they are being transported to great extend through the Finnish, Estonian and other Baltic ports. Russia has five ports in the Gulf of Finland. Estonia has also experienced fast economic growth, but the growth has been slowing down already during the past couples of years. The size of its economy is small compared to Russia, which means the transported tonnes cannot be very massive. However, relatively large amounts of the Russian petroleum exports have been transported through the Estonian ports. The future of the Russian transit traffic in Estonia looks nevertheless uncertain and it remains to be seen how it will develop and if Estonia is able to find replacing cargoes if the Russian transit traffic will come to an end in the Estonian ports. Estonia’s own import and export consists of forestry products, metals or other raw materials and consumer goods. Estonia has many ports on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, but the port of Tallinn dominates the cargo volumes. In 2007, 263 M tonnes of cargoes were transported in the maritime traffic in the Gulf of Finland, of which the share of petroleum products was 56 %. 23 % of the cargoes were loaded or unloaded in the Finnish ports, 60 % in the Russian ports and 17 % in the Estonian ports. The largest ports were Primorsk (74.2 M tonnes) St. Petersburg (59.5 M tonnes), Tallinn (35.9 M tonnes), Sköldvik (19.8 M tonnes), Vysotsk (16.5 M tonnes) and Helsinki (13.4 M) tonnes. Approximately 53 600 ship calls were made in the ports of the Gulf of Finland. The densest traffic was found in the ports of St. Petersburg (14 651 ship calls), Helsinki (11 727 ship calls) and Tallinn (10 614 ship calls) in 2007. The transportation scenarios are usually based on the assumption that the amount of transports follows the development of the economy, although also other factors influence the development of transportation, e.g. government policy, environmental aspects, and social and behavioural trends. The relationship between the development of transportation and the economy is usually analyzed in terms of the development of GDP and trade. When the GDP grows to a certain level, especially the international transports increase because countries of high GDP produce, consume and thus transport more. An effective transportation system is also a precondition for the economic development. In this study, the following factors were taken into consideration when formulating the future scenarios: maritime transportation in the Gulf of Finland 2007, economic development, development of key industries, development of infrastructure and environmental aspects in relation to maritime transportation. The basic starting points for the three alternative scenarios were: • the slow growth scenario: economic recession • the average growth scenario: economy will recover quickly from current instability • the strong growth scenario: the most optimistic views on development will realize According to the slow growth scenario, the total tonnes for the maritime transportation in the Gulf of Finland would be 322.4 M tonnes in 2015, which would mean a growth of 23 % compared to 2007. In the average growth scenario, the total tonnes were estimated to be 431.6 M tonnes – a growth of 64 %, and in the strong growth scenario 507.2 M tonnes – a growth of 93%. These tonnes were further divided into petroleum products and other cargoes by country, into export, import and domestic traffic by country, and between the ports. For petroleum products, the share of crude oil and oil products was estimated and the number of tanker calls in 2015 was calculated for each scenario. However, the future development of maritime transportation in the GoF is dependent on so many societal and economic variables that it is not realistic to predict one exact point estimate value for the cargo tonnes for a certain scenario. Plenty of uncertainty is related both to the degree in which the scenario will come true as well as to the cause-effect relations between the different variables. For these reasons, probability distributions for each scenario were formulated by an expert group. As a result, a range for the total tonnes of each scenario was formulated and they are as follows: the slow growth scenario: 280.8 – 363 M tonnes (expectation value 322.4 M tonnes)

Investigating the impact of small versus large firms on economic performance of countries and industries

Following earlier work by Audretsch et al. (2002), we assume that an optimal size-class structure exists, in terms of achieving maximal economic growth rates. Such an optimal structure is likely to exist as economies need a balance between the core competences of large firms (such as exploitation of economies of scale) and those of smaller firms (such as flexibility and exploration of new ideas). Accordingly, changes in size-class structure (i.e., changes in the relative shares in economic activity accounted for by micro, small, medium-sized and large firms) may affect macro-economic growth. Using a unique data base of the EU-27 countries for the period 2002-2008 for five broad sectors of economic activity and four size-classes, we find empirical support which suggests that, on average for these countries over this period, the share of micro and large firms may have been ‘above optimum’ (particularly in lower income EU countries) whereas the share of medium-sized firms may have been ‘below optimum’ (particularly in higher income EU countries). This evidence suggests that the transition from a ‘managed’ to an ‘entrepreneurial’ economy (Audretsch and Thurik, 2001) has not been completed yet in all countries of the EU-27. Keywords: small firms, large firms, size-classes, macro-economic performance

