CORPORATE MOBILITY REVIEW; How Business can Shape Mobility

This research is based around months of conversation with business leaders across major sectors of the Australian economy. It constitutes a business-led response to the challenge of mobility which is increasingly constraining the productivity and viability of Australian business. As part of the Sustainable Mobility Project, corporate involvement in mobility is investigated at all scales—from the smallest changes in company policy, to strategic new ventures in research and development. An extensive review of the literature is conducted to identify global trends and best practice in corporate mobility management. Transport challenges affecting a range of stakeholders like employees, customers, visitors and suppliers are discussed and various mobility initiatives evaluated. Mobility issues like flexible work, location policy and precinct-level travel management are also considered, before looking to new futures in urban passenger transportation and related opportunities for business participation. This literature review is coupled with an interview program conducted in Q4 2016 on ten organisations across unique industry sectors. Concurrent stakeholder engagement with Sustainable Business Australia member companies provided valuable ongoing feedback and ensured that emerging ideas could be adequately tested. The findings revealed a divergence across the business community’s involvement in mobility. Whilst some companies had a coherent strategy in place operationalised through worthwhile initiatives, others paid lip service to mobility issues and failed to translate the challenges they identified into action. There were some exceptional, forward-thinking leaders innovating to enter the future mobility marketplace with visions and targets set until the end of the century. Based on these findings, recommendations were then developed for businesses across sectors with the aim of generating dialogue and debate amongst the business community. These include: (1) collaborate across three dimensions—vertically within one’s own value chain with suppliers and customers, horizontally with competitors and other sectors, and orthogonally with government and industry associations; (2) challenge the status quo—whether it be on work practices, company culture or mobility solutions to lead new thinking across the organisation; (3) devise a mobility management plan—regularly survey stakeholders across the business (employees, customers, visitors and suppliers) on a range of indicators to understand their mobility requirements, and use this data to inform mobility initiative development; and (4) innovate to compete in the new mobility paradigm, adapting the company business model and seizing new opportunities as markets evolve. The key lesson here is that there are ample opportunities for business to shape mobility and that it is never too early (nor disadvantageous) to start the conversation

An Agent-Based Approach to Self-Organized Production

The chapter describes the modeling of a material handling system with the production of individual units in a scheduled order. The units represent the agents in the model and are transported in the system which is abstracted as a directed graph. Since the hindrances of units on their path to the destination can lead to inefficiencies in the production, the blockages of units are to be reduced. Therefore, the units operate in the system by means of local interactions in the conveying elements and indirect interactions based on a measure of possible hindrances. If most of the units behave cooperatively ("socially"), the blockings in the system are reduced. A simulation based on the model shows the collective behavior of the units in the system. The transport processes in the simulation can be compared with the processes in a real plant, which gives conclusions about the consequencies for the production based on the superordinate planning.Comment: For related work see http://www.soms.ethz.c

Distributed control of reconfigurable mobile network agents for resource coordination

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.Considering the tremendous growth of internet applications and network resource federation proposed towards future open access network (FOAN), the need to analyze the robustness of the classical signalling mechanisms across multiple network operators cannot be over-emphasized. It is envisaged, there will be additional challenges in meeting the bandwidth requirements and network management...The first objective of this project is to describe the networking environment based on the support for heterogeneity of network components..

Growing Artificial Societies to Support Demand Modelling in Mobility-as-a-Service Solutions

