1,861 research outputs found
A review of key planning and scheduling in the rail industry in Europe and UK
Planning and scheduling activities within the rail industry have benefited from developments in computer-based simulation and modelling techniques over the last 25 years. Increasingly, the use of computational intelligence in such tasks is featuring more heavily in research publications. This paper examines a number of common rail-based planning and scheduling activities and how they benefit from five broad technology approaches. Summary tables of papers are provided relating to rail planning and scheduling activities and to the use of expert and decision systems in the rail industry.EPSR
A software architecture for autonomous maintenance scheduling: Scenarios for UK and European Rail
A new era of automation in rail has begun offering developments in the operation and maintenance of industry standard systems. This article documents the development of an architecture and range of scenarios for an autonomous system for rail maintenance planning and scheduling. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been utilized to visualize and validate the design of the prototype. A model for information exchange between prototype components and related maintenance planning systems is proposed in this article. Putting forward an architecture and set of usage mode scenarios for the proposed system, this article outlines and validates a viable platform for autonomous planning and scheduling in rail
An intelligent framework and prototype for autonomous maintenance planning in the rail industry
This paper details the development of the AUTONOM project, a project that aims to provide an enterprise system tailored to the planning needs of the rail industry. AUTONOM extends research in novel sensing, scheduling, and decision-making strategies customised for the automated planning of maintenance activities within the rail industry. This paper sets out a framework and software prototype and details the current progress of the project. In the continuation of the AUTONOM project it is anticipated that the combination of techniques brought together in this work will be capable of addressing a wider range of problem types, offered by Network rail and organisations in different industries
An evaluation of a self-management program for patients with long-term conditions
Objective: To evaluate a group-based self-management program (SMP) delivered as part of a quality improvement program, Co-Creating Health, for patients living with one of four long-term conditions (LTCs): chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, diabetes, and musculoskeletal pain. Methods: The 7 week SMP was co-delivered by lay and health professional tutors. Patients completed self-reported outcome measures at pre-course and 6 months follow-up. Results: 486 patients completed (attended ≥5 sessions) the SMP and returned pre-course and 6 months follow up data. Patients reported significant improvements in patient activation (ES 0.65, pp= 0.04), and health status (ES 0.33, pppp values from pp= 0.028). Conclusion: Attending the SMP led to improvements in a range of outcomes. Improvement in patient activation is important, as activated patients are more likely to perform self-care activities. Practice implications: Co-delivered SMPs provide meaningful improvements in activation for >50 of those who complete and are a useful addition to self-management support provision
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The effect of soil moisture perturbations on Indian Monsoon Depressions in a numerical weather prediction model
Indian monsoon depressions (MDs) are synoptic-scale cyclonic systems that propagate across peninsular India three or four times per monsoon season. They are responsible for the majority of rainfall in agrarian north India, thus constraining precipitation estimates is of high importance. Here, we use a case study from August 2014 to explore the relationship between varying soil moisture and the resulting track and structure of an incident MD using the Met Office Unified Model. We use this case study with the view to increasing understanding of the general impact of soil moisture perturbations on monsoon depressions. It is found that increasing soil moisture in the monsoon trough region results in deeper inland penetration and a more developed structure - e.g. a warmer core in the mid-troposphere and a stronger bimodal potential vorticity core in the middle/lower troposphere - with more precipitation, and a
structure that in general more closely resembles that found in depressions over the ocean, indicating that soil moisture may enhance the convective mechanism that drives depressions over land. This experiment also shows that these changes are most significant when the depression is deep, and negligible when it is weakening. Increasing soil moisture in the sub-Himalayan arable zone, a region with large irrigation coverage, also caused deeper inland penetration and some feature enhancement in the upper troposphere but no significant changes were found in the track heading or lower-tropospheric structure
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Different Asian monsoon rainfall responses to idealised orography sensitivity experiments in the HadGEM3-GA6 and FGOALS-FAMIL global climate models
Recent work has shown the dominance of the Himalayas in supporting the Indian summer monsoon (ISM), perhaps by surface sensible heating along its southern slope and by mechanical blocking acting to separate moist tropical flow from drier mid-latitude air. Previous studies have also shown that Indian summer rainfall is largely unaffected in sensitivity experiments that remove only the Tibetan Plateau. However, given the large biases in simulating the monsoon in CMIP5 models, such results may be model dependent. This study investigates the impact of orographic forcing from the Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas and Iranian Plateau on the ISM and East Asian summer monsoons (EASM) in the UK Met Office HadGEM3-GA6 and China’s Institute of Atmospheric Physics FGOALS-FAMIL GCMs. The models chosen feature opposite-signed biases in their simulation of the ISM rainfall and circulation climatology.
