Probabilistic model for destination inference and travel pattern mining from smart card data

Transportation - Inferring trip destination in smart card data with only tap-in control is an important application. Most existing methods estimate trip destinations based on the continuity of trip...     

Total losses and the peril of piracy in English law of marine insurance

Whereas the Marine Insurance Act 1906 provides substantial detail about total losses, very little is provided in relation to piracy in the said statute. The recent judgments in Masefield v Amlin by Steel J ([2010] 1Lloyd's Rep. IR 345) and then by the English Court of Appeal ([2011] EWCA Civ 24) have highlighted the difficulties associated with determining whether a seizure of the subject-matter of insurance, in this case cargo, by pirates, demanding a ransom, can give rise to a claim for a total loss. This is a very important matter which also raises issues of legality and public policy. This article examines the implications of this judgment against the backdrop of the English marine insurance definition of piracy and the intricacies of the law relating to constructive and actual total losses. The article concludes with the suggestion that possibly the marine insurance definition of piracy should tally with that in the domain of public international law, and further, that legislative intervention should be considered for the purpose of ascertaining the point in time whether and when seizure by pirates can constitute a total loss.     

Piracy off West Africa from 2010 to 2014: an analysis

Piracy is one of the most frequent maritime threats. However, despite the importance of how maritime piracy is to be reduced, it is substantially less investigated than maritime safety. Piracy off Somalia is the most investigated case of piracy, but those results are not necessarily generalizable. Piracy off West Africa has been shown to be more diverse, successful and dangerous. This study investigates and analyses piracy off West Africa with the aim to understand how different operations and security measures affect the consequences of piracy. This study has identified several different intents and shows that most attacks are relatively close to shore and correspond to areas of high ship density. Attacks with the intent of theft at night-time are generally performed close to shore, and more complicated attacks against ships under way are more common during daytime and farther from shore. Five types of measures are found to have high effectiveness if the attack is detected during approach; after boarding, only two measures have high effectiveness. Of the effective measures, it can be concluded that all but one are dependent on detecting the attack. Therefore, detecting the pirates is key but must be accompanied by a set of measures because no measure alone can protect a ship given the operational conditions off West Africa. The risks associated with piracy off West Africa are estimated to be of the same magnitude as the risks posed by Somali piracy at its peak.     

Identification and quantification of link vulnerability in multi-level public transport networks: a passenger perspective

Robust public transport networks are important, since disruptions decrease the public transport accessibility of areas. Despite this importance, the full passenger impacts of public transport network vulnerability have not yet been considered in science and practice. We have developed a methodology to identify the most vulnerable links in the total, multi-level public transport network and to quantify the societal costs of link vulnerability for these identified links. Contrary to traditional single-level network approaches, we consider the integrated, total multi-level PT network in the identification and quantification of link vulnerability, including PT services on other network levels which remain available once a disturbance occurs. We also incorporate both exposure to large, non-recurrent disturbances and the impacts of these disturbances explicitly when identifying and quantifying link vulnerability. This results in complete and realistic insights into the negative accessibility impacts of disturbances. Our methodology is applied to a case study in the Netherlands, using a dataset containing 2.5 years of disturbance information. Our results show that especially crowded links of the light rail/metro network are vulnerable, due to the combination of relatively high disruption exposure and relatively high passenger flows. The proposed methodology allows quantification of robustness benefits of measures, in addition to the costs of these measures. Showing the value of robustness, our work can support and rationalize the decision-making process of public transport operators and authorities regarding the implementation of robustness measures.     

Pressure-Based Approach to Estimating the Injection Start and End in Single and Split Common Rail Injection Processes

The deep understanding on sand and sand dunes scale can be useful to reveal the formation mechanism of the sandstorm for early sandstorm forecast. The current sandstorm observation methods are mainly based on conventional meteorological station and satellites remote sensing, which are difficult to acquire sand scale information. A wireless sensing network is implemented in the hinterland of desert, which includes ad hoc network, sensor, global positioning system (GPS) and system integration technology. The wireless network is a three-layer architecture and daisy chain topology network, which consists of control station, master robots and slave robots. Every three robots including one master robot and its two slave robots forms an ad hoc network. Master robots directly communicate with radio base station. Information will be sent to remote information center. Data sensing system including different kinds of sensors and desert robots is developed. A desert robot is designed and implemented as unmanned probing movable nodes and sensors’ carrier. A new optical fiber sensor is exploited to measure vibration of sand in particular. The whole system, which is delivered to the testing field in hinterland of desert (25 km far from base station), has been proved efficient for data acquisition.     