Implications, large and small, from chemical education research for the teaching of chemistry

Research studies in chemical education pose a communication problem for chemists. Unlike the findings from other specializations in chemistry the findings in chemical education tend to be reported in education journals that are not readily accessible to most chemists or chemistry teachers. This lecture is an attempt to remedy this gap in communication. Research studies fall into three broad categories. (i) issues related to the content of chemistry itself, that is, What content to teach? And What meaning of each topic is to be conveyed? (ii) issues related to how chemical content is taught, such as, the role of lectures, practical work, particular pedagogies, etc. and (iii) issues related to its learning, that is, learning of concepts, conceptual change, motivation, etc. Findings in each of these categories of research over the last twenty years have drawn attention to opportunities for improving the quality of chemical education in each of the levels of formal education where chemistry is taught. Sometimes the research findings seem small since they, in fact, merely diagnose the actual problem in teaching and learning. At other times, the research findings are large because they provide a solution to these problems. What remains to be done is to disseminate the findings so that appropriate teaching occurs more widely, with its consequent gains in the quality of learning. Research findings, of these small and large types will be used to illustrate the potential of research to make the practice of chemical education more effective.

Do innovation and human capital explain the productivity gap between small and large firms?

Empirical evidence is compelling that large firms are more productive than small firms. The hypothesis in this paper is that the productivity differences between small and large firms are associated with two of the main determinants of a firm’s performance: the human and technological capital that firms incorporate. We suggest that the contribution of these factors in explaining the productivity-size gap might not only be due to the fact that large firms make a more extensive use of them, but also because large firms obtain higher returns from their investment in human and technological capital. The evidence we obtain for a comprehensive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms (1990-2002) supports this hypothesis, which has important implications for the effectiveness of policies designed to improve productivity in SMEs by stimulating innovation and the use of more skilled workers.

Enhancing the efficiency of freight transport by using simulation

The role of transport in the economy is twofold. As a sector of economic activity it contributes to a share of national income. On the other hand, improvements in transport infrastructure create room for accelerated economic growth. As a means to support railways as a safe and environmentally friendly transportation mode, the EU legislation has required the opening of domestic railway freight for competition from beginning of year 2007. The importance of railways as a mode of transport has been great in Finland, as a larger share of freight has been carried on rails than in Europe on average. In this thesis it is claimed that the efficiency of goods transport can be enhanced by service specific investments. Furthermore, it is stressed that simulation can and should be used to evaluate the cost-efficiency of transport systems on operational level, as well as to assess transportation infrastructure investments. In all the studied cases notable efficiency improvements were found. For example in distribution, home delivery of groceries can be almost twice as cost efficient as the current practice of visiting the store. The majority of the cases concentrated on railway freight. In timber transportation, the item with the largest annual transport volume in domestic railway freight in Finland, the transportation cost could be reduced most substantially. Also in international timber procurement, the utilization of railway wagons could be improved by combining complementary flows. The efficiency improvements also have positive environmental effects; a large part of road transit could be moved to rails annually. If impacts of freight transport are included in cost-benefit analysis of railway investments, up to 50 % increase in the net benefits of the evaluated alternatives can be experienced, avoiding a possible inbuilt bias in the assessment framework, and thus increasing the efficiency of national investments in transportation infrastructure. Transportation systems are a typical example of complex real world systems that cannot be analysed realistically by analytical methods, whereas simulation allows inclusion of dynamics and the level of detail required. Regarding simulation as a viable tool for assessing the efficiency of transportation systems finds support also in the international survey conducted for railway freight operators; operators use operations research methods widely for planning purposes, while simulation is applied only by the larger operators.

A characterization of cooperative TU-games with large monotonic core

[cat] El concepte de joc cooperatiu amb large core és introduït per Sharkey (1982) i el de Population Monotonic Allocation Scheme és definit per Sprumont (1990). Inspirat en aquests conceptes, Moulin (1990) introdueix la noció de large monotonic core donant una caracterització per a jocs de tres jugadors. En aquest document provem que tots els jocs amb large monotonic core són convexes. A més, donem un criteri efectiu per determinar si un joc té large monotonic core o no, i daquí obtenim una caracterització pel cas de quatre jugadors.

