A stochastic concession model for infrastructure projects under build-operate-transfer schemes

Concession period is a key factor in the arrangement of a build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract. This paper proposes a stochastic concession period model for infrastructure projects under a BOT scheme, which takes into account the impact of risks and the risk attitudes of the private investor and the government. A hypothetical case is simulated by using the Monte Carlo simulation method to illustrate the proposed model. The results indicate that even for a project with the same estimations, the concession interval can be different and depends a lot on the risk attitudes of the private investor and the government. The proposed model provides a more reasonable concession interval based on which a specific concession period can be obtained through negotiation between the two parties.     

Urban end distribution optimization under e-commerce environment

With the rapid development of e-commerce, urban end distribution plays more and more important role in e-commerce logistics. The collection and delivery points (CDPs), between online retailers and customers, provide a way to improve the service quality of urban end distribution. But it will be more difficult to obtain an optimal solution of urban end delivery plan when many CDPs joint a complicated delivery network, since the solution space is always too large for many traditional heuristic algorithms to search. In this paper, a two-stage optimization method based on geographic information system (GIS) and improved cooperative particle swarm optimization (CPSO) is proposed. This method takes full advantage of powerful network analysis of GIS and strong global search of CPSO. A new cooperative learning mechanism, global sub-swarm, local sub-swarm and normal sub-swarm (GS-LS-NS), is used to improve the search mode of CPSO. Finally, several experiments are conducted to show the better performance of GIS-CPSO, compared with single PSO, GIS-CPSO and ArcGIS (software of GIS) separately. The conclusion of this research is much useful and applicable for logistics service providers.     

Construction of rate-compatible (RC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes based on RC-LDPC block codes

In this paper, a family of rate-compatible (RC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes can be obtained from RC-LDPC block codes by graph extension method. The resulted RC-LDPC convolutional codes, which are derived by permuting the matrices of the corresponding RC-LDPC block codes, are systematic and have maximum encoding memory. Simulation results show that the proposed RC-LDPC convolutional codes with belief propagation (BP) decoding collectively offer a steady improvement on performance compared with the block counterparts over the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channels (BI-AWGNCs).     

Evolutionary game on oil and gas companies’ pollution treatment

This paper presents a dynamic model of pollution treatment strategies, driven by the bargaining relationships between governments, oil and gas companies and local residents. The results show that government plays a dominating role and government environmental policies have significant impact on other two parties’ behavior. To achieve better pollution treatment in the future, we put forward the following suggestions. An improvement in the legal system is required, and the legal enforcement needs to be strengthened. In terms of pollution treatment, responsibilities and obligations of these three parties need to be clearly defined. A wellfunctioned reward and penalties system needs to be established for minimizing the environment damage in the future.     

Route design and automatic check in electronic chart display and information system

For an electronic chart display and information system ( ECDIS), the most important function is the route design. In this paper,a novel approach to developing ECDIS was given and then an effective method was proposed for route design and automatic check. The mathematical model and logical relationship for coordinate transformation were also provided. They were adopted in ECDIS developing, which was based on the research of the Vxworks real-time operating system. The actual system application implies that the method is practical and can held navigation verv well.     

The real-time display algorithm of objects in seabed

Three-dimension electronic chart display information system (ECDIS) is one of the new developing directions of electronic navigation chart, and its real-time quality is one of the important requirements. In this paper the algorithm of simplifying triangle surface using edge contraction, which can ensure the real-time display of objects in seabed environment, was put forward. The optimum contraction point was determined by the Lagrange matrix, so that the algorithm ensures that the contraction point locates on the original model, meanwhile meets the demands of least deviation. This algorithm can improve the plotting speed, and preserve the boundary character by using the fewer triangles to simulate objects.     

The motion analysis of fire video images based on moment features and flicker frequency

In this paper, motion analysis methods based on the moment features and flicker frequency features for early fire flame from ordinary CCD video camera were proposed, and in order to describe the changing of flame and disturbance of non-flame phenomena further more, the average changing pixel number of the first-order moments of consecutive flames has been defined in the moment analysis as well. The first-order moments of all kinds of flames used in our experiments present irregularly flickering, and their average changing pixel numbers of first-order moments are greater than fire-like disturbances. For the analysis of flicker frequency of flame, which is extracted and calculated in spatial domain, and therefore it is computational simple and fast. The method of extracting flicker frequency from video images is not affected by the catalogues of combustion material and distance. In experiments, we adopted two kinds of flames, i.e. , fixed flame and movable flame. Many comparing and disturbing experiments were done and verified that the methods can be used as criteria for early fire detection.     

Multi-scale simulation for the forming of a heavy vessel head considering the evolution of defects and microstructure

The head of nuclear pressure vessel is a key component to guarantee the safety of nuclear power plant, so it is necessary to improve its mechanical properties during manufacturing. In the practical production, due to the huge size of the ingots from which the head is manufactured, coarse grains and voids are common defects existing in the material. Furthermore, cracks may appear in the forming process. It is highly demanded that the forming process must be properly designed with suitable parameters to compact the voids, to refine and homogenize the grains and to avoid cracks. Therefore, the research on the evolution of internal voids, grain size and cracks is very important to determine the forming process of huge components. SA508-3 steel is the material to manufacture the head of pressure vessel in the nuclear island. In the previous studies, we have separately built models to evaluate the evolution of internal voids, grain size and cracks during the hot forming process for SA508-3 steel. This study integrates the models for multi-scale simulation of the forging process of the head of nuclear pressure vessel in order to control the quality of the forgings. Through the software development, the models are integrated with a commercial finite element code DEFORM. Then, the extended forging and final forging processes of the head are investigated, and some appropriate deformation parameters are recommended.     

Priority based data reporting algorithm in wireless sensor networks

A cluster-based organization with two phases to separate priority calculation and network activity operations is developed. In the election-state phase, clusters are organized by those nodes with sufficient residual energy level (REL) that are distributed as evenly as possible in the network. For each network round, each node decides its role (such as, cluster header (CH) or a normal node) and its priority level for activity operation. The priority level also affects the active/sleep scheduling in the node. In the steady-state phase, the positive priority levels of active nodes determine their activity order to avoid transmission collision, and to reduce redundant data transmission and sensing coverage. Since the data reporting to the sink is usually performed by a CH delivery chain, subsidiary CHs are selected to assist with data delivery and to share the loading of CHs. The formulae for computing priority levels are analyzed and verified by the examples with valid parameters. The experimental results show that the two phases efficiently consume node energy and achieve energy savings.     

A simple method to solve the network congestion for spitial architcture

Scheduling algorithm always plays an important role in the spatial architecture for the contradiction between the finite network bandwidth and the abundant execution resources. This article provides a simple method to solve the contention for network resource in one of the spatial architecture, i.e. the tera-op, reliable, intelligently adaptive processing system (TRIPS) processor. The method improves the performance of network by increasing the bypass bandwidth which can transmit the data in the internal of every execution unit, and converting the proportion of remote communication by the deep scheduling algorithm. The deeply optimized algorithm is realized to verify the validity of the method, and the performance increase 9% for floating point spec2000 benchmark is got.