Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment

In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors, but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and what remains to be addressed in the future

Evaluating the impact of smart technologies on harbor's logistics via BPMN modeling and simulation

A Smart Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enables a synchronized interplay of different key factors, aligning infrastructures, consumers, and governmental policy-making needs. In the harbor's logistics context, Smart ICT has been driving a multi-year wave of growth. Although there is a standalone value in the technological innovation of a task, the impact of a new smart technology is unknown without quantitative analysis methods on the end-to-end process. In this paper, we first present a review of the Smart ICT for marine container terminals, and then we propose to evaluate the impact of such Smart ICT via Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modeling and simulation. The proposed approach is discussed in a real-world modeling and simulation analysis, made on a pilot terminal of the Port of Leghorn (Italy)

Analysis of current and potential sensor network technologies and their incorporation as embedded structural system

This document provides a brief overview of the actual wireless ad hoc sensor networks technologies and standards available, especially in view of their possible implementation for shipping container protection and monitoring within the framework of the STEC Action aiming at analyzing possible technical solutions to improve the security of the millions of containers moving in and out of Europe. Examples of applications and research projects are reported from the literature to give insights on the possibility of implementation of wireless sensor networks in real world scenarios.JRC.G.5-European laboratory for structural assessmen

Dynamics in Logistics

This open access book highlights the interdisciplinary aspects of logistics research. Featuring empirical, methodological, and practice-oriented articles, it addresses the modelling, planning, optimization and control of processes. Chiefly focusing on supply chains, logistics networks, production systems, and systems and facilities for material flows, the respective contributions combine research on classical supply chain management, digitalized business processes, production engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and mathematical optimization. To celebrate 25 years of interdisciplinary and collaborative research conducted at the Bremen Research Cluster for Dynamics in Logistics (LogDynamics), in this book hand-picked experts currently or formerly affiliated with the Cluster provide retrospectives, present cutting-edge research, and outline future research directions

Communication technologies and data processing for safety

Emergency workers comprise large professional groups like volunteer fire-fighters, police officers, emergency medical staff and so on. Their professions have to deal frequently with a considerable number of a combination of health and safety risk factors, which are often unavoidable. For example, workplace scenes demanding the intervention of emergency workers may be located in remote, difficult to access areas (mountains, sea, caves), and sometimes in extremely difficult weather conditions. Moreover, emergency workers must arrive very rapidly at the disaster scene at any time of the day or night, and there is always the possibility of car crashes or other transportation accidents on the journey to the disaster scene or to hospitals. Others examples are the industrial workplaces, which are inherently places with a high concentration of heavy machinery, fast handling equipments, high heat and pressure pipes, polluted and explosive areas where people work in a relatively small area. Therefore, in an environment where situational awareness and tactical decision making are critical elements to a successful operation, it is really important to have available efficient instruments to ensure the safety for all operators that work in the field. Despite the fact that a lot sophisticated solutions have been used for increasing request due to the growing need of safety concerns by the operators, the mission-critical environments are still considered high-risk environments with serious work safety related issues and higher accident rates than in other workplaces. This study focuses on the safety precautions in outdoor and indoor environments, safety communication and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and proposes solutions to ensure secure and reliable communications between forces deployed in the field and their dispatch center, which is often of decisive importance for the work of the emergency services, analyzing two different important case studies. Moreover, we have designed a control system intended as a platform for real-time information capable of monitoring, by means of camera and sensor data harvesting about people and vehicles movements. It provides automatic and semi-automatic risk prevention measures thanks to the work in progress on designing and implementing a first working prototype