WebLab project

WebLab is an online academic tool used to improve education by providing a framework for teachers to supply a higher quantity and quality of assignments to students. Currently this system is being used in a variety of courses including the Concepts of Programming Languages course taught to bachelor students at the Delft University of Technology. As a tool is used more and more functionality must be added in order to meet the ever increasing demands. The goal of this project is just that, expand on the current system to provide support for a new set of features. Specifically two new courses want to start using WebLab. MySQL support is added to support the database part of the Web & Database Technology course so students can execute queries and test their code against the correct queries without seeing those queries. Java support is added to provide extra practice material for the Object-oriented Programming in Java course; students who are new to programming have a chance to practice with the material at their own pace without having to install a myriad of software packages. Aside from these main features other features including group support and random assignment collections are also included in this project. Finally, as with any other software engineering project we include our requirements analysis, system analysis, project process, and take an in depth look at the testing of such a diverse and complex system.Software Engineering Research GroupSoftware Computer TechnologyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Optimization of the location and capacity of shared multimodal mobility hubs to maximize travel utility in urban areas

Nowadays, urban areas are exposed to various challenges such as climate change, social inequalities, and congestion. Shared mobility hubs present the opportunity to reshape our cities and mitigate the previously mentioned challenges by contributing to a more sustainable transport system. These are places where shared cars, mopeds, and e-bikes are offered to improve connectivity in urban areas. In this paper, we investigate the impact of efficiently allocating multimodal shared mobility hubs on modal split, service level, and environmental factors while assuring economic feasibility. Given a limited budget, cities would like to optimize the hubs’ locations to maximize the population's benefits. For that purpose, we introduce a multi-stage design algorithm model that distributes the hubs and allocates fleets of shared cars, mopeds, and e-bikes to maximize travel utility for all the population traveling using traditional and/or shared modes while accounting for multimodal trips. The model is divided into several modules: computational modules that calculate the demand for the hubs; an optimization module to optimize the hubs’ capacities, availability, and relocation of shared vehicles; and finally, a genetic algorithm to find the optimal hub distribution. Our proposed model is one of the first that optimizes the location and capacity of multimodal hubs by considering multimodal trips in a large network. Additionally, it allows to assess mobility, spatial, and environmental impact of shared modes. The model is applied to the case of Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, with around 800,000 inhabitants. After running several scenarios with different budgets allocated to build the hubs, results show that having more hubs with a lower number of shared vehicles is more beneficial than having fewer hubs with higher capacity. That is because the travel time savings increase considerably when investments lead to complete coverage of the area by the hubs network. A modal split of 5% for the shared modes is expected when Amsterdam is covered by 288 hubs. From an environmental point of view, only 32% of the shared trips replace trips previously made by ICE and electric cars, leading to a limited CO2 emissions reduction of 1.27%. Hence, introducing shared modes and mobility hubs without push measures for the use of private cars appears to offer limited benefits to decrease the negative impacts of private car usage.Transport and PlanningTransport and Plannin