Science shop for innovative mobility solutions for mobility challenged Europeans (INMOSION)

The overall aim of this project is to accommodate through a University based Science Shop (called InMoSion) to develop all necessary expertise and know-how for assisting communities with the deployment of an innovative transportation system to meet the mobility needs of elder and mobility challenged Europeans. The system will be a flexible, technologically advanced demand based paratransit system. The InMoSion project will be lead by the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece and will support at first a Greek Capodistrian Municipality, the Municipality of Philippi, to deploy a paratransit system in order to enhance the mobility in the area. After that, the InMoSion project will help communities across Europe and elsewhere that want to investigate the potential deployment of such a demand based paratransit system. The Science Shop will develop all necessary know how through this initiative and will create a core group of students and researchers that can support free of charge communities through the whole process: from conception, feasibility analysis, needs analysis, requirements analysis, system design, yield management, deployment, evaluation and maintenance. It is a well known fact that Europeans are rapidly aging, mainly due to the low birth-rate and the increase in people's lifespan; new technologically advanced and flexible transportation solutions must be developed in order to address their constantly growing mobility challenges. Older people are usually unable to drive but prefer to live in low-density suburban locations. The transportation systems in these areas are often quite inadequate, which creates serious mobility problems, especially for elderly and disabled people. Note here that while the elderly and disabled are the target customers for the proposed Science Shop, such a service may be expanded to any potential traveller in the future given that the system will be broadly available to meet their needs.SSA - Specific Support Action (FP6-2005-SCIENCE-AND-SOCIETY-20

On Strategies Improving Accuracy of Speed Prediction from Floating Car Data (FCD)

For smart mobility, speed data extracted from Floating Car Data (FCD) plays an important role in speed predictionaccuracy. However, there are reliability issues for commercial FCD due to processing of individual vehicletracking data, and imposed temporal averaging to compress data size. Furthermore, spatial discretizationsignificantly affects the accuracy of the prediction due to uneven segment lengths and highly variable dataavailability in the network. In this study, these issues are examined in detail, and several strategies to improveaverage speed prediction are proposed. An extensive FCD data from a 75-km long corridor is utilized in thecalculations. Firstly, for data reliability, several filters are applied to clean data, then, a robust algorithm is appliedto smoothen the speed data. Secondly, to investigate and reduce prediction errors due to spatial segmentation, anumber of segmentation approaches are developed, and their effects on the average speed prediction are assessed.Finally, several autoregressive prediction models are implemented and a comprehensive comparison of results ispresented

High-Speed Rail (HSR) Users and Travel Characteristics in Turkey

To change the current road dominancy in the intercity passenger transportation, Turkey has been establishing High-Speed Rail (HSR) services as a competitive mode since 2009. A user survey was conducted at four stations of the currently serving HSR lines to obtain data on i) intercity mode choices of HSR users for different trip purposes, ii) alternative modes preferred in HSR corridors and iii) user perspectives on modal service attributes (i.e. travel time, cost, safety, etc.). A significant share of first-time HSR users showed the growing demand of HSR as a transportation mode in Turkey. There were many business or education related trips observed. In the short corridors (i.e. Ankara-Eskisehir), the modal shift was mainly from road transportation, while in Ankara-Istanbul corridor, shift from air to HSR was also observed. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Traffic Management Challenges in Terrorist Attacks: Evacuations in Chemical/Hazardous Material Spills and Emergency Operations

Transportation systems are backbones of urban life serving thousands of people everyday, creating potential targets or environments for terrorist attacks which aim to put fear in people's minds and disrupt daily lives. Even if not targeted directly, better management of transportation systems are crucial after terrorist attacks, which may reach a disaster level, especially, if it includes CBRN elements. Evacuations are massive operations that require transportation of a large number of people outside a disaster zone and generally take place simultaneously with emergency operations. Thus, the need and main aspects of an evacuation traffic management methodology that includes an integrated look at different traffic flows and network management strategies is discussed in this paper

Transportation Security Against Terrorism

Transportation systems are backbones of urban life serving thousands of people everyday, creating potential targets or environments for terrorist attacks which aim to put fear in people's minds and disrupt daily lives. Even if not targeted directly, better management of transportation systems are crucial after terrorist attacks, which may reach a disaster level, especially, if it includes CBRN elements. Evacuations are massive operations that require transportation of a large number of people outside a disaster zone and generally take place simultaneously with emergency operations. Thus, the need and main aspects of an evacuation traffic management methodology that includes an integrated look at different traffic flows and network management strategies is discussed in this paper

Network Traffic Management: Under Disaster Conditions

Natural or man-made, disasters have been a major concern to humanity and a threat to our lives. Management of traffic is very critical during disasters, as accessibility to and mobility in a disaster region can directly affect the level of success in dealing with it. Among many tasks of disaster traffic management, evacuation traffic management is singled out as a major one due to extreme demand levels potentially causing congestion and even gridlocks in a network, if not handled properly. This book includes a thorough review of the literature for both evacuation models and related studies to develop a general evacuation traffic management methodology that outlines major steps and management options for evacuation planning. For supply management, capacity reversibility (also known as ?contraflow?) is proposed on congested evacuation routes. Demand management actions include departure and destination choice optimization and evacuation zone scheduling. Both options are studied analytically for optimal traffic assignment principles, as well as heuristically for computationally less demanding approaches suitable for large urban networks

Best Option For Reducing On-Campus Private Car-Based CO2 Emissions: Reducing VKT Or Congestion?

Reducing carbon emissions, especially that of private car use, is an inevitable goal of sustainable transportation policies. This study focuses on i) determination of the current level of CO2 emissions from private cars on the Middle East Technical University (METU) campus and ii) evaluation of the impact of different emission reduction scenarios. Such scenarios were based on hypothetical conditions that can either reduce Vehicle-km-travelled (VKT) or congestion on campus, which are defined as the two major factors governing vehicle emission levels with today's engine technology. To produce a quantitative evaluation, first, as a base case, current private car travel demand was derived from the joint analysis of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) data and parking lot surveys. In the scenarios, this demand was modified according to the assumptions made. All network assignments were performed using PTV-VISUM software, which produced average speed and number of vehicles on campus roads. The daily assignment was carried out in three parts, as a morning and an evening peak, and an off-peak assignment. Emissions due to congestion were determined separately, as a percentage. The results showed that carbon emissions produced by private cars on METU campus were primarily a function of VKT; thus, could not be reduced by congestion management alone. They could be reduced by 30% if commuters would shift to the metro service that is supported by a strong on-campus shuttle services

Türkiye'de Şehirlerarası Yük Trafiği CO2 Emisyonlarının Tahmini

Recently, road freight transportation dominates the freight sector in many countries including Turkey, which is causing a growing concern about environmental and sustainability issues. To develop better policies, road freight emissions have to be determined. Such evaluations are very challenging in the absence of disaggregate commodity flow data, which is the case in Turkey. As a solution, to calculate truck freight transportation emissions a model that combines national level national freight transportation statistics with detailed information collected from roadside axle surveys is proposed. As the roadside axle load surveys are performed on intercity roads, the proposed model can provide emission for intercity truck transportation. Emissions are estimated for the period of 2000 to 2009 using COPERT 4 software. Besides, the level of CO2 emissions is almost same in 2009 and 2000. This amount corresponded to the 25.9% of the national transportation sector emissions in 200