of sensor network based on RFID BAN. These capabilities are the topic of a larger research project that aims to find the optimal solution in terms of feasibility and practical implementation. To conclude our study, we have developed a indoor navigation system for mobile devices. The application is able to follow the user and it indicates the shortest path to achieve a specific destination. It uses only smartphone motion sensor and not requires the use of extra equipment. Moreover, thanks to an algorithm widely explained afterwards and the use of the gyroscope sensor rather than the compass, the mobile application ensure a very good orientation. The thesis is organized as following: - In the first chapter, to design a radio communication system both for health emergency services and Civil Protection services, different Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) standards was analized. PMR, also known as land mobile radio (LMR) in North America, are field radio communications systems which use portable, mobile, base station, and dispatch console radios. It has referred to a suite of radio mobile network tecnologies deployed for missioncritical users, which need high affordable communication system. In the specific, PMR networks provide radio services for closed user group, group call and push-to-talk, and call set-up times which are generally short compared with cellular system. In addition, they provide communications in extreme situations that might cause failures in other communications network, like 2G or 3G. As a result of the analysis of the main digital PMR standards (TETRA and DMR) used in European countries, we decided to use the DMR standard to design the radio network for 118 service in Sardinia and for Civil Protection service. DMR has been identified as the best solution, which grants cost saving, high coverage, spectral efficiency and simplicity in network configuration and it is well suitable in wide area with a low/medium density of traffic. - The second and third chapter of the thesis are focused on improvement of the safety of operators in a maritime cargo terminal. Hence, a new infrastructure of a maritime cargo terminal has been defined, using a control system for monitoring workplace safety. By combining, in the control system, the inputs from a Body Area Network (BAN) integrated in the safety equipment and from CCTV cameras, a human supervisor is able to achieve an accurate overview of the entire situation in terms of work safety and act accordingly when needed. In addition, we focused even on the design and implementation of a working prototype of an RFID-based BAN sensor network for actively monitoring and preventing workplace safety risks in the same industrial area. This first conceptual and technological analysis, together with the test implementation, is the forerunner of a complex monitoring system in development to be implemented both for the specific case and for any industrial environment. - The last chapter aims to describe an indoor navigation system developed for smartphone android. Specifically, it has been demonstrated how the use of a gyroscope sensor can brings more benefits respect to a compass sensor to get the best detected position. Nowadays, modern mobile devices, such as smartphones and PDAs in general, come to the market already equipped with sensors able to track them as they move, both in outdoor and indoor environment. The sensing technologies embedded in such devices make it ideal for a wide range of location-based services, such as navigation applications. An Inertial Navigation System (INS) uses motion and rotation sensors in order to determine the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object/user without the need of external infrastructures. This is essential in an indoor environment where common localization systems, such as Global Positioning System (GPS), fail due to severe attenuation or obscuration of the satellite's signal. In inertial navigation systems, localization/ orientation estimation is source-independent. The user's position is calculated in relation to a known starting position using a dead reckoning algorithm and the orientation is usually provided by a digital compass embedded in the smartphone. A digital compass sensor provides the orientation of the device relative to the magnetic north of the earth. However, when it is used in indoor environments, like any magnetic device, it is affected by significant error caused by nearby ferrous materials, as well as local electromagnetic fields. Such errors seriously affect the performance and the accuracy of the system, thus the need to investigate any alternative orientation technique. In the specific, we have developed an early prototype of a pedestrian navigation system for indoor environments based on dead reckoning, 2D barcodes and data from accelerometers and magnetometers. All the sensing and computing technologies of our solution are available in common smartphones. The prototype has been further improved by a new algorithm described afterwards and now it is able to estimate the correct current position of the user, track him inside the building and provide the best path to achieve a specific destination

