Widening the Panama Canal and U.S. ports: historical and economic impact analyses

ABSTRACT

The economic history of the U.S. illustrates how the role of many cities has been changed by being seaports or located on navigable rivers or lakes. Based on the widening of the Panama Canal in 2016, the West Coast ports that include the west coast seaports of California, Oregon, and Washington were expected to become less important, while the freight shares of the East Coast and Gulf ports would increase. By how much it has been not easy to measure or predict so far, but this study attempted to define some of the key parameters in the measurement. As well as several relevant background topics, both the demand- and supply-side versions of the National Interstate Economic Model, have been applied for the measurement of economic impacts. U.S. port authorities and policy makers at the local and national levels who respond and develop plans for coping with the new realities of the Panama Canal are able to understand the extent to which changes in shippers’ and land-mode transporters’ behaviors would undermine the logistics and the costs of their activities. Therefore, this study is important for a diverse spectrum of port development strategies in the U.S. to respond to the Canal expansion.     

Time windows in workers' activity patterns: Empirical evidence from the Netherlands

This paper assumes that activities at the home and work location are important determinants of individuals' paths through time and space. Fixed activities at these locations determine to a large extent the duration and timing of time windows – blocks of time available for participation in travel and out-of-home non-work activities. Taking the time spent at home and at the workplace as a starting point, this paper classifies activity patterns on workdays into six groups with distinct home- and work-stay patterns. For this, data are used from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. The six clusters vary in terms of the duration and timing of time windows and some of the differences can be explained by commute characteristics, types of non-work activities performed, workers' sociodemographic attributes, and their spatiotemporal environment. However, the impact of sociodemographic and spatiotemporal variables on cluster membership is shown to be weak.     

The role of perceived environment,neighbourhood characteristics,and attitudes in walking behaviour: evidence from a rapidly developing city in China

Transportation - The associations between objective and subjective dimensions of the built environment and walking behaviour have been examined extensively in existing studies. However, the...     

In search of surrogate safety indicators for vulnerable road users: a review of surrogate safety indicators

Surrogate indicators are meant to be alternatives or complements of safety analyses based on accident records. These indicators are used to study critical traffic events that occur more frequently, making such incidents easier to analyse. This article provides an overview of existing surrogate indicators and specifically focuses on their merit for the analyses of vulnerable road users and the extent to which they have been validated by previous research. Each indicator is evaluated based on its ability to consider the collision risk, which can be further divided into the initial conditions of an event, the magnitude of any evasive action and the injury risk in any traffic event. The results show that various indicators and their combinations can reflect different aspects of any traffic event. However, no existing indicator seems to capture all aspects. Various studies have also focused on the validity of different indicators. However, due to the use of diverse approaches to validation, the large difference in how many locations were investigated and variations in the duration of observation at each location, it is difficult to compare and discuss the validity of the different surrogate safety indicators. Since no current indicator can properly reflect all the important aspects underlined in this article, the authors suggest that the choice of a suitable indicator in future surrogate safety studies should be made with considerations of the context-dependent suitability of the respective indicator.     

Establishment of Community Managed Fisheries’ Closures in Kenya: Early Evolution of the Tengefu Movement

Community-based management (CBM) could be an essential tool to prevent the depletion of marine resources in the Western Indian Ocean region. In Kenya, political pressure to strengthen local governance, has led to adoption of CBM as a way of reducing over-exploitation and managing the competing uses and impacts on the marine environment. Several communities in Kenya have embraced CBM and have set aside or closed previously fished areas to enhance recovery of fisheries and biodiversity. These community fisheries closures (locally called tengefu), despite being degraded, may recover to finfish abundances and biodiversity levels similar to established MPAs or above thresholds for maintaining some ecological services. Communities see their direct involvement and control of these tengefu as more likely to result in benefits flowing directly to them. Community closures are also important for articulating and resolving community values and strengthening their management capacity. Here, we describe the evolution of the tengefu movement in Kenya and combine information from focus group discussions, interviews, underwater surveys and boundary marking to evaluate the current status, opportunities and challenges facing these tengefu. We show that in some cases community closures suffer from slow and incomplete national and local legislative processes, challenges to compliance, and weak management.     

