Abstract: This paper describes the architecture for a collaborative Car Pooling System based on a credits mechanism to motivate the cooperation among users. Users can spend the accumulated credits on parking facilities. For this, we propose a business model to support the collaboration between a car pooling system and parking facilities. The Portuguese Lisbon-s Metropolitan area is used as application scenario.
Abstract: A long-term campaign for monitoring the
concentration of atmospheric Particulate Matter (PM) was conducted
at multiple sites located in the center and suburbs of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Area in Japan. The concentration of fine PM has shown a
declining trend over the last two decades. A positive matrix
factorization model elucidated that the contribution of combustion
sources was drastically reduced. In Japan, the regulations on vehicle
exhaust emissions were phased in and gradually tightened over the last
two decades, which has triggered a notable reduction in PM emissions
from automobiles and has contributed to the mitigation of the problem
of fine PM pollution.
Abstract: Commercial infrastructures intended for use as leisure
retreats such as golf and ski resorts have been extensively developed in many rural areas of Japan. However, following the burst of the economic bubble in the 1990s, several existing resorts faced tough
management decisions and some were forced to close their business.
In this study, six alternative management options for restructuring the
existing golf courses (park, cemetery, biofuel production, reforestation,
pasturing and abandonment) are examined and their environmental
and economic impacts are quantitatively assessed. In addition,
restructuring scenarios of these options and an ex-ante assessment
model are developed. The scenario analysis by Monte Carlo simulation shows a clear trade-off between GHG savings and benefit/cost (B/C) ratios, of which “Restoring Nature" scenario
absorbs the most CO2 among the four scenarios considered, but its B/C
ratio is the lowest. This study can be used to select or examine options
and scenarios of golf course management and rural environmental
management policies.
Abstract: The purposes of this study are 1) to study the over 20-year attempt of Mahakan fort community to negotiate with Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to remain in their residential area belonging to the state, and 2) to apply the new social and cultural dimension between the state and the community as an alternative for local participation in keeping their residential area. This is a qualitative research, and the findings reveal that the community claimed their ancestors’ right as owners of this piece of land for over 200 years. The community, therefore, requested to take part in the preservation of land, culture and local intellect and the area management in terms of being a learning resource on the cultural road in Rattanakosin Island. However, BMA imposed the law concerning the community area relocation in Rattanakosin Island. The result of law enforcement led to the failure of the area relocation, and the hard hit on physical structure of the area including the overall deterioration of the cultural road renovated in the year 1982, the 200 years’ celebration of Bangkok. The enforcement of law by the state required the move of the community, and the landscape improvement based on the capital city plan. However, this enforcement resulted in the unending conflicts between the community and the state, and the solution of this problem was unclear. At the same time the community has spent a long time opposing the state’s action, and preparing themselves by administrating the community behind Mahakan fortress with community administrative committee under the suggestion of external organization by registering all community members, providing funds for community administration. At the meantime the state lacked the continuation of the enforcement due to political problem and BMA’s administration problem. It is, therefore, suggested that an alternative solution to this problem lie at the negotiation between the state and the community with the purpose of the collaboration between the two to develop the area under the protective law of each side.
Abstract: Loop detectors report traffic characteristics in real
time. They are at the core of traffic control process. Intuitively,
one would expect that as density of detection increases, so would
the quality of estimates derived from detector data. However, as
detector deployment increases, the associated operating and
maintenance cost increases. Thus, traffic agencies often need to
decide where to add new detectors and which detectors should
continue receiving maintenance, given their resource constraints.
This paper evaluates the effect of detector spacing on freeway
travel time estimation. A freeway section (Interstate-15) in Salt
Lake City metropolitan region is examined. The research reveals
that travel time accuracy does not necessarily deteriorate with
increased detector spacing. Rather, the actual location of detectors
has far greater influence on the quality of travel time estimates.
The study presents an innovative computational approach that
delivers optimal detector locations through a process that relies on
Genetic Algorithm formulation.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to study the people’s level of participation in activities of the community, their satisfaction towards the community, the attachment they have to the community, factors that influence the attachment, as well as the characteristics of the relationships of military families’ of the Royal Guards community of Dusit District. The method used was non-probability sampling by quota sampling according to people’s age. The determined age group was 18 years or older.
One set of a sample group was done per family. The questionnaires were conducted by 287 people. Snowball sampling was also used by interviewing people of the community, starting from the Royal Guards Community’s leader, then by 20 of the community’s well-respected persons. The data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics, such as arithmetic mean and standard deviation, as well as by inferential statistics, such as Independent - Samples T test (T-test), One-Way ANOVA (F-test), Chi-Square. Descriptive analysis according to the structure of the interview content was also used. The results of the research is that the participation of the population in the Royal Guards Community in various activities is at a medium level, with the average participation level during Mother’s and Father’s Days. The people’s general level of satisfaction towards the premises of the Royal Guards Community is at the highest level.
