Selective Screening of Rail Passengers, MTI 06-07

The threat of another major terrorist attack in the United States remains high, with the greatest danger coming from local extremists inspired by events in the Middle East. Although the United States removed the Taliban government and destroyed al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan, events in Europe and elsewhere have shown that the terrorist network leadership remains determined to carry out further attacks and is capable of doing so. Therefore, the United States must systematically conduct research on terrorist strikes against transportation targets to distill lessons learned and determine the best practices for deterrence, response, and recovery. Those best practices must be taught to transportation and security professionals to provide secure surface transportation for the nation. Studying recent incidents in Europe and Asia, along with other research, will help leaders in the United States learn valuable lessons—from preventing attacks, to response and recovery, to addressing the psychological impacts of attacks to business continuity. Timely distillations of the lessons learned and best practices developed in other countries, once distributed to law enforcement, first responders, and rail- and subway-operating transit agencies, could result in the saving of American lives. This monograph focuses on the terrorist risks confronting public transportation in the United States—especially urban mass transit—and explores how different forms of passenger screening, and in particular, selective screening, can best be implemented to reduce those risks

Impact of airline service quality on overall and female passengers' satisfaction : a case study of Tonga's domestic aviation market : a 190.893 (120 credit) research report presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Aviation at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The primary objectives of this thesis are to determine the direct impact of airline service quality on passengers’ satisfaction in Tonga’s domestic aviation market. The determinants of airline service quality were identified by using the SERVQUAL dimensions (assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness and tangibles) as measurable indicators. A survey was conducted and 205 questionnaires were collected and analysed. Empirical results obtained via the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach revealed that airline service quality has a direct impact on overall and female passengers’ satisfaction. Furthermore, both overall and female passengers were mostly satisfied with the responsiveness dimension. The tangibles dimension was the dimension with the lowest level of satisfaction for overall passengers and the reliability dimension was the dimension with the lowest satisfaction for female passengers. Importantly, the research highlights the different levels of satisfaction among airline passengers in the monopolistic Tongan domestic aviation market. The findings have implications for the airline management

NPRF: A Neural Pseudo Relevance Feedback Framework for Ad-hoc Information Retrieval

Pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) is commonly used to boost the performance of traditional information retrieval (IR) models by using top-ranked documents to identify and weight new query terms, thereby reducing the effect of query-document vocabulary mismatches. While neural retrieval models have recently demonstrated strong results for ad-hoc retrieval, combining them with PRF is not straightforward due to incompatibilities between existing PRF approaches and neural architectures. To bridge this gap, we propose an end-to-end neural PRF framework that can be used with existing neural IR models by embedding different neural models as building blocks. Extensive experiments on two standard test collections confirm the effectiveness of the proposed NPRF framework in improving the performance of two state-of-the-art neural IR models.Comment: Full paper in EMNLP 201

Staff access control at airports

Since 2001 the aviation industry is continuously facing a growing problem of safety and security within air travel procedure. The restrictions had been taken seriously, new rules and technologies surfaced. Passengers are often defined as wrongdoers but the airport staff has much better conditions to do any kind of attack or pilferage. To avoid any possibility of attack the airport´s staff have to be controlled and monitored. With the combination of video camera, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag and biometrical identification it is solvable

Modernizing the Supply Chain of Airbus by Integrating RFID and Blockchain Processes

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, has been gaining momentum within the aviation industry for improving efficiencies in the supply chain. RFID technology is not new, with many manufacturers outside of aviation being more responsive as early adopters to the technology. Currently, many of the full-scale implementation organizations from late adopters, have strategically integrated RFID technology into the manufacturing supply chain to tag parts and for airports/airlines to track baggage and passengers throughout their airport journey. Literature remains rather sparse in the implementation and success factors within the aviation supply chain as a number of businesses have kept much of the details discreet to differentiate themselves from the competitors. In this case study, we have examined the state of the early adopters in aviation to implement RFID technology into their supply chain for tracking parts, identifying information, logistics media, and other process improvements in component maintenance management. Airbus, who was the first in the aviation industry to adopt RFID will be examined. The paper examines the increasing numbers of airports/airlines use of RFID to track baggage and passengers with technology. Using information from published secondary data, we review the early adopters of RFID in aircraft manufacturing who are employing RFID to the improve supply chain and how airports/airlines usage of RFID has transcend to passenger tracking to improve airport operational efficiency and to increase passenger satisfaction. By identifying key trends in the aviation supply chain and the value-added in manufacturing and passenger experiences, this paper presents areas in need of further empirical research in order to understand the key success factors with RFID implementation in aviation

LATEST INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Civil aviation will soon celebrate its centenary. It emerged as a universal means of transportation, to which the latest technological innovations of many kinds have never ceased to be applied. Nowadays different vendor companies have developed an extensive range of solutions to improve the passenger´s journey, streamline and integrate airline and airport operations, track baggage and cargo, and ensure that the highest levels of maintenance and aircraft safety and security are effectively communicated. Their objective is simple - to assist their customers in delivering the highest quality to the passengers. This paper provides details on all the latest solutions available at every step of journey for passengers from providing up-to-the-minute fare and flight information, to safe arrival, and everything in between. We have to know that air passengers cannot be served by the airline on an appropriate level having no effective information systems available

Preliminary design studies of an advanced general aviation aircraft

The preliminary design results are presented of the advanced aircraft design project. The goal was to take a revolutionary look into the design of a general aviation aircraft. Phase 1 of the project included the preliminary design of two configurations, a pusher, and a tractor. Phase 2 included the selection of only one configuration for further study. The pusher configuration was selected on the basis of performance characteristics, cabin noise, natural laminar flow, and system layouts. The design was then iterated to achieve higher levels of performance

Mobile Business as Strategic Tools in the US Airline Industry

This thesis analyzes opportunities and threats of mobile business in the context of the US airline industry as s strategic tool to create a sustainable competitive advantage through the implementation of an effective mobile business model. The analysis is based on the assumption that mobile airline strategies have to create a strategic fit with the business environment seen from an airline perspective. Forces inherent in the global environment as well as in the micro-environment are analyzed using environmental scanning as systematic technique. Exploratory data obtained from a focus group interview is added to the analysis in order to assess opportunities and threats and to extract the key success factors for airline m-business, which is found to have tremendous impact on the way an airline creates value to its customers. Key success factors discussed in this thesis are user experience, the value contribution of mobile technology, and customer requirements. Crucial elements found for matching these factors are to expedite and facilitate processes, the ability to integrate systems into a mobile infrastructure, and using devices that yield quick and inexpensive results