Increased productivity efforts yield few rewards in the knowledge economy

Population aging is reducing access to knowledge workers even as they are becoming more important to economic growth. Thus far, corporations and governments alike have made the intuitive yet untested assumption that working the existing workforce harder and longer can alleviate the economic fallout. This is based on the ‘success’ similar efforts have previously seen in production industries characterized by physical inputs. Our study provides evidence that these successes may not carry over to industries, such as transportation that are reliant on intellectual skill. It is shown that meeting productivity goals by increasing the job demands of knowledge workers, specifically air traffic controllers, compromises the provision of new kinds of value added. Furthermore, it is demonstrated for the first time that increasing job duration exacerbates the effects of job demand on human performance. Coping with staffing shortages by asking that knowledge workers simply ‘do more’ may impede rather than stimulate economic growth.     

Fuzzy ontology-based sentiment analysis of transportation and city feature reviews for safe traveling

Traffic congestion is rapidly increasing in urban areas, particularly in mega cities. To date, there exist a few sensor network based systems to address this problem. However, these techniques are not suitable enough in terms of monitoring an entire transportation system and delivering emergency services when needed. These techniques require real-time data and intelligent ways to quickly determine traffic activity from useful information. In addition, these existing systems and websites on city transportation and travel rely on rating scores for different factors (e.g., safety, low crime rate, cleanliness, etc.). These rating scores are not efficient enough to deliver precise information, whereas reviews or tweets are significant, because they help travelers and transportation administrators to know about each aspect of the city. However, it is difficult for travelers to read, and for transportation systems to process, all reviews and tweets to obtain expressive sentiments regarding the needs of the city. The optimum solution for this kind of problem is analyzing the information available on social network platforms and performing sentiment analysis. On the other hand, crisp ontology-based frameworks cannot extract blurred information from tweets and reviews; therefore, they produce inadequate results. In this regard, this paper proposes fuzzy ontology-based sentiment analysis and semantic web rule language (SWRL) rule-based decision-making to monitor transportation activities (accidents, vehicles, street conditions, traffic volume, etc.) and to make a city-feature polarity map for travelers. This system retrieves reviews and tweets related to city features and transportation activities. The feature opinions are extracted from these retrieved data, and then fuzzy ontology is used to determine the transportation and city-feature polarity. A fuzzy ontology and an intelligent system prototype are developed by using Protégé web ontology language (OWL) and Java, respectively. The experimental results show satisfactory improvement in tweet and review analysis and opinion mining.     

Mitigating environmental impacts in advance: Evidence of cost and time savings for transportation projects

The traditional model for mitigating a transportation project’s environmental impacts typically operates project-by-project and delivers the mitigation just-in-time. In contrast, the newer practice of advance mitigation comprehensively assesses and mitigates impacts from one or multiple transportation projects before or during project planning, sometimes long before project construction begins. The practice has gained adherents for its potential to improve ecological outcomes, by better aligning mitigation and conservation goals. Advance mitigation also stands to reduce mitigation costs, an important secondary benefit for transportation agencies with constrained resources. Evidence of cost savings, however, has been piecemeal and anecdotal. This paper advances knowledge of advance mitigation’s financial impacts in two ways. First, it critically assesses the evidence about cost savings realized through advance mitigation, both through avoided up-front costs and reduced project delay. Second, it directly estimates the project time savings that might accrue with advance mitigation of state highway projects in California. Overall, the balance of evidence is encouraging for transportation agencies that would introduce the practice, and general agreement exists on its financial benefits. Considering project delays related only to the environmental process, we estimate advance mitigation could reduce delivery times by 1.3–5.0 months per project. Still, we also identify factors limiting comprehensive analysis. Transportation agencies adopting advance mitigation practices into their operations could use a pilot approach that includes rigorous environmental and mitigation cost accounting; such pilots would build needed empirical evidence of advance mitigation’s financial and ecological outcomes.     

