Regional Data Archiving and Management for Northeast Illinois

This project studies the feasibility and implementation options for establishing a regional data archiving system to help monitor and manage traffic operations and planning for the northeastern Illinois region. It aims to provide a clear guidance to the regional transportation agencies, from both technical and business perspectives, about building such a comprehensive transportation information system. Several implementation alternatives are identified and analyzed. This research is carried out in three phases. In the first phase, existing documents related to ITS deployments in the broader Chicago area are summarized, and a thorough review is conducted of similar systems across the country. Various stakeholders are interviewed to collect information on all data elements that they store, including the format, system, and granularity. Their perception of a data archive system, such as potential benefits and costs, is also surveyed. In the second phase, a conceptual design of the database is developed. This conceptual design includes system architecture, functional modules, user interfaces, and examples of usage. In the last phase, the possible business models for the archive system to sustain itself are reviewed. We estimate initial capital and recurring operational/maintenance costs for the system based on realistic information on the hardware, software, labor, and resource requirements. We also identify possible revenue opportunities. A few implementation options for the archive system are summarized in this report; namely: 1. System hosted by a partnering agency 2. System contracted to a university 3. System contracted to a national laboratory 4. System outsourced to a service provider The costs, advantages and disadvantages for each of these recommended options are also provided.ICT-R27-22published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Capturing the Practices, Challenges, and Needs of Transportation Decision-Makers

Transportation decision-makers from government agencies play an important role in addressing the traffic network conditions, which in turn, have a major impact on the well-being of citizens. The practices, challenges, and needs of this group of practitioners are less represented in the HCI literature. We address this gap through an interview study with 19 practitioners from Transports Qu\'ebec, a government agency responsible for transportation infrastructures in Qu\'ebec, Canada. We found that this group of decision-makers can most benefit from research about data analysis tools and platforms that (1) provide information to support data quality awareness, (2) are interoperable with other tools in the complex workflow of the practitioners, and (3) support intuitive and customizable visual analytics. These implications can also be informative to the design of tools supporting other decision-making tasks and domains.Comment: 7 pages, 0 figures, ACM CHI LBW Paper (2020). For personas created in the project, see https://github.com/HCDLab/TDMPersona

A Bayesian spatio-temporal model of panel design data: airborne particle number concentration in Brisbane, Australia

This paper outlines a methodology for semi-parametric spatio-temporal modelling of data which is dense in time but sparse in space, obtained from a split panel design, the most feasible approach to covering space and time with limited equipment. The data are hourly averaged particle number concentration (PNC) and were collected, as part of the Ultrafine Particles from Transport Emissions and Child Health (UPTECH) project. Two weeks of continuous measurements were taken at each of a number of government primary schools in the Brisbane Metropolitan Area. The monitoring equipment was taken to each school sequentially. The school data are augmented by data from long term monitoring stations at three locations in Brisbane, Australia. Fitting the model helps describe the spatial and temporal variability at a subset of the UPTECH schools and the long-term monitoring sites. The temporal variation is modelled hierarchically with penalised random walk terms, one common to all sites and a term accounting for the remaining temporal trend at each site. Parameter estimates and their uncertainty are computed in a computationally efficient approximate Bayesian inference environment, R-INLA. The temporal part of the model explains daily and weekly cycles in PNC at the schools, which can be used to estimate the exposure of school children to ultrafine particles (UFPs) emitted by vehicles. At each school and long-term monitoring site, peaks in PNC can be attributed to the morning and afternoon rush hour traffic and new particle formation events. The spatial component of the model describes the school to school variation in mean PNC at each school and within each school ground. It is shown how the spatial model can be expanded to identify spatial patterns at the city scale with the inclusion of more spatial locations.Comment: Draft of this paper presented at ISBA 2012 as poster, part of UPTECH projec

