A review of factors which influence pedestrian use of the streets: Task 1 report for an EPSRC funded project on measuring pedestrian accessibility

INTRODUCTION This document was written to report the results from Task 1 of the Measuring Pedestrian Accessibility project funded through the EPSRC Future Integrated Transport programme. The project is being carried out by staff at the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds in collaboration with the Pedestrians Association and City of York Council. The overall aim of this project is to identify ways to encourage and enable more people to make more journeys on foot. The specific objectives are to: • quantify attitudes and perceptions held towards walking and the barriers to walking; • study the feasibility of developing a tool that can be used to evaluate pedestrian routes; • undertake validation of the tool. The achievement of these objectives will represent a thorough investigation into the two sides of providing for walking - the physical environment for pedestrians and people's attitudes to walking. Task 1 of the project is an extended literature review and survey of experts to identify an initial list of features that are thought to influence pedestrian use of the streets. The paper that follows is split into a number of sections which look at the different characteristics of pedestrians, factors which affect route choice, factors which affect mode choice, problems faced by pedestrians on our streets and a short review of recent Government (local and national) policy which has influenced pedestrian provision

Genetic study of congenital bile-duct dilatation identifies de novo and inherited variants in functionally related genes

Background: Congenital dilatation of the bile-duct (CDD) is a rare, mostly sporadic, disorder that results in bile retention with severe associated complications. CDD affects mainly Asians. To our knowledge, no genetic study has ever been conducted. Methods: We aim to identify genetic risk factors by a “trio-based” exome-sequencing approach, whereby 31 CDD probands and their unaffected parents were exome-sequenced. Seven-hundred controls from the local population were used to detect gene-sets significantly enriched with rare variants in CDD patients. Results: Twenty-one predicted damaging de novo variants (DNVs; 4 protein truncating and 17 missense) were identified in several evolutionarily constrained genes (p < 0.01). Six genes carrying DNVs were associated with human developmental disorders involving epithelial, connective or bone morphologies (PXDN, RTEL1, ANKRD11, MAP2K1, CYLD, ACAN) and four linked with cholangio- and hepatocellular carcinomas (PIK3CA, TLN1 CYLD, MAP2K1). Importantly, CDD patients have an excess of DNVs in cancer-related genes (p < 0.025). Thirteen genes were recurrently mutated at different sites, forming compound heterozygotes or functionally related complexes within patients. Conclusions: Our data supports a strong genetic basis for CDD and show that CDD is not only genetically heterogeneous but also non-monogenic, requiring mutations in more than one genes for the disease to develop. The data is consistent with the rarity and sporadic presentation of CDD

An overview of recent research results and future research avenues using simulation studies in project management

This paper gives an overview of three simulation studies in dynamic project scheduling integrating baseline scheduling with risk analysis and project control. This integration is known in the literature as dynamic scheduling. An integrated project control method is presented using a project control simulation approach that combines the three topics into a single decision support system. The method makes use of Monte Carlo simulations and connects schedule risk analysis (SRA) with earned value management (EVM). A corrective action mechanism is added to the simulation model to measure the efficiency of two alternative project control methods. At the end of the paper, a summary of recent and state-of-the-art results is given, and directions for future research based on a new research study are presented

Flooding through the lens of mobile phone activity

Natural disasters affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide every year. Emergency response efforts depend upon the availability of timely information, such as information concerning the movements of affected populations. The analysis of aggregated and anonymized Call Detail Records (CDR) captured from the mobile phone infrastructure provides new possibilities to characterize human behavior during critical events. In this work, we investigate the viability of using CDR data combined with other sources of information to characterize the floods that occurred in Tabasco, Mexico in 2009. An impact map has been reconstructed using Landsat-7 images to identify the floods. Within this frame, the underlying communication activity signals in the CDR data have been analyzed and compared against rainfall levels extracted from data of the NASA-TRMM project. The variations in the number of active phones connected to each cell tower reveal abnormal activity patterns in the most affected locations during and after the floods that could be used as signatures of the floods - both in terms of infrastructure impact assessment and population information awareness. The representativeness of the analysis has been assessed using census data and civil protection records. While a more extensive validation is required, these early results suggest high potential in using cell tower activity information to improve early warning and emergency management mechanisms.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Global Humanitarian Technologies Conference (GHTC) 201

Duration and cost variability of construction activities: an empirical study

The unique nature of construction projects can mean that construction activities often suffer from duration and cost variability. Because this variability is unplanned, it can present a problem when attempting to complete a project on time and on budget. Various factors causing this variability have been identified in the literature, but they predominantly refer to the nature and/or context of the whole project rather than specific activities. In this paper, the order of magnitude of and correlation between activity duration and cost variability is analyzed in 101 construction projects with over 5,000 activities. To do this, the first four moments (mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis) of actual versus planned duration and cost (log) ratios are analyzed by project, phase of execution, and activity type. Results suggest that, contrary to common wisdom, construction activities do not end late on average. Instead, the large variability in the activity duration is the major factor causing significant project delays and cost overruns. The values of average activity duration and cost variability gathered in this study will also serve as a reference for construction managers to improve future construction planning and project simulation studies with more realistic data

Drawing the line: balancing the spatial requirements of customer and contractor in occupied refurbishment

In planning the refurbishment of railway stations the spatial needs of the contractor and ofthe ongoing business stakeholders have to be balanced. A particular concern is thedisruptive effect of construction works upon pedestrian movement.RaCMIT (Refurbishment and Customer Movement Integration Tool) is a research projectaimed at addressing this problem through combining the knowledge of the client projectmanager, the construction planner and the pedestrian modelling expert.The objective of the research is to develop a decision protocol (based on problemsencountered in two case studies) facilitating optimisation of overall project value to theclient?s business.Research observations as well as current literature suggest that:? for overall decision-making, opportunities may be lost (under current practice) forminimising joint project cost/revenue disruption and? for spatial decision-making, temporary station configuration during construction(and not just overall pedestrian capacity) is a significant variable for both businessand safety outcomes. In planning the refurbishment of railway stations the spatial needs of the contractor and ofthe ongoing business stakeholders have to be balanced. A particular concern is thedisruptive effect of construction works upon pedestrian movement.RaCMIT (Refurbishment and Customer Movement Integration Tool) is a research projectaimed at addressing this problem through combining the knowledge of the client projectmanager, the construction planner and the pedestrian modelling expert.The objective of the research is to develop a decision protocol (based on problemsencountered in two case studies) facilitating optimisation of overall project value to theclient?s business.Research observations as well as current literature suggest that:? for overall decision-making, opportunities may be lost (under current practice) forminimising joint project cost/revenue disruption and? for spatial decision-making, temporary station configuration during construction(and not just overall pedestrian capacity) is a significant variable for both businessand safety outcomes

Project regularity : development and evaluation of a new project characteristic

The ability to accurately characterize projects is essential to good project management. Therefore, a novel project characteristic is developed that reflects the value accrue within a project. This characteristic, called project regularity, is expressed in terms of the newly introduced regular/irregular-indicator RI. The widely accepted management system of earned value management (EVM) forms the basis for evaluation of the new characteristic. More concretely, the influence of project regularity on EVM forecasting accuracy is assessed, and is shown to be significant for both time and cost forecasting. Moreover, this effect appears to be stronger than that of the widely used characteristic of project seriality expressed by the serial/parallel-indicator SP. Therefore, project regularity could also be useful as an input parameter for project network generators. Furthermore, the introduction of project regularity can provide project managers with a more accurate indication of the time and cost forecasting accuracy that is to be expected for a certain project and, correspondingly, of how a project should be built up in order to obtain more reliable forecasts during project control