Automated driving recognition technologies for adverse weather conditions

During automated driving in urban areas, decisions must be made while recognizing the surrounding environment using sensors such as camera, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), millimeter-wave radar (MWR), and the global navigation satellite system (GNSS). The ability to drive under various environmental conditions is an important issue for automated driving on any road. In order to introduce the automated vehicles into the markets, the ability to evaluate various traffic conditions and navigate safely presents serious challenges. Another important challenge is the development of a robust recognition system can account for adverse weather conditions. Sun glare, rain, fog, and snow are adverse weather conditions that can occur in the driving environment. This paper summarizes research focused on automated driving technologies and discuss challenges to identifying adverse weather and other situations that make driving difficult, thus complicating the introduction of automated vehicles to the market.     

Reconstruction of the Aceh Region following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster: A transportation perspective

Aceh, located in the northernmost area of Sumatra Island, is one of the regions that suffered the most damage from the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The process of reconstruction after a large-scale disaster is considered an opportunity to create a safer society, especially for developing countries, however the accumulation of knowledge about how to improve reconstruction is insufficient. The affected areas have diverse social and economic characteristics and unprecedented restoration efforts have been made. The Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, therefore, provides numerous research opportunities, and many surveys and other researches have been conducted to better understand what happened and how the reconstruction process could be improved. However, the majority of such research has focused on housing reconstruction, rebuilding livelihoods and community rehabilitation and there has been only limited research on transportation-related issues. Thus, there is significance in evaluating the reconstruction of Aceh from a transportation perspective, a dimension that has yet to be examined systematically. As a first step in the effort to evaluate various aspects of the reconstruction of Aceh from a transportation perspective, this research aims to present three transportation-related issues within the reconstruction process—1) the road network in the Banda Aceh coastal area, 2) mobility in relocation sites, and 3) reconstruction of the Banda Aceh–Meulaboh road—and to conduct a preliminary analysis of these issues by adding the viewpoint of disaster management and reconstruction, the authors' area of specialization. For conducting a preliminary analysis, existing information such as research papers, articles and reports and data collected through interviews and field reconnaissance conducted by the authors were utilized as much as possible, and such “qualitative data” was analyzed by applying the “interpretive approach”, considered an appropriate analytical framework for qualitative data.