Phasing out lead in automotive fuels: conversion considerations, policy formulation, and application to Lebanon

The serious public health effects of lead are widely recognized, and many countries of the world have taken steps to completely eliminate it from automotive fuels. This study reviews the international experience with phasing out leaded gasoline; considerations affecting adoption of unleaded fuel are identified, and difficulties underlying change are synthesized. Factors related to technology, supply availability, distribution channels, economics, and social equity are underlined. International experience is distilled into a set of desirable characteristics of policies for phasing out leaded fuel. Such desirable properties include robustness vis-à-vis enforcement and compliance, the existence of a few “control points”, flexibility with respect to future vehicle and fuel technologies, cost-neutrality, and fairness in terms of incidence on socio-economic groups. The case of Lebanon is considered in structuring a practical strategy for phasing out leaded fuel. Positive and negative factors likely to affect the success of lead phaseout strategies in Lebanon are identified. Consideration of these factors along with the desirable attributes of successful policies has led to the development of a recommended plan for leaded fuel phaseout.     

An Epsilon Bargaining Game-Theoretic Formulation Between Carrier and Container Terminal Operators for Servicing Vessels During Unloading Operations

Due to globalization trends and the increasing competition between ports, the maritime policy for container shipments has witnessed a change in operations that resulted in less reliance on direct freight flows and higher transshipment operations. Motivated to investigate a soft intelligent decision-making approach using game theory in the context of servicing vessels during unloading operations in transshipment, we propose an epsilon bargaining approach between the carrier and the container terminal operator (CTO). The objective of the game is to maximize the carrier service level while minimizing operation costs for the CTO. The players' utilities, which depend on the service level and the fees for the carrier, as well as the revenues generated and the cost incurred for the CTO, are uniquely formulated and evaluated in a bargaining scenario using an ordinal ranking approach. The negotiation process is further improved between the two players based on our proposed Epsilon Bargaining Equilibrium, which to the best of our knowledge has not been used in maritime transportation problems. Results from a risk aversion case illustrate the value of the soft computing mathematical model that we formulated and motivate follow-up research.     

Modeling car ownership and use in a developing country context with informal public transportation

Transportation - Car ownership and use is a main contributor to the deterioration of air quality in cities and to global warming. There is thus a pressing need to understand their determinants in...