Beyond First/Last Mile Active Transportation - BikeShare@UH

Bike sharing is a new green transportation solution that has been developed and adopted at various cities around the world. In this paper, we present the process and results of the design and prototypes that a group of undergraduate students developed for a BikeShare@UH program during Summer 2017. After presenting the detailed results of four project teams focusing on customer discovery, bike share station (BSS) location identification, cloud-based mobile computing platform for user engagement and bike share program operation and management, smart lock, and alternative energy source based on PV panel. With the phase one implementation at the University planned in Spring 2018, we anticipate gathering real time data and feedback to improve the system.Cockrell School of Engineerin

"Last-Mile" preparation for a potential disaster

Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity

The Last Mile

My desire was to encourage the community as we head into Finals Week

Millimeter-wave communication for a last-mile autonomous transport vehicle

Low-speed autonomous transport of passengers and goods is expected to have a strong, positive impact on the reliability and ease of travelling. Various advanced functions of the involved vehicles rely on the wireless exchange of information with other vehicles and the roadside infrastructure, thereby benefitting from the low latency and high throughput characteristics that 5G technology has to offer. This work presents an investigation of 5G millimeter-wave communication links for a low-speed autonomous vehicle, focusing on the effects of the antenna positions on both the received signal quality and the link performance. It is observed that the excess loss for communication with roadside infrastructure in front of the vehicle is nearly half-power beam width independent, and the increase of the root mean square delay spread plays a minor role in the resulting signal quality, as the absolute times are considerably shorter than the typical duration of 5G New Radio symbols. Near certain threshold levels, a reduction of the received power affects the link performance through an increased error vector magnitude of the received signal, and subsequent decrease of the achieved data throughput

Last mile delivery

Last mile delivery is one of the most complex processes in the whole logistics process. This is because it involves many uncertainties, such as weather conditions, road conditions, traffic, car accidents, delivery vehicle anomalies, choice of route, avoiding parcel damage and delivery errors, and communication with the retailer or the recipient of the parcel; all this makes the successful delivery of parcels at the customers’ doorstep difficult. In addition, today’s consumers have much greater expectations regarding delivery services, they demand to receive their parcels much faster or be able to choose the time and place of delivery. All this increases the cost of last mile delivery, accounting for 40% of overall supply chain costs. E-commerce giants such as Amazon can invest a large number of resources into creating optimal last mile delivery solutions, establish numerous warehouses throughout countries which enable them to store the parcels as close to the end user as possible. However, companies that do not have as many resources may find it difficult to satisfy the delivery expectations of their customers; longer and inflexible waiting times, as well as additional payment for delivery may cause companies to quickly lose competitiveness on the market. This means that companies must turn to technological solutions that are going to help them to improve their last mile delivery effectively but at a reasonably low price. Big Data are the basis of all smart solutions. This is because collecting large amounts of data makes it possible to extract information and make future predictions on the basis of past patterns

Doha: The Last Mile

The major issue preventing the conclusion of the Doha Round is the conflict on agricultural protectionism between India and America. When one probes the matter in depth, one immediately sees that a political compromise is within reach

Pricing the last mile in the postal sector

Traditionally, pricing of postal services was fully sender based. We analyze a potential alternative consisting of a two-part tariff where the sender is charged reduced postage while the recipient is charged a yearly fixed fee.Pricing, Two-part tariff, Universal Service, Receiver Pays Principle