Storm Spotting and Amateur Radio: a Field Guide for Volunteer Storm Spotters

Volunteers have played a critical part in relaying weather information since the middle 19th century. The effort of these volunteers has helped safeguard life and property when severe weather threatens. For almost 100 years Amateur Radio operators have played a critical part in severe weather preparedness and response. Amateur Radio operators not only bring a willingness to serve, but communications skills that provide an added benefit to any storm spotter program. The National Weather Service recognized this when developing the SKYWARN program during the 1960’s. Amateur Radio and the National Weather Service have developed over the last 40 years a solid relationship that has been beneficial to communities across the country that face the threat of severe weather. This project, the first of its kind, seeks to gather information together that will help better prepare Amateur Radio operators that serve as volunteer storm spotters

Human–Machine Interface in Transport Systems: An Industrial Overview for More Extended Rail Applications

This paper provides an overview of Human Machine Interface (HMI) design and command systems in commercial or experimental operation across transport modes. It presents and comments on different HMIs from the perspective of vehicle automation equipment and simulators of different application domains. Considering the fields of cognition and automation, this investigation highlights human factors and the experiences of different industries according to industrial and literature reviews. Moreover, to better focus the objectives and extend the investigated industrial panorama, the analysis covers the most effective simulators in operation across various transport modes for the training of operators as well as research in the fields of safety and ergonomics. Special focus is given to new technologies that are potentially applicable in future train cabins, e.g., visual displays and haptic-shared controls. Finally, a synthesis of human factors and their limits regarding support for monitoring or driving assistance is propose

Real Urban Images: Policy and Culture in Northern Britain

This paper explores recent attempts to re-imagine and re-brand northern British cities through processes of economic and (mainly) cultural regeneration. It analyses the creation of new contemporary urban images and presentations and compares these with the economic, social and cultural life experiences of people living in the areas. It examines the process of recharacterising former industrial conurbations as being at the cutting edge of contemporary, postmodern culture. A range of features is identified here within similar political, economic and policy contexts: deindustrialisation and regeneration driven by local business and political elites; emphasis on culture as spectacle to the exclusion of other cultural configurations; reliance on tourism and advertising, hyper consumption and leisure as determining aspects of the local economy; and the reorganisation of city population

The virtues and vices of equilibrium and the future of financial economics

The use of equilibrium models in economics springs from the desire for parsimonious models of economic phenomena that take human reasoning into account. This approach has been the cornerstone of modern economic theory. We explain why this is so, extolling the virtues of equilibrium theory; then we present a critique and describe why this approach is inherently limited, and why economics needs to move in new directions if it is to continue to make progress. We stress that this shouldn't be a question of dogma, but should be resolved empirically. There are situations where equilibrium models provide useful predictions and there are situations where they can never provide useful predictions. There are also many situations where the jury is still out, i.e., where so far they fail to provide a good description of the world, but where proper extensions might change this. Our goal is to convince the skeptics that equilibrium models can be useful, but also to make traditional economists more aware of the limitations of equilibrium models. We sketch some alternative approaches and discuss why they should play an important role in future research in economics.Comment: 68 pages, one figur

Implementation and Impact of ICT Technology on Vehicle Over-speed and Drinking Driving Monitoring in Tanzania: A Survey

Today’s transportation status has rapidly grown due to the daily increase of population and use of road as main, easy and economical way of travelling as well as transportation of goods, Thus now a days due to the high quantity of vehicles several problems has arisen in road sector such as road damage, road accidents, congestion as road accidents has been a major problem in Tanzania which in many cases results from the Breach of Traffic rules. Many innocents Tanzanians are continuously losing their lives and some get permanent body disabilities and property destruction due to road accidents. From 2009 to 2010 there was an increment of 2,907 accidents which is equivalent to 13.2% and most of the causes were due to human factors which include over-speed, drinking and driving, reckless driving, overtaking and overloading. Some of the measures have been taken but still there are many challenges. Traffic Police have been using devices (speed radar and breathlayzer) but have shown some weakness on solving problems. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Also contributed a lot to control the problem as introduced many ways of automatic control. Thus this paper will review the system used for prevention/avoidance of drinking & driving and over-speeding in Tanzania. It will also propose a system that will monitor and provide real time information of drivers drinking & driving status and over-speeding in different zones of different speed limits. Keywords: Over-speed; Speed Radar Touch; Breathalyzer; Information Communication Technology (ICT

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 341)

This bibliography lists 133 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during September 1990. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance