REAR SEAT SAFETY IN FRONTAL TO SIDE IMPACTS – FOCUSING ON OCCUPANTS FROM 3YRS TO SMALL ADULTS

ABSTRACT This study presents a broad comprehensive research effort that combines expertise from industry and academia and uses various methodologies with applied research directed towards countermeasures. The project includes real world crash data analysis, real world driving studies and crash testing and simulations, aiming at enhancing the safety of forward facing child occupants (aged 3y to small adults) in the rear seat during frontal to side impacts. The real world crash data analyses of properly restrained children originate from European as well as US data. Frontal and side impact crash tests are analyzed using different sizes of crash test dummies in different sitting postures. Side impact parameter studies using FE-models are run. The sitting posture and behavior of 12 children are monitored while riding in the rear seat. Also, the body kinematics and belt position during actual braking and turning maneuvers are studied for 16 rear seat child occupants and for various child dummies. Real world crash data indicates that several of the injured children in frontal impacts, despite being properly restrained, impacted the vehicle interior structure with their head/face resulting in serious injury. This was attributed to oblique crashes, pre-crash vehicle maneuvers or high crash severity. Crash tests confirm the importance of proper initial belt-fit for best protection. The crash tests also highlight the difficulty in obtaining the real world kinematics and head impact locations using existing crashtest dummies and test procedures. The side impact parameter studies indicate that the vehicle’s occupant protection systems, such as airbags and seat belt pretensioners, play an important role in protecting children as well. The results from the on-road driving studies illustrate the variation of sitting postures during riding in the rear seat giving valuable input to the effects of the restraint systems and to how representative the standardized dummy seating positioning procedures are. The results from the maneuver driving studies illustrate the importance of understanding the kinematics of a child relative to the seat belt in a real world maneuver situation. Real world safety of rear seat occupants, especially children, involves evaluation of protection beyond standard crash testing scenarios in frontal and side impact conditions. This project explores the complete context of rear seat protection in impact situations ranging from front to side and directions in between highlighting the importance of pre-crash posture and behavior. This research project at SAFER (Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers), where researchers from the industry and universities cooperate with the aim to further improve safety for children (from 3y) to small adults in the rear seat, speeds up the process to safety implementation due to the interaction between academic and industrial researchers

Admirality law cases

Sverige har sju stycken tingsrätter har blivit utsedda till att behandla sjörättsmål. Sjörättsmål innebär antingen tvister eller brottmål med anknytning till sjöfarten på svenskt territorium. Syftet var att kartlägga och redogöra avgjorda brottmål och tvistemål hos sjörättsdomstolarna över tid. Studiens frågeställningar fokuserade på typer av mål, skillnader mellan domstolar och förändring över tid. Studien fördjupade sig i domar rörande handelssjöfarten. Som metod valdes litteraturstudie och vid uppföljande frågor gjordes intervjuer med myndigheter och sakkunniga. Litteraturen i denna studie var de 153 domarna som meddelades mellan 2009 och 2013. Av alla domarna var det fem tvistemål och 148 brottmålsdomar, om 13 olika rubriceringar. Den största skillnaden mellan domstolarna var antalet avgjorda mål och någon förändring över tid kunde inte påträffas.   Andra slutsatser var att fartygs befälhavare, som har det yttersta ansvaret, undvek åtal om denne inte varit närvarande vid åtalshändelsen. Ett mörkertal råder angående sjöfylleri bland yrkessjömän ute till havs. In Sweden seven courts has been appointed to specialize in admiralty law cases. These cases are either civil or criminal cases with connection to shipping on Swedish territory. The objective was to examine and describe the admiralty law verdicts over time with focus on what types of cases, differences between courts and variation over time. The study focused on merchant shipping. Study of literature was chosen as method and with follow-up questions interviews were made with agencies and experts. The literature in this study was the 153 verdicts that were announced between 2009 and 2013. Of all verdicts collected were five civil cases and 148 criminal cases with 13 classifications. The largest difference between the courts was the sum of verdicts. A change over time could not be observed. Other conclusions that were made were that ships’ masters, that have the utmost responsibility, avoided prosecution when they were not present for the event of the prosecution.

A comparative study of the conventional item-based collaborative filtering and the Slope One algorithms for recommender systems

Recommender systems are an important research topic in todays society as the amount of data increases across the globe. In order for commercial systems to give their users good and personalized recommendations on what data may be of interest to them in an effective manner, such a system must be able to give recommendations quickly and scale well as data increases. The purpose of this study is to evaluate two such algorithms with this in mind.  The two different algorithm families tested are classified as item-based collaborative filtering but work very differently. It is therefore of interest to see how their complexities affect their performance, accuracy as well as scalability. The Slope One family is much simpler to implement and proves to be equally as efficient, if not even more efficient than the conventional item-based ones. Both families do require a precomputation stage before recommendations are possible to give, this is the stage where Slope One suffers in comparison to the conventional item-based one. The algorithms are tested using Lenskit, on data provided by GroupLens and their MovieLens project

Assessing the Impact of Disruptive Events on Port Performance and Choice: The Case of Gothenburg

This paper assesses the impact of a major disruptive event at the port of Gothenburg, Scandinavia’s largest container port. Automatic Identification System (AIS) data is analyzed, in combination with official port statistics on container handling in the four main container ports in Sweden, from 2014–2018. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between container volumes handled and calculated performance metrics at the specific times of the intense labour dispute at the port of Gothenburg during the periods Q2 (2016) and Q4 (2016)–Q2 (2017). The paper concludes that the decline in container volumes handled at Gothenburg over the period is specifically due to fewer ships calling at the port following each of the intense periods of the labour dispute. It is also concluded that the effect on competitor ports in the region were significant in terms of both increased volumes of gateway container traffic and the resulting short-term and medium term impacts on both port user profiles and port efficiency levels

Assessing the Impact of Disruptive Events on Port Performance and Choice: The Case of Gothenburg

This paper assesses the impact of a major disruptive event at the port of Gothenburg, Scandinavia’s largest container port. Automatic Identification System (AIS) data is analyzed, in combination with official port statistics on container handling in the four main container ports in Sweden, from 2014–2018. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between container volumes handled and calculated performance metrics at the specific times of the intense labour dispute at the port of Gothenburg during the periods Q2 (2016) and Q4 (2016)–Q2 (2017). The paper concludes that the decline in container volumes handled at Gothenburg over the period is specifically due to fewer ships calling at the port following each of the intense periods of the labour dispute. It is also concluded that the effect on competitor ports in the region were significant in terms of both increased volumes of gateway container traffic and the resulting short-term and medium term impacts on both port user profiles and port efficiency levels

A revisit of the definition of the ship domain based on AIS analysis

When ships approach each other, they should keep a minimum area around them clear of other\ua0vessels in order to remain safe. The geometrical shape of this area has been studied since the\ua0early 1970s and is defined as the ship domain. The progress in computer capacity since then and\ua0the introduction of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides the potential to further\ua0investigate the size and the governing factors of the domain. This investigation revisits and\ua0proposes a method using data based on 600,000 ship encounters at 36 locations. It is concluded\ua0that the ship domain has the shape of an ellipse with half axis radii of 0.9 and 0.45 nautical\ua0miles. However, there are two factors that greatly affect the ship domain: how large the area\ua0is that is used to gather vessel intersections and whether they are constrained by water depth.\ua0In contradiction to some previous research, it is found that the ship domain is unrelated to the\ua0length of the ship

AIS in maritime research

Although not originally developed for research use, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) enables its data to be used in research. The present paper provides a structured overview of how AIS data is used for various research applications. Ten areas have been identified, spread across maritime, marine and other journals. Many stakeholders beyond the most frequently mentioned – authorities and maritime administrations – can benefit from the research in which AIS data is used. AIS data can be incorporated in various types of modelling approaches and play a small or large role as a source of data. AIS data can also be validated or used to validate research from other data sources. Although a large amount of AIS-based research adds to the literature, there is still a large potential for using AIS data for research by making greater use of the variety in AIS messages, combining AIS with other sources of data, and extending both spatial and temporal perspectives