Stakeholder Perspectives on the Value of Marine Spatial Planning Towards Advancing Offshore Wind in the U.S.

The United States contributes only 0.2% of the 18,814?MW of global installed offshore wind capacity. Lack of development has been attributed in part to a cumbersome regulatory process that includes the evaluation of environmental impacts. Assessments are based on biological, social, and technical data that are often incomplete. Marine spatial planning (MSP) may help fill data gaps. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key informants to understand (1) whether a lack of biological data impedes offshore wind environmental assessments, (2) whether MSP could mitigate these impediments, and (3) whether MSP could advance offshore wind development in the U.S. in other ways. Most informants stated that a lack of biological data in offshore wind environmental assessments was problematic due to incomplete data, uncertainty of data, and mismatched scales. Data issues may be mitigated by creation of data products and increased communication, outcomes of MSP that may benefit the regulatory process by increasing data availability, resolving conflicts among users, and providing a common operating picture. Challenges remain in integrating MSP into the processes of siting and permitting offshore wind, but it provides a strategic framework for the systematic identification, collection, collation, analyses, application, and management of data in the offshore wind environmental regulatory process.     

Testing and Analysis Techniques for Safety Assessment of Rail Vehicles: The State-of-the-Art

The methods currently being used in North America, Britain and Europe for the safety assessment of rail vehicles are discussed. There is considerable disparity between the methods that have been developed in the different countries. These differences, and the possible reasons for them, are discussed in the paper. Finally, conclusions are drawn and some recommendations are made for the future direction of safety assessment methods.     

Impacts of the 2004 Tsunami on Surin Marine National Park,Thailand

The impacts of the tsunami in 2004 on the reefs in Surin Marine National Park, Thailand, varied with the location and exposure of the reefs. Channel areas between islands were severely damaged. Areas with steep reef slopes were damaged by sand slides or coral collapse more than areas with low slopes. Massive, sub-massive, and encrusting corals were more resistant and resilient to the direct impact of the tsunami than branching, tabulate, and foliose life forms whereas the latter were more tolerant of temporary coverage by sand. Sub-massive corals were the most tolerant overall and survived sand coverage, breakage, and overturning. Live coral cover measured three months after the tsunami was significantly greater than immediately post-tsunami as broken, moved, or sand-covered corals, recorded as impacted in the initial survey, had survived and were regenerating. Low turbidity, lack of pollution, and mild currents possibly contributed to rapid recovery and limited long-term effects of the tsunami. Impact assessment shortly after a major disturbance may give an initial measure of damage but subsequent surveys must be undertaken to identify long-term effects. Understanding patterns of reef damage can help to formulate reef zoning and protection strategies in response to catastrophic events, but also in advance of such events to improve likely resilience of the marine park to disturbance.     

A two-dimensional response to a tropical storm on the Gulf of Mexico shelf

Surface current data from drifting buoys and remotely sensed wind data recorded over the continental shelf in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico during the passage of tropical storm Josephine in October 1996 are examined. Drifter data show the existence of a strong surface jet (velocities reaching 1 m s⁻¹) that moves up the west Florida shelf and westward along the Louisiana–Texas shelf, and lasts for nearly 1 week. The coastal jet occurs during an intense synoptic scale wind event where wind speeds reach 15 m s⁻¹. A simple force balance and statistical analysis are performed to assess the role of strong wind forcing. The primary balance shows an Ekman-type current. The role of local acceleration is greatest when winds are directed along bathymetry. A simple two-dimensional strongly forced shelf response model developed from the linear steady-state momentum equations also indicates larger along-shore currents due to both Ekman-type forcing by cross-shore winds and a cross-shore pressure gradient arising from conservation of mass. Model parameters fit empirically are within 15% of theoretical values. The simple model explains 30% and 46% of the variance in the observed along-shore and cross-shore surface currents, respectively.     

Forecasting high-speed rail ridership using a simultaneous modeling approach

Abstract

The newly launched, June 2009, US High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program has rekindled a renewed interest in forecasting high-speed rail (HSR) ridership. The first step to the concerted effort by the federal, state, rail, and other related agencies to develop a nationwide HSR network is the development of credible approaches to forecast the ridership. This article presents a nested logit/simultaneous choice model to improve the demand forecast in the context of intercity travel. In addition to incorporating the interrelationship between trip generation and mode choice decisions, the simultaneous model also provides a platform for the same utility function flowing between both the decision-making processes. Using American Travel Survey data, supplemented by various mode parameters, the proposed model improves the forecast accuracy and confirms the significant impact of travel costs on both mode choice and trip generation. Furthermore, the cross elasticity of mode choice and trip generation related to travel costs and other modal characteristics may shed some light on transportation policies in the area of intercity travel, especially in anticipation of HSR development.     