The changes to ISM and EASM circulation across the sensitivity experiments are similar in both models and consistent with previous studies. However, considerable differences exist in the rainfall responses over India and China, and in the detailed aspects such as onset and retreat dates. In particular, the models show opposing changes in Indian monsoon rainfall when the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau orography are removed. Our results show that a multi-model approach, as suggested in the forthcoming Global Monsoon Model Intercomparison Project (GMMIP) associated with CMIP6, is needed to clarify the impact of orographic forcing on the Asian monsoon and to fully understand the implications of model systematic error
An unstructured CD-grid variational formulation for sea ice dynamics
For the numerical simulation of earth system models, Arakawa grids are
largely employed. A quadrilateral mesh is assumed for their classical
definition, and different types of grids are identified depending on the
location of the discretized quantities. The B-grid has both velocity components
at the center of a cell, the C-grid places the velocity components on the edges
in a staggered fashion, and the D-grid is a ninety-degree rotation of a C-grid.
Historically, B-grid formulations of sea ice dynamics have been dominant
because they have matched the grid type used by ocean models. In recent years,
as ocean models have increasingly progressed to C-grids, sea ice models have
followed suit on quadrilateral meshes, but few if any implementations of
unstructured C-grid sea ice models have been developed. In this work, we
present an unstructured CD-grid type formulation of the elastic-viscous-plastic
rheology, where the velocity unknowns are located at the edges, rather than at
the vertices, as in the B-grid. The notion of a CD-grid has been recently
introduced and assumes that the velocity components are co-located at the
edges. The mesh cells in our analysis have sides, with greater than or
equal to four. Numerical results are included to investigate the features of
the proposed method. Our framework of choice is the Model for Prediction Across
Scales (MPAS) within E3SM, the climate model of the U.S. Department of Energy,
although our approach is general and could be applied to other models as well.
While MPAS-Seaice is currently defined on a B-grid, MPAS-Ocean runs on a
C-grid, hence interpolation operators are heavily used when coupled simulations
are performed. The discretization introduced here aims at transitioning the
dynamics of MPAS-Seaice to a CD-grid, to ultimately facilitate improved
coupling with MPAS-Ocean and reduce numerical errors associated with this
communication
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Black carbon physical and optical properties across northern India during pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons
Black carbon (BC) is known to have major impacts on both climate and human health and is therefore of global importance, particularly in regions close to large populations that have strong sources. The size-resolved mixing state of BC-containing particles was characterised using a single-particle soot photometer (SP2). The study focusses on the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) during the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons. Data presented are from the UK Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements BAe-146 research aircraft that performed flights during the pre-monsoon (11 and 12 June) and monsoon (30 June to 11 July) seasons of 2016.
Over the IGP, BC mass concentrations were greater (1.95 µg m−3) compared to north-west India (1.50 µg m−3) and north-east India (0.70 µg m−3) during the pre-monsoon season. Across northern India, two distinct BC modes were recorded; a mode of small BC particles (core diameter <0.16 µm and coating thickness <50 nm) and a mode of moderately coated BC (core diameter <0.22 µm and coating thickness of 50–200 nm). The IGP and north-east India locations exhibited moderately coated black carbon particles with enhanced coating thicknesses, core sizes, mass absorption cross sections, and scattering enhancement values compared to much lower values present in the north-west. The coating thickness and mass absorption cross section increased with altitude (13 %) compared to those in the boundary layer. As the monsoon arrived across the region, mass concentration of BC decreased over the central IGP and north-east locations (38 % and 28 % respectively), whereas for the north-west location BC properties remained relatively consistent. Post-monsoon onset, the coating thickness, core size, mass absorption cross section, and scattering enhancement values were all greatest over the central IGP much like the pre-monsoon season but were considerably reduced over both north-east and north-west India. Increases in mass absorption cross section through the atmospheric column were still present during the monsoon for the north-west and central IGP locations, but less so over the north-east due to lack of long-range transport aerosol aloft. Across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and north-east India during the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons, solid-fuel (wood burning) emissions form the greatest proportion of BC with moderately coated particles. However, as the monsoon develops in the north-east there was a switch to small uncoated BC particles indicative of traffic emissions, but the solid-fuel emissions remained in the IGP into the monsoon. For both seasons in the north-west, traffic emissions form the greatest proportion of BC particles.
Our findings will prove important for greater understanding of the BC physical and optical properties, with important consequences for the atmospheric radiative forcing of BC-containing particles. The findings will also help constrain the regional aerosol models for a variety of applications such as space-based remote sensing, chemistry transport modelling, air quality, and BC source and emission inventories
Host-parasite biology in the real world: the field voles of Kielder
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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