The people were most satisfied with the transportation within the community and in contacting with people from outside the premises. The access to the community is convenient and there are various entrances. The attachment of the people to the Royal Guards Community in general and by each category is at a high level. The feeling that the community is their home rated the highest average. Factors that influence the attachment of the people of the Royal Guards Community are age, status, profession, income, length of stay in the community, membership of social groups, having neighbors they feel close and familiar with, and as well as the benefits they receive from the community. In addition, it was found that people that participate in activities have a high level of positive relationship towards the attachment of the people to the Royal Guards Community. The satisfaction of the community has a very high level of positive relationship with the attachment of the people to the Royal Guards Community.
The characteristics of the attachment of military families’ is that they live in big houses that everyone has to protect and care for, starting from the leader of the family as well as all members. Therefore, they all love the community they live in. The characteristics that show the participation of activities within the community and the high level of satisfaction towards the premises of the community will enable the people to be more attached to the community. The people feel that everyone is close neighbors within the community, as if they are one big family.
Abstract: Facility location problem involves locating a facility
to optimize some performance measures. Location of a public facility
to serve the community, such as a fire station, significantly affects its
service quality. Main objective in locating a fire station is to
minimize the response time, which is the time duration between
receiving a call and reaching the place of incident. In metropolitan
areas, fire vehicles need to cross highways and other traffic obstacles
through some obstacle-overcoming points which delay the response
time. In this paper, fire station location problem is analyzed.
Simulation models are developed for the location problems which
involve obstacles. Particular case problems are analyzed and the
results are presented.
Abstract: The purposes of this study are to study political
information exposure, politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and
political participations among people in Bangkok Metropolitan Area.
The sample consisted of 420 which were selected by using accidental sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to all of the
respondents to obtain the data for this research. T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson-s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The findings are as follows: The difference in gender,
education, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political information exposures. The difference in age, income has
significantly effect upon politicians- perceptions. The difference in income has significantly effect upon political attitudes. The
difference in gender, income and occupation has significantly effect
upon political participations. There were a significantly relations between political information exposures, political attitudes, political
participations and between politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations.
Abstract: This paper explores gender related barriers to interagency collaboration in statutory children safeguard partnerships against a theoretical framework that considers individuals, professions and organisations interacting as part of a complex adaptive system. We argue that gender-framed obstacles to effective communication between culturally discrepant agencies can ultimately impact on the effectiveness of policy delivery,. We focused our research on three partnership structures in Sefton Metropolitan Borough in order to observe how interactions occur, whether the agencies involved perceive their occupational environment as being gender affected and whether they believe this can hinder effective collaboration with other biased organisations. Our principal empirical findings indicate that there is a general awareness amongst professionals of the role that gender plays in each of the agencies reviewed, that gender may well constitute a barrier to effective communication, but there is a sense in which there is little scope for change in the short term. We aim to signal here, however, the need to change against the risk of service failure.
Abstract: This paper describes a novel projection algorithm, the Projection Onto Span Algorithm (POSA) for wavelet-based superresolution and removing speckle (in wavelet domain) of unknown variance from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. Although the POSA is good as a new superresolution algorithm for image enhancement, image metrology and biometric identification, here one will use it like a tool of despeckling, being the first time that an algorithm of super-resolution is used for despeckling of SAR images. Specifically, the speckled SAR image is decomposed into wavelet subbands; POSA is applied to the high subbands, and reconstruct a SAR image from the modified detail coefficients. Experimental results demonstrate that the new method compares favorably to several other despeckling methods on test SAR images.
Abstract: This study uses GIS (Geographic Information
Systems) to conduct an evaluation of the degree of the sufficiency of
public green spaces such as parks and urban green areas as an
indicator of the density of metropolitan areas, in particular the Chubu
metropolitan area, in Japan. To that end, it first grasps the distribution
situation of green spaces in the three metropolitan areas in Japan,
especially in the Chubu metropolitan area, using GIS digital maps.
And based on this result, it conducts a GIS evaluation of the degree of
sufficiency of public green spaces and arranges the result for every
distance belt from the central part to compare and exam for every
distance belt away from the center in the Chubu metropolitan area.
Furthermore, after pointing out the insufficient areas of public green
spaces based on the result, it also proposes the improvement policy
which can be introduced in the Chubu metropolitan area.
