Estimation of indirect cost and evaluation of protective measures for infrastructure vulnerability: A case study on the transalpine transport corridor

Infrastructure vulnerability is a topic of rising interest in the scientific literature for both the general increase of unexpected events and the strategic importance of certain links. Protective investments are extremely costly and risks are distributed in space and time which poses important decision problems to the public sector decision makers. In an economic prospective, the evaluation of infrastructure vulnerability is oriented on the estimation of direct and indirect costs of hazards. Although the estimation of direct costs is straightforward, the evaluation of indirect cost involves factors non-directly observable making the approximation a difficult issue. This paper provides an estimate of the indirect costs caused by a two weeks closure of the north-south Gotthard road corridor, one of the most important infrastructure links in Europe, and implements a cost-benefit analysis tool that allows the evaluation of measures ensuring a full protection along the corridor. The identification of the indirect cost relies on the generalized cost estimation, which parameters come from two stated preference experiments, the first based on actual condition whereas the second assumes a road closure. The procedure outlined in this paper proposes a methodology aimed to identify and quantify the economic vulnerability associated with a road transport infrastructure and, to evaluate the economic and social efficiency of a vulnerability reduction by the consideration of protective measures.infrastructure vulnerability, choice experiment, cost-benefit analysis, freight transport

On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools

Novel approach for integrated biomass supply chain synthesis and optimisation

Despite looming energy crises, fossil resources are still widely used for energy and chemical production. Growing awareness of the environmental impact from fossil fuels has made sustainability one of the main focuses in research and development. Towards that end, biomass is identified as a promising renewable source of carbon that can potentially replace fossil resources in energy and chemical productions. Although many researches on converting biomass to value-added product have been done, biomass is still considered underutilised in the industry. This is mainly due to challenges in the logistic and processing network of biomass. An integrated biomass supply chain synthesis and optimisation are therefore important. Thus, the ultimate goal of this thesis is to develop a novel approach for an integrated biomass supply chain. Firstly, a multiple biomass corridor (MBC) concept is presented to integrate various biomass and processing technologies into existing biomass supply chain system in urban and developed regions. Based on this approach, a framework is developed for the synthesis of a more diversified and economical biomass supply chain system. The work is then extended to consider the centralisation and decentralisation of supply chain structure. In this manner, P-graph-aided decomposition approach (PADA) is proposed, whereby it divides the complex supply chain problem into two smaller sub-problems – the processing network is solved via mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model, whereas the binaries-intensive logistic network configuration is determined through P-graph framework. As existing works often focus on supply chain synthesis in urban regions with well-developed infrastructure, resources integrated network (RIN) – a novel approach for the synthesis of integrated biomass supply chain in rural and remote regions is introduced to enhance rural economies. This approach incorporates multiple resources (i.e. bioresources, food commodities, rural communities’ daily needs) into the value chain and utilises inland water system as the mode of transport, making the system more economically feasible. It extends the MBC approach for technology selection and adopts vehicle routing problem (VRP) for inland water supply and delivery network. To evaluate the performance of the proposed integrated biomass supply chain system, a FANP-based (fuzzy analytical network process) sustainability assessment tool is established. A framework is proposed to derive sustainability index (SI) from pairwise comparison done by supply chain stakeholders to assess the sustainability of a system. Fuzzy limits are introduced to reduce uncertainties in human judgment while conducting the pairwise comparison. To design a sustainable integrated biomass supply chain, a FANP-aided, a novel multiple objectives optimisation framework is proposed. This approach transforms multiple objective functions into single objective function by prioritising each of the objective through the FANP framework. The multiple objectives are then normalised via max-min aggregation to ensure the trade-off between objectives is performed on the same scale. At the end of this thesis, viable future works of the whole programme is presented for consideration