Efficient estimation of extreme long-term stresses by considering a combination of longitudinal bending stresses

Longitudinal stresses due to combined horizontal and vertical bending moments in ships, corresponding to a return period of 20 years, are estimated by linear response analysis. In principle, the stress should be obtained by combining the stress in all sea states that can occur over a long-term period. A method to determine the desired long-term extreme stress by considering only a few short-term sea states is presented. The sea states have a certain probability of occurrence, and are each identified by a contour line in the (H _s, T _p)-plane. This approach makes it possible to estimate the extreme loads on the vessel in a practical and accurate manner. Moreover, it is shown that the long-term stress can be estimated by combining the individual long-term extreme stresses due to vertical and horizontal bending moments by using the sum-of-squares approach and accounting for the correlation between stresses. It was found that the correlation coefficient can be taken as the largest of the ones calculated along the contour line. It is shown that this correlation coefficient can even be approximated by the normalized phase angle at the wave length where the dominant response has its peak value. A comparison with the results obtained using well-known combination rules is presented. While linear analysis has been used here, it is believed that the approach can be generalized to stresses with nonlinear behavior, and hence represent a significant improvement in calculation efficiency. Received: September 18, 2001 / Accepted: December 18, 2001     

A Computational Procedure for Non-Linear Dynamic Analysis of Vehicles

In the research and design of vehicles, the accurate simulation of their dynamic behaviour is often of interest. Therefore, on the one hand, the non-linear properties of suspensions and tyres may not be neglected. On the other hand, the application of large mechanical models is necessary in order to get correct information about the local dynamic behaviour of critical parts or elements of vehicles. With regard to these requirements, in this paper, a special computational procedure is presented for the non-linear dynamic analysis of vehicles using large finite element models. Correctness, in comparison to COSMOS/M commercial finite element program, and applicability of the presented procedure is shown by the use of a bus finite element model containing 2214 degrees of freedom.     

Prediction method of hydrodynamic forces acting on the hull of a blunt-body ship in the even keel condition

The mathematical modeling group (MMG) model is well known and is widely used in the field of ship maneuverability. However, the MMG model can be applied only after determination of the hydrodynamic coefficients either from comprehensive captive model tests or from general empirical data. Around the cruising speed, when a ship's drift angle is relatively small, several methods have been developed to predict hydrodynamic coefficients from the ship's principal particulars, e.g., Kijima's method. Kijima's method is efficient in predicting the ship's maneuverability at the initial design stage and is even able to assess the effect of changes in stern design. Similarly, for the low speed range when a ship's drift angle is relatively large, several methods for predicting the ship's hydrodynamic coefficients have been proposed, based on captive model tests, such as those by Kose, Kobayashi, and Yumuro. However, most of the methods developed for low speeds cannot be applied to general ship types without additional experiments being performed. In contrast, Karasuno's method uses theoretical and empirical approaches to predict the hydrodynamic forces, even for large drift motions. Although Karasuno's model utilizes the ship's principal particulars and is applicable to a general vessel, it has not been widely used. This is because the form of Karasuno's model is relatively complicated and its accuracy around the cruising speed is less than that for other methods that have been specifically developed for the cruising speed range. A practical method for predicting hydrodynamic forces for the entire operating speed range of blunt-body ships is proposed in this article. It is based on the MMG model and predicts hydrodynamic coefficients based on a ship's principal particulars. A regression model for the proposed method has also been proposed by analyzing 21 different blunt-body ships. Finally, simulations of a very large 4-m crude carrier (VLCC) model using the proposed method were carried out and the results compared with free-running experiments (both at the cruising speed and at low speeds) to validate the efficacy of the model.     

A review of the effect of a／W ratio on fracture toughness （Ⅰ）—experimental investigation in EPFM

Many experimental investigations have previously been performed and recently done on different shipbuilding structural steels where the specimens size and crack depth/specimen width (a/W) were varied. A series of interesting results have been gained. It is worthwhile to have a review on the effect of a/W ratio on fracture toughness, and further theoretical analysis is necessary. In this paper, experimental work in elasticplastic fracture mechanics (EPFM) was discussed. Tests had been carried out on 10 kinds of strength steels. Results showed that J _i and δ₁ values increased with decreasing a/W when a/W<0.3 for three-point bend specimens and that shallow crack specimens which have less constrained flow field give markedly higher values of toughness than deeply notched specimens. However, for a/W>0.3, the toughness was found to be independent of a/W. Slip line field analysis shows that for shallow cracks, the hydrostatic stress is lower than that from standard deeply cracked bend specimen which develops a high level of crack tip constraint, provides a lower bound estimate of toughness, and will ensure an unduly conservative approach when applied to structure defects especially if initiation values of COD/J-integral are used.