Tráfego intenso, congestionamentos e tempos de deslocamento mais longos são consequência doaumento da população, da continuação da posse de carro próprio e do fim do transporte público derota fixa. Embora esta situação tenha criado alguma pressão sobre as autoridades governamentaispara lidar com as questões acima mencionadas, isso também pode provar ser uma oportunidadepara numa nova abordagem ao conceito de mobilidade.Uma possível solução passaria pela Mobilidade como serviço (MaaS), um conceito relativa-mente novo no paradigma de mobilidade, que promete mudar em termos do que é mobilidade ecomo ela é entregue aos usuários finais. Fazendo uso das atuais infraestruturas físicas e meios detransporte, e combinando-as com tecnologias da informação e comunicação (TICs), o MaaS temcomo principal objetivo entregar a mobilidade aos usuários finais como um serviço que é consum-ido através de uma plataforma. Essas plataformas são baseadas em modelos de mercado, onde umregulador é responsável pelo equilíbrio entre oferta e demanda.As Sociedades Artificiais (AS) pretendem ser uma forma de simular sociedades reais, atravésde um modelo artificial de agentes proativos e dinâmicos, capazes de interagir entre eles. Essesagentes são capazes de se comunicar entre eles através de uma rede social, onde várias regras sãousadas para disciplinar e normalizar os agentes e o ambiente onde eles estão contidos.A modelação da demanda (DM) é um conceito que permite prever com precisão a demandapor algum mercado, dependendo do equilíbrio entre oferta e demanda. Além disso, tendo em contaa presença do regulador, responsável pela manutenção e implementação de políticas de regulação,o DM facilita a modelação de toda essa dinâmica.A análise dos melhores modelos de serviços, pode ser muito benéfica para o MaaS, uma vezque a modelação de metodologias novas e mais precisas poderia melhorar os processos de decisãopresentes nos vários modelos de mercado do MaaS.Este trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver um metamodelo cognitivo de sistema multi-agente capaz de descrever a dinâmica do conceito de MaaS. O metamodelo desenvolvido deveser capaz de suportar diferentes estratégias deliberativas e de tomada de decisão em ambientes demercado de serviços abertos, com aplicações de mobilidade em Cidades Inteligentes. O objetivo édesenvolver uma plataforma de apoio à decisão para apoiar a análise e implementação de políticasde incentivo que promovam o desenvolvimento do conceito de MaaS. Esta plataforma fará uso detécnicas de modelagem e simulação de sistemas complexos recorrendo às metáforas de sociedadesartificiais e sistemas multiagentes.Huge traffic, congestion, longer commute times, are a consequence of the increase in population,continuation of universal car ownership and demise of fixed route public transport. While thissituation have been creating some pressure on the governmental authorities to tackle the afore-mentioned issues, this could also prove to be an opportunity to try a different approach regardingthe concept of mobility.One particular solution could be Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), a relatively new concept in amobility paradigm that promises a big shift in terms of what is mobility and how it is deliveredto the end-users. Making use the current physical infrastructures and transport means, and com-bining them with information and communications technologies (ICTs), MaaS has the main goalto delivery the mobility to the end-users as a service that is consumed through a platform. Theseplatforms are based on market models, where there a regulator that is responsible for the balancethe balance between supply and demand.Artificial Societies (AS) aims to be a way to simulate real societies, through an artificial modelof proactive and dynamic agents, able to interact between them. These agents are able to commu-nicate between them through a social network, where several rules are used to discipline and normboth agents and the environment where they are contained.Demand modelling (DM) is a concept that allows accurately to forecast the demand regardingsome market, depending of the balance between supply and demand. Moreover, taken into accountthe presence of the regulator, which is responsible for the maintenance and implementation ofpolicies, DM facilitates the modelling of all this dynamic.The analysis of the best service models, could prove greatly beneficial for MaaS, as modelingnew and more accurate methodologies could better the decision processes present in the variousmarket models of MaaS.This work aims to develop a cognitive multi-agent system meta-model able to describe thedynamic of MaaS concept. The developed meta-model should be able to support different de-liberative and decision making strategies in open service market environments, with mobility ap-plications in Smart Cities. The purpose is to develop a decision support platform to support theanalysis and implementation of incentive policies that promote the development of the concept ofMaaS. This platform will make use of techniques of modeling and simulation of complex systemsresorting to the metaphors of artificial societies and multi-agent systems

An Agent-based Approach for Improving the Performance of Distributed Business Processes in Maritime Port Community

In the recent years, the concept of “port community” has been adopted by the maritime transport industry in order to achieve a higher degree of coordination and cooperation amongst organizations involved in the transfer of goods through the port area. The business processes of the port community supply chain form a complicated process which involves several process steps, multiple actors, and numerous information exchanges. One of the widely used applications of ICT in ports is the Port Community System (PCS) which is implemented in ports in order to reduce paperwork and to facilitate the information flow related to port operations and cargo clearance. However, existing PCSs are limited in functionalities that facilitate the management and coordination of material, financial, and information flows within the port community supply chain. This research programme addresses the use of agent technology to introduce business process management functionalities, which are vital for port communities, aiming to the enhancement of the performance of the port community supply chain. The investigation begins with an examination of the current state in view of the business perspective and the technical perspective. The business perspective focuses on understanding the nature of the port community, its main characteristics, and its problems. Accordingly, a number of requirements are identified as essential amendments to information systems in seaports. On the other hand, the technical perspective focuses on technologies that are convenient for solving problems in business process management within port communities. The research focuses on three technologies; the workflow technology, agent technology, and service orientation. An analysis of information systems across port communities enables an examination of the current PCSs with regard to their coordination and workflow management capabilities. The most important finding of this analysis is that the performance of the business processes, and in particular the performance of the port community supply chain, is not in the scope of the examined PCSs. Accordingly, the Agent-Based Middleware for Port Community Management (ABMPCM) is proposed as an approach for providing essential functionalities that would facilitate collaborative planning and business process management. As a core component of the ABMPCM, the Collaborative Planning Facility (CPF) is described in further details. A CPF prototype has been developed as an agent-based system for the domain of inland transport of containers to demonstrate its practical effectiveness. To evaluate the practical application of the CPF, a simulation environment is introduced in order to facilitate the evaluation process. The research started with the definition of a multi-agent simulation framework for port community supply chain. Then, a prototype has been implemented and employed for the evaluation of the CPF. The results of the simulation experiments demonstrate that our agent-based approach effectively enhances the performance of business process in the port community

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing