Self-Evaluation Applied Mathematics 2003-2008 University of Twente

This report contains the self-study for the research assessment of the Department of Applied Mathematics (AM) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at the University of Twente (UT). The report provides the information for the Research Assessment Committee for Applied Mathematics, dealing with mathematical sciences at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. It describes the state of affairs pertaining to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008

Internet of things-based framework for public transportation fleet management in the Free State

Thesis (Masters: Information Technology) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2019The poor service delivery by the Free State public transportation system inspired us to design a framework solution to improve the current system. This qualitative study focuses on improving the management of the public transportation fleet. One of the most recently developed technologies in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), namely the Internet of Things (IoT), was utilised to develop this framework. Existing problems were identified through research observations, analyses of the current system, analyses of the current problem areas, as well as participants’ questionnaire answers and recommendations, the participants being the passengers, drivers and vehicle owners. The framework was developed in two phases, namely a hardware phase that makes use of ICT sensors (e.g. RFID, GPS, GPRS, IR, Zigbee, WiFi), and a software phase that uses an internet connection to communicate with the different ICT devices. The software utilised a Graphic User Interface (GUI) to ensure that the software is user-friendly and addresses possible problems and barriers such as multiple language interfaces and different ICT skills levels. The newly designed framework offers different services and solutions to meet the participants’ needs, such as real-time tracking for public transport vehicles to help passengers manage their departure and arrival times, as well as for vehicle owners to monitor their own vehicles. In turn, vehicle arrival notifications will encourage passengers to be on time so that vehicles will not be delayed unnecessarily. Another feature is counting devices that can be installed inside the vehicles, which will inform vehicle owners how many passengers are being transported by a vehicle. The passenger pre-booking system will support the drivers when planning their trips/routes. Finally, the framework was designed to fulfil all the participants’ needs that were indicated in the questionnaires in order to achieve the goal of the research study

Complexity in Economic and Social Systems

There is no term that better describes the essential features of human society than complexity. On various levels, from the decision-making processes of individuals, through to the interactions between individuals leading to the spontaneous formation of groups and social hierarchies, up to the collective, herding processes that reshape whole societies, all these features share the property of irreducibility, i.e., they require a holistic, multi-level approach formed by researchers from different disciplines. This Special Issue aims to collect research studies that, by exploiting the latest advances in physics, economics, complex networks, and data science, make a step towards understanding these economic and social systems. The majority of submissions are devoted to financial market analysis and modeling, including the stock and cryptocurrency markets in the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic risk quantification and control, wealth condensation, the innovation-related performance of companies, and more. Looking more at societies, there are papers that deal with regional development, land speculation, and the-fake news-fighting strategies, the issues which are of central interest in contemporary society. On top of this, one of the contributions proposes a new, improved complexity measure

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans