The Emerging Central Business District (CBD) in Lafia Town, Nigeria, and its Related Urban Planning Problems

A spatial analysis of a large 20th century urban settlement (town/city) easily presents the celebrated central Business District (CBD). Theories of Urban Land Economics have easily justified and attempted to explain the existence of such a district activity area within the cityscape. This work examines the gradual emergence and development of the CBD in Lafia Town, Nigeria over 20 years and the attended urban problems caused by its emergence. Personal knowledge and observation of land use change are the main sources of data for the work, with unstructured interview with residents. The result are that the absence of a co-ordinate land use plan for the town, multi-nuclei nature, and regional location of surrounding towns have affected the growth pattern, hence the CBD. Traffic congestion, dispersed CBD land uses are some of the urban planning problems. The work concludes by advocating for integrating CBD uses.

Analysis of Linked in Series Servers with Blocking, Priority Feedback Service and Threshold Policy

The use of buffer thresholds, blocking and adequate service strategies are well-known techniques for computer networks traffic congestion control. This motivates the study of series queues with blocking, feedback (service under Head of Line (HoL) priority discipline) and finite capacity buffers with thresholds. In this paper, the external traffic is modelled using the Poisson process and the service times have been modelled using the exponential distribution. We consider a three-station network with two finite buffers, for which a set of thresholds (tm1 and tm2) is defined. This computer network behaves as follows. A task, which finishes its service at station B, gets sent back to station A for re-processing with probability o. When the number of tasks in the second buffer exceeds a threshold tm2 and the number of task in the first buffer is less than tm1, the fed back task is served under HoL priority discipline. In opposite case, for fed backed tasks, “no two priority services in succession" procedure (preventing a possible overflow in the first buffer) is applied. Using an open Markovian queuing schema with blocking, priority feedback service and thresholds, a closed form cost-effective analytical solution is obtained. The model of servers linked in series is very accurate. It is derived directly from a twodimensional state graph and a set of steady-state equations, followed by calculations of main measures of effectiveness. Consequently, efficient expressions of the low computational cost are determined. Based on numerical experiments and collected results we conclude that the proposed model with blocking, feedback and thresholds can provide accurate performance estimates of linked in series networks.

Issues in Travel Demand Forecasting

Travel demand forecasting including four travel choices, i.e., trip generation, trip distribution, modal split and traffic assignment constructs the core of transportation planning. In its current application, travel demand forecasting has associated with three important issues, i.e., interface inconsistencies among four travel choices, inefficiency of commonly used solution algorithms, and undesirable multiple path solutions. In this paper, each of the three issues is extensively elaborated. An ideal unified framework for the combined model consisting of the four travel choices and variable demand functions is also suggested. Then, a few remarks are provided in the end of the paper

Network Application Identification Based on Communication Characteristics of Application Messages

A person-to-person information sharing is easily realized by P2P networks in which servers are not essential. Leakage of information, which are caused by malicious accesses for P2P networks, has become a new social issues. To prevent information leakage, it is necessary to detect and block traffics of P2P software. Since some P2P softwares can spoof port numbers, it is difficult to detect the traffics sent from P2P softwares by using port numbers. It is more difficult to devise effective countermeasures for detecting the software because their protocol are not public. In this paper, a discriminating method of network applications based on communication characteristics of application messages without port numbers is proposed. The proposed method is based on an assumption that there can be some rules about time intervals to transmit messages in application layer and the number of necessary packets to send one message. By extracting the rule from network traffic, the proposed method can discriminate applications without port numbers.

Congestion Control for Internet Media Traffic

In this paper we investigated a number of the Internet congestion control algorithms that has been developed in the last few years. It was obviously found that many of these algorithms were designed to deal with the Internet traffic merely as a train of consequent packets. Other few algorithms were specifically tailored to handle the Internet congestion caused by running media traffic that represents audiovisual content. This later set of algorithms is considered to be aware of the nature of this media content. In this context we briefly explained a number of congestion control algorithms and hence categorized them into the two following categories: i) Media congestion control algorithms. ii) Common congestion control algorithms. We hereby recommend the usage of the media congestion control algorithms for the reason of being media content-aware rather than the other common type of algorithms that blindly manipulates such traffic. We showed that the spread of such media content-aware algorithms over Internet will lead to better congestion control status in the coming years. This is due to the observed emergence of the era of digital convergence where the media traffic type will form the majority of the Internet traffic.