A characterization of cooperative TU-games with large monotonic core

[cat] El concepte de joc cooperatiu amb large core és introduït per Sharkey (1982) i el de Population Monotonic Allocation Scheme és definit per Sprumont (1990). Inspirat en aquests conceptes, Moulin (1990) introdueix la noció de large monotonic core donant una caracterització per a jocs de tres jugadors. En aquest document provem que tots els jocs amb large monotonic core són convexes. A més, donem un criteri efectiu per determinar si un joc té large monotonic core o no, i daquí obtenim una caracterització pel cas de quatre jugadors.

Fish colonization of artificial reefs in a large Neotropical reservoir: material type and successional changes

Artificial reefs have barely been used in Neotropical reservoirs (about five studies in three reservoirs), despite their potential as a fishery management tool to create new habitats and also to understand fish ecology. We experimentally assessed how reef material (ceramic, concrete, and PVC) and time modulated fish colonization of artificial reefs deployed in Itaipu Reservoir, a large reservoir of the mainstem Parana´ River, Brazil. Fish richness, abundance, and biomass were significantly greater in the reef treatments than at control sites. Among the experimental reefs, ceramic followed by the concrete treatments were the materials most effectively colonized, harboring the majority of the 13 fish species recorded. Although dependent on material type, many of the regularities of ecological successions were also observed in the artificial reefs, including decelerating increases in species richness, abundance, mean individual size, and species loss rates with time and decelerating decreases of species gain and turnover rates. Species composition also varied with material type and time, together with suites of life history traits: more equilibrium species (i.e., fishes of intermediate size that often exhibit parental care and produce fewer but larger offspring) of the Winemiller-Rose model of fish life histories prevailed in later successional stages. Overall, our study suggests that experimental reefs are a promising tool to understand ecological succession of fish assemblages, particularly in tropical ecosystems given their high species richness and low seasonality

Development of IT Service Management in a Large International Company

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to examine the IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities of a large international company and develop a design for the IT Service Management of the company. The thesis consists of two parts: a literature review and a case study. The first part is the literature review. It examines different aspects of IT Service Management. The purpose of the literature review is to increase the credibility of the case study. In the case study, the IT Service Management of a large industrial company is assessed, and an improved design for IT Service Management is created. The services are limited to common IT services, and management is limited to operative management. To assess and develop the case company’s IT Service Management, the IT organization and its ITSM capabilities are analyzed, and on the basis of the analyses, an improved IT Service Management model is created. As a result of the analyses, it was found out that the management of the IT organization is function-oriented. Therefore, the organization needs a management model that breaks the functional borders and brings services to the center of management. The designed model aspires to achieve this by defining IT services and modeling management processes from the service perspective.

Critical Success and Failure Factors of Knowledge Management Implementation in a Large Multinational Company

More and more companies are interested in implementing knowledge management. However, the majority of knowledge management initiatives will fail to have any significant impact. In this study, theories regarding knowledge management implementation and adoption are investigated further. The objective of this study is to deepen understanding regarding the critical factors that contribute to successful knowledge management adoption in large multinational companies. The study is formulated around the following four research questions: 1. What are the key success and failure factors in knowledge management implementation? 2. How can knowledge management adoption be improved at the individual, group and organizational levels of the company? 3. What are the critical factors that hinder knowledge management adoption in the case company? 4. How can the case company promote the adoption of knowledge management among company personnel? The methodology used in this study is a combination of a literature review and an explanatory, exploratory, qualitative single-case study. The literature review answers the first and second research questions. Based on the literature review, a framework is presented to illustrate the factors contributing to the success of knowledge management implementation. The framework also links together knowledge management implementation and adoption. The third research question is answered by revealing the relevant findings from 21 expert interviews and 2 online questionnaires with 42 respondents in total. By comparing and contrasting the results of the literature review with the findings of the empirical case study, the fourth research question is answered. The concrete outcomes of this study are a framework to elucidate the factors contributing to the success of knowledge management implementation, a case study highlighting the issues that hinder knowledge management adoption within the case company, and recommendations for the case company.