Communication technologies and data processing for safety

Emergency workers comprise large professional groups like volunteer fire-fighters, police officers, emergency medical staff and so on. Their professions have to deal frequently with a considerable number of a combination of health and safety risk factors, which are often unavoidable. For example, workplace scenes demanding the intervention of emergency workers may be located in remote, difficult to access areas (mountains, sea, caves), and sometimes in extremely difficult weather conditions. Moreover, emergency workers must arrive very rapidly at the disaster scene at any time of the day or night, and there is always the possibility of car crashes or other transportation accidents on the journey to the disaster scene or to hospitals. Others examples are the industrial workplaces, which are inherently places with a high concentration of heavy machinery, fast handling equipments, high heat and pressure pipes, polluted and explosive areas where people work in a relatively small area. Therefore, in an environment where situational awareness and tactical decision making are critical elements to a successful operation, it is really important to have available efficient instruments to ensure the safety for all operators that work in the field. Despite the fact that a lot sophisticated solutions have been used for increasing request due to the growing need of safety concerns by the operators, the mission-critical environments are still considered high-risk environments with serious work safety related issues and higher accident rates than in other workplaces. This study focuses on the safety precautions in outdoor and indoor environments, safety communication and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and proposes solutions to ensure secure and reliable communications between forces deployed in the field and their dispatch center, which is often of decisive importance for the work of the emergency services, analyzing two different important case studies. Moreover, we have designed a control system intended as a platform for real-time information capable of monitoring, by means of camera and sensor data harvesting about people and vehicles movements. It provides automatic and semi-automatic risk prevention measures thanks to the work in progress on designing and implementing a first working prototype of sensor network based on RFID BAN. These capabilities are the topic of a larger research project that aims to find the optimal solution in terms of feasibility and practical implementation. To conclude our study, we have developed a indoor navigation system for mobile devices. The application is able to follow the user and it indicates the shortest path to achieve a specific destination. It uses only smartphone motion sensor and not requires the use of extra equipment. Moreover, thanks to an algorithm widely explained afterwards and the use of the gyroscope sensor rather than the compass, the mobile application ensure a very good orientation. The thesis is organized as following: - In the first chapter, to design a radio communication system both for health emergency services and Civil Protection services, different Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) standards was analized. PMR, also known as land mobile radio (LMR) in North America, are field radio communications systems which use portable, mobile, base station, and dispatch console radios. It has referred to a suite of radio mobile network tecnologies deployed for missioncritical users, which need high affordable communication system. In the specific, PMR networks provide radio services for closed user group, group call and push-to-talk, and call set-up times which are generally short compared with cellular system. In addition, they provide communications in extreme situations that might cause failures in other communications network, like 2G or 3G. As a result of the analysis of the main digital PMR standards (TETRA and DMR) used in European countries, we decided to use the DMR standard to design the radio network for 118 service in Sardinia and for Civil Protection service. DMR has been identified as the best solution, which grants cost saving, high coverage, spectral efficiency and simplicity in network configuration and it is well suitable in wide area with a low/medium density of traffic. - The second and third chapter of the thesis are focused on improvement of the safety of operators in a maritime cargo terminal. Hence, a new infrastructure of a maritime cargo terminal has been defined, using a control system for monitoring workplace safety. By combining, in the control system, the inputs from a Body Area Network (BAN) integrated in the safety equipment and from CCTV cameras, a human supervisor is able to achieve an accurate overview of the entire situation in terms of work safety and act accordingly when needed. In addition, we focused even on the design and implementation of a working prototype of an RFID-based BAN sensor network for actively monitoring and preventing workplace safety risks in the same industrial area. This first conceptual and technological analysis, together with the test implementation, is the forerunner of a complex monitoring system in development to be implemented both for the specific case and for any industrial environment. - The last chapter aims to describe an indoor navigation system developed for smartphone android. Specifically, it has been demonstrated how the use of a gyroscope sensor can brings more benefits respect to a compass sensor to get the best detected position. Nowadays, modern mobile devices, such as smartphones and PDAs in general, come to the market already equipped with sensors able to track them as they move, both in outdoor and indoor environment. The sensing technologies embedded in such devices make it ideal for a wide range of location-based services, such as navigation applications. An Inertial Navigation System (INS) uses motion and rotation sensors in order to determine the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object/user without the need of external infrastructures. This is essential in an indoor environment where common localization systems, such as Global Positioning System (GPS), fail due to severe attenuation or obscuration of the satellite's signal. In inertial navigation systems, localization/ orientation estimation is source-independent. The user's position is calculated in relation to a known starting position using a dead reckoning algorithm and the orientation is usually provided by a digital compass embedded in the smartphone. A digital compass sensor provides the orientation of the device relative to the magnetic north of the earth. However, when it is used in indoor environments, like any magnetic device, it is affected by significant error caused by nearby ferrous materials, as well as local electromagnetic fields. Such errors seriously affect the performance and the accuracy of the system, thus the need to investigate any alternative orientation technique. In the specific, we have developed an early prototype of a pedestrian navigation system for indoor environments based on dead reckoning, 2D barcodes and data from accelerometers and magnetometers. All the sensing and computing technologies of our solution are available in common smartphones. The prototype has been further improved by a new algorithm described afterwards and now it is able to estimate the correct current position of the user, track him inside the building and provide the best path to achieve a specific destination

Game Theory Relaunched

The game is on. Do you know how to play? Game theory sets out to explore what can be said about making decisions which go beyond accepting the rules of a game. Since 1942, a well elaborated mathematical apparatus has been developed to do so; but there is more. During the last three decades game theoretic reasoning has popped up in many other fields as well - from engineering to biology and psychology. New simulation tools and network analysis have made game theory omnipresent these days. This book collects recent research papers in game theory, which come from diverse scientific communities all across the world; they combine many different fields like economics, politics, history, engineering, mathematics, physics, and psychology. All of them have as a common denominator some method of game theory. Enjoy

Dynamics in Logistics

This open access book highlights the interdisciplinary aspects of logistics research. Featuring empirical, methodological, and practice-oriented articles, it addresses the modelling, planning, optimization and control of processes. Chiefly focusing on supply chains, logistics networks, production systems, and systems and facilities for material flows, the respective contributions combine research on classical supply chain management, digitalized business processes, production engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and mathematical optimization. To celebrate 25 years of interdisciplinary and collaborative research conducted at the Bremen Research Cluster for Dynamics in Logistics (LogDynamics), in this book hand-picked experts currently or formerly affiliated with the Cluster provide retrospectives, present cutting-edge research, and outline future research directions