An inference engine for smartphones to preprocess data and detect stationary and transportation modes

A smartphone can be utilized as a cost-effective device for the purposes of intelligent transportation system. To detect the movement and the stationary statuses in the motorized and non-motorized modes, this study develops a new inference engine, including two sets of rules. The first sets of rules are defined by the related thresholds on the features of smartphone sensors while the second sets are extracted from the human knowledge to improve the results of the first rules. The experimental results reveal that by utilizing Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors in the proposed inference engine, it is possible to save 40% energy in comparison with the previous research. Moreover, this engine increases the accuracy of the motorized mode detection to 95.2% and determines the stationary states in motorized mode with 97.1% accuracy.     

Effect of mass on multimodal fuel consumption in moving people and freight in the U.S.

The United States transportation sector consumes 5 billion barrels of petroleum annually to move people and freight around the country by car, truck, train, ship and aircraft, emitting significant greenhouse gases in the process. Making the transportation system more sustainable by reducing these emissions and increasing the efficiency of this multimodal system can be achieved through several vehicle-centric strategies. We focus here on one of these strategies – reducing vehicle mass – and on collecting and developing a set of physics-based expressions to describe the effect of vehicle mass reduction on fuel consumption across transportation modes in the U.S. These expressions allow analysts to estimate fuel savings resulting from vehicle mass reductions (termed fuel reduction value, FRV), across modes, without resorting to specialized software or extensive modeling efforts, and to evaluate greenhouse gas emission and cost implications of these fuel savings. We describe how FRV differs from fuel intensity (FI) and how to properly use both of these metrics, and we provide a method to adjust FI based on mass changes and FRV. Based on this work, we estimate that a 10% vehicle mass reduction (assuming constant payload mass) results in a 2% improvement in fuel consumption for trains and light, medium, and heavy trucks, 4% for buses, and 7% for aircraft. When a 10% vehicle mass reduction is offset by an increase in an equivalent mass of payload, fuel intensity (fuel used per unit mass of payload) increases from 6% to 23%, with the largest increase being for aircraft.     

铁路运输企业信息化标准体系框架研究

论述铁路运输企业信息化标准体系建设的基础作用和重要意义,提出统筹发展需求、提供规划指引、强化基础保障、便于日常使用的建设原则.在遵循国家和行业标准化方针和政策的基础上,运用标准化原理分析信息化标准体系建设需求.通过筛选、分类和组合各相关标准,将铁路运输企业信息化标准体系框架设计为二级结构,涉及信息化规划、设计、研发、实...     

城市轨道智能交通体系下的旅客向导系统构想

依据ITS理论与系统工程思想,在分析城市轨道交通特点的基础上,提出城市轨道智能交通系统的概念,并对UMITS的基本构成进行了论述,对UMITS体系中旅客向导系统（PIS）的服务内容与功能进行了新的构想。     

浅析油品运输中"转换装油"引起的安全问题

从一起油轮爆炸事故，分析了事故的起因主要是由于“转换装油”引发的。后经随机调查发现，现阶段油轮“转换装油”现象非常突出。针对此现象，客观分析了油轮“转换装油”危害性及引发事故的原因，并提出了有效的防范措施，呼吁广大从业人员一定要加强防范意识。     

DCY100型动力平板运输车

动力平板板运输车是造船厂钢结构船体分段在工序之间转运的主要设备，本文介绍了该车结构特点、主要技术参数、控制方式及应用范围。     

浅析交通行政执法中语言的运用

在交通行政执法工作中,交通行政执法人员与当事人之间的第一接触就是语言的接触。因此,在交通行政执法过程中,能否正确、规范地运用语言这一交流媒介,不仅会直接影响到交通行政执法工作效果,而且还可以反映出交通行政执法人员的基本素质和知识水平。因此正确、规范地使用语言这一交流工具是顺利开展交通行政执法工作、提高交通行政执法效能所必须面对和掌握的一项基本功