The Roles of ‘Conventional’ and Demand-Responsive Bus Services

Purpose - The roles of ‘conventional’ (fixed-route and fixed-timetable) bus services is examined and compared to demand-responsive services, taking rural areas in England as the basis for comparison. It adopts a ‘rural’ definition of settlements under a population of 10,000. Design/methodology/approach - Evidence from the National Travel Survey, technical press reports and academic work is brought together to examine the overall picture. Findings - Inter-urban services between towns can provide a cost-effective way of serving rural areas where smaller settlements are suitably located. The cost structures of both fixed-route and demand-responsive services indicate that staff time and cost associated with vehicle provision are the main elements. Demand-responsive services may enable larger areas to be covered, to meet planning objectives of ensuring a minimum of level of service, but experience often shows high unit cost and public expenditure per passenger trip. Economic evaluation indicates user benefits per passenger trip of similar magnitude to existing average public expenditure per trip on fixed-route services. Considerable scope exists for improvements to conventional services through better marketing and service reliability. Practical implications - The main issue in England is the level of funding for rural services in general, and the importance attached to serving those without access to cars in such areas. Social implications - The boundary between fixed-route and demand-responsive operation may lie at relatively low population densities. Originality/value - The chapter uses statistical data, academic research and operator experience of enhanced conventional bus services to provide a synthesis of outcomes in rural areas.

Intercity Bus Route Evaluation for Statewide Planning, 1981

The goal of this research was to evaluate the needs of the intercity common carrier bus service in Iowa. Within the framework of the overall goal, the objectives were to: (1) Examine the detailed operating cost and revenue data of the intercity carriers in Iowa; (2) Develop a model or models to estimate demand in cities and corridors served by the bus industry; (3) Develop a cost function model for estimating a carrier's operating costs; (4) Establish the criteria to be used in assessing the need for changes in bus service; (5) Outline the procedures for estimating route operating costs and revenues and develop a matrix of community and social factors to be considered in evaluation; and (6) Present a case study to demonstrate the methodology. The results of the research are presented in the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Intercity Bus Research and Development; (3) Operating Characteristics of Intercity Carriers in Iowa; (4) Commuter Carriers; (5) Passenger and Revenue Forecasting Models; (6) Operating Cost Relationships; (7) Social and General Welfare Aspects of Intercity Bus Service; (8) Case Study Analysis; and (9) Additional Service Considerations and Recommendations.

Failure to Stop for School Bus Convictions by County of Occurrence 2009-2014, May 8, 2015

Failure to stop for school bus convictions by county from 2009-2014.

Residential planning, driver mobility and CO2 emission

The literature on residences and citizens’ transports has focused on either reforming traffic managing in response to residential relocation or post-evaluation of urban planning policies or the evolution of the urban spatial form. In a city there are hotspots that attract the citizens and most of the transportation in the city arises as the citizens’ movement between their residence and the hotspots. Little scholarly attention has been devoted to the possibility to minimize citizens’ transportation in the city by the urban planning of residential areas. In this paper we propose a method to evaluate the environmental impact (in terms of CO2-emissions) of urban plans of residential areas. The method is illustrated in a Swedish case of a midsize city which is presently preoccupied with urban planning of new residential areas in response to substantial population growth due to immigration. The residential plans aims to increase the compactness and residential density in the current center and sub centers leads to less CO2 emissions compare to urban expansion to the edge of the city. The plans of concentrated apartment buildings are more effective in meeting residential needs and mitigating CO2 emissions than dispersed single-family houses.

Quantitative and Qualitative Trade-Off Analysis of Drowsy Driver Detection Methods: Single Electrode Wearable EEG Device, Multi-Electrode Wearable EEG Device, and Head-Mounted Gyroscope

Drowsy driving impairs motorists’ ability to operate vehicles safely, endangering both the drivers and other people on the road. The purpose of the project is to find the most effective wearable device to detect drowsiness. Existing research has demonstrated several options for drowsiness detection, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) brain wave measurement, eye tracking, head motions, and lane deviations. However, there are no detailed trade-off analyses for the cost, accuracy, detection time, and ergonomics of these methods. We chose to use two different EEG headsets: NeuroSky Mindwave Mobile (single-electrode) and Emotiv EPOC (14- electrode). We also tested a camera and gyroscope-accelerometer device. We can successfully determine drowsiness after five minutes of training using both single and multi-electrode EEGs. Devices were evaluated using the following criteria: time needed to achieve accurate reading, accuracy of prediction, rate of false positives vs. false negatives, and ergonomics and portability. This research will help improve detection devices, and reduce the number of future accidents due to drowsy driving.

