Efficiency in Asian railways: a comparison between data envelopment analysis approaches

Performance analysis has become a vital part of the management practices in the logistics infrastructure. Although there are numerous applications using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models to estimate efficiency in ports and airports, research on railway efficiency remains scarce. Most of the efficiency studies of railways assume that inputs and outputs are known with absolute precision. Here, we compare Stochastic-DEA and Fuzzy-DEA models to assess, respectively, how the underlying randomness and fuzziness impact efficiency levels in railway operations in six different Asian countries: Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Findings reveal that conclusions with respect to the ranking of these railways may vary substantially depending upon the type of model chosen, although efficiency scores are similar to some extent when compared within the ambits of Stochastic-DEA and Fuzzy-DEA models. Additionally, modeling choices on fuzziness, rather than randomness, appear to be the most critical source for variations in efficiency rankings.     

On the imputation of missing data for road traffic forecasting: New insights and novel techniques

Vehicle flow forecasting is of crucial importance for the management of road traffic in complex urban networks, as well as a useful input for route planning algorithms. In general traffic predictive models rely on data gathered by different types of sensors placed on roads, which occasionally produce faulty readings due to several causes, such as malfunctioning hardware or transmission errors. Filling in those gaps is relevant for constructing accurate forecasting models, a task which is engaged by diverse strategies, from a simple null value imputation to complex spatio-temporal context imputation models. This work elaborates on two machine learning approaches to update missing data with no gap length restrictions: a spatial context sensing model based on the information provided by surrounding sensors, and an automated clustering analysis tool that seeks optimal pattern clusters in order to impute values. Their performance is assessed and compared to other common techniques and different missing data generation models over real data captured from the city of Madrid (Spain). The newly presented methods are found to be fairly superior when portions of missing data are large or very abundant, as occurs in most practical cases.     

On the use of Lagrangian observations from public transport and probe vehicles to estimate car space-mean speeds in bi-modal urban networks

The Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) has been recognized as a powerful framework to develop network-wide control strategies. Recently, the concept has been extended to the three-dimensional MFD, used to investigate traffic dynamics of multi-modal urban cities, where different transport modes compete for, and share the limited road infrastructure. In most cases, the macroscopic traffic variables are estimated using either loop detector data (LDD) or floating car data (FCD). Taking into account that none of these data sources might be available, in this study we propose novel estimation methods for the space-mean speed of cars based on: (i) the automatic vehicle location (AVL) data of public transport where no FCD is available; and (ii) the fused FCD and AVL data sources where both are available, but FCD is not complete. Both methods account for the network configuration layout and the configuration of the public transport system. The first method allows one to derive either uni-modal or bi-modal macroscopic fundamental relationships, even in the extreme cases where no LDD nor FCD exist. The second method does not require a priori knowledge about FCD penetration rates and can significantly improve the estimation accuracy of the macroscopic fundamental relationships. Using empirical data from the city of Zurich, we demonstrate the applicability and validate the accuracy of the proposed methods in real-life traffic scenarios, providing a cross-comparison with the existing estimation methods. Such empirical comparison is, to the best of our knowledge, the first of its kind. The findings show that the proposed AVL-based estimation method can provide a good approximation of the average speed of cars at the network level. On the other hand, by fusing the FCD and AVL data, especially in case of sparse FCD, it is possible to obtain a more representative outcome regarding the performance of multi-modal traffic.     

Long distance truck tracking from advanced point detectors using a selective weighted Bayesian model

Truck flow patterns are known to vary by season and time-of-day, and to have important implications for freight modeling, highway infrastructure design and operation, and energy and environmental impacts. However, such variations cannot be captured by current truck data sources such as surveys or point detectors. To facilitate development of detailed truck flow pattern data, this paper describes a new truck tracking algorithm that was developed to estimate path flows of trucks by adopting a linear data fusion method utilizing weigh-in-motion (WIM) and inductive loop point detectors. A Selective Weighted Bayesian Model (SWBM) was developed to match individual vehicles between two detector locations using truck physical attributes and inductive waveform signatures. Key feature variables were identified and weighted via Bayesian modeling to improve vehicle matching performance. Data for model development were collected from two WIM sites spanning 26 miles in California where only 11 percent of trucks observed at the downstream site traversed the whole corridor. The tracking model showed 81 percent of correct matching rate to the trucks declared as through trucks from the algorithm. This high accuracy showed that the tracking model is capable of not only correctly matching through vehicles but also successfully filtering out non-through vehicles on this relatively long distance corridor. In addition, the results showed that a Bayesian approach with full integration of two complementary detector data types could successfully track trucks over long distances by minimizing the impacts of measurement variations or errors from the detection systems employed in the tracking process. In a separate case study, the algorithm was implemented over an even longer 65-mile freeway section and demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is capable of providing valuable insights into truck travel patterns and industrial affiliation to yield a comprehensive truck activity data source.     

