DroneBased Parcel Delivery Using the Rooftops of City Buildings: Model and Solution

In general, the demand for delivery cannot be fulfilled efficiently due to the excessive traffic in dense urban areas. Therefore, many innovative concepts for intelligent transportation of freight have recently been developed. One of these concepts relies on drone-based parcel delivery using rooftops of city buildings. To apply drone logistics system in cities, the operation design should be adequately prepared. In this regard, a mixed integer programming model for drone operation planning and a heuristic based on block stacking are newly proposed to provide solutions. Additionally, numerical experiments with three different problem sizes are conducted to check the feasibility of the proposed model and to assess the performance of the proposed heuristic. The experimental results show that the proposed model seems to be viable and that the developed heuristic provides very good operation plans in terms of the optimality gap and the computation time. Document type: Articl

Innovative solutions in last mile delivery: concepts, practices, challenges, and future directions

In the last decade, e-commerce has been growing consistently. Fostered by the covid pandemic, online retail has grown exponentially, particularly in industries including food, clothing, groceries and many others. This growth in online retailing activities has raised critical logistic challenges, especially in the last leg of the distribution, commonly referred to as the Last Mile. For instance, traditional truck-based home delivery has reached its limit within metropolitan areas and can no longer be an effective delivery method. Driven by technological progress, several other logistic solutions have been deployed as innovative alternatives to deliver parcels. This includes delivery by drones, smart parcel stations, robots, and crowdsourcing, among others. In this setting, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the latest trends in last-mile delivery solutions from both industry and academic perspectives (see Figure 1 for overview). We use a content analysis literature review to analyse over 80 relevant publications, derive the necessary features of the latest innovation in the last mile delivery, and point out their different maturity levels and the related theoretical and operational challenges

Spatial Distribution, Sources, and Associated Risks of Toxic Metals In Red Sea Sediments Near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Coastal areas are known to be sequestration points for various pollutants generated from industrial and urban activities. Diverse anthropogenic pollutants are typically delivered to coastal sediments via atmospheric or fluvial processes. Heavy metals, such as chromium, copper, manganese, zinc, and lead, are some of the toxic contaminants of greatest concernbecause of their well-established detrimental effects on the marine environment. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has encouraged activities to bring about economic development, particularly along the Red Sea. Jeddah is located on the Red Sea and is the second largest city in Saudi Arabia, famous for its beautiful coral reef. In this dissertation, a variety of studies were applied not only to in situ sediment samples but also to aerosol particulate matter. The primary goal of the work is to determine the degree of heavy metal pollution in the region and, for key contaminants, identify their sources. The research plan in the dissertation included three phases that are discussed in the first chapter. The first phase included review of the literature, a field survey to design a sampling plan and identify thecollection sample points, and meetings with officials, including a Coast Guard representative to obtain the necessary permissions. The second phase involved collecting sediments and air filter samples and preparing the samples for laboratory analysis. The third phase comprised interpreting the results to obtain valuable relations between measured indices, and to determine the principal sources of pollution. Chapter 2 of this dissertation investigated the state of pollution in eighty sediments focusing on six heavy metals: chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and lead (Pb). The study also quantified the degree of pollution in sediments using various risk indices, including Geo-accumulation Indices (Igeo), Enrichment factors (Ef), Contamination factors (Cf), Pollution Load Indices (PLI), Potential Ecological Risk Indices (PERI) and Potential Toxicity Response Indices (RI). Results showed that the majority of the polluted sediments were recorded in the Middle and Southlocations, and Pb showed the highest concentration of the metals in the study area (77.34 mg/kg). The Igeo values for Pb in the Middle stations showed that 10% of the stations were categorized as moderately polluted, whereas 20% of the South location was classified as moderately polluted. The RI values in the South stations, especially the northern stations within the South location, indicate high Pb pollution in the area. This study recommended that appropriate management strategies should be applied for the Jeddah Coast to control potential pollution sources and prevent permanent hazards to marine ecology currently documented elsewhere. Additionally, the study implicated that the area needs more tracer studies such as isotopic and speciation studies that could be used to investigate the sources of the Pb in sediments, water, and even in airborne aerosols near the shoreline. The findings of chapter 2 led us to study Pb isotopes in the sediment samples and the results are described in chapter 3. For the first time in the Red Sea area, the Pb isotopic ratios of 206Pb, 207Pb, and 208Pb were examined to evaluate the sources of Pb. A two end-member model and a three component fractional contribution model were both used to identify possible Pb sources and their percentage contributions in the study area. The isotopic data and modeling show that natural and anthropogenic sources such as gasoline and an identified unknown source contribute to the Pb load of Jeddah\u27s sediments. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that different activities were controlling the Pb isotopes for each location. The study concluded that the Middle location was the most effected location by the Pb from different sources, and the Ef outcomes revealed that 80% of the sediment samples were considered extremely severely enriched with Pb. This study has raised many topics of concern in need of further investigation, including the ratio of Pb isotopes in air samples to Pb isotopes in the soil and isotopic variance with time, presumably recorded in sediment cores. Finally, in chapter 4, the concentration of the heavy metals of particulate matter (PM) with a size less than 2.5micrometers is determined. The results of this study indicate that the PM2.5 concentration was higher in the North location,and the Pb concentration was higher in the Middle location. The results of the backward trajectory analysis help us understand the sudden concentration increase of PM on August 2 and September 13, 2017. On those dates, Jeddah\u27satmosphere was affected by a massive dust storms originating in the Tokar Desert in northeastern Sudan. According to Principle Component Analysis (PCA) results, the four principal sources of the heavy metals in the Jeddah ambient air were particles originating from the marine aerosol and re-suspension of soil-derived particles, particles originating from the land in addition to the anthropogenic contribution of Fe, particles originating from oil combustion, and particles originating from incineration and fossil fuel combustion. The outcomes of the dissertation provide the spatial mapping of the distribution of heavy metals as well as their possible sources. This will help develop pollution control measures and serve as a resource for choosing optimum remediationmethods for water and sediments on the Saudi Arabian coast of the Red Sea. Taken together, the findings of each chapterare impactful and have many important implications for future practice

The Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, volume 1

These papers comprise a peer-review selection of presentations by authors from NASA, LPI industry, and academia at the Second Conference (April 1988) on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, sponsored by the NASA Office of Exploration and the Lunar Planetary Institute. These papers go into more technical depth than did those published from the first NASA-sponsored symposium on the topic, held in 1984. Session topics covered by this volume include (1) design and operation of transportation systems to, in orbit around, and on the Moon, (2) lunar base site selection, (3) design, architecture, construction, and operation of lunar bases and human habitats, and (4) lunar-based scientific research and experimentation in astronomy, exobiology, and lunar geology

Mining Social Media and Structured Data in Urban Environmental Management to Develop Smart Cities

This research presented the deployment of data mining on social media and structured data in urban studies. We analyzed urban relocation, air quality and traffic parameters on multicity data as early work. We applied the data mining techniques of association rules, clustering and classification on urban legislative history. Results showed that data mining could produce meaningful knowledge to support urban management. We treated ordinances (local laws) and the tweets about them as indicators to assess urban policy and public opinion. Hence, we conducted ordinance and tweet mining including sentiment analysis of tweets. This part of the study focused on NYC with a goal of assessing how well it heads towards a smart city. We built domain-specific knowledge bases according to widely accepted smart city characteristics, incorporating commonsense knowledge sources for ordinance-tweet mapping. We developed decision support tools on multiple platforms using the knowledge discovered to guide urban management. Our research is a concrete step in harnessing the power of data mining in urban studies to enhance smart city development

Space and place as expressive categories in videogames

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis

Data bases and data base systems related to NASA's aerospace program. A bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 1778 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system, 1975 through 1980

Aeronautical enginnering: A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography (supplement 312)

This is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in NASA SP-7037 (301) through NASA SP-7073 (311) of Aeronautical Engineering: A Continuing Bibliography. NASA SP-7037 and its supplements have been compiled by the Center for AeroSpace Information of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This cumulative index includes subject, personal author, corporate source, foreign technology, contract number, report number, and accession number indexes