Overseas trade vis-a-vis overseas shipping: Growth and performance in India (1999–2009)

Maritime trade has been and even continues to account for about a lion's share of India's total cargo volumes. Despite the growth of multimodal transport (by land, water and air), shipping still continues to be the major mode of transport in the bulk carriage of country's overseas trade. In view of this vital role of shipping, in the first four decades of independence, under the initiative of planned development and active government support, India's shipping and port sector saw dramatic growth in their performance to build adequate national fleet, in keeping up with the transport of overseas cargo. However, the onset of economic liberalization in 1991 has given rise to many new dimensions in the development of the shipping and port sector of the country with a significant redefinition of shipping and port services, in response to the new global trend patterns. For instance, it has also established the new era of containerization in the mode of cargo delivery from the dominance of the era of bulk and break-bulk trade during the decade of sixties and seventies. Moreover, as global competition increases, in response to this emerging trade patterns within this country, India's volume of traffic growth also increases manifold. So, India's shipping and port sectors need, significantly, to build up and furnish their capacity by increasing the frequency of this mode of transport i.e. the growth of the national overseas fleet to meet this surging demand. This paper, therefore, have focused on this role of shipping in such rising overseas trade, with a view to examine the shipping performance (the growth of overseas fleet) in response to the growing overseas trade at all ports of India during the period (1999–2000 to 2008–2009), in terms of both a mathematical model and a graphical representation. Finally, it concludes that the absolute overseas trade, being highly import dependent, have led to a more or less stagnant performance in overseas shipping, owing to the lack of the adequate growth of absolute overseas exports during this period.     

航运市场预测方法研究

引入灰色理论和回归预测模型,提出预测海运市场容量的方法,运用马尔科夫法预测未来公司的市场占有率,并运用敏感性分析搜寻盈利的关键因素。结合实例计算分析,证明该方法的衫性与有效性。     

Going fast or going green? Evidence from environmental speed limits in Norway

This paper studies the impact of speed limits on local air pollution using a series of date-specific speed limit reductions in Oslo over the 2004–2011 period. We find that lowering the speed limit from 80 to 60 km/h reduces travel speed by 5.8 km/h. However, we find no evidence of reduced air pollution as measured next to the treated roads. Our estimates suggest an annual time loss of the speed limit reductions of 66 USD per affected vehicle. Our findings imply that policy makers need to consider other actions than speed limit reductions to improve local air quality.     

Climate change modeling and the weather-related road accidents in Canada

The objective of this research is to study the impact of climate change on the hazardous weather-related road accidents in the New Brunswick, Canada. We develop an Exposure to Weather-Accident Severity (EWAS) index multiplying accident and weather severity. The Negative Binomial Regression and Poisson regression models are applied to estimate the spatial–temporal relationship between the EWAS index and weather-related explanatory variables of road accidents. The regression results show that the surface-weather condition, weather, driver’s gender, weather-driver’s age, weather-driver’s experience, and weather-vehicle’s age have strong positive correlation with the EWAS index, while the surface-road alignment and surface-road characteristics have negative relationship with the EWAS index. The climate change model also indicates that the number of accidents declines during snowy and freezing days—most people stay at home and those who travel extra cautious—accidents do occur. The study suggests that the Road Safety Strategy 2015 of the Transport Canada should take a holistic approach to help minimize the incidences of severe road accident during the normal as well as hazardous weather conditions.     

Does emission control area policy reduce sulfur dioxides concentration in Shanghai?

As an important measure to abate ship-source air emissions, the establishment of Emission Control Area (ECA) has been adopted not only at international level, but also at national and regional level. However, there exists a research gap of employing econometric models to enrich the ECA policy evaluation research by testing the effectiveness of an ECA policy based on the empirical data. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of the ECA policy in shanghai port by adopting regression discontinuity (RD) approach. The RD design is considered as a wonderful substitution for the randomized control trial, which usually serves as a conventional and effective tool to address endogeneity. The causal effect of the ECA policy on the SO₂ concentration reduction can be detected by the RD approach. According to the estimated results, there is a discontinuity around the ECA policy cutoff point, and it is indicated that the SO₂ concentration in Shanghai decreased by at least 0.229 μg/m³ daily on average due to the implementation of the ECA policy. The positive role that the ECA policy plays in reducing SO₂ concentration in Shanghai is well demonstrated. This paper also puts forward an agenda for the future studies in the domain of the ECA policy evaluation.     

