Assessing a maritime service website prototype in a ship bridge simulator: navigators’ experiences and perceptions of novel e-Navigation solutions

The aim of this study was to assess proof of concept and usability of a maritime service website prototype in a full-mission ship bridge simulator through Swedish mariners’ experiences and perceptions. This test was part of the European Commission’s EfficienSea2 project for e-navigation. The prototype was intended as an aid to existing standard systems and methodologies for planning, executing and monitoring voyages. The study began with 5 days of simulator trials focused on today’s standard practices. This served as a baseline to compare to subsequent 4 days of simulator trials testing the prototype. For data collection, observations, video footage, interviews, and eye tracking were used. Data analysis included breaking apart the qualitative data to capture the perceptions of the participants, and a preliminary analysis of eye-tracking data as a complement. The results suggested that the prototype could be more suitable for a route planning stage, that the participants were familiar with similar existing solutions from other manufacturers, and that the contents of the tool would be most beneficial if integrated within the Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS). There is a pressing need for the novel solutions to be user needs-driven, integrated with the existing technologies, and standardized across the domain, and these processes must go hand-in-hand with accounting for all involved stakeholders, procedures, regulations, and training, as this will alter the course of shipping.     

Economic Outcomes for Harvesters under the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program: Have Goals and Objectives Been Met?

Abstract

The West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program was designed to achieve multiple economic goals and objectives, including increasing net benefits, profitability, flexibility, and utilization of harvest allocations. In this article, we leverage seven years of comprehensive cost and earnings data to evaluate progress towards these goals with a focus on harvesters. Our assessment shows that five years post-implementation, net benefits to the nation have doubled, and indicators of productivity and profitability have increased. The fleet that targets Pacific whiting has seen the largest gains, due in part to increases in total allowable catch and the elimination of the race-to-fish. However, increased revenues have not been realized to the degree that was expected for harvesters targeting non-whiting groundfish, partly due to lower than predicted consolidation and relatively low quota utilization. Economic outcomes indicate that tradeoffs exist between certain objectives of the program, specifically between achieving full utilization and flexibility for harvesters. Results are discussed in the context of the design and evaluation of catch share programs for diverse, multispecies fisheries.     

有轨电车综合指挥调度系统中列车运行的控制与监视

介绍国内有轨电车的发展现状,结合苏州有轨电车2号线综合指挥调度系统(tramway integrated dispatching system,TIDS)项目,对TIDS主要的系统功能进行简要说明,对有轨电车TIDS系统自动监控功能进行详细的功能模块划分,并围绕列车位置的监视与追踪,提出一种新的基于冗余策略的列车追踪方法和列车定位矫正算法,用于列车定位和显示。方案可在确保线路运行安全和运营安全的前提下,提升效率、提高稳定性,对后续有轨电车综合指挥调度系统方案建设具有一定的参考价值。     

The dynamic relationships between paper petroleum refining and physical trade of crude oil into the United States

This article examines the relationship between refinery margins traded on paper using petroleum futures (the paper refinery) and the physical trade of crude oil into the US. Computations of a 3:2:1 crack spread were constructed using daily observations of second- and third-nearby unleaded gasoline and heating oil futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NY MEX) and spot Brent crude oil prices. The crack spread represents the margin between the cost of crude oil feed stock today and the value of the products produced by a refinery in the future. Unit root tests on each of the time series found crack spreads to be stationary while crude oil imports were found to be non-stationary. A s the two series were found to be integrated of different order, cointegration analysis of the two series was not deemed appropriate. Instead, linear relationships between crack spreads and imports were examined using causality tests. It was found that the 2-month 3:2:1 crack spread Granger-causes crude oil imports and that this causality is unidirectional. The significance of these findings lies in the fact that other industries like tanker shipping derive their demand from the demand for, and trade in, petroleum. Crack spreads, therefore, can provide a leading indicator for short term developments in tanker demand. For a chartering manager who has ships on the spot market, crack spreads can help him/her anticipate demand developments and influence vessel deployment and chartering decisions.     

潜艇操纵性多目标优化及灵敏度分析

以潜艇操纵面的几何尺度和纵向位置为设计变量,估算归一化后的无因次水动力系数,建立潜艇操纵性指标预报数学模型.基于iSIGHT优化平台,采取NCGA遗传算法开展潜艇操纵性指标的多目标优化设计,给出改进的优选方案,并进行灵敏度分析,评估操纵面参数对操纵性指标的影响.     

