Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

OPTIMIZATION OF STATION LOCATIONS AND TRACK ALIGNMENTS FOR RAIL TRANSIT LINES

Designing urban rail transit systems is a complex problem, which involves the determination of station locations, track geometry, right-of-way type, and various other system characteristics. The existing studies overlook the complex interactions between railway alignments and station locations in a practical design process. This study proposes a comprehensive methodology that helps transit planners to concurrently optimize station locations and track alignments for an urban rail transit line. The modeling framework resolves the essential trade-off between an economically efficient system with low initial and operation cost and an effective system that provides convenient service for the public. The proposed method accounts for various geometric requirements and real-world design constraints for track alignment and stations plans. This method integrates a genetic algorithm (GA) for optimization with comprehensive evaluation of various important measures of effectiveness based on processing Geographical Information System (GIS) data. The base model designs the track alignment through a sequence of preset stations. Detailed assumptions and formulations are presented for geometric requirements, design constraints, and evaluation criteria. Three extensions of the base model are proposed. The first extension explicitly incorporates vehicle dynamics in the design of track alignments, with the objective of better balancing the initial construction cost with the operation and user costs recurring throughout the system's life cycle. In the second extension, an integrated optimization model of rail transit station locations and track alignment is formulated for situations in which the locations of major stations are not preset. The concurrent optimization model searches through additional decision variables for station locations and station types, estimate rail transit demand, and incorporates demand and station cost in the evaluation framework. The third extension considers the existing road network when selecting sections of the alignment. Special algorithms are developed to allow the optimized alignment to take advantage of links in an existing network for construction cost reduction, and to account for disturbances of roadway traffic at highway/rail crossings. Numerical results show that these extensions have significantly enhanced the applicability of the proposed optimization methodology in concurrently selecting rail transit station locations and generating track alignment

Evaluating the effects of road hump on speed and noise level at a university setting

This study is carried out to determine the effectivness of road humps to reduce the traffic speed and traffic noise in institutional area. The difference in hump profiles in terms of height, width and length are the main factors in determing the effectiveness of road humps. The difference in the profiles of the road hump will cause changing driver behaviour of the users especially when approaching the road hump. The road humps with different design profiles are selected to measure the speed and noise level of the vehicles at, before and after each of the selected road humps. Radar speed gun and noise level meters are used to measure speed and noise level of the vehicles at each of designated points along the major circular road in IIUM. The changes in speed and noise level at different selected points at each of the different profiles of the road humps are the expected findings of this study

Evaluating the effects of road hump on the speed of vehicles in an institutional environment

Vehicles travelling at speed above the permissible speed limit have jeopardized the safety of road users. The concern is greater at institutional environment whereby most road users travel by walking. Road hump is considered as an efficient traffic calming measure in reducing the speed of the vehicle. This paper investigates the effects of different road hump dimensions in decreasing the speed of vehicles at the main road of International Islamic University Malaysia. Six (6) road humps with different design profile were selected. The design profile and spot speed of the vehicles at all six (6) road humps were measured. The speed of vehicles at the road hump was analyzed by using descriptive analysis and t-test. The findings of this study suggest that road hump is effective in lowering the speed of vehicles in an institutional environment. The dimensions of road hump, especially height, influence significantly the speed reduction of vehicles

Intelligent decision support for maintenance: an overview and future trends

The changing nature of manufacturing, in recent years, is evident in industry’s willingness to adopt network-connected intelligent machines in their factory development plans. A number of joint corporate/government initiatives also describe and encourage the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the operation and management of production lines. Machine learning will have a significant role to play in the delivery of automated and intelligently supported maintenance decision-making systems. While e-maintenance practice provides aframework for internet-connected operation of maintenance practice the advent of IoT has changed the scale of internetworking and new architectures and tools are needed. While advances in sensors and sensor fusion techniques have been significant in recent years, the possibilities brought by IoT create new challenges in the scale of data and its analysis. The development of audit trail style practice for the collection of data and the provision of acomprehensive framework for its processing, analysis and use should be avaluable contribution in addressing the new data analytics challenges for maintenance created by internet connected devices. This paper proposes that further research should be conducted into audit trail collection of maintenance data, allowing future systems to enable ‘Human in the loop’ interactions

Geometric Variability in Parametric 3D Models: Implications for Engineering Design

Modern manufacturing companies operate in environments characterized by increasingly shorter development cycles and the need to develop highly customizable products at competitive prices. In this paper, we examine the role of parametric 3D modeling in the product development process, and highlight the importance of robustness, flexibility, and responsiveness to geometric variations, which are particularly relevant in the context of the Model-Based Enterprise (MBE). We discuss the often-inefficient parametric 3D modeling practices used in industry, their root causes and implications, and identify the detrimental effects of low-quality models on engineering design activities, specifically design changes during development, generative design algorithms, design optimization, simulation, product/part family configuration, AI-based parametric modeling, Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE), and parametric and adaptive encryption. Finally, we present future lines of research aimed at increasing the quality of parametric models

The Development of modelling tools for railway switches and crossings

Network Rail records indicate that approximately 24% of the total track maintenance and renewal budgets are spent on railway switches and crossings (S&C), which account for only 5% of the total main line track mileage. S&C complexities also introduce a degree of risk, which must be adequately managed to ensure a safe and reliable network. In recent years, risk mitigation fell short, resulting in some high profile incidents at S&C. A recent derailment investigation uncovered knowledge gaps within the UK rail industry, including the understanding of S&C degradation. This PhD research project was therefore initiated to investigating modelling tools for S&C wheel-rail interaction and degradation. A new wheel-rail contact detection routine has been developed and validated using existing software and a novel experimental technique using thermal imagery. Existing techniques were then integrated to enable the prediction of normal and tangential contact stresses whilst also simulating wear accumulation. To improve accuracy for long-term S&C damage, a combined tool for assessing non-Hertzian normal contact stresses and multiple modes of S&C degradation was sought. A novel 2.5D boundary element model capable of simulating wheel-rail contact detection, surface and sub-surface elastic and elastic-plastic stress analysis and dynamic material response is presented. Superior computational effort is also achieved, illustrating further the feasibility of such an approach. To conclude, a three-dimensional dynamic finite element model of a railway wheel passing through a cast manganese crossing has also been developed. For the first time, a tool capable of simulating both dynamic contact forces and corresponding plastic material response has been used to discover flaws within existing designs of UK cast manganese crossings. This approach has enabled immediate recommendations for asset improvement to be provided to Network Rail and gives the UK rail industry more scientific insight into the optimal design of railway crossings.Open Acces