Coping with Captivity in a maritime hijacking situation

Piracy has unfortunately become a health and safety risk for seafarers in the maritime industry today. However, little do we know about the impact of a pirate hijacking situation and how seafarers cope. Focusing on negotiation communication, the analysis debouches in a discussion of the dynamics of coping strategies, by investigating 173 authentic audio recordings of communication sequences recorded during a pirate hijacking situation that were donated voluntarily by a shipping company. The Captain assessed and reflected on the course of events in the situation, to which the negotiator responded appropriately, with acknowledging brief responses or psychological aid. This is similar to other highly dynamic decision-making settings, where decision-makers tend to continuously reflect and revise their view of the situation (Eraut 2000). The data is also consistent with the “reflection-in-action” concept by Schön (1983) used by van den Heuvel et al. (Cogn Technol Work 16: 25–45, 2014) in their investigation of communication of police officers in hostage situations. However, the coping dynamics changed when the negotiator’s responses became too minimal. This shows how the context and the individual’s cognitive appraisal of the encounter co-shapes the coping dynamics in the situation. It is urged that pre-piracy care and seafarer training involves practical examples and information about roles and coping dynamics in negotiation communication as part of an orchestrated approach to the scourge of piracy.     

Global maritime domain awareness: a sustainable development perspective

The International Maritime Organization defines maritime domain awareness as the effective understanding of any activity that could impact upon the security, safety, economy or environment. The traditional approach to manage it is based on state sovereignty over national territorial waters where authorities exercise their responsibilities within the defined specific area. Lately, new issues of transboundary dimension (i.e. piracy, overfishing, pollution) are changing the high seas from an open space governed by the rule of freedom into a common domain requiring new governance approach to manage its complex international problems. This paper investigates the use of sustainable development methodology to explore governance solutions within the socio-technical domain of maritime awareness. The outcome suggests that the use of sustainable development tools can and should be used to support the development and implementation of cooperative governance models which are more appropriate for creating global maritime domain awareness than the traditional state-centric and sector-based models. A modelling diagram for potential governance framework under International Maritime Organization’s leadership is included.     

Effect of injection angle on artificial cavitation using the design of experiment method

Using the supercavitation phenomenon is necessary to reach high velocities underwater. Supercavitation can be achieved in two ways: natural and artificial. In this article, the simulation of flows around a torpedo was studied naturally and artificially. The validity of simulation using theoretical and practical data in the natural and artificial phases was evaluated. Results showed that the simulations were consistent with the laboratory results. The results in different injection coefficient rates, injection angles, and cavitation numbers were studied. The obtained results showed the importance of cavitation number, injection rate coefficient, and injection angle in cavity shape. At the final level, determining the performance conditions using the Design of Experiment (DOE) method was emphasized, and the performance of cavitation number, injection rate coefficient, and injection angle in drag and lift coefficient was studied. The increase in injection angle in the low injection rate coefficient resulted in a diminished drag coefficient and that in the high injection rate coefficient resulted in an enhanced drag coefficient.     

Activity sequencing,location, and formation of individual non-mandatory tours: application to the activity-based models for Columbus,Cincinnati, and Cleveland,OH

Most of the earlier activity based models (ABMs) largely relied on a tour-based modeling paradigm which explicitly predicts tour frequency and then adds details including stop frequency, order, and location of stops within each tour. The current study is part of new tour formation design framework for an ABM in which the underlying tour structure and the stop frequency within tours emerge from temporal, sequencing, and locational preferences of activities that the traveler intends to participate during the day. In order to do this, the study developed a modified rank-ordered logit (ROL) framework that is capable of modeling sequence, locations, as well as the underlying tour structure of all activity episodes simultaneously in an integrated manner. Model estimation with the household survey data, provided several important behavioral insights into underlying choices that drive tour formation. Specifically, the study uncovered pairwise ordering preferences among episodes of different activity purposes, clustering tendencies among episodes of same activity purpose, the impact of supply side activity opportunities on the location and sequence choice dimensions, and impedance effects (including distance and mode and time-of-day logsums) on location and tour break dimensions. The developed models are incorporated in the operational ABM structure adopted for three major cities (Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati) in Ohio.     

Joint road toll pricing and capacity development in discrete transport network design problem

The paper demonstrates a method to determine road network improvements that also involve the use of a road toll charge, taking the perspective of the government or authority. A general discrete network design problem with a road toll pricing scheme, to minimize the total travel time under a budget constraint, is proposed. This approach is taken in order to determine the appropriate level of road toll pricing whilst simultaneously addressing the need for capacity. The proposed approach is formulated as a bi-level programming problem. The optimal road capacity improvement and toll level scheme is investigated with respect to the available budget levels and toll revenues.     

