Case study on health assessments related to a modal shift in transportation

Historically, the emphasis on environmental problems has been on visible pollution. However, as a result of the reduction in visible pollution in recent years, many people have become anxious about invisible dangers. The method for objectively evaluating these invisible dangers is risk assessment. Therefore, in the present study we propose and discuss a method for evaluating the influence of a modal shift in transportation on cancer risk using the technique of risk assessment. First, two representative transportation routes were selected for analysis. Subsequently, the level of airborne carcinogens from the exhaust of ships and trucks was determined. Next, the concentration of each carcinogen in locations across Japan was calculated. Finally, the number of people in Japan who will suffer from cancer related to these emissions was derived and the effects of the modal shift on health are discussed.     

A new weather-routing system that accounts for ship stability based on a real-coded genetic algorithm

The operation schedule of an oceangoing vessel can be influenced by wave or wind disturbances, and is therefore weather routed. The weather-routing problem is considered to be a multimodal function problem. Therefore, in the present research, the real-coded genetic algorithm technique (an evolutionary calculation technique) is applied to globally search for the optimum route. Additionally, to avoid maritime accidents due to parametric rolling, this route optimization method takes into account the risk of parametric rolling as one of its objective functions. Numerical verification is carried out for three kinds of objective functions with different weight ratios between fuel efficiency and ship safety in parametric rolling. As a result, it is numerically confirmed that the relation between economics and ship safety is a trade-off, and the safer route is not necessarily the most economical. Considering its robustness, the proposed method appears to be a powerful practical tool by choosing the most appropriate weights for economics and ship safety.