Object Detection based Weighted-Center Surround Difference

Intelligent traffic surveillance technology is an issue in the field of traffic data analysis. Therefore, we need the technology to detect moving objects in real-time while there are variations in background and natural light. In this paper, we proposed a Weighted-Center Surround Difference method for object detection in outdoor environments. The proposed system detects objects using the saliency map that is obtained by analyzing the weight of each layers of Gaussian pyramid. In order to validate the effectiveness of our system, we implemented the proposed method using a digital signal processor, TMS320DM6437. Experimental results show that blurred noisy around objects was effectively eliminated and the object detection accuracy is improved.

Traffic Signal Coordinated Control Optimization: A Case Study

In the urban traffic network, the intersections are the “bottleneck point" of road network capacity. And the arterials are the main body in road network and the key factor which guarantees the normal operation of the city-s social and economic activities. The rapid increase in vehicles leads to seriously traffic jam and cause the increment of vehicles- delay. Most cities of our country are traditional single control system, which cannot meet the need for the city traffic any longer. In this paper, Synchro6.0 as a platform to minimize the intersection delay, optimizesingle signal cycle and split for Zhonghua Street in Handan City. Meanwhile, linear control system uses to optimize the phase for the t arterial road in this system. Comparing before and after use the control, capacities and service levels of this road and the adjacent road have improved significantly.

Modeling and Performance Evaluation of LTE Networks with Different TCP Variants

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless broadband technology developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) release 8, and it's represent the competitiveness of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) for the next 10 years and beyond. The concepts for LTE systems have been introduced in 3GPP release 8, with objective of high-data-rate, low-latency and packet-optimized radio access technology. In this paper, performance of different TCP variants during LTE network investigated. The performance of TCP over LTE is affected mostly by the links of the wired network and total bandwidth available at the serving base station. This paper describes an NS-2 based simulation analysis of TCP-Vegas, TCP-Tahoe, TCPReno, TCP-Newreno, TCP-SACK, and TCP-FACK, with full modeling of all traffics of LTE system. The Evaluation of the network performance with all TCP variants is mainly based on throughput, average delay and lost packet. The analysis of TCP performance over LTE ensures that all TCP's have a similar throughput and the best performance return to TCP-Vegas than other variants.

Remarks Regarding Queuing Model and Packet Loss Probability for the Traffic with Self-Similar Characteristics

Network management techniques have long been of interest to the networking research community. The queue size plays a critical role for the network performance. The adequate size of the queue maintains Quality of Service (QoS) requirements within limited network capacity for as many users as possible. The appropriate estimation of the queuing model parameters is crucial for both initial size estimation and during the process of resource allocation. The accurate resource allocation model for the management system increases the network utilization. The present paper demonstrates the results of empirical observation of memory allocation for packet-based services.

Roundabout Optimal Entry and Circulating Flow Induced by Road Hump

Roundabout work on the principle of circulation and entry flows, where the maximum entry flow rates depend largely on circulating flow bearing in mind that entry flows must give away to circulating flows. Where an existing roundabout has a road hump installed at the entry arm, it can be hypothesized that the kinematics of vehicles may prevent the entry arm from achieving optimum performance. Road humps are traffic calming devices placed across road width solely as speed reduction mechanism. They are the preferred traffic calming option in Malaysia and often used on single and dual carriageway local routes. The speed limit on local routes is 30mph (50 km/hr). Road humps in their various forms achieved the biggest mean speed reduction (based on a mean speed before traffic calming of 30mph) of up to 10mph or 16 km/hr according to the UK Department of Transport. The underlying aim of reduced speed should be to achieve a 'safe' distribution of speeds which reflects the function of the road and the impacts on the local community. Constraining safe distribution of speeds may lead to poor drivers timing and delayed reflex reaction that can probably cause accident. Previous studies on road hump impact have focused mainly on speed reduction, traffic volume, noise and vibrations, discomfort and delay from the use of road humps. The paper is aimed at optimal entry and circulating flow induced by road humps. Results show that roundabout entry and circulating flow perform better in circumstances where there is no road hump at entrance.