Children’s travel to school: satisfaction,current mood,and cognitive performance

We investigate whether travel mode, travel time, and activities during travel influence children’s satisfaction with their travel to school, their current mood, and their cognitive performance after arriving at school. A sample of 344 children (165 girls) between the ages of 10 and 15 years were recruited at five public schools in Värmland County, Sweden. Directly after arriving at school, the children rated how they felt on two scales ranging from very sad to very happy and from very tired to very alert, filled out the Satisfaction with Travel Scale adapted for children (STS-C), reported details about their journeys, and took a word-fluency test. The results for STS-C showed that traveling by school bus and walking or cycling was experienced as having a higher quality than traveling by car. Children who engaged in conversation during their journeys reported a higher quality and more positive feelings than children who were engaged in solitary activities during their journeys. A shorter journey was experienced as having a higher quality and resulting in more positive feelings. Children traveling for longer durations performed better in the word-fluency test if using their smartphones or doing a combination of activities during their journeys.     

What encourages people to carpool? An evaluation of factors with meta-analysis

Non-household carpools (where two or more commuters from different residences travel together in the same private vehicle) bring public benefits. To encourage and incentivise it, transport practitioners and researchers must understand its private motivations and deterrents. Existing studies often report conflicting results or non-generalisable findings. Thus, a quantitative systematic review of the literature body is needed. Using meta-analysis, this study synthesised 22 existing empirical studies (representing over 79,000 observations) to produce an integrated review of the carpooling literature. The meta-analysis determined 24 non-household carpooling factors, and their effect sizes. Factors such as number of employees (\(\bar{r} = 0.42\)), partner matching programs (\(\bar{r} = 0.42\)), female (\(\bar{r} = 0.22\)) and fixed work schedule (\(\bar{r} = 0.15\)) were found to have strong effects on carpooling while judgmental factors (such as the motivation to save costs) only exhibited small influence (\(\bar{r} < 0.1\)). Based on the significant effects, the paper discussed prospects for improving carpooling uptake by developing: (i) target demographics, (ii) selling points for marketing, (iii) carpooling partner programs and (iv) multiple employer ‘super-pools’. The results warrant caution due to the small amount of studies synthesised. Transport practitioners might plan carpooling policies based on the findings; and transportation researchers might use the list of factors to model carpooling behaviour.     

Research on vibration and near-field sound radiation of ring-ribbed cylindrical shell coated deadening and decoupling materials

The research on structural vibration and sound radiation of underwater ring-ribbed cylindrical shell, which is coated with a kind of deadening and decoupling materials, becomes a focus in recent years. This paper analyzes the problem on two aspects: model experiment and numerical calculation. The model experiment is carried out including three cases firstly, in which the structural vibration response and radiating acoustic field are measured respectively, and the results gained in these three cases are analyzed to discuss the effect of reducing structural vibration and radiating noise of the deadening and decoupling materials. The coupling FEM/BEM and the SEA methods are both used in numerical calculation, i.e. the arithmetic of the coupling FEM/BEM method is adopted to calculate the low frequency characteristics and the SEA method is adopted to calculate the medium-high frequencies characteristics of the model. By comparing experimental results with numerical calculation results, it is proved that the algorithm adopted in this paper is reasonable.     

Classification of underwater still objects based on multi-field features and SVM

A Support Vector Machine is used as a classifier to the automatic detection and recognition of underwater still objects. Discrimination between the objects can be transferred into different projection spaces by the process of multi-field feature extraction. The multi-field feature vector includes time-domain, spectral, time-frequency distribution and bi-spectral features. Underwater target recognition can be considered as a problem of small sample recognition. SVM algorithm is appropriate to this kind of problems because of its outstanding generalizability. The SVM is contrasted with a Gaussian classifier and a k-nearest classifier in some experiments using real data of lake or sea trial. The experimental results indicate that SVM is better than the others two.     

Measuring the effectiveness of methods for evaluating noise jammers

Reliable evaluations of a noise jammer's effectiveness are necessary to properly design, manufacture, and operate one, so it is important to have an evaluation model. Based on their characteristics and principles, relevant factors were classified in terms of their contribution to a unit's effectiveness. In this way an evaluation index system was established. In the proposed mathematical model a noise jammer is analyzed by combining the model of system effectiveness with the method of analytic hierarchical process. A simulation of underwater acoustic countermeasures was used to test the rationality and feasibility of the model. The results showed that this model is an effective way to solve the challenge of evaluating the effectiveness of non-offensive weapons under single working phase.