Getting the best of both worlds: a framework for combining disaggregate travel survey data and aggregate mobile phone data for trip generation modelling

Transportation - Traditional approaches to travel behaviour modelling primarily rely on household travel survey data, which is expensive to collect, resulting in small sample sizes and infrequent...     

Possible remedies for intact stability hazards involving contemporary small inland passenger ferries in Bangladesh

On the basis of previous studies, a series of hazards involving the typical small inland passenger ferries operating in inland Bangladeshi waters have been identified. In particular, stormy weather conditions, overloading, and the risk of crowding to one side have been determined as the typical events that are likely to lead to capsizing in the intact condition. In this article, possible hazard mitigation measures are discussed, both from the regulatory and from the design point of view, for a small inland ferry that is very similar to one that actually capsized in the past. The addressed design options involve ballasting and hull modification by means of additional buoyancy above the waterline. From a regulatory point of view, it is proposed that the present weather criterion in force in Bangladesh be modified by increasing the wind speed to be accounted for and by considering the concurrent effects of wind, rolling, and the crowding of people to one side.     

Predicting arterial breakdown probability: A data mining approach

Predicting the probability of traffic breakdown can be used as an important input for creating advanced traffic management strategies that are specifically implemented to reduce this probability. However, most, if not all, past research on the probability of breakdown has focused on freeways. This study focuses on the prediction of arterial breakdown probability based on archived traffic data for use in real-time transportation system operations. The breakdown of an arterial segment is defined in this study as a segment's operating condition under the level of service F according to the highway capacity manual threshold, although any other level of service could be used. Data from point detection and automatic vehicle identification matching technologies are aggregated in space and time to allow their use as inputs to the prediction model. A decision tree approach, combined with binary logistic regression, is used in this study to predict the breakdown probability based on these inputs. The model is validated using data not used in the development of the model. The research shows that the root mean square error and the mean absolute error of the prediction was 13.6 and 11%, respectively. The analysis also shows that the best set of parameters used in the prediction can be different for different links, due to the various causes of breakdown and characteristics of different links. Predicting the probability of breakdown in ahead of time will allow the agencies to change the signal-timing plan that can delay or eliminate the breakdown.     

A rational analysis of intact stability hazards involving small inland passenger ferries in Bangladesh

The safety of inland passenger vessels operating in Bangladesh has been investigated. By thorough analysis of past accident data, the main causes of intact stability failures have been determined: adverse weather conditions and overloading, likely resulting in crowding to one side. Historical series of wind data were gathered and their analysis suggests that an increase in the wind speed presently used in the Weather Criterion in force in Bangladesh could be advisable. A model of a small passenger ship typically operated in Bangladesh has been analyzed in order to identify the most relevant hazards under intact ship conditions. A strongly jeopardizing effect of overloading under intact ship conditions has been detected when analyzing the hazard from the crowding of people to one side.     

Machine Learning of Multi Agents for RoboCup Soccer Domain： A Survey

Machine learning has been widely applied to deal with problems in complex environment such as RoboCup, which is assumed as the ideal platform for research on AI and robotic. In RoboCup simulation league,software agents play soccer games on an official soccer server over the network. When constructing these software agents, issues in area of agents learning techniques arise to satisfy the properties specified by agent theorists. This paper presented an overview of the agents learning used in the simulator teams. Many kinds of agents learning techniques were reported and compared. It also provided open questions for discussing and pointed out some possible answers to verify in near future.     

RESEARCH ON A SOCCER SERVER TEAM WITH ENVIRONMENTAL-AGENTS

IntroductionRobot Soccer World Cup( Robo Cup) ,an im-portant application in both Artificial Intelligence( AI) and robotics,has been developed rapidly inrecentyears. The tournament of Robo Cup Simula-tion League uses the soccer server system as thestandard environment. The soccer server systemprovides a rich and challenging multi- agent,real-time domain[1] 。 Every client should finish reason-ing,calculation and send movement commands tothe soccer server in a configured simulation step,ot…     

Inland transportation system planning by life cycle impact assessment: a case study

The comparison of land and inland water transportation from economical and ecological points of view is discussed. Required freight rates for trucks and ships are calculated and compared to find which has economic superiority. From the environmental impacts of these two transportation types, the comparative environmental destruction indices for two different time-durations are estimated. All these investigations were conducted for the Yokohama–Fukuoka route in Japan. Life cycle impact assessment, a very useful tool for quantitatively evaluating the environmental influence of a product, was used to compare the environmental burden imposed by these types of transportation. Finally, the way that these results can be used for inland transportation system planning is discussed. Received: January 21, 2000 / Accepted: June 27, 2000     

Inland transportation system planning by life-cycle impact assessment: a case study. 2nd report: single comparison index

A model to estimate and compare the ecological impact and economic feasibility of a land transportation system (trucks) and a marine transportation system (cargo ships) was developed and presented in a previous report.¹ Three different comparison indices—environmental, economic, and customer service—were used to evaluate and compare their ecological impacts and determine their economic superiority. In this article, a single comparison index is proposed and assessed for the two transportation systems. The estimates were made for nine different routes in Japan. A simple mathematical model of the whole methodology is given. The sensitivity of the weighting factors used in the comparison method was analyzed. The social cost saving in monetary terms through a modal shift is also presented. Received: February 15, 2001 / Accepted: September 19, 2001