scholarly journals State of the Art of Automated Buses

Author(s):  
Jaagup Ainsalu ◽  
Ville Arffman ◽  
Mauro Bellone ◽  
Maximilian Ellner ◽  
Taina Haapamäki ◽  
...  

Urban transportation in the next few decades will shift worldwide towards electrification and automation, with the final aim of increasing energy efficiency and safety for passengers. Such a big change requires strong collaboration and efforts among public administration, research and stakeholders in developing, testing and promoting these technologies in the public transportation. Working in this direction, in the present work the impact of the introduction of driverless electric minibuses, for the first and last mile transportation, in the public service is studied. More specifically, this paper covers a state of the art in terms of technological background for automation, energy efficiency via electrification, and the current state of the legal framework in Europe with focus on the Baltic Sea Region.

Author(s):  
Jaagup Ainsalu ◽  
Ville Arffman ◽  
Mauro Bellone ◽  
Maximilian Ellner ◽  
Taina Haapamäki ◽  
...  

Urban transportation in the next few decades will shift worldwide towards electrification and automation, with the final aim of increasing energy efficiency and safety for passengers. Such a big change requires strong collaboration and efforts among public administration, research and stakeholders in developing, testing and promoting these technologies in the public transportation. Working in this direction, in the present work the impact of the introduction of driverless electric minibuses, for the first and last mile transportation, in the public service is studied. More specifically, this paper covers a state of the art in terms of technological background for automation, energy efficiency via electrification, and the current state of the legal framework in Europe with focus on the Baltic Sea Region.


Transport ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurgita Barysienė ◽  
Nijolė Batarlienė ◽  
Darius Bazaras ◽  
Kristina Čižiūnienė ◽  
Daiva Griškevičienė ◽  
...  

The rapidly changing world determines changes in the business processes. Logistics and transport are the areas facing constant changes. Therefore, an important point is to analyse the current problems of logistics and transport within the context of the changing environment. For many years, the experts of the Dept of Logistics and Transport Management of the Faculty of Transport Engineering from Vilnius Gediminas Technical University have been pursuing research both, in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) in Lithuania and foreign countries. This research has been directed toward improvements to logistics and the entire supply chain in pursuit of economic, social and ecological competitiveness, an increase in the competitiveness and attractiveness of the transport system in the context of sustainable development, the impact of this system on the economic and social welfare of society, an increase in the competitiveness and attractiveness of the transport sector of improving the legal framework and the application of innovative technologies (including IT) in the transport sector aimed at implementing economic and social cohesion goals. The article deals with some of the key issues of the above introduced research.


Author(s):  
O Vasylchenko ◽  
O Lotiuk ◽  
A Yevstihnieiev ◽  
A Basalaieva ◽  
S Kustova

Purpose. To enhance the quality of Ukrainian legislation by improving the legal framework of public administration in the field of environmental regulation of mining in Ukraine. Methodology. The authors used comparative and legal, historical, systemic, structural and functional, formal and logical, and dialectical research methods. The need to use an integrated research method is emphasized. Findings. The authors investigated two problems actualized by the so-called Adani Syndrome: 1. The criteria for assessing the impact on the environment and their legal force. 2. The legal framework governing the rights of the owner, the state and the public. The above problems were studied in comparison with the legal support of environmental regulation of mining in Ukraine. Originality. The experience of environmental regulation of mining in Australia is analyzed on the example of the conflict over the Carmichael mine project, resulting in disclosing the current state of Ukrainian legislation in this area. The directions of improving the legal foundations of public administration in the field of environmental regulation of mining in Ukraine have been brought up for discussion. Practical value. The use of the obtained results will make it possible to eliminate the difference between the legal support of environmental regulation of mining in developed and developing countries. The proposals have been formulated to improve the legal regulation in the area under study in terms of detailing the powers of individual governing bodies of special competence, as well as in terms of procedures for assessing the environmental impact. The formulated proposals can help to strengthen the effectiveness of the legislation in power.


