Estimating the willingness to pay and value of risk reduction for car occupants in the road environment

In recent years there has been a re-focus on the valuation of a statistical life from the ex post or human capital method to an ex ante willingness to pay (WTP) approach. This is in part a recognition that we may have been undervaluing the cost of fatalities and injuries to society associated with crashes, but also a strong belief in the need to focus on establishing the amount, ex ante, that individuals are willing to pay to reduce the risk of exposure to circumstances that might lead to death or degree of injury on the road network. This study has developed a framework in which to identify the degree of preference heterogeneity in willingness to pay by individuals who are drivers or passengers in cars to avoid being killed or injured. A stated choice experiment approach is developed. The empirical setting is a choice of route for a particular trip that a sample of individuals periodically undertakes in Australia. The particular trip is described in enough detail to provide the respondent with a familiar market environment, providing all the relevant background information required for making a decision. Mixed logit models are estimated to obtain the marginal (dis)utilities associated with each influence on the choice amongst the attribute packages offered in the stated choice scenarios. These estimates are used to obtain the WTP distributions for fatality and injury avoidance, which are then aggregated to obtain estimates of the value of risk reduction (VRR), of which the fatality class is also known as the value of a statistical life (VSL).     

Effects of intake valve angle on combustion characteristic in an SI engine

In this study, 2 different valve-angle engines, one is wide and the other is narrow, were prepared for investigating the effects of the angle on the combustion. For this purpose, the part load performances were evaluated and the pressures were measured for combustion analysis at an engine bench under 5 different operating conditions, varying the compression ratio. The results show that the combustion proceeds so faster in the small IVA engine that its MBT timings are retarded considerably compared with that of large one and result in lower NOx emission level; however, unburned HC is higher because of its geometrical feature. In addition, there is no substantial difference between 2 IVA engines in the timings of combustion initiation and completion as a crank-angle-position-base in spite of the considerable difference of spark timing, on the other hands, the ignition delay of the small IVA is shorter than that of large one. Also the phenomena that the flame propagation is faster and the instant heat release rate is more concentrated and higher in the small were observed. Also, the burn duration of small one is shorter and the combustion process is more accelerated up to the mid-combustion stage; however, the process of large one is faster as the combustion approaches the last stage and the differences of combustion duration reduce as the compression ratio increases. Finally, the engine runs more stable when the IVA is small without any exception because of its rapid burn at the initial combustion stage.     

Heuristic resource allocation and scheduling method for distributed automotive control systems

This paper presents a heuristic resource allocation and scheduling method, which is based on an integrated architecture that enables multiple missions to be embedded in a single electronic control unit (ECU) and a single mission to be distributed over multiple ECUs. The proposed design method is composed of resource(e.g. task and message) allocation, scheduling, and attribute assignments. From a given target application’s task graph, the method generates a scheduling table specifying the release, start, and completion timings of tasks and messages. After that, all relevant attributes(e.g. priority of tasks and messages) are automatically assigned. In order to guarantee the functional and temporal requirements of target applications, design constraints such as the worst case response time, deadline, precedence relations, and physical limitations are concurrently considered. A chassis control system consisting of electronic stability control, an electro-mechanical brake, continuous damping control, and electronic air suspension is employed for evaluating the proposed method. The conventional chassis control system which is composed of seven ECUs was redesigned by only four ECUs without the degradation of control performance. Consequently, it is expected that the development time and production cost of distributed automotive control systems can be significantly reduced by the proposed design method.     

Real-time vision-based blind spot warning system: Experiments with motorcycles in daytime/nighttime conditions

This paper describes a real-time vision-based blind spot warning system that has been specially designed for motorcycles detection in both daytime and nighttime conditions. Motorcycles are fast moving and small vehicles that frequently remain unseen to other drivers, mainly in the blind-spot area. In fact, although in recent years the number of fatal accidents has decreased overall, motorcycle accidents have increased by 20%. The risks are primarily linked to the inner characteristics of this mode of travel: motorcycles are fast moving vehicles, light, unstable and fragile. These features make the motorcycle detection problem a difficult but challenging task to be solved from the computer vision point of view. In this paper we present a daytime and nighttime vision-based motorcycle and car detection system in the blind spot area using a single camera installed on the side mirror. On the one hand, daytime vehicle detection is carried out using optical flow features and Support Vector Machine-based (SVM) classification. On the other hand, nighttime vehicle detection is based on head lights detection. The proposed system warns the driver about the presence of vehicles in the blind area, including information about the position and the type of vehicle. Extensive experiments have been carried out in 172 minutes of sequences recorded in real traffic scenarios in both daytime and nighttime conditions, in the context of the Valencia MotoGP Grand Prix 2009.     

