Analytical methods and simulation models to assess innovative operational measures and technologies for rail port terminals: the case of Valencia Principe Felipe terminal

The topic of freight transport by rail is a complex theme and, in recent years, a main issue of European policy. The legislation evolution and the White Paper 2011 have demonstrated the European intention to re-launch this sector. The challenge is to promote the intermodal transport system to the detriment of road freight transport. In this context intermodal freight terminals, play a primary role for the supply chain, they are the connection point between the various transport nodes and the nodal points where the freight are handled, stored and transferred between different modes to final customer. To achieve the purpose, it is strengthen the improvement of existing intermodal freight terminals and the development of innovative intermodal freight terminals towards higher performance (ERRAC, 2012). Many terminal performances improvements have been proposed and sometime experimented. They are normally basing on combinations of operational measures and innovative technologies (e.g. automatic horizontal and parallel storage and handling, automated gate and sensors for tracking systems data exchange) tested in various terminals, with often-contradictory results. The research work described in this paper (developed within the Capacity4Rail EU project) focusses on the assessment of effects that these innovations can have in the intermodal freight terminals combined in various alternative consistent effective scenarios. The methodological framework setup to assess these innovations is basing on a combination of analytical methods based on sequential algorithms and discrete events simulation models. The output of this assessment method are key performance indicators (KPIs) selected according to terminals typologies and related to different aspects (e.g. management, operation and organization). The present paper illustrates the application of the methodological framework, tuned on the operation of various intermodal terminals, for the validation on today operation and the assessment of possible future scenarios to the case study of the Principe Felipe sea-rail terminal in Valencia

Livestock Changes at the Beginning and End of the Roman Period in Britain: Issues of Acculturation, Adaptation and ‘Improvement’

This article reviews aspects of the development of animal husbandry in Roman Britain, focusing in particular on the Iron Age/Roman and Roman/early medieval transitions. By analysing the two chronological extremes of the period of Roman influence in Britain we try to identify the core characteristics of Romano-British husbandry by using case studies, in particular from south-eastern Britain, investigated from the perspective of the butchery and morphometric evidence they provide. Our aim is to demonstrate the great dynamism of Romano-British animal husbandry, with substantial changes in livestock management occurring at the beginning, the end, and during the period under study. It is suggested that such changes are the product of interactions between different cultural and social traditions, which can be associated with indigenous and external influences, but also numerous other causes, ranging from ethnic origins to environmental, geographic, political, and economic factors

Why do Canadian firms invest and operate abroad? Implications for Canadian exports

Canadian foreign direct investment and sales of Canadian multinational firms' operations abroad, particularly in the manufacturing industry and in the United States, have accelerated sharply over the past decade. At the same time, although foreign demand has accelerated following the Great Recession, Canadian exports have failed to rebound as strongly as historical correlation would suggest. If part of Canadian firms' investment abroad over the past decade was intended to replace their Canadian production and exports, it could help to explain recent export weakness. This paper investigates these issues in the Canadian forest products industry and the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry, using a case study approach. Specifically, we examine 15 large, Canadian, publicly traded firms, dominant in each of these industries, over the period 2000-13. We triangulate (i) financial statement data and (ii) public statements about decisions to invest abroad with (iii) macroeconomic data on the activity of Canadian foreign affiliates, focusing on investments in the United States and Mexico. We find that over this period, the companies in the study increasingly chose to invest abroad, leading to a shift in relative operational capacity from Canada to locations abroad. Motives behind this trend include market-seeking objectives, as well as relative cost factors and strategic asset seeking abroad. This shift in the location of production capacity may, at least for the industries and the time period studied, help to explain the weakness in Canadian merchandise exports over the past years, since these firms increasingly choose to serve foreign demand through their operations abroad, rather than exclusively through exports.Les dix dernières années ont vu une nette augmentation des investissements directs canadiens à l’étranger et du chiffre d’affaires des filiales étrangères de multinationales canadiennes, particulièrement dans le secteur manufacturier et aux États-Unis. En dépit de la hausse de la demande étrangère survenue à la suite de la Grande Récession, les exportations canadiennes n’ont pas rebondi aussi fortement que les corrélations historiques le laissaient supposer. Dans cette étude, les auteurs cherchent à déterminer si la faiblesse des exportations observée récemment pourrait s’expliquer par le fait que les investissements effectués à l’étranger par les entreprises canadiennes au cours des dix dernières années étaient en partie destinés à remplacer leur capacité de production au Canada ainsi que leurs exportations. Ils tentent de répondre à cette question à partir d’une étude de cas en analysant le secteur des produits forestiers et celui de la fabrication de pièces automobiles. Ils examinent plus précisément l’évolution des opérations de quinze grandes sociétés canadiennes cotées en bourse, dominantes dans ces deux secteurs, pour la période allant de 2000 à 2013. Pour ce faire, ils procèdent à l’analyse croisée de trois sources d’informations : 1) les données tirées d’états financiers; 2) les annonces d’investissements à l’étranger; 3) les données macroéconomiques sur l’activité de filiales étrangères de sociétés canadiennes, leur attention portant sur les investissements réalisés aux États-Unis et au Mexique. Les auteurs constatent que durant la période retenue, les firmes de l’échantillon ont de plus en plus choisi d’investir à l’étranger, ce qui a provoqué une délocalisation accrue de leur production. Cette tendance est justifiée par la quête de nouveaux marchés et d’actifs stratégiques, ainsi que par les coûts relatifs des facteurs. Ce déplacement de la capacité de production pourrait, du moins pour les secteurs et la période visés, contribuer à expliquer la faible progression des exportations canadiennes de biens enregistrée ces dernières années, puisque les entreprises étudiées choisissent de plus en plus de répondre à la demande étrangère par l’intermédiaire de leurs filiales plutôt qu’exclusivement au moyen des exportations