Study on the Effect of Road Infrastructure, Socio-Economic and Demographic Features on Road Crashes in Bangladesh

Road crashes not only claim lives and inflict injuries but also create economic burden to the society due to loss of productivity. The problem of deaths and injuries as a result of road traffic crashes is now acknowledged to be a global phenomenon with authorities in virtually all countries of the world concerned about the growth in the number of people killed and seriously injured on their roads. However, the road crash scenario of a developing country like Bangladesh is much worse comparing with this of developed countries. For developing proper countermeasures it is necessary to identify the factors affecting crash occurrences. The objectives of the study is to examine the effect of district wise road infrastructure, socioeconomic and demographic features on crash occurrence .The unit of analysis will be taken as individual district which has not been explored much in the past. Reported crash data obtained from Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) from the year 2004 to 2010 are utilized to develop negative binomial model. The model result will reveal the effect of road length (both paved and unpaved), road infrastructure and several socio economic characteristics on district level crash frequency in Bangladesh.

A Technical Perspective on Roadway Safety in Eastern Province: Data Evaluation and Spatial Analysis

Saudi Arabia in recent years has seen drastic increase in traffic related crashes. With population of over 29 million, Saudi Arabia is considered as a fast growing and emerging economy. The rapid population increase and economic growth has resulted in rapid expansion of transportation infrastructure, which has led to increase in road crashes. Saudi Ministry of Interior reported more than 7,000 people killed and 68,000 injured in 2011 ranking Saudi Arabia to be one of the worst worldwide in traffic safety. The traffic safety issues in the country also result in distress to road users and cause and economic loss exceeding 3.7 billion Euros annually. Keeping this in view, the researchers in Saudi Arabia are investigating ways to improve traffic safety conditions in the country. This paper presents a multilevel approach to collect traffic safety related data required to do traffic safety studies in the region. Two highway corridors including King Fahd Highway 39 kilometre and Gulf Cooperation Council Highway 42 kilometre long connecting the cities of Dammam and Khobar were selected as a study area. Traffic data collected included traffic counts, crash data, travel time data, and speed data. The collected data was analysed using geographic information system to evaluate any correlation. Further research is needed to investigate the effectiveness of traffic safety related data when collected in a concerted effort.

A Novel Approach of Route Choice in Stochastic Time-varying Networks

Many exist studies always use Markov decision processes (MDPs) in modeling optimal route choice in stochastic, time-varying networks. However, taking many variable traffic data and transforming them into optimal route decision is a computational challenge by employing MDPs in real transportation networks. In this paper we model finite horizon MDPs using directed hypergraphs. It is shown that the problem of route choice in stochastic, time-varying networks can be formulated as a minimum cost hyperpath problem, and it also can be solved in linear time. We finally demonstrate the significant computational advantages of the introduced methods.

Location Update Cost Analysis of Mobile IPv6 Protocols

Mobile IP has been developed to provide the continuous information network access to mobile users. In IP-based mobile networks, location management is an important component of mobility management. This management enables the system to track the location of mobile node between consecutive communications. It includes two important tasks- location update and call delivery. Location update is associated with signaling load. Frequent updates lead to degradation in the overall performance of the network and the underutilization of the resources. It is, therefore, required to devise the mechanism to minimize the update rate. Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and Hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) have been the potential candidates for deployments in mobile IP networks for mobility management. HMIPv6 through studies has been shown with better performance as compared to MIPv6. It reduces the signaling overhead traffic by making registration process local. In this paper, we present performance analysis of MIPv6 and HMIPv6 using an analytical model. Location update cost function is formulated based on fluid flow mobility model. The impact of cell residence time, cell residence probability and user-s mobility is investigated. Numerical results are obtained and presented in graphical form. It is shown that HMIPv6 outperforms MIPv6 for high mobility users only and for low mobility users; performance of both the schemes is almost equivalent to each other.

Routing Load Analysis over 802.11 DCF of Reactive Routing Protocols DSR and DYMO

The Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of self-configuring and rapidly deployed mobile nodes (routers) without any central infrastructure. Routing is one of the potential issues. Many routing protocols are reported but it is difficult to decide which one is best in all scenarios. In this paper on demand routing protocols DSR and DYMO based on IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol are examined and characteristic summary of these routing protocols is presented. Their performance is analyzed and compared on performance measuring metrics throughput, dropped packets due to non availability of routes, duplicate RREQ generated for route discovery and normalized routing load by varying CBR data traffic load using QualNet 5.0.2 network simulator.

