Compliance with MARPOL Annex VI regulation 14 by ships in the Gulf of Guinea sub-region: Issues,challenges and opportunities

The negative environmental and health impacts association with high sulphur dioxide emissions from shipboard machineries have been raised by various stakeholders within the marine transportation sector. It is against this backdrop that the International Maritime Organisation under the MARPOL Annex VI regulation 14 has capped sulphur emission to 0.1% for Sulphur Emission Control Areas and 0.5% for the other shipping nations. However, ship owners in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) sub-region are facing multitudes of challenges in meeting up with this new IMO regulation. This paper aims to identify the main barriers hampering effective compliance to this new regulation by ships operating in the GoG, rank the barriers, and then discuss the possible opportunities that may arise as a result of addressing the challenges. To identify the main barriers, experts with several years of experience in the maritime industry from Ghana and Cameroun were used while multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method combining analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was employed to rank the barriers. Other methods such as fuzzy AHP (FAHP), rank-order centroid (ROC) and TOPSIS were combined to validate the result of the study. The findings indicate that lack of infrastructure, lack of comprehensive marine air pollution laws and high capital and operational costs of sulphur reduction solutions emerged as the top three ranked barriers. The findings of this study can be useful to ship owners and policy makers in dealing with the issues of marine air pollution.     

Influential vectors in fuel consumption by an urban bus operator: Bus route,driver behavior or vehicle type?

Energy costs account for an important share of the total costs of urban and suburban bus operators. The purpose of this paper is to expand empirical research on bus transit operation costs and identify the key factors that influence bus energy efficiency of the overall bus fleet of one operator and aid to the management of its resources.We estimate a set of multivariate regression models, using cross-section dataset of 488 bus drivers operating over 92 days in 2010, in 87 routes with different bus typologies, of a transit company operating in the Lisbon’s Metropolitan Area (LMA), Rodoviária de Lisboa, S.A.Our results confirm the existence of influential variables regarding energy efficiency and these are mainly: vehicle type, commercial speed, road grades over 5% and bus routes; and to a lesser extent driving events such as: sudden longitudinal decelerations and excessive engine rotation. The methodology proved to be useful for the bus operator as a decision-support tool for efficiency optimization purpose at the company level.     

Large-scale dynamic transportation network simulation: A space-time-event parallel computing approach

This paper describes a computationally efficient parallel-computing framework for mesoscopic transportation simulation on large-scale networks. By introducing an overall data structure for mesoscopic dynamic transportation simulation, we discuss a set of implementation issues for enabling flexible parallel computing on a multi-core shared memory architecture. First, we embed an event-based simulation logic to implement a simplified kinematic wave model and reduce simulation overhead. Second, we present a space-time-event computing framework to decompose simulation steps to reduce communication overhead in parallel execution and an OpenMP-based space-time-processor implementation method that is used to automate task partition tasks. According to the spatial and temporal attributes, various types of simulation events are mapped to independent logical processes that can concurrently execute their procedures while maintaining good load balance. We propose a synchronous space-parallel simulation strategy to dynamically assign the logical processes to different threads. The proposed method is then applied to simulate large-scale, real-world networks to examine the computational efficiency under different numbers of CPU threads. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the implemented parallel computing algorithm can significantly improve the computational efficiency and it can reach up to a speedup of 10 on a workstation with 32 computing threads.     

Hardware-in-the-loop testbed for evaluating connected vehicle applications

Connected vehicle environment provides the groundwork of future road transportation. Researches in this area are gaining a lot of attention to improve not only traffic mobility and safety, but also vehicles’ fuel consumption and emissions. Energy optimization methods that combine traffic information are proposed, but actual testing in the field proves to be rather challenging largely due to safety and technical issues. In light of this, a Hardware-in-the-Loop-System (HiLS) testbed to evaluate the performance of connected vehicle applications is proposed. A laboratory powertrain research platform, which consists of a real engine, an engine-loading device (hydrostatic dynamometer) and a virtual powertrain model to represent a vehicle, is connected remotely to a microscopic traffic simulator (VISSIM). Vehicle dynamics and road conditions of a target vehicle in the VISSIM simulation are transmitted to the powertrain research platform through the internet, where the power demand can then be calculated. The engine then operates through an engine optimization procedure to minimize fuel consumption, while the dynamometer tracks the desired engine load based on the target vehicle information. Test results show fast data transfer at every 200 ms and good tracking of the optimized engine operating points and the desired vehicle speed. Actual fuel and emissions measurements, which otherwise could not be calculated precisely by fuel and emission maps in simulations, are achieved by the testbed. In addition, VISSIM simulation can be implemented remotely while connected to the powertrain research platform through the internet, allowing easy access to the laboratory setup.     

