Assessing the Impact of Speed Limit Changes on Urban Motorways: A Simulation Study in Lille, France

AbstractRecent directives in France on sustainable development have driven local Authorities to the reduction of speed limits on urban highways. Consequently, Local Authorities are interested in a thorough evaluation of this measure and in the estimation of the potential impact upon traffic and emissions.In this paper, we undertake an a priori evaluation of speed limit reduction from 110km/h to 90km/h on the Lille motorway network, in France. We first provide an overview of key lessons learned from previous speed limit reduction experiences. Then, we present the methodology of the specific prior evaluation on the Lille network. In particular, we use a first order macroscopic traffic simulation tool for this a priori assessment. The model is first calibrated and then statistically validated using traffic data. This statistical validation is consistent with good practices in simulation. The evaluation output allows for a thorough understanding of the impacts on prevailing traffic conditions and air pollution. Additional scenarios are also considered in order to take into account driver behaviour on the non-compliance with speed limits.Besides the various limitations of the study, especially those related to its predictive aspects, we can conclude that the intended measure will have a positive impact on traffic and emissions. Nevertheless, the magnitude of this impact is largely variable, in particular in regards to driver compliance

Ανάπτυξη προτύπου προσομοίωσης για την πρόβλεψη και τη διαχείριση έκτακτων συμβάντων σε δίκτυα αυτοκινητόδρομων

177 σ.Research on road safety has been of great interest to engineers and planners for decades. Regardless of modeling techniques, a serious factor of inaccuracy - in most past studies - has been data aggregation. Nowadays, most freeways are equipped with continuous surveillance systems making disaggregate traffic data readily available; these have been used in few studies. In this context, the main objective of this dissertation is to capitalize highway traffic data collected on a real-time basis at the moment of accident occurrence in order to expand previous road safety work and to highlight potential further applications. To this end, we first examine the effects of various traffic parameters on type of road crash as well as on the injury level sustained by vehicle occupants involved in accidents, while controlling for environmental and geometric factors. Probit models are specified on 4-years of data from the A4-A86 highway section in the Ile-de-France region, France. Empirical findings indicate that crash type can almost exclusively be defined by the prevailing traffic conditions shortly before its occurrence. Increased traffic volume is found to have a consistently positive effect on severity, while speed has a differential effect on severity depending on flow conditions. We then establish a conceptual framework for incident management applications using real-time traffic data on urban freeways. We use dissertation previous findings to explore potential implications towards incident propensity detection and enhanced management.Η Οδική Ασφάλεια αποτελεί πεδίο ερευνητικού ενδιαφέροντος για μηχανικούς κατά τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες. Ανεξάρτητα από τις εφαρμοζόμενες μεθόδους προτυποποίησης, σημαντικός παράγοντας ανακρίβειας πρότερων διερευνήσεων είναι η ομαδοποίηση δεδομένων. Ωστόσο, οι περισσότεροι αυτοκινητόδρομοι είναι πλέον εξοπλισμένοι με συστήματα παρακολούθησης, τα οποία καθιστούν διαθέσιμα μη ομαδοποιημένα κυκλοφοριακά δεδομένα. Η διαθεσιμότητα των δεδομένων αυτών δεν έχει επαρκώς αξιοποιηθεί ερευνητικά. Στόχος της διατριβής είναι η αξιοποίηση των κυκλοφοριακών δεδομένων αυτοκινητόδρομων που συλλέγονται σε πραγματικό χρόνο κατά τη στιγμή εκδήλωσης ατυχήματος. Για το σκοπό αυτό, μελετήθηκε η επίδραση διάφορων κυκλοφοριακών παραμέτρων στον τύπο οδικού ατυχήματος, αλλά και στο επίπεδο σοβαρότητας τραυματισμού των επιβαινόντων. Παράλληλα, ελήφθησαν υπόψιν παράγοντες σχετιζόμενοι με το περιβάλλον και τη γεωμετρία. Εφαρμόστηκαν μοντέλα probit σε τετραετή δεδομένα συμβάντων από το κοινό τμήμα των αυτοκινητόδρομων Α4-Α86 στην περιοχή Ile-de-France της Γαλλίας. Τα εμπειρικά αποτελέσματα καταδεικνύουν ότι ο τύπος ατυχήματος μπορεί –σχεδόν αποκλειστικά- να εκτιμηθεί από τις επικρατούσες κυκλοφοριακές συνθήκες. η αύξηση του κυκλοφοριακού φόρτου φαίνεται να ασκεί σταθερή επίδραση στη σοβαρότητα των ατυχημάτων, ενώ η επίδραση της ταχύτητας διαφοροποιείται ανάλογα με το επίπεδο του κυκλοφοριακού φόρτου. Στη συνέχεια, αναπτύσσεται πλαίσιο για την ένταξη κυκλοφοριακών δεδομένων πραγματικού χρόνου στη διαχείριση συμβάντων. Τέλος, τα πορίσματα της διατριβής χρησιμοποιούνται στη διερεύνηση εφαρμογών με απώτερο στόχο τον περιορισμό της προδιάθεσης πρόκλησης συμβάντων και τη βελτιωμένη διαχείρισή τους.Ζωή Δ. Χριστοφόρο