Measuring energy and environmental efficiency of transportation systems in China based on a parallel DEA approach

Because of China’s rapid economic development, its transportation system has become one of China’s high-energy-consumption and high-pollution-emission sectors. However, little research has been done which pays close attention to China’s transportation system, especially in terms of energy and environmental efficiency evaluation. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to measure the energy and environment performance of transportation systems in China with the goal of sustainable development. This paper treats transportation as a parallel system consisting of subsystems for passenger transportation and freight transportation, and extends a parallel DEA approach to evaluate the efficiency of each subsystem. An efficiency decomposition procedure is proposed to obtain the highest achievable subsystem efficiency. Our empirical study on 30 of mainland China’s provincial-level regions shows that most of them have a low efficiency in their transportation system and the two parallel subsystems. There are large efficiency differences between the passenger and freight transportation subsystems. In addition, unbalanced development has occurred in the three large areas of China, with the east having the highest efficiency, followed by central China and then west. Therefore, more measures should be taken to balance and coordinate the development between the three large areas and between the two subsystems within them. Our analysis approach gives data for determining effective measures.     

Urban traffic state estimation: Fusing point and zone based data

Loop detectors are the oldest and widely used traffic data source. On urban arterials, they are mainly installed for signal control. Recently state-of-the art Bluetooth MAC Scanners (BMS) has significantly captured the interest of stakeholders for exploiting it for area-wide traffic monitoring. Loop detectors provide flow – a fundamental traffic parameter; whereas BMS provides individual vehicle travel time between BMS stations. Hence, these two data sources complement each other, and if integrated should increase the accuracy and reliability of the traffic state estimation.This paper proposed a model that integrates loops and BMS data for seamless travel time and density estimation for urban signalised network. The proposed model is validated using both real and simulated data and the results indicate that the accuracy of the proposed model is over 90%.     

汽车可靠性工程数据分布规律的模糊模式识别法

根据汽车可靠性工程数据,对其进行可靠性定量分析时,应该首先判别可靠性数据的分布规律。汽车可靠性工程数据的分布规律具有模糊集合的性质。本文探索了用模糊模式识别法识别汽车可靠性工程数据的分布规律,简单易行,实用。     

国内外实时交通流数据质量控制比较与分析

交通流数据质量控制可以保证从数据源所获得数据的正确性和完整性，并为数据的管理和应用提供可靠的数据基础，虽然历史数据修正方法和交通流理论修正方法能够用于质量控制，但难以实现推广应用。根本原因在于前者需要大量历史数据，引发了存储上的困难；后者需要针对不同路段进行重复建模，模型通用性差，且准确性难以评价，鉴于此，本文首先研究并设计了基于线性插值法的道路交通流数据质量控制方法，该方法主要以时间点邻近数据为参考，对交通流参数和时间点分别进行判别修正，其优点在于不需要大量的历史数据，且适用性和可操作性强，其次，本文建立了实时交通流数据质量控制平台，针对北京市和美国圣安东尼奥市的数据进行质量控制处理，归纳总结出国内外实时交通流数据在质量控制前后的特征及差异，证明该方法能够有效的解决数据质量问题，最后，本文针对实时交通流数据质量控制方法的选取、交通探测器选择和配置等方面提出了建议。     

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需求分析是数据库设计的重要阶段.在充分考虑用户需求的基础上分析了与 旅客列车数据库相关的信息，对旅客列车开行方案决策支持系统进行了数据库需求分析，形成了该系统的数据流程图和数据字典，并进行了相应的概要设计，从而为该系统的数据库设计乃至后面的系统开发打下了良好的基础.     

基于时延数据融合的港口船舶监控策略研究

在对现有港口船舶航行监控方法以及导航技术详细分析的基础上,结合基于Kalman滤波的数据融合技术,讨论了利用雷达、GPS以及AIS数据进行港口船舶导航算法和监控策略的设计问题。针对现有的时延平滑估计存在的缺点,提出一种基于时延的集中式预测估计融合算法。新算法具有很高的实时性和可实施性,同时,将新算法与现有的时延平滑估计融合算法相集成,提出一种完整的船舶导航和监控策略,计算机仿真算例验证了新算法的优越性,同时显示了新监控策略的有效性。