做好交通行业政务信息工作的研究

以山东省港航业政务信息工作为例，对如何做好交通行业政务信息工作进行研究。做好交通行业政务信息工作的关键是要根据交通行业的特点，构建交通政务信息网络；围绕港航行业管理内容，突出港航信息特色；同时也离不开领导的重视和支持。     

Studies on emergency evacuation management for maritime transportation

Marine transportation is a vital component of the world’s economy and transportation network. The number of people using passenger ships around the globe is increasing worldwide. Similar to other transportation systems, passenger safety is critical in maritime shipment. As emergency evacuation processes for ships are highly different from and more complicated than those for buildings and other vehicles, many researchers have published a vast range of documents related to this peculiar research area. However, there is a tangible lack of sufficient literature review studies that investigate marine emergency evacuation (MEE). That being the case, the potential of marine transportation and the effect of emergency evacuation operation on life safety have inspired the proposal of this study. This paper offers a review of the available literature on MEE modelling, analysis and planning during the period from 1973 to 2017 using a systematic approach. After reviewing relevant academic journals, peer-reviewed conference papers, and technical reports of agencies, relevant literature is analysed. In addition, the literature review is extended by means of proposing a framework methodology which considers different possible conditions and situations during MEE. Finally, insights for ship managers and policymakers are discussed and potential future research directions are identified.     

技术站间货物列车协同配流方案研究

技术站间货物列车协同作业组织模式，可实现各站获益，整体加强，对提升铁路运输生产效率具有重要意义.本文建立技术站间货物列车协同配流模型.模型以最大化两技术站的正点出发列车数作为目标函数，采用启发式遗传算法进行寻优，得到货物列车解编顺序和配流方案.最后，通过对算例进行实验分析，验证协同配流模型的实用性.结果表明，技术站间协同配流作业明显压缩车辆在站总停留时间，增加了阶段计划内正点出发列车数，进而提高了技术站内线路使用能力.     

考虑收益管理的高铁平行车次动态差别定价

基于RP(Revealed Preference)和SP(Stated Preference)调查数据，利用潜在类别模型对高铁旅客进行细分，得到旅客对平行车次不同服务属性，如列车运行时间、发车时段和舒适度的偏好程度，并对其进行量化；引入收益管理，以多列车整体收益最大为目标，构建平行车次动态差别定价模型，并设计模拟退火算法进行求解；最后，通过京沪高铁进行实例验证.结果表明：与固定票价进行客票销售相比，所提方案能够适应高峰期和平峰期不同客流特点，提高铁路客票总收益，为高铁平行车次灵活定价提供参考.     

桨-舵间距对其组合系统水动力性能的影响

本文通过CFD方法对敞水桨、桨-舵组合以及优化间距的桨-舵组合装置开展了数值仿真研究，分析了桨-舵间距对其组合系统的水动力性能影响。螺旋桨敞水工况的计算值与物理模型试验值吻合良好，验证了数值计算方法的可行性。通过对比桨-舵间距大于推荐值的三个工况，发现在较低进阶系数下系统的节能效率有稍许增加，然而随着间距的增大，节能效率呈现降低的趋势；在高进阶系数下，随间距增大节能效率逐步降低。适当减小桨-舵间距，在较低和中等进阶系数下，随间距减小节能效率呈现逐步升高的趋势，在间距减少10mm时，组合体的节能效率最大可增加1.937%；不过在高进阶系数下，随间距减小节能效率却有下降趋势。