Development of a multi criteria model for assisting EV user charging decisions

Electric Vehicles offer one of the most efficient solutions towards the direction of providing sustainable transportation systems. However, a broader market uptake of Electric Vehicle--based mobility is still missing. The lack of sufficient infrastructure (Electric Vehicle charging stations) in combination with the lack of information about their availability appears as a major limitation, leading to low user acceptance. Additional, technology based, assistance services provided to Electric Vehicle users is a key solution to unlock the full potential of their utilization. This paper presents a multi-factor dynamic optimization model using multi-criteria analysis to select the best alternatives for Electric Vehicle charging within a smart grid with the goal of supporting a larger uptake of Electric Vehicle -based mobility. The application provides assistance to the Electric Vehicle drivers through functionalities of energy price, cost and travel time of the electric vehicle to the charging station, the specifications of vehicles and stations, the status of the charging stations as well as the user\u27s preferences. The proposed model is developed by incorporating PROMETHEE II and Analytic Hierarchy Process methodologies to provide the best charging solutions after considering all possible options for each Electric Vehicle user. The multi-criteria analysis algorithm is not only limited to comparing alternative charging options at a specific time but also looks at several starting times of charging. A simulated case study is implemented to examine the functionality of the proposed model. From the results, it is evident that by applying the findings of this work entrepreneurial community and industry can develop new services that will improve user satisfaction, electromobility, urban mobility, and sustainability of cities. At the same time, academia, leveraging the methodology and factors that influence the choice of charging station, can conduct further research on digital innovations that will contribute to the consolidation of e-mobility ensuring the sustainability of cities, while accelerating digital transformation in the transport sector

Search for invisible decays of the Higgs boson produced via vector boson fusion in proton-proton collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

A search for invisible decays of the Higgs boson produced via vector boson fusion (VBF) has been performed with 101  fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC at $\sqrt{s}$ =13  TeV and collected by the CMS detector in 2017 and 2018. The sensitivity to the VBF production mechanism is enhanced by constructing two analysis categories, one based on missing transverse momentum and a second based on the properties of jets. In addition to control regions with Z and W boson candidate events, a highly populated control region, based on the production of a photon in association with jets, is used to constrain the dominant irreducible background from the invisible decay of a Z boson produced in association with jets. The results of this search are combined with all previous measurements in the VBF topology, based on data collected in 2012 (at $\sqrt{s}$ =8  TeV), 2015, and 2016, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 19.7, 2.3, and 36.3  fb$^{-1}$, respectively. The observed (expected) upper limit on the invisible branching fraction of the Higgs boson is found to be 0.18 (0.10) at the 95% confidence level, assuming the standard model production cross section. The results are also interpreted in the context of Higgs-portal models

Observation of the Bc+_\mathrm{c}^+ Meson in Pb-Pb and pp Collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02 TeV and Measurement of its Nuclear Modification Factor

The B$_\mathrm{c}^+$ meson is observed for the first time in heavy ion collisions. Data from the CMS detector are used to study the production of the B$_\mathrm{c}^+$ meson in lead-lead (Pb-Pb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV , via the B$_\mathrm{c}^+$ → (J/ψ → μ$^+$μ$^−$)μ$^+$ν$_μ$ decay. The B$_\mathrm{c}^+$ nuclear modification factor, derived from the PbPb-to-pp ratio of production cross sections, is measured in two bins of the trimuon transverse momentum and of the PbPb collision centrality. The B$_\mathrm{c}^+$meson is shown to be less suppressed than quarkonia and most of the open heavy-flavor mesons, suggesting that effects of the hot and dense nuclear matter created in heavy ion collisions contribute to its production. This measurement sets forth a promising new probe of the interplay of suppression and enhancement mechanisms in the production of heavy-flavor mesons in the quark-gluon plasma

Search for top squarks in the four-body decay mode with single lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at s \sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

A search for the pair production of the lightest supersymmetric partner of the top quark, the top squark (t∼1), is presented. The search targets the four-body decay of the t∼1, which is preferred when the mass difference between the top squark and the lightest supersymmetric particle is smaller than the mass of the W boson. This decay mode consists of a bottom quark, two other fermions, and the lightest neutralino (χ∼01), which is assumed to be the lightest supersymmetric particle. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Events are selected using the presence of a high-momentum jet, an electron or muon with low transverse momentum, and a significant missing transverse momentum. The signal is selected based on a multivariate approach that is optimized for the difference between m(t∼1) and m(χ∼01). The contribution from leading background processes is estimated from data. No significant excess is observed above the expectation from standard model processes. The results of this search exclude top squarks at 95% confidence level for masses up to 480 and 700 GeV for m(t∼1) − m(χ∼01) = 10 and 80 GeV, respectively

Search for Higgs Boson Decay to a Charm Quark-Antiquark Pair in Proton-Proton Collisions at √s = 13 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a charm quark-antiquark pair, H→c¯c, produced in association with a leptonically decaying V (W or Z) boson is presented. The search is performed with proton-proton collisions at √s=13  TeV collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138  fb−1. Novel charm jet identification and analysis methods using machine learning techniques are employed. The analysis is validated by searching for Z→c¯c in VZ events, leading to its first observation at a hadron collider with a significance of 5.7 standard deviations. The observed (expected) upper limit on σ(VH)B(H→c¯c) is 0.94 (0.50+0.22−0.15)pb at 95% confidence level (C.L.), corresponding to 14 (7.6+3.4−2.3) times the standard model prediction. For the Higgs-charm Yukawa coupling modifier, κc, the observed (expected) 95% C.L. interval is 1.1<|κc|<5.5 (|κc|<3.4), the most stringent constraint to date