Automatic Incident Detection and Driver Warning in PORTICO.

This paper focuses on the low-volume incident detection and subsequent driver warning objectives of the PORTICO project. It proposes Automatic Incident Detection (AID) which uses a multimodel approach comprised of a number of different algorithms. A set of thresholds and conditions are defined which determine which algorithm(s) need to indicate an incident under different traffic conditions in order to trigger an alarm

Inductive Theorem Proving and Computer Algebra in the Mathweb Software Bus

Reasoning systems have reached a high degree of maturity in the last decade. However, even the most successful systems are usually not general purpose problem solvers but are typically specialised on problems in a certain domain. The MathWeb SOftware Bus (Mathweb-SB) is a system for combining reasoning specialists via a common osftware bus. We described the integration of the lambda-clam systems, a reasoning specialist for proofs by induction, into the MathWeb-SB. Due to this integration, lambda-clam now offers its theorem proving expertise to other systems in the MathWeb-SB. On the other hand, lambda-clam can use the services of any reasoning specialist already integrated. We focus on the latter and describe first experimnents on proving theorems by induction using the computational power of the MAPLE system within lambda-clam.

Improved Squeaky Wheel Optimisation for Driver Scheduling

This paper presents a technique called Improved Squeaky Wheel Optimisation (ISWO) for driver scheduling problems. It improves the original Squeaky Wheel Optimisation’s (SWO) effectiveness and execution speed by incorporating two additional steps of Selection and Mutation which implement evolution within a single solution. In the ISWO, a cycle of Analysis-Selection-Mutation-Prioritization-Construction continues until stopping conditions are reached. The Analysis step first computes the fitness of a current solution to identify troublesome components. The Selection step then discards these troublesome components probabilistically by using the fitness measure, and the Mutation step follows to further discard a small number of components at random. After the above steps, an input solution becomes partial and thus the resulting partial solution needs to be repaired. The repair is carried out by using the Prioritization step to first produce priorities that determine an order by which the following Construction step then schedules the remaining components. Therefore, the optimisation in the ISWO is achieved by solution disruption, iterative improvement and an iterative constructive repair process performed. Encouraging experimental results are reported.

Desenvolvimento de mediation e-health bus

Este relatório apresenta todo o trabalho desenvolvido na Portugal Telecom Inovação ao longo de 6 meses. Este projeto esteve inserido no produto Medigraf, o qual é uma plataforma de telemedicina, desenvolvida e comercializada pela Portugal Telecom Inovação, destinada a ser integrada em organizações de saúde. Um sistema de informação é um componente muito importante nas organizações de saúde. É através deste que toda a informação referente à organização é processada e comunicada. Para que um novo sistema, a ser incorporado na organização, seja capaz de atingir todas as suas potencialidades é necessário que haja uma integração e uma interoperabilidade total entre o novo sistema e o sistema de informação existente. Torna-se assim indispensável conseguir uma integração entre o Medigraf e o sistema de informação existente nas organizações de saúde. Para isso, é necessário apurar quais os requisitos necessários para haver uma integração e uma partilha de informação entre sistemas heterógenos, explicando o conceito de standards, interoperabilidade e terminologias. O estado da arte revelou que a integração entre sistemas heterogéneos em organizações de saúde é difícil de atingir. Das várias organizações existentes, destaquei a HL7 (Health Level Seven) pelos seus avanços nesta área e pelo desenvolvimento de duas versões de um standard de mediation de mensagens (HL7 v2.x e HL7 v3) com o objetivo de atingir uma interoperabilidade entre sistemas heterógenos. Com o estudo mais aprofundado do standard de mensagens HL7 v3, foi necessário adotar uma arquitetura/topologia de integração de forma a implementar o standard. Neste estudo, destaquei a família de soluções EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) como melhor solução. De modo a implementar o standard HL7 v3 com base na arquitetura escolhida, realizei um estudo sobre os softwares existentes. Desse estudo, resultou a escolha do Mirth Connect como melhor abordagem para implementação de uma interoperabilidade entre o Medigraf e um sistema de informação. Este software atua como um middleware de mediation na comunicação entre sistemas heterogéneos. Selecionei para implementação, dois casos de uso do standard, de modo a demonstrar a sua utilização. Nativamente, o Mirth Connect não suporta a validação das mensagens do standard HL7 v3, suportando apenas HL7 v2.x. O Mirth Connect, sendo um software Open Source, permitiu que eu pudesse desenvolver um método capaz de executar essa validação. O método foi publicado no fórum da Mirth Corporation, possibilitando a sua partilha. No final são tecidas algumas conclusões, referindo o trabalho futuro que pode ser desenvolvido.

Chronic Polyaromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) Contamination Is a Marginal Driver for Community Diversity and Prokaryotic Predicted Functioning in Coastal Sediments

Benthic microorganisms are key players in the recycling of organic matter and recalcitrant compounds such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in coastal sediments. Despite their ecological importance, the response of microbial communities to chronic PAH pollution, one of the major threats to coastal ecosystems, has received very little attention. In one of the largest surveys performed so far on coastal sediments, the diversity and composition of microbial communities inhabiting both chronically contaminated and non-contaminated coastal sediments were investigated using high-throughput sequencing on the 18S and 16S rRNA genes. Prokaryotic alpha-diversity showed significant association with salinity, temperature, and organic carbon content. The effect of particle size distribution was strong on eukaryotic diversity. Similarly to alpha-diversity, beta-diversity patterns were strongly influenced by the environmental filter, while PAHs had no influence on the prokaryotic community structure and a weak impact on the eukaryotic community structure at the continental scale. However, at the regional scale, PAHs became the main driver shaping the structure of bacterial and eukaryotic communities. These patterns were not found for PICRUSt predicted prokaryotic functions, thus indicating some degree of functional redundancy. Eukaryotes presented a greater potential for their use as PAH contamination biomarkers, owing to their stronger response at both regional and continental scales.

Infomobility for “Car-Driver” Systems: Reference Model and Case Study

Part 21: Mobility and Logistics

An evolutionary squeaky wheel optimisation approach to personnel scheduling

The quest for robust heuristics that are able to solve more than one problem is ongoing. In this paper, we present, discuss and analyse a technique called Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimisation and apply it to two different personnel scheduling problems. Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimisation improves the original Squeaky Wheel Optimisation’s effectiveness and execution speed by incorporating two additional steps (Selection and Mutation) for added evolution. In the Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimisation, a cycle of Analysis-Selection-Mutation-Prioritization-Construction continues until stopping conditions are reached. The aim of the Analysis step is to identify below average solution components by calculating a fitness value for all components. The Selection step then chooses amongst these underperformers and discards some probabilistically based on fitness. The Mutation step further discards a few components at random. Solutions can become incomplete and thus repairs may be required. The repair is carried out by using the Prioritization step to first produce priorities that determine an order by which the following Construction step then schedules the remaining components. Therefore, improvements in the Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimisation is achieved by selective solution disruption mixed with iterative improvement and constructive repair. Strong experimental results are reported on two different domains of personnel scheduling: bus and rail driver scheduling and hospital nurse scheduling.

Análisis de soluciones para el diseño robusto del sistema de propulsión de un vehículo eléctrico: tarjeta de disparos/driver

El presente proyecto tiene como objetivo el análisis de la tecnología a de la tarjeta de disparos/driver del convertidor de potencia de un vehículo eléctrico. En él, se ha realizado un estudio profundo de las protecciones, consiguiendo así los conocimientos necesarios para el desarrollo de un diseño robusto capaz de hacer frente a situaciones de falta como cortocircuitos, picos de tensión, encendidos parásitos del IGBT, etc. Además de esto, se ha realizado la simulación de las protecciones estudiadas, con lo que es posible visualizar el funcionamiento de las mismas y acabar de comprender de forma correcta como actúan en los diferentes casos de falta. Con todo esto, es posible la realización de una tarjeta de disparos/driver para el inversor de un motor de un vehículo eléctrico, pudiendo utilizarse también en diferentes aplicaciones.