Exploring the feasibility of classification trees versus ordinal discrete choice models for analyzing crash severity

A cross-median crash (CMC) is one of the most severe types of crashes in which a vehicle crosses the median and sometimes collides with opposing traffic. A study of severity of CMCs in the state of Wisconsin was conducted by Lu et al. in 2010. Discrete choice models, namely ordinal logit and probit models were used to analyze factors related to the severity of CMCs. Separate models were developed for single and multi-vehicle CMCs. Although 25 different crash, roadway, and geometric variables were used, only 3 variables were found to be statistically significant which were alcohol usage, posted speed, and road conditions. The objective of this research was to explore the feasibility of GUIDE Classification Tree method to analyze the severity of CMCs to discover if any additional information could be revealed.A dataset of CMCs in the state of Wisconsin between 2001 and 2007, used in the study by Lu et al. was used to develop three different GUIDE Classification Trees. Additionally, the effects of variable types (continuous or discrete), misclassification costs, and tree pruning characteristics on models results were also explored. The results were directly compared with discrete choice models developed in the study by Lu et al. showing that the GUIDE Classification Trees revealed new variables (median width and traffic volume) that affect CMC severity and provided useful insight on the data. The results of this research suggest that the use of Classification Tree analysis should at least be considered in conjunction with regression-based crash models to better understand factors affecting crashes. Classification Tree models were able to reveal additional information about the dependent variable and offer advantages with respect to multicollinearity and variable redundancy issues.     

Cox Regression模型在交通事件持续时间研究中的应用

有效的交通事件管理要求交通管理者全面了解交通事件的各种特征才能准确估计事件持续时间,从而及时地疏导交通拥堵。利用某高速公路应急指挥中心管理系统中记录的近3 a的交通事件持续时间数据,建立Cox Regression模型探索影响持续时间的危险因素并评价其作用强度和方向。研究表明,日夜、报警方式、事件类型、占用车道数、涉及车辆数、涉及死亡、救护车、牵引车、吊车、驳车、涉及货车等11项是交通事件持续时间的显著影响因素,因此,交通管理者对这些因素进行改善可有效提高交通事件管理效率和安全性。     

隧道变形预测的灰色与回归模型对比分析

模型预测法是目前常用的隧道围岩变形预测的方法之一。文章结合广梧高速公路茶林顶隧道工程实例,建立GM（1,1）灰色模型、GM（2,1）灰色模型和双曲函数回归模型分别对隧道围岩变形进行预测,并对各模型的预测情况进行对比分析。结果表明,不论是从短期还是从长期看,GM（1,1）灰色模型都体现了优越的模拟和预测效果,且建立预测模型时不需要大量的统计数据,可应用于工程实际。     

建筑结构强度超声回弹逆回归区间融合评定法

运用因变量估计自变量及其可能取值范围的逆回归分析方法代替传统的回归分析方法,推导出回弹值和声速值的逆回归模型数据融合测强曲线。运用区间估计方法代替传统的点估计方法,导出结构混凝土强度的置信上限、下限和置信区间。给出混凝土强度的判定标准,在给定高置信度下对结构混凝土强度做出合格、不合格和待定结论的定量判断。该测强曲线比任何单一方法的测强曲线的精度高,减小偶然误差,能够消除无损检测中无法通过仪器校准的系统误差,并且解决了回弹值和声速值不同量纲的数据融合问题。     

基于乘客满意度的公交车站立乘客面积研究

公交车内站立乘客面积是影响公共交通乘车阶段乘客满意度的关键指标.将使乘客感受由不满意转变为满意的公交车站立乘客面积的临界值定义为临界站立乘客面积.本文旨在提出临界站立乘客面积的建议值.首先,在呼和浩特市开展了客流调查及问卷调查;然后,基于调查所获数据,采用有序 Logistic回归建立了乘客满意度与站立乘客面积的模型;最后,通过对所建模型的图形化分析,提出临界站立乘客面积(即保证乘客满意的最小站立乘客面积)的建议值为 0.25 m2/人.本文研究成果为公共交通乘车阶段的乘客满意度评价、舒适性评价提供量化依据,为公交车额定载客量的核定提供新思路.