Advanced Mobility and Transport Engineering E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 388

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Multimodal transport network customers need to be directed during their travels. A travel support tool can be offered by a Multimodal Information System (MIS), which allows them to input their needs and provides them with the appropriate responses to improve their travel conditions.

The goal of this book is to design and develop methodologies in order to realize a MIS tool which can ensure permanent multimodal information availability before and during travel, considering passengers' mobility.

The authors propose methods and tools that help transport network customers to formulate their requests when they connect to their favorite information systems through PC, laptop, cell phone, Portable Digital Assistant (PDA), etc. The MIS must automatically identify the websites concerning the customer's services. These sites can, in fact, represent transport services, cultural services, tourist services, etc. The system should then be able to collect the necessary travel information from these sites in order to construct and propose the most convenient information according to the user’s requests.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. Agent-oriented Road Traffic Simulation

1.1. Introduction

1.2. The principle of multi-agent systems

1.3. General remarks on traffic simulation devices

1.4. ArchiSim simulator

1.5. The issue of traffic simulation in intersections

1.6. Assessment of different scenarios

1.7. Conclusion

1.8. Bibliography

Chapter 2. An Agent-based Information System for Searching and Creating Mobility-aiding Services

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Formulating the problem

2.3. The global architecture of the system

2.4. Proposal of a resolution system with several interactive entities: a dynamic multi-agent system

2.5. The behavior of a scheduling agent

2.6. Managing system robustness when dealing with disruptions: advancing a negotiation process between stationary and mobile entities

2.7. The usefulness of a dedicated dynamic ontology

2.8. Simulations and results

2.9. Conclusion and perspectives

2.10. List of abbreviations

2.11. Bibliography

Chapter 3. Inter-vehicle Services and Communication

3.1. Introduction

3.2. The specificity of inter-vehicle communication

3.3. Inter-vehicle communication

3.4. Deployment and maintenance

3.5. What kind of future can we envisage for inter-vehicle services and communication technologies?

3.6. Bibliography

Chapter 4. Modeling and Control of Traffic Flow

4.1. General introduction

4.2. Microscopic models

4.3. Macroscopic models

4.4. General remarks concerning macroscopic and microscopic models

4.5. Hybrid models

4.6. Different strategies for controlling road traffic flow systems

4.7. Conclusion

4.8. Bibliography

Chapter 5. Criteria and Methods for Interactive System Evaluation: Application to a Regulation Post in the Transport Domain

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Principles and criteria of evaluation

5.3. Methods, techniques and tools for the evaluation of interactive systems

5.4. Toward automated or semi-automated evaluation assistance tools

5.5. Proposal of a generic and configurable environment to aid in the evaluation of agent-based interactive systems: EISEval

5.6. Context of operation of the proposed evaluation environment

5.7. Conclusion

5.8. Bibliography

List of Authors

Index

First published 2012 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

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© ISTE Ltd 2012

The rights of Slim Hammadi and Mekki Ksouri to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Advanced mobility and transport engineering / edited by Slim Hammadi, Mekki Ksouri.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84821-377-7

1. Transportation engineering. I. Hammadi, Slim. II. Ksouri, Mekki.

TA1145.A37 2012

629.04--dc23

2012008581

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84821-377-7

Preface

The main functions of the transport engineering field refer to the needs of users, the study and design of technical and industrial solutions, as well as their implementation and supervision.

The user of a transport system can be a network controller or a passenger who needs travel information. In any case, a client needs to be provided with advanced mobility services.

Transport engineering is a field of enquiry appealing to researchers worldwide. The purpose of their work is to improve existing solutions or to try to solve new functional problems in an effective manner.

New problem-solving methods are being developed in relation to the emerging needs of users as well as the latest communication and mobility technologies in an ergonomic, socioeconomic and ecological context.

Thanks to the meeting of the best teams of researchers and innovators in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region within CISIT1 — the International Campus on Safety and Intermodality in Transportation — many lasting partnerships have been developed with the contribution of industrialists, transport operators and international researchers who have been invited to join us. As a result of these fruitful partnerships, the idea of writing a reference work emerged.

These research endeavors are part of the “Multimodal Urban and Intercity Networks” action initiated by CISIT in order to accomplish the strategic objective of “optimal management of multimodal transport chains”. This objective is associated with three other large strategic objectives:

– new challenges for clean, lightweight and secure vehicles;

– safe, secure and intelligent mobility; and

– morpho-adaptive safety and human factors.

All of these objectives help to face the challenge of the sustainable mobility of people and goods.