Author(s):  
Florian Kuisat ◽  
Fernando Lasagni ◽  
Andrés Fabián Lasagni

AbstractIt is well known that the surface topography of a part can affect its mechanical performance, which is typical in additive manufacturing. In this context, we report about the surface modification of additive manufactured components made of Titanium 64 (Ti64) and Scalmalloy®, using a pulsed laser, with the aim of reducing their surface roughness. In our experiments, a nanosecond-pulsed infrared laser source with variable pulse durations between 8 and 200 ns was applied. The impact of varying a large number of parameters on the surface quality of the smoothed areas was investigated. The results demonstrated a reduction of surface roughness Sa by more than 80% for Titanium 64 and by 65% for Scalmalloy® samples. This allows to extend the applicability of additive manufactured components beyond the current state of the art and break new ground for the application in various industrial applications such as in aerospace.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 3366
Author(s):  
Daniel Suchet ◽  
Adrien Jeantet ◽  
Thomas Elghozi ◽  
Zacharie Jehl

The lack of a systematic definition of intermittency in the power sector blurs the use of this term in the public debate: the same power source can be described as stable or intermittent, depending on the standpoint of the authors. This work tackles a quantitative definition of intermittency adapted to the power sector, linked to the nature of the source, and not to the current state of the energy mix or the production predictive capacity. A quantitative indicator is devised, discussed and graphically depicted. A case study is illustrated by the analysis of the 2018 production data in France and then developed further to evaluate the impact of two methods often considered to reduce intermittency: aggregation and complementarity between wind and solar productions.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 4155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Cumino ◽  
Wellington Lobato Junior ◽  
Thais Tavares ◽  
Hugo Santos ◽  
Denis Rosário ◽  
...  

Collaboration between multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to set up a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is a growing trend since future applications claim for more autonomous and rapid deployable systems. The user experience on watching videos transmitted over FANETs should always be satisfactory even under influence of topology changes caused by the energy consumption of UAVs. In addition, the FANET must keep the UAVs cooperating as much as possible during a mission. However, one of the main challenges in FANET is how to mitigate the impact of limited energy resources of UAVs on the FANET operation in order to monitor the environment for a long period of time. In this sense, UAV replacement is required in order to avoid the premature death of nodes, network disconnections, route failures, void areas, and low-quality video transmissions. In addition, decision-making must take into account energy consumption associated with UAV movements, since they are generally quite energy-intensive. This article proposes a cooperative UAV scheme for enhancing video transmission and global energy efficiency called VOEI. The main goal of VOEI is to maintain the video with QoE support while supporting the nodes with a good connectivity quality level and flying for a long period of time. Based on an Software Defined Network (SDN) paradigm, the VOEI assumes the existence of a centrailized controller node to compute reliable and energy-efficiency routes, as well as detects the appropriate moment for UAV replacement by considering global FANET context information to provide energy-efficiency operations. Based on simulation results, we conclude that VOEI can effectively mitigate the energy challenges of FANET, since it provides energy-efficiency operations, avoiding network death, route failure, and void area, as well as network partitioning compared to state-of-the-art algorithm. In addition, VOEI delivers videos with suitable Quality of Experience (QoE) to end-users at any time, which is not achieved by the state-of-the-art algorithm.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Fallah ◽  
Sungmin O ◽  
Rene Orth

