The use of simulation in the design of a road transport incident detection algorithm

Automatic incident detection is becoming one of the core tools of urban traffic management, enabling more rapid identification and response to traffic incidents and congestion. Existing traffic detection infrastructure within urban areas (often installed for traffic signal optimization) provides urban traffic control systems with a near continuous stream of data on the state of traffic within the network. The creation of a simulation to replicate such a data stream therefore provides a facility for the development of accurate congestion detection and warning algorithms. This paper describes firstly the augmentation of a commercial traffic model to provide an urban traffic control simulation platform and secondly the development of a new incident detection system (RAID-Remote Automatic Incident Detection), with the facility to use the simulation platform as an integral part of the design and calibration process. A brief description of a practical implementation of RAID is included along with summary evaluation results

Developing a smartphone app to enhance Oxfam's supply chain visibility

This paper reports on the development of a smartphone app designed to give drivers and managers in a charity organisation greater visibility of transport, donation bank and shop stock in time and space. Trials of the app with samples of drivers and shop managers across three counties in the UK showed that users’ understanding of vehicle activity and how time was utilised in the business was enhanced. The app also informed their decision making, aided some collaboration and helped in their understanding of donation bank and shop performance, with one region altering their collection schedules. The quality of 3G signal was an issue in certain areas which impeded performance and the rules by which the messaging platform should be used in such a tool need careful consideratio

Towards safer roadside behavior on the school journey through interactive video training

Active travel in the form of walking can contribute to recommended levels of daily exercise and is linked to increased health and wellbeing. Promoting active modes for school travel, such as walking, has become commonplace in recent years. In the United Kingdom, Safe Routes to Schools programs demonstrate one method of promoting walking, whilst attempting to ensure the safety of children during their school journey through interventions which include child pedestrian training. The quality of child pedestrian training programs in the United Kingdom has suffered in recent years due to austerity measures and time pressures forcing local authorities to reduce the amount of practical training and increase the amount of less effective, but cheaper, paper-based classroom activities. This paper considers the effectiveness of an interactive video which has been developed as an alternative to these paper-based activities designed to target and improve the crossing behavior of children between parked cars. In an exploratory study targeted at elementary school aged children, significant improvements in certain crossing behaviors were demonstrated as a result of training with the interactive video, indicating its potential to significantly improve the range of resources currently available for use by road safety training 15 professional

Can locker box logistics enable more human-centric medical supply chains?

There are a range of non-clinical support services within hospitals, such as catering, linen / laundry and supply logistics, which are widely considered to have a significant effect on the delivery and quality of patient care. Supply chain activities are regarded as one of the most important owing to the potentially fatal consequences of ‘stock-outs’ (Özkil et al. 2009; Costantino et al. 2010) where key inventory becomes temporarily unavailable. As a result, hospitals typically employ inventory buffers but in spite of such practices, stock-outs still occur due to disparities in inventory requirements between the hospital and suppliers; the presence of unusual demand for specific items (Jarret 2006); and, receipt of goods which are faulty, contaminated or otherwise unfit for purpose. In such events, the supply chain needs to be agile, responding quickly in order to cater for demand. However, due to the structure of the healthcare supply chain which consists of an external chain (delivering goods to the hospital) and internal hospital chain (distributing delivered goods to end users throughout the hospital), the fast flow of goods is often stalled by the interface between the two (Aronsson et al. 2011).This paper critically assesses the current supply chain practices implemented at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) NHS Trust in London in relation to those that could be utilised, whilst presenting a new concept of supply for key lines and items to the trust using unattended electronic locker boxes to create a more individualistic human-centric service for users, with the overall aim of improving the speed of the distribution of goods both internally (between players once inventory has arrived at the hospital) and externally (for inventory being delivered into the hospital from outside)

Congestion and driver response

In 2 vols.SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN018916 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Waste collection

This chapter provides a summary of the practical issues associated with the collection of municipal solid waste and of the challenges faced in trying to develop accurate waste collection models. The chapter highlights the variety of materials that are collected and the many collection options available (e.g. containers, vehicles, collection frequencies and methods). Waste collection problems and methods include: locating facilities (e.g. vehicle depots, waste disposal sites); sub-dividing rounds into districts for ease of operation and of optimisation; specifying the aggregation level for the collection points to be modelled (e.g. postcode, street, block) and then estimating the waste volume to be collected from each collection point; and optimising vehicle routes and schedules. The chapter concludes with four case study examples of modelling research results from around the worl