Quantifying economic benefits for rail infrastructure projects

Investment in rail infrastructure is necessary to maintain existing service and to cater for future growth in freight and passenger services. Many communities have realized the importance of investment in rail infrastructure projects and set up goals and visions to achieve economic development through investing in such projects. Due to limited funds available, communities have to select a single or very few projects from a variety of projects. It is very critical that right projects must be selected at the right time for a community to realize economic development. The limited methods for quantifying the economic benefits to the stakeholders often cause a problem in the selection process. Most of the conventional methods focus mainly on the economic impact of the project and ignore the metrics that convey the economic impacts in meaningful ways to the key stakeholders involved. This leads to uncertainty in the project selection and planning process and often leads to failure in achieving the goals of the project. This study aims to provide a mathematical framework that quantifies economic benefits of investment in rail infrastructure projects in meaningful ways to the key stakeholders through three different approaches, namely, Leontief-based approach, Bayesian approach and system dynamics approach. The Leontief-based approach is the easiest of all the three approaches provided that historical data is available. Bayesian approach is also very beneficial as it can be used by coupling small data with surveys and interviews. Also, system dynamics model is very useful to conduct qualitative analysis, but the quantitative analysis part can become very complex --Abstract, page iii

Application of Advanced Early Warning Systems with Adaptive Protection

This project developed and field-tested two methods of Adaptive Protection systems utilizing synchrophasor data. One method detects conditions of system stress that can lead to unintended relay operation, and initiates a supervisory signal to modify relay response in real time to avoid false trips. The second method detects the possibility of false trips of impedance relays as stable system swings “encroach” on the relays’ impedance zones, and produces an early warning so that relay engineers can re-evaluate relay settings. In addition, real-time synchrophasor data produced by this project was used to develop advanced visualization techniques for display of synchrophasor data to utility operators and engineers

Optimal Alignments for Designing Urban Transport Systems: Application to Seville

The achievement of some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the recent 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has drawn the attention of many countries towards urban transport networks. Mathematical modeling constitutes an analytical tool for the formal description of a transportation system whereby it facilitates the introduction of variables and the definition of objectives to be optimized. One of the stages of the methodology followed in the design of urban transit systems starts with the determination of corridors to optimize the population covered by the system whilst taking into account the mobility patterns of potential users and the time saved when the public network is used instead of private means of transport. Since the capture of users occurs at stations, it seems reasonable to consider an extensive and homogeneous set of candidate sites evaluated according to the parameters considered (such as pedestrian population captured and destination preferences) and to select subsets of stations so that alignments can take place. The application of optimization procedures that decide the sequence of nodes composing the alignment can produce zigzagging corridors, which are less appropriate for the design of a single line. The main aim of this work is to include a new criterion to avoid the zigzag effect when the alignment is about to be determined. For this purpose, a curvature concept for polygonal lines is introduced, and its performance is analyzed when criteria of maximizing coverage and minimizing curvature are combined in the same design algorithm. The results show the application of the mathematical model presented for a real case in the city of Seville in Spain.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2015-67706-

Sea Container Terminals

Due to a rapid growth in world trade and a huge increase in containerized goods, sea container terminals play a vital role in globe-spanning supply chains. Container terminals should be able to handle large ships, with large call sizes within the shortest time possible, and at competitive rates. In response, terminal operators, shipping liners, and port authorities are investing in new technologies to improve container handling infrastructure and operational efficiency. Container terminals face challenging research problems which have received much attention from the academic community. The focus of this paper is to highlight the recent developments in the container terminals, which can be categorized into three areas: (1) innovative container terminal technologies, (2) new OR directions and models for existing research areas, and (3) emerging areas in container terminal research. By choosing this focus, we complement existing reviews on container terminal operations

Sustainable urban logistics solutions for the city of Kaunas

The main objective of this research project is to develop sustainable measures for the improvement of urban logistics in the city of Kaunas. The project is focusing on the sustainable approach to evaluate the viability of its measures. In other words, it considers the feasibility of the measures depending on the social, economic, and environmental effects that they could have. Firstly, it is analyzed the problems caused by logistic activities in Kaunas. Some of the problems have deep consequences for Kaunas citizens and might even be worse in future scenarios. The analysis tries to draw all the logistic scenario existing in the city. Kaunas, as an important logistic “pole” of Lithuania, has some important logistic platforms that must be considered. Besides, it is also analyzed different levels of administration, the developed plans of each of them, and the stakeholders related to different economic activities. To conclude the analysis and provide a more extended context, it is done a benchmarking of different successful measures developed in other cities. Finally, it is proposed two related measures. In the first place, it is located an urban distribution center by using Brown & Gibson Methodology and utility function. Secondly, it is developed a bicycle logistic system for the operation of the located distribution center. By using Clarke & Wright algorithm, it is designed the capacity and the necessary routes to serve the potential demand of the urban distribution center

Book of abstracts of the 24th Euro Working Group on Transportation Meeting

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