Abstract. Precipitation is a crucial variable for hydro-meteorological applications. Unfortunately, rain gauge measurements are sparse and unevenly distributed, which substantially hampers the use of in-situ precipitation data in many regions of the world. The increasing availability of high-resolution gridded precipitation products presents a valuable alternative, especially over gauge-sparse regions. Nevertheless, uncertainties and corresponding differences across products can limit the applicability of these data. This study examines the usefulness of current state-of-the-art precipitation datasets in hydrological modelling. For this purpose, we force a conceptual hydrological model with multiple precipitation datasets in > 200 European catchments. We consider a wide range of precipitation products, which are generated via (1) interpolation of gauge measurements (E-OBS and GPCC V.2018), (2) combination of multiple sources (MSWEP V2) and (3) data assimilation into reanalysis models (ERA-Interim, ERA5, and CFSR). For each catchment, runoff and evapotranspiration simulations are obtained by forcing the model with the various precipitation products. Evaluation is done at the monthly time scale during the period of 1984–2007. We find that simulated runoff values are highly dependent on the accuracy of precipitation inputs, and thus show significant differences between the simulations. By contrast, simulated evapotranspiration is generally much less influenced. The results are further analysed with respect to different hydro-climatic regimes. We find that the impact of precipitation uncertainty on simulated runoff increases towards wetter regions, while the opposite is observed in the case of evapotranspiration. Finally, we perform an indirect performance evaluation of the precipitation datasets by comparing the runoff simulations with streamflow observations. Thereby, E-OBS yields the best agreement, while furthermore ERA5, GPCC V.2018 and MSWEP V2 show good performance. In summary, our findings highlight a climate-dependent propagation of precipitation uncertainty through the water cycle; while runoff is strongly impacted in comparatively wet regions such as Central Europe, there are increasing implications on evapotranspiration towards drier regions.


1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK DRAKEFORD

This article considers the current state of help with funeral expenses in Britain. It argues that assistance has been progressively and deliberately eroded to the point where the famous ‘from the cradle to the grave’ protection of the welfare state has been removed from increasing numbers of poor people. The article sets these developments within the context of the contemporary British funeral industry, with emphasis upon its treatment of less-well-off consumers. The changing nature of social security provision for funeral expenses is traced in detail, including the actions of the incoming 1997 Labour government. This article investigates the public health role of local authorities in the case of burials, concluding that such services are insufficiently robust to meet the new weight placed upon them. The article ends with a consideration of the impact which these different changes produce in the lives of individuals upon whom they have an effect.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin H Lemaire ◽  
Remco S Mannak ◽  
Sonia M Ospina ◽  
Martijn Groenleer

Abstract With the growing amount and increasing heterogeneity of research on purpose-oriented networks (PONs) in the public sector, it is imperative to find a way to synthesize this research. Drawing on the varied research perspectives on PONs, we advance the idea of paradigm interplay and meta-synthesis as aspirations for the field and argue this is especially key if we want the study of PONs to inform practice. However, we recognize several challenges in the current state of the PON research that prevent the field from making strides in paradigm interplay and meta-synthesis. We discuss six challenges which we consider the most critical: different labels, differences across research foci, variation in measurement, the nestedness of networks, the dynamism of networks, and variation in the network context. We suggest six good research practices that could contribute to overcoming the challenges now so as to make integration of the research field more of a possibility in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6492
Author(s):  
Marta Viu-Roig ◽  
Eduard J. Alvarez-Palau

E-commerce-related last-mile logistics have a great impact on cities. Recent years have seen sustained growth in e-commerce in most developed countries, a trend that has only been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The perceived impact of this phenomenon varies depending upon the perspective of the players involved: individual members of the public, companies, or the public administrations. Tackling the issue from these perspectives, the goal of this article is to explore the kinds of impact this phenomenon has and will have. We use as the basis for their classification the so-called triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability, encompassing people, planet, and profit; we complement this with the impact classification used by the European Science Foundation’s impact assessment working group. After performing a systematic review of the literature following PRISMA guidelines, our results show that, albeit to different degrees, the four impact dimensions analyzed (economic, social, environmental, and technological) have only received incipient coverage in the existing literature. Given its ever-growing importance, we believe that greater attention needs to be paid to this phenomenon, especially with regard to those aspects having the greatest impact upon urban systems and the different stakeholders involved. Only in this way can the public policies needed to mitigate these externalities be properly implemented.


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