Selection of Coal Transportation Company Based on Fuzzy SWARA-COPRAS Approach

Background: Coal production and marketing enterprises can significantly reduce transportation costs and improve their competitiveness by choosing appropriate road transportation companies. Methods: Based on this, a trapezoidal fuzzy SWARA-COPRAS method is proposed to select coal transportation companies. The trapezoidal fuzzy SWARA method is used to determine the index weight of coal transportation companies. The ranking of coal transportation companies is determined using the trapezoidal fuzzy COPRAS method. Results: Taking a coal production and marketing enterprise in Hubei, China as an example, the application of the trapezoidal fuzzy SWARA-COPRAS method is illustrated, and the coal transportation companies are sorted and analyzed for sensitivity. Conclusions: Compared with the results of other methods, the effectiveness and practicability of the trapezoidal fuzzy SWARA-COPRAS method are verified.

Limited Capacity of Railways for Coal Transportation in India: Evidence from ArcGIS-based Load Flow Study

How much coal will India need to transport in future and is the rail network poised to handle that requirement are two important questions for the emerging economy. To find answers to these questions, this study creates a distribution model of coal freight traffic on Indian Railways, analyzing the sufficiency of infrastructure for future economic needs. Using data on spatial distribution of coal mines, coal traffic volumes and rail sectional capacities, this study creates sectional capacity maps as main visual tool for analysis. Sections with bottlenecks are identified for next ten years’ coal transport need of the country. The simulation done in this study finds 15% under-delivery for the 900mT coal demand in the country by 2030 due to transport bottlenecks. Based on this analysis, the article presents the conclusions on possible influence of existing conditions of coal transportation on India’s economy in the long-term period and also considers the role of dedicated freight.

Truck Driver Behavior and Travel Time Effectiveness Using Smart GPS

The pattern of coal transportation is very dependent on the behaviour of the driver, which influences the effectiveness of travel time. Good driver behaviour will affect the optimization of travel time, and scenarios need to reduce travel time wastage. This study aims to optimize travel time and sensitivity analysis based on the influence of driver behaviour, truck travel movements and the use of travel time on coal haul roads. The research method uses a field survey with a GPS tracker, a smart GPS server 3.3, google earth and statistics. The results showed that the driver's behaviour greatly influenced the pattern of use of travel time and truck travel speed. Coal transportation in the morning can be more optimal than night so that that travel time wastage can reduced by 40%. The proposed optimization scenarios can save 36.7% - 48.61% of the existing travel time and the transport cycle can be increased to four to five times. So that with the addition of the cycle, it will increase the income of the transport company and the driver's income. With smart GPS, companies can improve the performance of transportation services in company management, get coal supplies on time.