A quantitative approach to behavioural analysis of drivers in highways using particle filtering

The analysis of the driving behaviour is a challenging area in transport that has applications in numerous fields ranging from highway design to micro-simulation and development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). There has been evidence suggesting changes in the driving behaviour in response to changes in traffic conditions, and this is known as adaptive driving behaviour. Identifying these changes, the conditions under which they happen, and describing them in a systematic way would contribute greatly to the accuracy of micro-simulation and more importantly to the understanding of the traffic flow, and will therefore pave the way for introducing further improvements in the efficiency of the transport network. In this paper adaptive driving behaviour is linked to changes in the model parameters for a given car-following model. These changes are tracked using a dynamic system identification method, namely unscented particle filtering

Daylight performance through different types of glazing in the tropics

Having glazing on buildings will allow natural daylighting in a room. There are four types of glazing which are commonly used in the market today: Clear, light green, bronze and black float glass where tinted glazing will provide shading to the interior. These four glass are being tested using Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IESVE) software with different proportion to investigate the influence of arrangements of glazing to permit daylight and to serve as shading device. There are 40 combinations of different glazing proportion tested in the simulation. The combination of 75 % clear float glass on a green float glass base gives the highest lux value at a point 90cm from the opening whereas the lowest value is exhibited through a 25% green float glass with a black float glass base of 75%. The finding shows that glazing with lower Visual Light Transmittance as the base will give a lower Daylight Factor compared to using it on top of the other glazing. Furthermore, although there is a large contrast of Daylight Factor between the 0.9m and 3.6m depth, several combination of glazing achieved the requirement of Malaysian Standard 1525 for daylighting in office

Calibrating Car-Following Models using Trajectory Data: Methodological Study

The car-following behavior of individual drivers in real city traffic is studied on the basis of (publicly available) trajectory datasets recorded by a vehicle equipped with an radar sensor. By means of a nonlinear optimization procedure based on a genetic algorithm, we calibrate the Intelligent Driver Model and the Velocity Difference Model by minimizing the deviations between the observed driving dynamics and the simulated trajectory when following the same leading vehicle. The reliability and robustness of the nonlinear fits are assessed by applying different optimization criteria, i.e., different measures for the deviations between two trajectories. The obtained errors are in the range between~11% and~29% which is consistent with typical error ranges obtained in previous studies. In addition, we found that the calibrated parameter values of the Velocity Difference Model strongly depend on the optimization criterion, while the Intelligent Driver Model is more robust in this respect. By applying an explicit delay to the model input, we investigated the influence of a reaction time. Remarkably, we found a negligible influence of the reaction time indicating that drivers compensate for their reaction time by anticipation. Furthermore, the parameter sets calibrated to a certain trajectory are applied to the other trajectories allowing for model validation. The results indicate that ``intra-driver variability'' rather than ``inter-driver variability'' accounts for a large part of the calibration errors. The results are used to suggest some criteria towards a benchmarking of car-following models

A comparative stratigraphy of cilicia : Results of the first three cilician chronology workshops

This article presents a preliminary comparative stratigraphy of excavated sites in Plain Cilicia and one in Rough Cilicia. It is the outcome of three workshops held in 2014, 2015 and 2017. Plain Cilicia at the junction of Anatolia, Syro-Mesopotamia and Cyprus is one of the most fertile regions of the Ancient Near East. In recent years, archaeological research in the region has intensified, re-opening questions of chronology. The comparative stratigraphy discussed in the workshops is presented here in form of a gazetteer of the participating sites and a chart. This is to be understood as a first step towards a more comprehensive chronology

Empirical analysis of two-leader car-following behavior

Civil Engineering and Geoscience

Horizontal light pipe transporter for deep plan high-rise office daylighting in tropical climate

Despite having abundance of daylight in tropical climate, many high-rise offices do not exhibit good daylight condition. Economic profits have led to the blooming of deep open-plan design which causes non-uniform daylight distribution especially in the deep area. Light pipe (LP) provides a solution to transport daylight into the interior. Daylighting performance of nine LP transporter shapes with different numbers of side and extractor openings were analysed using computer simulation software, Integrated Environment Solution Virtual Environment (IESVE) and validated with a physical scale-model experiment. Validation results showed significant Pearson correlations that ranged from 0.9170 to 0.9544. Simulations were carried out under overcast sky and intermediate sky with sun conditions. The results showed that all of the LP cases improved the daylighting performance of an empty open-plan office room. The semicircle transporter with two openings, which has 14% less surface area than a typical rectangular transporter, showed the best performance both quantitatively and qualitatively. This helps to save cost in terms of material usage and creates additional spaces for wiring and ducting in the plenum. This study also concluded that the shape of the LP transporter affects the efficiency of LP while the influence of the number of polygon sides and height of the sides, without altering the overall height of the transporter, are not significant. Thus, the findings of this study promote the usage of LP in deep open-plan high-rise office buildings by proposing design recommendations and guides for building designers

Effect of built-up ratio on the variation of air temperature in a heritage city

Urbanization in tropics has altered the microclimate of cities over the past decades. Malacca is a historical city in Malaysia that has been under immense urban growth since 2008 when the city was listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO. This study aimed to examine the effects of urbanization on the microclimate of Malacca by quantifying the ratio of built-up areas in two prominent areas of the city, namely, old (heritage site) and new city quarter (contemporary urban environment). This study focused on the variation of air temperature. The intensity of heat island effect in the two selected areas was calculated by conducting a comparative analysis. Mobile traverses, fixed-station measurements, GIS, and satelite images were used to monitor the variation of air temperature. Results indicated that the heritage site, which exhibited higher ratios of built-up area, was cooler than the contemporary urban area during the day. However,the heritage site had warmer air temperatures at night than the contemporary urban area. The built-up ratio alone could not predict the possible consequences of planning decisions on air temperature. The findings of this study are expected to help urban planners to integrate local climate knowledge into urban planning and design practices