Developing engineering design core competences through analysis of industrial products

Many product development projects are directed towards designing an upgraded variant of an existing product. These redesign projects require that the engineering designers understand needs and requirements from users, and know how the existing product functions and how it is manufactured. For an engineering designer to be able to contribute to a redesign project, he/she must have core competences to carry through a composite product analysis, which encompasses both a user-oriented and a technical side. We have developed and refined a product analysis method and a staging of it, which is very productive in building the students' competences

Updating trip matrices for Copenhagen using multiple data sources

Traffic planning in the Greater Copenhagen Region (have over the last 10 years mainly been supported by the so-called OTM traffic model. The behavioural models in OTM include advanced state-of-the-art utility-based formulations, which are combined with base-matrices in a pivot-correction procedure. Before and after studies of specific projects have shown, that these matrices might be the Achilles heal of the whole model system. Vuk and Hansen (2006) therefore validated the present version of the OTM traffic model (version 4.0 from summer 2000) and concluded that a major drawback of the model was indeed outdated base 1992 matrices. From January 2005 to March 2007 the OTM model has therefore been in a large-scale process of updating where creation of new trip matrices has been the main focus. The article describes the undertaken methodology for constructing the travel matrices for Copenhagen, and how the improved matrices influence the performance of the model. A main focus in the work has been to utilise various data sources for estimation of the new matrices. This includes telephone survey data, cordon line surveys and existing transport surveys to construct the base matrices, traffic counts to adjust these, and digital network databases. The article also demonstrates a new approach to adjust public transport matrices to counts

The Ørestad Traffic Passenger Demand Model, version 5.0

Vuk and Hansen ("Validating the passenger traffic model for Copenhagen", Transportation, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 371-392. 2006) have validated the present version of the Ørestad traffic model (version 4.0 from summer 2000) and concluded that a major drawback of the model is outdated base 1992 matrices. With respect to planning of the alignment of the Metro’s phase 4, the so called Metro City Ring, a group of clients headed by the Ministry of Energy and Transport wished to upgrade OTM 4.0 to a new version, ver. 5.0, where a number of improvements were proposed. Most importantly the OTM 5.0 includes new base 2004 matrices. The main aim of the paper is to provide a description of the new base matrices as well as changes in the model estimations

Older People’s Attitudes and Perspectives of Welfare Technology in Norway.

Background: In Norway, as in other European countries, the ageing population is increasing rapidly. Governments seek to enable older people stay in their homes for as long as possible, and welfare technology (WT) has been proposed as a possible solution. Human behaviour modelling (HBM) is a welfare technology that identifies an individual’s behaviour patterns and detects abnormal behaviours, including falls and early signs of dementia. However, the successful development of HBM WT requires the consideration of the older people’s attitudes on this. Aim: The present study sought to explore attitudes and perspectives about welfare technology among older people living alone in Norway. Methods: We used an exploratory, qualitative approach in which semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with five women and four men between the ages of 79 and 91. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results: Two categories and four subcategories were identified: 1) preferences and concerns of welfare technology (i) feeling confident-proactive approach of future technology, (ii) concerns and dilemmas, and 2) reflections of today and tomorrow- awareness of own health (i) feeling healthy, independent, self-sufficient and safe, (ii) facing own ageing- preparedness on unpredictable scenarios. The main theme, welfare technology - a valuable addition to tomorrow’s homes, represents how the participants held positive and proactive attitudes towards the use of WT in their homes. Conclusion: Participants trusted the Norwegian healthcare system and did not rely on their families for care. Independence, autonomy, and feeling safe were essential for all participants, and most participants regarded welfare technology as empowering them to remain in their homes for as long as possible. Participants already confidently used various technologies in their daily lives. Surprisingly, they expressed no concerns about privacy, but some mention concerns about loss of autonomy and dignity. We conclude that a person-centred approach to integrating new WT is necessarypublishedVersio