Cycle Network Planning: Towards a Holistic Approach Using Temporal Topology

ABSTRACT

Current cycle-network planning (CNP) at the local level tends to be dominated by a subjective-pragmatic approach in which it is only possible to consider a limited number of route alignment possibilities and development-sequencing scenarios. Although this method may produce acceptable results, it may also be true that the final design could be improved – and the construction efficiency could be enhanced – by a more comprehensive review of the available options in relation to the objectives of the intervention. Such objectives may include accident reduction, modal shift in favour of cycling, health benefits or strategic expansion of a network. This article presents work undertaken to demonstrate a holistic approach to CNP, based on a logically defined spatio-temporal model and allowing some semi-automated multiobjective optimization of network designs in a GIS-based decision-support system. The model is introduced briefly before a case study applying this model to development of a cycle network in a small town in northeast England is described. The results obtained from this case study and the implications of this research for cycle network planners are discussed.     

On cost-efficiency of the global container shipping network

This paper presents a simple formulation in the form of a pipe network for modelling the global container-shipping network. The cost-efficiency and movement-patterns of the current container-shipping network have been investigated using heuristic methods. The model is able to reproduce the overall incomes, costs, and container movement patterns for the industry as well as for the individual shipping lines and ports. It was found that the cost of repositioning empties is 27% of the total world fleet running cost and that overcapacity continues to be a problem. The model is computationally efficient. Implemented in the Java language, it takes one minute to run a full-scale network on a Pentium IV computer.     

手持式蠕动泵点胶节省成本

概要螺纹锁固和螺纹密封胶已经成为装配螺纹时保持锁固力和防止漏液最具可靠性和低成本的一种最佳解决方案。大多数用户采用手工点胶的方法直接从原包装内挤出粘合剂．而有时这种方法会导致粘合剂用量过多．并且在窄小处很难点胶。一个简单有效的解决方案就是使用低成本的手持式蠕动泵,将设备直接安装在瓶口上使用。研究表明．使用手持式蠕动泵可降低粘合剂使用量的40％以上。     

Empty container repositioning in liner shipping1

The efficient and effective management of empty containers is an important problem in the shipping industry. Not only does it have an economic effect, but it also has an environmental and sustainability impact, since the reduction of empty container movements will reduce fuel consumption and reduce congestion and emissions. The purposes of this paper are: to identify critical factors that affect empty container movements; to quantify the scale of empty container repositioning in major shipping routes; and to evaluate and contrast different strategies that shipping lines, and container operators, could adopt to reduce their empty container repositioning costs. The critical factors that affect empty container repositioning are identified through a review of the literature and observations of industrial practice. Taking three major routes (Trans-Pacific, Trans-Atlantic, Europe–Asia) as examples, with the assumption that trade demands could be balanced among the whole network regardless the identities of individual shipping lines, the most optimistic estimation of empty container movements can be calculated. This quantifies the scale of the empty repositioning problem. Depending on whether shipping lines are coordinating the container flows over different routes and whether they are willing to share container fleets, four strategies for empty container repositioning are presented. Mathematical programming is then applied to evaluate and contrast the performance of these strategies in three major routes.     

Automatic calibration of fundamental diagram for first‐order macroscopic freeway traffic models

Despite its importance in macroscopic traffic flow modeling, comprehensive method for the calibration of fundamental diagram is very limited. Conventional empirical methods adopt a steady state analysis of the aggregate traffic data collected from measurement devices installed on a particular site without considering the traffic dynamics, which renders the simulation may not be adaptive to the variability of data. Nonetheless, determining the fundamental diagram for each detection site is often infeasible. To remedy these, this study presents an automatic calibration method to estimate the parameters of a fundamental diagram through a dynamic approach. Simulated flow from the cell transmission model is compared against the measured flow wherein an optimization merit is conducted to minimize the discrepancy between model‐generated data and real data. The empirical results prove that the proposed automatic calibration algorithm can significantly improve the accuracy of traffic state estimation by adapting to the variability of traffic data when compared with several existing methods under both recurrent and abnormal traffic conditions. Results also highlight the robustness of the proposed algorithm. The automatic calibration algorithm provides a powerful tool for model calibration when freeways are equipped with sparse detectors, new traffic surveillance systems lack of comprehensive traffic data, or the case that lots of detectors lose their effectiveness for aging systems. Furthermore, the proposed method is useful for off‐line model calibration under abnormal traffic conditions, for example, incident scenarios. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.