Distributed Detection and Optimal Traffic-blocking of Network Worms

Despite the recent surge of research in control of worm propagation, currently, there is no effective defense system against such cyber attacks. We first design a distributed detection architecture called Detection via Distributed Blackholes (DDBH). Our novel detection mechanism could be implemented via virtual honeypots or honeynets. Simulation results show that a worm can be detected with virtual honeypots on only 3% of the nodes. Moreover, the worm is detected when less than 1.5% of the nodes are infected. We then develop two control strategies: (1) optimal dynamic trafficblocking, for which we determine the condition that guarantees minimum number of removed nodes when the worm is contained and (2) predictive dynamic traffic-blocking–a realistic deployment of the optimal strategy on scale-free graphs. The predictive dynamic traffic-blocking, coupled with the DDBH, ensures that more than 40% of the network is unaffected by the propagation at the time when the worm is contained.

Bi-Criteria Latency Optimization of Intra-and Inter-Autonomous System Traffic Engineering

Traffic Engineering (TE) is the process of controlling how traffic flows through a network in order to facilitate efficient and reliable network operations while simultaneously optimizing network resource utilization and traffic performance. TE improves the management of data traffic within a network and provides the better utilization of network resources. Many research works considers intra and inter Traffic Engineering separately. But in reality one influences the other. Hence the effective network performances of both inter and intra Autonomous Systems (AS) are not optimized properly. To achieve a better Joint Optimization of both Intra and Inter AS TE, we propose a joint Optimization technique by considering intra-AS features during inter – AS TE and vice versa. This work considers the important criterion say latency within an AS and between ASes. and proposes a Bi-Criteria Latency optimization model. Hence an overall network performance can be improved by considering this jointoptimization technique in terms of Latency.

Visualisation and Navigation in Large Scale P2P Service Networks

In Peer-to-Peer service networks, where peers offer any kind of publicly available services or applications, intuitive navigation through all services in the network becomes more difficult as the number of services increases. In this article, a concept is discussed that enables users to intuitively browse and use large scale P2P service networks. The concept extends the idea of creating virtual 3D-environments solely based on Peer-to-Peer technologies. Aside from browsing, users shall have the possibility to emphasize services of interest using their own semantic criteria. The appearance of the virtual world shall intuitively reflect network properties that may be of interest for the user. Additionally, the concept comprises options for load- and traffic-balancing. In this article, the requirements concerning the underlying infrastructure and the graphical user interface are defined. First impressions of the appearance of future systems are presented and the next steps towards a prototypical implementation are discussed.

A Fast Sign Localization System Using Discriminative Color Invariant Segmentation

Building intelligent traffic guide systems has been an interesting subject recently. A good system should be able to observe all important visual information to be able to analyze the context of the scene. To do so, signs in general, and traffic signs in particular, are usually taken into account as they contain rich information to these systems. Therefore, many researchers have put an effort on sign recognition field. Sign localization or sign detection is the most important step in the sign recognition process. This step filters out non informative area in the scene, and locates candidates in later steps. In this paper, we apply a new approach in detecting sign locations using a new color invariant model. Experiments are carried out with different datasets introduced in other works where authors claimed the difficulty in detecting signs under unfavorable imaging conditions. Our method is simple, fast and most importantly it gives a high detection rate in locating signs.

Intercultural Mediation Training and the Training Process of Common Sense Leaders by the Leadership of Universities Communication and Artistic Campaigns

It is quite essential to form dialogue mechanisms and dialogue channels to solve intercultural communication issues. Therefore, every country should develop a intercultural education project which aims to resolve international communication issues. For proper mediation training, the first step is to reach an agreement on the actors to run the project. The strongest mediation mechanisms in the world should be analyzed and initiated within the educational policies. A communication-based mediation model should be developed for international mediation training. Mediators can use their convincing communication skills as a part of this model. At the first, fundamental stages of the mediation training should be specified within the scope of the model. Another important topic at this point is common sence and peace leaders to act as an ombudsman in this process. Especially for solving some social issues and conflicts, common sense leaders acting as an ombudsman would lead to effective communication. In mediation training that is run by universities and non-governmental organizations, another phase is to focus on conducting the meetings. In intercultural mediation training, one of the most critical topics is to conduct the meeting traffic and performing a shuttle diplomacy. Meeting traffic is where the mediator organizes meetings with the parties with initiative powers, in order to contribute to the solution of the issue, and schedule these meetings. In this notice titled “ Intercultural mediation training and the training process of common sense leaders by the leadership of universities communication and artistic campaigns" , communication models and strategies about this topic will be constructed and an intercultural art activities and perspectives will be presented.