A havelock source panel method for near-surface submarines

A panel method is described for calculating potential flow around near-surface submarines. The method uses Havelock sources which automatically satisfy the linearized free-surface boundary condition. Outputs from the method include pressure field, pressure drag, wave resistance, vertical force, trim moment and wave pattern. Comparisons are made with model tests for wave resistance of Series 58 and DARPA SUBOFF hulls, as well as with wave resistance, lift force and trim moment of three length-to-diameter variants of the DSTO Joubert submarine hull. It is found that the Havelock source panel method is capable of determining with reasonable accuracy wave resistance, vertical force and trim moment for submarine hulls. Further experimental data are required in order to assess the accuracy of the method for pressure field and wave pattern prediction. The method is implemented in the computer code “HullWave” and offers potential advantages over RANS-CFD codes in terms of speed, simplicity and robustness.     

A product life cycle approach to urban waterfronts: The revitalization of Galveston

Abstract

Urban waterfronts are increasingly the focus of revitalization efforts designed to enhance tourism and recreation. The evolution of urban waterfronts suggests that these resources experience distinct stages of introduction, growth, maturity, decline, and sometimes revitalization. In this paper the product life cycle is broadened to describe the evolution of the waterfront district of Galveston, Texas. Implications of the product life cycle model of urban waterfront revitalization pertain to public policy formation, “product”; development, and management response to different life cycle stages.     

Identification of potential sites for deep-ocean waste isolation with a geographic site-selection model

Identification of optimal sites for the isolation of waste on the abyssal seafloor was performed with two approaches: by the traditional method of map overlays of relevant attributes, and by a specially developed, automated Site-Selection Model (SSM). Five initial, Surrogate Sites, identified with the map-overlay approach, were then compared with the more rigorously produced scores from the SSM. The SSM, a process for optimization of site locations, accepts subjective, expert-based judgments and transforms them into a quantitative, reproducible, and documented product. The SSM is adaptable to any siting scenario. Forty-one factors relevant to the isolation scenario, including 21 weightable factors having a total of 123 scorable categories, have been entered into the SSM. Factors are grouped under project definition, unique environments, anthropogenic, geologic, biologic, weather, oceanographic and distance criteria. The factor scores are linked to a georeferenced database array of all factors, corresponding to 1°×1° latitude–longitude squares. The SSM includes a total of 2241 one-degree squares within 1000 n.m. of the U.S. coasts, including the western North Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern North Pacific. Under a carefully weighted and scored scenario of isolation, the most favorable sites identified with the SSM are on the Hatteras and Nares Abyssal Plains in the Atlantic. High-scoring sites are also located in the Pacific abyssal hills province between the Murray and Molokai Fracture Zones. Acceptable 1° squares in the Gulf of Mexico are few and of lower quality, with the optimum location on the northern Sigsbee Abyssal Plain. Two of the five Surrogate Site locations, on the Hatteras and Sigsbee Abyssal Plains, correspond to the best SSM sites in each ocean area. Two Pacific and a second Atlantic Surrogate Site are located in low-scoring regions or excluded by the SSM. Site-selection results from the SSM, although robust, are an initial attempt to quantify the site-selection process. The SSM database exposes a significant lack of high-quality information for many areally mappable attributes on the abyssal seafloor, particularly bottom-current speed and measures of biologic productivity and flux. Terminologies and classifications of some measures, such as sediment types, suffer from parochialism and vary by ocean. Considerable research is needed even for a broad understanding of the environmental measures required to make sound societal decisions about use of the abyssal seafloor for disposal or other purposes.     

列车内饰设计趋势之一——旅客信息系统备受全球欢迎

让旅客享受娱乐已经不再被运营商认为是会对成本造成进一步损失而成为一种奢望。因为，通过为旅客提供一些他们想要的休闲娱乐项目和设施。已经成为提高运营收入的有效来源。     

单壳油轮何去何从

按照规定,单壳油轮已经被逐步淘汰,而我们却还在2009年年未考虑淘汰所带来的影响,这看起来也许有点奇怪。有些人甚至会觉得,自己回到了五年前。那时候,这是一个重要的争论焦点,而围绕2010年这个期限尚有不少疑问。在2004年，这是任何重大海运会议都必定涉及的首要问题。事实上，我记得一位业界观察家好像评论说，