Present ground surface dynamics in the North Adriatic coastland

Le livellazioni geometriche sono state nel secolo scorso l’unico metodo di rilievo altimetrico che abbia consentito di misurare con precisione l'entità della subsidenza “moderna” dell’area costiera nord adriatica. Solo alla fine degli anni 1990 è stata istallata una rete per misure GPS in differenziale (DGPS) e in continuo (CGPS). Nell’ultimo decennio inoltre, l'utilizzo del radar ad apertura sintetica (SAR) su vettori satellitari ha consentito lo sviluppo e l’affinamento dell’analisi interferometrica differenziale (InSAR) e dell’analisi interferometrica su riflettori persistenti (IPTA) che si sono dimostrati di estrema efficacia per lo studio dei movimenti verticali del suolo. Nel caso della pianura costiera Veneta, sono stati utilizzati i satelliti ERS-1/2 ed ENVISAT dell’Agenzia Spaziale Europea, rispettivamente per il periodo 1992-2005 e 2003-2009, ed il satellite TerraSAR-X dell’Agenzia Spaziale Tedesca, per il biennio 2008-2009. Oggi si dispone di una densità di dati SAR che, data la risoluzione spaziale dei satelliti tra 20 e 3 m, è maggiore di circa 2 ordini di grandezza nelle l’analisi a scala regionale e più di 3 ordini per analisi locali rispetto alle misure tradizionali su capisaldi. Ciò ha permesso la mappatura dei movimenti del suolo a scala “regionale” (100×100 km2), locale (10×10 km2) e puntale al livello di singole strutture. Le serie di dati SAR sono stati calibrati e validati con le misure altimetriche di livellazione, DGPS e CGPS nella rete di monitoraggio ISES-IRMA. Grazie all’elevata densità di informazioni, all’ottima risoluzione spaziale e accuratezza verticale millimetrica del monitoraggio SAR è emersa una dinamica verticali del territorio costiero Veneto diversa da quanto ottenibile utilizzando le sole tecniche di livellazione tradizionale. L’immagine attuale indica che il processo subsidenziale si esplica con una forte variabilità spaziale, sia a scala regionale che locale. L’analisi integrata dei dati altimetrici e delle numerose nuove informazioni sul sottosuolo, recentemente acquisite nell’ambito di una serie di ricerche condotte dagli Autori, ha permesso la caratterizzazione delle componenti dei movimenti verticali del suolo della pianura costiera Veneta in funzione della profondità alla quale agiscono e la loro distribuzione areale

Past, present, and expected hydro-morphologic evolution of the Bahia de Samborombon (Argentina) by remote sensing data

Hydro-geomorphologic setting of coastal areas is the result of complex interactions between marine and continental processes. Lowland morphologies make coastlands the zones at highest hydrogeological risk because of flooding, land subsidence, and saltwater contamination (e.g., Pousa et al. 2007). As many studies have predicted a significant increase of eustacy, sea level rise (SLR) is the most relevant problem affecting coastal lowlands. The wetland of the Samborombon Bay (Argentina) is a Ramsar natural reserve affected to periodic floods due to rainfall, runoff, tidal fluctuations, and storm surges. In this work, we show preliminary results of a project aimed at understanding the effect of expected SLR scenarios on the hydromorphologic setting of the Samborombon Bay. In particular, the outcomes of the first step of the research, i.e., the remote sensing analysis, are illustrated

Simple assessment of spatio-temporal evolution of salt marshes ecological services

A number of previous research studies have addressed the enormous role played by biodiversity and ecosystems in human well-being and have placed particular emphasis on the consequences of the reduction or loss of these services. A handful of studies have implemented practical methodologies to quantify the variability of limiting factors leading to reductions in these ecological services. The aim of this article is to document the limited number of studies that have analyzed coastal ecosystem services and acknowledge the impacts of physical changes in habitat provision. In one example, it is clear that the maintenance of salt marshes depends on sedimentary supply and consequent morphological variability in spite of the fact that there is usually no recurrent integration of habitat time-space dynamics (sediment availability) during the quantification and monetization of marsh services (i.e., monetary valuation of salt marsh services). This means that one key challenge facing the analysis of salt marsh (or other ecosystem) services in a global climate context is to predict future value, based on past trends, while at the same time guaranteeing conservation. Research in this field has been very broad and so the use of long-term evolutionary datasets is proposed here to explain future habitat provision. An empirical approximation is also presented here that accounts for service provision and enables time-space analysis. Although improvements will be required, the equation presented here represents a key first step to enable managers to cope with the constraints of resource limitations and is also applicable to other habitats.PTDC/MAR-EST/1031/2014info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and Rural Africa

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