Transportation Risk ANalysis tool for hazardous Substances (TRANS): a user-friendly, semi-quantitative multi-mode hazmat transport route safety risk estimation methodology for Flanders

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The Straits of Malacca: Regional powers vis-a-vis littoral states in strategic and security issues and interests

This paper presents an overview of the strategic and security issues surrounding the Straits of Malacca. It begins by introducing the strategic nature of the Straits of Malacca and piracy threat in the busy sea lane. Subsequently this paper discusses the issues and interests of the emerging powers in the Straits of Malacca historically. This covers the Asia’s emerging powers such as India, Japan and China. Then, the position of the three littoral states of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore towards the issue of piracy in the Straits of Malacca is touched upon before analyzing the littoral states’ position on external powers’ involvement in the Straits of Malacca. This is paper also briefly discusses the individual littoral states’ interests in the vital sea lane

A Process for Producing Ice Coverage Marine Information Objects (MIOs) in IHO S-57 Format

While global warming may be opening up more Arctic waters in the summer, ice still infests key shipping lanes in the northern hemisphere during the winter months. To safely navigate these areas, mariners rely on daily ice coverage charts produced by national governmental agencies. Ice charts are primarily issued in paper format or as a fax. However, there is increased interest to ice coverage information on vessel navigation systems such as an Electronic Chart and Display Information Systems (ECDIS). However, to do so, the ice information must be provided as a separate layer of information to the Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC)

Dynamic Time-Dependent Route Planning in Road Networks with User Preferences

There has been tremendous progress in algorithmic methods for computing driving directions on road networks. Most of that work focuses on time-independent route planning, where it is assumed that the cost on each arc is constant per query. In practice, the current traffic situation significantly influences the travel time on large parts of the road network, and it changes over the day. One can distinguish between traffic congestion that can be predicted using historical traffic data, and congestion due to unpredictable events, e.g., accidents. In this work, we study the \emph{dynamic and time-dependent} route planning problem, which takes both prediction (based on historical data) and live traffic into account. To this end, we propose a practical algorithm that, while robust to user preferences, is able to integrate global changes of the time-dependent metric~(e.g., due to traffic updates or user restrictions) faster than previous approaches, while allowing subsequent queries that enable interactive applications

An integrated methodology for the design of Ro-Ro passenger ships

The present paper provides a brief introduction to the holistic approach to ship design, defines the generic ship design optimization problem and demonstrates its solution by use of advanced optimization techniques

International Experiences of Water Transfers: Relevance to India

Water transfer has and continues to be a complementary water management strategy for promoting socioeconomic development in water-scarce regions. Over 2,500 years ago, the Babylonians, the Roman Empire and the Chinese constructed extensive canal networks, famous aqueducts and the Grand Canal, respectively to support human settlement in water- scarce areas. The Anuradhapura Kingdom of Sri Lanka too, developed major water transfers as far back as 100 AD to support the irrigation civilization needed to feed a growing population (de Silva 2005). In the twentieth century, the phenomenal population growth, economic activities and human settlement in water-scarce regions, advances in science and technology, political will and availability of resources led to the development of many water transfer projects. The global inter-basin water transfer increased from 22 to 56, from 56 to 257 and from 257 to 364 km3 yr-1 during the periods 1900-1940, 1940-1980 and 1980-1986, respectively, and is estimated to increase to 760-1,240 km3 yr-1 by 2020 (Shiklomanov 1999). Most of these transfers took place in Canada, the former USSR, India and the United States of America

Computing New Optimized Routes for GPS Navigators Using Evolutionary Algorithms

GPS navigators are now present in most vehicles and smartphones. The usual goal of these navigators is to take the user in less time or distance to a destination. However, the global use of navigators in a given city could lead to traffic jams as they have a highly biased preference for some streets. From a general point of view, spreading the traffic throughout the city could be a way of preventing jams and making a better use of public resources. We propose a way of calculating alternative routes to be assigned by these devices in order to foster a better use of the streets. Our experimentation involves maps from OpenStreetMap, real road traffic, and the microsimulator SUMO. We contribute to reducing travel times, greenhouse gas emissions, and fuel consumption. To analyze the sociological aspect of any innovation, we analyze the penetration (acceptance) rate which shows that our proposal is competitive even when just 10% of the drivers are using it.Spanish MINECO project TIN2014-57341-R (http://moveon.lcc.uma.es). FPU grant (FPU13/00954) from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. University of Malaga. International Campus of Excellence Andalucia TECH