A mixed logit model for predicting exit choice during building evacuations

Knowledge on human behaviour in emergency is crucial to increase the safety of buildings and transportation systems. Decision making during evacuations implies different choices, of which one of the most important concerns is the escape route. The choice of a route may involve local decisions on alternative exits from an enclosed environment. This study investigates the effect of environmental (presence of smoke, emergency lighting and distance of exit) and social factors (interaction with evacuees close to the exits and with those near the decision-maker) on local exit choice. This goal is pursued using an online stated preference survey carried out making use of non-immersive virtual reality. A sample of 1503 participants is obtained and a mixed logit model is calibrated using these data. The model shows that the presence of smoke, emergency lighting, distance of exit, number of evacuees near the exits and the decision-maker and flow of evacuees through the exits significantly affect local exit choice. Moreover, the model indicates that decision making is affected by a high degree of behavioural uncertainty. Our findings support the improvement of evacuation models and the accuracy of their results, which can assist in designing and managing building and transportation systems. The main aim of this study is to enrich the understanding of how local exit choices are made and how behavioural uncertainty affects these choices.     

From Twitter to detector: Real-time traffic incident detection using social media data

The effectiveness of traditional incident detection is often limited by sparse sensor coverage, and reporting incidents to emergency response systems is labor-intensive. We propose to mine tweet texts to extract incident information on both highways and arterials as an efficient and cost-effective alternative to existing data sources. This paper presents a methodology to crawl, process and filter tweets that are accessible by the public for free. Tweets are acquired from Twitter using the REST API in real time. The process of adaptive data acquisition establishes a dictionary of important keywords and their combinations that can imply traffic incidents (TI). A tweet is then mapped into a high dimensional binary vector in a feature space formed by the dictionary, and classified into either TI related or not. All the TI tweets are then geocoded to determine their locations, and further classified into one of the five incident categories.We apply the methodology in two regions, the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Metropolitan Areas. Overall, mining tweets holds great potentials to complement existing traffic incident data in a very cheap way. A small sample of tweets acquired from the Twitter API cover most of the incidents reported in the existing data set, and additional incidents can be identified through analyzing tweets text. Twitter also provides ample additional information with a reasonable coverage on arterials. A tweet that is related to TI and geocodable accounts for approximately 5% of all the acquired tweets. Of those geocodable TI tweets, 60–70% are posted by influential users (IU), namely public Twitter accounts mostly owned by public agencies and media, while the rest is contributed by individual users. There is more incident information provided by Twitter on weekends than on weekdays. Within the same day, both individuals and IUs tend to report incidents more frequently during the day time than at night, especially during traffic peak hours. Individual tweets are more likely to report incidents near the center of a city, and the volume of information significantly decays outwards from the center.     

丰田＂召回事件＂对汽车零部件企业的警示

丰田“召回事件”向国内汽车零部件企业敲响了警钟。国内汽车零部件企业应当从丰田“召回事件”中吸取教训。要做大应先做强,打牢做大的基础;要正确处理好速度与质量的关系,任何时候都必须坚持“质量就是生命”的信念和追求;为消费者和社会提供优质的产品,既是企业应尽的义务,也是企业应该担负的社会责任,更是企业可持续发展,在市场竞争中“永葆青春”的法宝;在“走出去”的过程中,要加强“风险防范”,千万不能低估了跨国经营的法规制度的风险防范。     

浅析泡沫沥青冷再生技术

文章结合324国道百色一平班公路大修工程实例,介绍了泡沫沥青冷再生技术的原理、设计方法和施工工艺,并通过和传统大修方案的比较,分析了泡沫沥青冷再生技术在社会经济效益方面的优越性。     

The reconstruction of transportation and environmental infrastructure in rural areas

On March 11, 2011 a massive, magnitude 9.0 earthquake destroyed most of the rural areas along the Pacific Coast of eastern Japan, an area that had been facing issues of depopulation and aging even before the earthquake. In this paper I discuss reconstruction plans for depopulated rural areas from the perspectives of transportation infrastructure, residential areas, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, consensus building, and nature restoration. We must take a “backcasting” approach to sustainable development, one in which planning strategies lead to successful outcomes. An organizational and planning support platform is needed to build a consensus within an area.     

Analysis of the economic and social parameters of the Three-Wheeler Taxi service in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has an extensive Three-Wheeler Taxi service comprised of around 300,000 vehicles. These vehicles, which first made an entry to Sri Lanka’s roads in the early 1980s, account for around 15% of the active motor vehicle fleet at present. Three-Wheelers Taxis also account for around 6% of the passenger kilometres. These vehicles are mostly individually operated with some owned by the operator and others hired on a monthly or daily basis. The industry is unregulated with vehicle registration and driving licenses being the only instruments of regulation. Fares are unregulated. However, most operators belong to associations which are loose collections of operators found in a given locality. These associations impose a degree of self regulation with respect to fares. They also tend to demonstrate oligapolistic behaviour.The paper is based on a survey of 200 operators and 100 passengers from a Divisional Secretariat area in Colombo District. The survey covered a number of details pertaining to ownership, management and fare structures, as well as opinions on the service attributes by users. The survey also covered perceptions of operators to determine the social, economic and transport implications of the services provided. Details were also obtained on the profiles of the operators and their expectations.The paper provides the results of the analysis of this data and draws a number of conclusions on the economics of the industry as well as the social aspects associated with it. It also discusses the characteristics of the users of these three wheelers as well as their typical use. The analysis also investigates complementarily of service provision between three wheelers as an access mode to buses and railways. This analysis has been used to develop an understanding of the manner in which the industry has grown over the last two decades and how it is being operated today. It also identifies areas wherein the industry has become inefficient and assesses the degree of over pricing that exists due to this. The data also helps to determine the relationship between unemployment and provision of self-employed transport services.The paper concludes with a synopsis of the profile of the industry and its role within the wider transport sector and with respect to ownership. It also discusses the positive and negative impacts of the lack of regulation on the industry.     

高职院校面向新农村建设开展社会服务的探讨

开展返乡农民工职业技能培训是历史赋予高职院校的使命和机遇,也是高职院校最鲜明的办学特色和开展社会服务的重要途径。     

试论中国经济转型与社会稳定

我国处在社会经济转型与持续调整增长阶段，社会非稳定因素与日俱增，社会经济转型给整个社会带来进步与繁荣，也给社会带来冲突与动荡，但是，中国的社会经济顺利转型又必须在长期稳定的社会环境中才能进行，因此，保持政治稳定，社会安定是实现社会经济转型的前提。     

社会体育专业管理类课程实践教学模式研究

本文根据社会体育专业培养目标,以《健身俱乐部经营与管理》课程为例,分析指出现阶段社会体育专业在实践教学中存在的问题,探索研究在体育专业领域培养经营管理人才的实践教学模式,为体育专业培养经营管理人才实践教学改革提供了理论基础。     

社会工作在思政课实践教学中的应用探析

文章分析了社会工作在思政课教学实践中运用的重要作用,提出在思政课实践教学中,引入社会工作中的"助人自助"、"平等和尊重"理念以及"服务"的理念,借鉴社会工作中的个案工作法、团体工作法和社区工作法,以期建立以学生为本的教学观,开创思政课改革的新局面。