Development perspectives for the City of Hamburg: Migration, commuting, and specialization

This paper disentangles the single effects of increasing transportation costs on the arising economic structure and applies them to the regional level of the metropolis of Hamburg. Therefore we begin with a general indexing of the metropolis Hamburg in the context of Germany's ten biggest cities according to some key economic variables. Of major importance are issues of migration, commuting as well as structural change and regional specialization. As will become apparent all these aspects are differently affected by (changing) transportation costs and it is finally the interplay of different forces that shapes the future structure and hence the economic success of the metropolis. From the viewpoint of private individuals, increasing transportation costs affect the outweighing of commuting from home to the working place versus migration. Focusing on the production site, not only direct but also indirect effects that arise from horizontal or vertical relationships gain importance. --

Metropolitan Cities under Transition: The Example of Hamburg/Germany

In the intermediate and long run energy prices and hence transportation costs are expected to increase significantly. According to the reasoning of the New Economic Geography this will strengthen the spreading forces and thus affect the economic landscape. Other influencing factors on the regional distribution of economic activity include the general trends of demographic and structural change. In industrialized countries, the former induces an overall reduction of population and labor force whereas the latter implies an ongoing shift to the tertiary sector and increased specialization. Basically, cities provide better conditions to cope with these challenges than rural regions. Since the general trends affect all economic spaces similarly, city-specific factors also have to be considered in order to derive the impact of rising energy costs on future urban development. With respect to Hamburg regional peculiarities include the overall importance of the harbor as well as the existing composition of the industry and the service sector. The analysis highlights that rising energy and transportation costs will open up a range of opportunities for the metropolitan region.urban development; regional specialization; structural change; demographic change; transportation costs.

Metropolitan Cities under Transition: The Example of Hamburg/Germany

In the intermediate and long run, energy prices and hence transportation costs are expected to increase significantly. According to the reasoning of the New Economic Geography this will strengthen the spreading forces and thus affect the economic landscape. Other influencing factors on the regional distribution of economic activity include the general trends of demographic and structural change. In industrialized countries, the former induces an overall reduction of population and labor force, whereas the latter implies an ongoing shift to the tertiary sector and increased specialization. Basically, cities provide better conditions to cope with these challenges than do rural regions. Since the general trends affect all economic spaces similarly, especially cityspecific factors have to be considered in order to derive the impact of rising energy costs on future urban development. With respect to Hamburg, regional peculiarities include the overall importance of the harbor as well as the existing composition of the industry and the service sector. The analysis highlights that rising energy and transportation costs will open up a range of opportunities for the metropolitan region.urban development, regional specialization, structural change, demographic change, transportation costs

Detailed population balance modelling of industrial titania synthesis

This thesis presents an efficient and robust detailed population balance framework for simulating aerosol synthesis of structured particles using a stochastic method. This is developed in the context of the industrial titania (TiO2) process to enable extensive numerical characterisation of the pigmentary product. A reactor network model is used to provide a modular treatment of the reactor and account for key features, including multiple reactant injections, and tubular reaction and cooling zones. This approach simplifies the flow field in order to focus computational effort on resolving particle structure using a high-dimensional particle model and its modularity offers flexibility to investigate different configurations. Initial results are presented using a pre-defined temperature profile in the network, and the particulate product is characterised by its property distributions. Numerical performance is studied, highlighting the high computational cost of simulating strong phase-coupling, fast process rates, and broad particle size distributions. A novel hybrid particle model is developed to address these challenges. The hybrid particle model employs a univariate description of small particles and switches to a detailed particle model to resolve morphology of more complicated, aggregate particles. New simulation algorithms are presented to manage interactions between particles of each type. The hybrid model is shown to improve efficiency (resolution versus computational cost) and robustness (sensitivity to numerical parameters), while generating the same solutions and convergence behaviour as earlier models. The reactor model is extended, utilizing the superior numerical performance of the new hybrid particle model to enable inclusion of a system energy balance for more accurate study of a broad range of process conditions, and a more sophisticated particle model to resolve particle geometry. These contributions facilitate the study of particle structure and its sensitivity to reactor design and operational choices, providing insight into how operation affects characteristics of the particles and allowing direct comparison with experimental images of the pigmentary product.This research was supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme, and by Venator

Intelligent AGV with navigation, object detection and avoidance in an unknown environment

Thesis (M.Tech.) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 2007The latest technological trend worldwide, is automation. Reducing human labour and introducing robots to do the work is a pure business decision. The reason for automating a plant can be some, or all, of the following: Improve productivity Reduce labour and equipment costs Reduce product damage System reliability can be monitored Improves plant safety When the automation process is started, Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) will be one of the first commodities that can be used. The reason for this is that they are so versatile. They can be programmed to follow specific paths when moving material from one point to another and the biggest advantage of all is that they can operate for twenty four hours a day. Automatic Guided Vehicles are developed for many different applications and therefore many different types of AGVs are available. All AGVs are equipped with sensors so that they are able to “see” what is happening around them. Since the AGV must be able to function without any human help or control, it must be able to navigate through the work environment. In this study a remote control car was converted to an AGV and thorough research was done on the different types of sensors that can be used to make the AGV more intelligent when it comes to navigating in an unknown environment