Route choice of cyclists in Zurich

This paper presents the first route choice model for bicyclists estimated from a large sample of GPS observations and overcomes the limitations inherent in the generally employed stated preference approach. It employs an improved mode detection algorithm for GPS post-processing to determine trips made by bicycle, which are map matched to an enriched street network. The alternatives are generated as a random sample from an exhaustive, but constrained search. Accounting for the similarity between the alternatives with the path-size factor the MNL estimates show that the elasticity with regards to trip length is nearly four times larger than that with respect to the share of bike paths. The elasticity with respect to the product of length and maximum gradient of the route is small. No other variable describing the routes had an impact. The heterogeneity of the cyclists is captured through interaction terms formulated on their average behaviour.     

Preview suspension control for a full tracked vehicle

In this study, preview control algorithms for the active and semi-active suspension systems of a full tracked vehicle (FTV) are designed based on a 3-D.O.F model and evaluated. The main issue of this study is to make the ride comfort characteristics of a fast moving tracked vehicle better to keep an operator’s driving capability. Since road wheels almost trace the profiles of the road surface as long as the track doesn’t depart from the ground, the preview information can be obtained by measuring only the absolute position or velocity of the first road wheel. Simulation results show that the performance of the sky-hook suspension system almost follows that of full state feedback suspension system and the on-off semi-active system carries out remarkable performance with the combination of 12 on-off semi-active suspension units. The results simulated with 1^st and 2^nd weighting sets mean that the suspension system combined with the soft type of inner suspension and hard type of outer suspension can carry out better ride comfort characteristics than that with identical suspensions. The full tracked vehicle (FTV) system is uncontrollable and the system is split into controllable and uncontrollable subspace using singular value decomposition transformation. Frequency response curves to four types of inputs, such as heaving, pitching, rolling, and warping inputs, also demonstrate the merits of preview control in ride comfort. All the frequency characteristic responses confirm the continuous time results.     

Realization of pmp-based control for hybrid electric vehicles in a backward-looking simulation

Optimal control is generally not possible without information about the future coming up, and it is not easy to obtain an optimal solution even though the information is given a priori. In this paper, a control concept based on Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle (PMP) is introduced as an efficient solution to generate an optimal control trajectory for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HVEs) when the performance of the vehicles is evaluated on scheduled driving cycles at a simulation level. The main idea of the control concept is to minimize Hamiltonian, which is interpreted as equivalent fuel consumption, and the Hamiltonian is characterized by a co-state, which is interpreted as a weighting factor for the electrical usage. A key aspect of the control problem is that an appropriate initial condition of the co-state is required to satisfy the boundary condition of the problem. In this study, techniques to calculate the Hamiltonian in different hybrid configurations are introduced, and a methodology to look for the initial condition of the co-state is studied, so that the controller is able to realize a desired State Of Charge (SOC) trajectory. To address the issue, we utilize a shooting method with multiple initial conditions based on the concept of the Newton-Raphson method, and all these techniques are realized in a backward looking simulator. The simulation results show that the PMP-based control is a very efficient approach to produce the optimal control trajectory, and the performance is compared to the optimal solution solved by Dynamic Programming (DP).     

不同外加剂对OGFC混合料路用性能的影响

OGFC为开级配沥青混合料,主要由粗集料嵌挤组成,在世界各地越来越广泛地用于铺筑路面.OGFC混合料可以增大路表面渗透性,减少噪音,增强表面摩擦力,尤其是在潮湿条件下.该文主要研究不同外加剂对OGFC路用性能的影响,其混合料分别由再生聚乙烯改性沥青(RPEB)、橡胶粉改性沥青(CRMB)和70#基质沥青+纤维与矿料拌和而成.并分别采用析漏试验、肯塔堡飞散试验、渗水试验、劈裂试验、静态模量试验,车辙试验和抗滑试验评估OGFC混合料的路用性能.结果表明:纤维和聚合物可以有效地减小OGFC离析的可能性,混合料每面击实50次能相应地提高磨耗性和其他相关的性能.改性沥青混合料的抗拉强度比(TSR)低于纤维+基质沥青混合料的抗拉强度比.