Beyond First/Last Mile Active Transportation - BikeShare@UH

Bike sharing is a new green transportation solution that has been developed and adopted at various cities around the world. In this paper, we present the process and results of the design and prototypes that a group of undergraduate students developed for a BikeShare@UH program during Summer 2017. After presenting the detailed results of four project teams focusing on customer discovery, bike share station (BSS) location identification, cloud-based mobile computing platform for user engagement and bike share program operation and management, smart lock, and alternative energy source based on PV panel. With the phase one implementation at the University planned in Spring 2018, we anticipate gathering real time data and feedback to improve the system.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Millimeter-wave communication for a last-mile autonomous transport vehicle

Low-speed autonomous transport of passengers and goods is expected to have a strong, positive impact on the reliability and ease of travelling. Various advanced functions of the involved vehicles rely on the wireless exchange of information with other vehicles and the roadside infrastructure, thereby benefitting from the low latency and high throughput characteristics that 5G technology has to offer. This work presents an investigation of 5G millimeter-wave communication links for a low-speed autonomous vehicle, focusing on the effects of the antenna positions on both the received signal quality and the link performance. It is observed that the excess loss for communication with roadside infrastructure in front of the vehicle is nearly half-power beam width independent, and the increase of the root mean square delay spread plays a minor role in the resulting signal quality, as the absolute times are considerably shorter than the typical duration of 5G New Radio symbols. Near certain threshold levels, a reduction of the received power affects the link performance through an increased error vector magnitude of the received signal, and subsequent decrease of the achieved data throughput

Doha: The Last Mile

The major issue preventing the conclusion of the Doha Round is the conflict on agricultural protectionism between India and America. When one probes the matter in depth, one immediately sees that a political compromise is within reach

"Last-Mile" preparation for a potential disaster

Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity

Consumer preferences and last mile pricing in the postal sector

The paper analyzes consumer preferences towards a potential two-part tariff in the postal sector. Based on the empirical results we analyze the welfare effects of a two-part tariff when applied in the Swiss letter market.Pricing, Two-part tariff, Universal Service, Receiver Pays Principle, Consumer Preferences

Pricing the last mile in the postal sector

Traditionally, pricing of postal services was fully sender based. We analyze a potential alternative consisting of a two-part tariff where the sender is charged reduced postage while the recipient is charged a yearly fixed fee.Pricing, Two-part tariff, Universal Service, Receiver Pays Principle

End-to-end QoE optimization through overlay network deployment

In this paper an overlay network for end-to-end QoE management is presented. The goal of this infrastructure is QoE optimization by routing around failures in the IP network and optimizing the bandwidth usage on the last mile to the client. The overlay network consists of components that are located both in the core and at the edge of the network. A number of overlay servers perform end-to-end QoS monitoring and maintain an overlay topology, allowing them to route around link failures and congestion. Overlay access components situated at the edge of the network are responsible for determining whether packets are sent to the overlay network, while proxy components manage the bandwidth on the last mile. This paper gives a detailed overview of the end-to-end architecture together with representative experimental results which comprehensively demonstrate the overlay network's ability to optimize the QoE