The authors of this reference work offer the reader an overview of the latest techniques, approaches and methods used for identifying, designing, optimizing and carrying out advanced mobility services.

We express our sincere thanks to all those who have contributed to this work, members of CISIT, as well as researchers in various fields relating to transport engineering and advanced mobility services.

Slim HAMMADI

Mekki KSOURI

April 2012

1www.cisit.org.

Introduction

Given the constant reshaping of the mobility principles, concepts and individuals’ preferences, the implementation of new services joining the context of intelligent mobility is becoming necessary. This reshaping is meant to address environmental, economic, and social problems and is part of a policy of incentives promoting clean, flexible and less costly modes of transportation. Furthermore, given the extension in distances and the duration of journeys , such services need to ensure full spatiotemporal coverage, attending to urban, peri-urban and extra-urban areas. Thus, besides ensuring continuity and security of all journeys, decreasing budget allocations for transport and combining efficacy with the need for the optimization of travel time, these are among the main objectives of these services. Competitiveness in this field has currently reached its highest peak: systems characterized by monomodality, intermodality, multimodality and recently co-modality, compete fiercely with one another. Therefore, following the example of CISIT — the International Campus on Safety and Intermodality in Transportation — in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, projects have been initiated in order to realize innovative ideas combining intelligence with transport. As for the latter, different systems including transport-on-demand, “eco-sharing” modes, travel assistance have been realized. Moreover, thanks to technological advancements, intelligent transport systems are now beyond the stage of mere ideas; they have become extremely significant, if not essential.

Within the framework of sustainable mobility, the time has arrived for minimum usage of the single car in favor of alternative modes of transport that are “soft” and collective: we need to promote a rational and suitable use of the best mode of transportation for a given journey. However, it is the transport information that must be central to both reflection and action.

Multimodal or passenger information is information that accompanies the passenger before and during his or her journey when using public transport. This travel assistance generally consists of a detailed description of available itineraries, arrivals and departures, duration of journeys, ticket prices for different modes of transport and sometimes even for different transport operators. In addition to this essential information, passengers can be provided with futher information called secondary (or approval) information that informs them about the weather, nearest restaurants, hotels and other local services. This secondary information is not necessary for describing the journey, but can be indispensable for transport users in order to choose the best mobility offer provided. Moreover, the quality of multimodal information in terms of availability and relevance has currently become a fundamental criterion in assessing the quality of services offered by transport operators.

Nowadays, researchers, industrialists and public communities are involved in a process of innovation in order to create multimodal and secondary information services, adapted to the needs of its users. Special attention to the industrial and commercial context of different transport operators is given.

Chapter 1

Agent-oriented Road Traffic Simulation1

1.1. Introduction

The main objective of (computer) road traffic simulation is to recreate and understand the observed traffic phenomena. Road traffic can be defined as the phenomena resulting from the movement of road users within a road network of limited capacity. The traffic system is characterized by an endeavor consisting of road infrastructure that was designed in such a way as to accommodate a collective optimum, and by an ever-increasing demand on the part of users looking to achieve an individual optimum. The reconciliation between private and collective interests gave birth to a vast amount of research, especially in traffic supervision [HAL 97], the optimization of traffic flow [BAZ 05] and in road infrastructures [ESP 02].

One of the notoriously difficult theoretical problems in the development of simulation devices is the case study of an intersection. Traditional approaches, consisting mainly of traffic simulation devices, have so far relied on considerable simplifications. A problem-solving mechanism within an intersection allows vehicles to enter an intersection as long as their trajectories do not cross. Such solutions are sometimes satisfactory, but they are not always appropriate when it comes to recreating the behavior of real drivers. The precision of these simulations is very important, as the driver interferes with the overall flow of the road network. For our purposes, we propose to tackle this traffic simulation problem using an agent-oriented approach.

This chapter is divided into five sections. Section 1.2 briefly introduces multi-agent systems. Section 1.3 presents road traffic simulation devices. In section 1.4 we introduce the ArchiSim simulation device. Finally, in the last two sections we examine the model that was used as well as the results that were obtained in a few simulations.

1.2. The principle of multi-agent systems

This section is an excerpt from a document written for GdR I3 [GUE 10].

1.2.1. Motivations

In order to approach difficult problems, special efforts have been made in the area of distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. The latter offer some advantages [GAS 89, CHA 92, FER 95, BRI 01] and provide useful models for the study of complex distributed systems made of autonomous components capable of interacting with one other. These entities are called agents. Breaking down the system into various agents allows for better responsiveness and a higher adaptability to the changing environment. Moreover, the interactions between agents may generate organized (social) structures, which in turn constrain and coordinate agents behavior.