Managing a smart bicycle system when demand outstrips supply: the case of the university community in Seville

Of the many public initiatives used to promote the use of bicycles in the urban environment, the one that has achieved the most spectacular results in a short period of time is the public bicycle hire system. The experience of Seville is one of the most successful internationally, where 6.6 % of mechanised trips were being made by bicycle within 30 months. This paper analyses this experience in the university community, which represents one-third of system users. We conclude that the people who are most satisfied with the system are those who use it for leisure and recreation activities, non-residents of the city, more environmentally aware people and those who have no alternative mode of transportation. Their satisfaction is also closely linked to their appreciation of the bicycles’ level of comfort, the ease with which users can hire bicycles and return them and the small amount of paperwork involved required to sign up for the system. However, user appreciation has fallen over time because the system’s rapid success has caused it to become overloaded. This experience therefore provides one main lesson: the system’s success can result in eventual difficulties.     

Integrated transit services for minimum cost operation considering heterogeneous demand

Abstract

In large metropolitan areas, public transit is a major mode choice of commuters for their daily travel, which has an important role in relieving congestion on transportation corridors. The purpose of this study is to develop a model which optimizes service patterns (SPs) and frequencies that yield minimum cost transit operation. Considering a general transit route with given stops and origin-destination demand, the proposed model consists of an objective total cost function and a set of constraints to ensure frequency conservation and sufficient capacity subject to operable fleet size. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed model, in which the demand and facility data of a rail transit route were given. Results show that the proposed model can be applied to optimize integrated SPs and headways that significantly reduce the total cost, while the resulting performance indicators are generated.     

Development of a probabilistic model to optimize disseminated real‐time bus arrival information for pre‐trip passengers

In the advent of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS), the total wait time of passengers for buses may be reduced by disseminating real‐time bus arrival times for the next or series of buses to pre‐trip passengers through various media (e.g., internet, mobile phones, and personal digital assistants). A probabilistic model is desirable and developed in this study, while realistic distributions of bus and passenger arrivals are considered. The disseminated bus arrival time is optimized by minimizing the total wait time incurred by pre‐trip passengers, and its impact to the total wait time under both late and early bus arrival conditions is studied. Relations between the optimal disseminated bus arrival time and major model parameters, such as the mean and standard deviation of arrival times for buses and pre‐trip passengers, are investigated. Analytical results are presented based on Normal and Lognormal distributions of bus arrivals and Gumbel distribution of pre‐trip passenger arrivals at a designated stop. The developed methodology can be practically applied to any arrival distributions of buses and passengers.     

Characterization of fall–winter upwelling recurrence along the Galician western coast (NW Spain) from 2000 to 2005: Dependence on atmospheric forcing

Upwelling events driving ENACW (Eastern North Atlantic Coastal Water) into the Galician western coast rias had been considered typical spring–summer processes, according to the research developed in this area. However, they can also be observed in fall or winter under northerly winds blowing at shelf. Six different upwelling events were analyzed in the Ria of Pontevedra during the wet season (NDJF) from 2000 to 2005. These events were characterized by means of the zonal Ekman transport (Q_x) at four control points in front of the western rias (locally known as Rias Baixas) and thermohaline variables measured at a fixed station in the main mouth of the Ria of Pontevedra. The duration of the upwelling events ranged from 27 days (during February and March 2002) to 69 days (during November–December 2004 and January 2005). Upwelling events studied in the Ria of Pontevedra from 2000 to 2005 showed the similarity in upwelling features during both seasons (similar wind forcing and upwelled water). Finally, Q_x was correlated with the most representative atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere (EA, NAO, EA/WR, POL and SCA) from 1966 to 2005. The winter EA pattern has the most influence on Q_x showing an annual evolution with a prevalence of the positive phase from 1976 on. This positive phase is directly correlated with a prevalence of positive values of Q_x which are upwelling unfavorable in the Rias Baixas.     

Measuring the thicknesses of the freshwater-layer plume and sea ice in the land-fast ice region of the Mackenzie Delta using helicopter-borne sensors

Helicopter-borne sensors have been used since the early 1990s to monitor ice properties in support of winter marine transportation along the east coast of Canada. The observations are used in ice chart production and to validate ice hazard identification algorithms using satellite advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) imagery. In this study we evaluated the sensors' additional capability to monitor the freshwater plume characteristic beneath land-fast ice. During the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES) data were collected over the Mackenzie Delta in the southern Beaufort Sea where a buoyant river plume exists. Results showed that the electromagnetic–laser system could describe not only the ice properties but also the horizontal distribution of the freshwater plume depths that decreased in depth stepwise offshore as the flow of the buoyant plume was restricted by a series of ridge-rubble fields running parallel to the coast. Relative to the 2 m mean ice thickness, the plume layer depth varied from zero under mobile offshore pack ice to 3 m inshore of the third set of ridge-rubble fields.