Abstract: Nowadays, the earth is countered with serious problem
of air pollution. This problem has been started from the industrial
revolution and has been faster in recent years, so that leads the earth
to ecological and environmental disaster. One of its results is the
global warming problem and its related increase in global
temperature. The most important factors in air pollution especially in
urban environments are Automobiles and residential buildings that are
the biggest consumers of the fossil energies, so that if the residential
buildings as a big part of the consumers of such energies reduce their
consumption rate, the air pollution will be decreased. Since
Metropolises are the main centers of air pollution in the world,
assessment and analysis of efficient strategies in decreasing air
pollution in such cities, can lead to the desirable and suitable results
and can solve the problem at least in critical level. Tabriz city is one
of the most important metropolises in North west of Iran that about
two million people are living there. for its situation in cold dry
climate, has a high rate of fossil energies consumption that make air
pollution in its urban environment. These two factors, being both
metropolis and in cold dry climate, make this article try to analyze the
strategies of climatic design in old districts of the city and use them in
new districts of the future. These strategies can be used in this city
and other similar cities and pave the way to reduce energy
consumption and related air pollution to save whole world.
Abstract: This research aimed to study correlation between
work satisfaction and organization core value of officers in
Waterworks Authority, Bangkean Branch. Sample group of the study
was 112 officers who worked in the Waterworks Authority,
Bangkean Branch. Questionnaires were employed as a research tools,
while, Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test, One-way
ANOVA, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation were claimed as
statistics used in this study. Researcher found that overall and
individual aspects of work satisfaction namely, work characteristic,
work progress, and colleagues significantly correlated with
organization core value in aspect of perception in choice of work at
0.5, 0.01, and 0.01 respectively. Also, such aspects were compatible
with income at .05 which indicated the low level of correlation, mid
low correlation respectively at the same direction, same direction,
opposite direction, and same direction, correspondingly.
Abstract: Nowadays, several techniques such as; Fuzzy
Inference System (FIS) and Neural Network (NN) are employed for
developing of the predictive models to estimate parameters of water
quality. The main objective of this study is to compare between the
predictive ability of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System
(ANFIS) model and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to
estimate the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) on data from 11
sampling sites of Saen Saep canal in Bangkok, Thailand. The data is
obtained from the Department of Drainage and Sewerage, Bangkok
Metropolitan Administration, during 2004-2011. The five parameters
of water quality namely Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen
Demand (COD), Ammonia Nitrogen (NH3N), Nitrate Nitrogen
(NO3N), and Total Coliform bacteria (T-coliform) are used as the
input of the models. These water quality indices affect the
biochemical oxygen demand. The experimental results indicate that
the ANN model provides a higher correlation coefficient (R=0.73)
and a lower root mean square error (RMSE=4.53) than the
corresponding ANFIS model.
Abstract: Recent trends in building constructions in Libya are
more toward tall (high-rise) building projects. As a consequence, a
better estimation of the lateral loading in the design process is
becoming the focal of a safe and cost effective building industry. Byin-
large, Libya is not considered a potential earthquake prone zone,
making wind is the dominant design lateral loads. Current design
practice in the country estimates wind speeds on a mere random
bases by considering certain factor of safety to the chosen wind
speed. Therefore, a need for a more accurate estimation of wind
speeds in Libya was the motivation behind this study. Records of
wind speed data were collected from 22 metrological stations in
Libya, and were statistically analysed. The analysis of more than four
decades of wind speed records suggests that the country can be
divided into four zones of distinct wind speeds. A computer “survey"
program was manipulated to draw design wind speeds contour map
for the state of Libya.
The paper presents the statistical analysis of Libya-s recorded
wind speed data and proposes design wind speed values for a 50-year
return period that covers the entire country.
Abstract: Clean air in subway station is important to passengers. The Platform Screen Doors (PSDs) can improve indoor air quality in the subway station; however the air quality in the subway tunnel is degraded. The subway tunnel has high CO2 concentration and indoor particulate matter (PM) value. The Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) level in subway environment degrades by increasing the frequency of the train operation and the number of the train. The ventilation systems of the subway tunnel need improvements to have better air-quality. Numerical analyses might be effective tools to analyze the performance of subway twin-track tunnel ventilation systems. An existing subway twin-track tunnel in the metropolitan Seoul subway system is chosen for the numerical simulations. The ANSYS CFX software is used for unsteady computations of the airflow inside the twin-track tunnel when the train moves. The airflow inside the tunnel is simulated when one train runs and two trains run at the same time in the tunnel. The piston-effect inside the tunnel is analyzed when all shafts function as the natural ventilation shaft. The supplied air through the shafts is mixed with the pollutant air in the tunnel. The pollutant air is exhausted by the mechanical ventilation shafts. The supplied and discharged airs are balanced when only one train runs in the twin-track tunnel. The pollutant air in the tunnel is high when two trains run simultaneously in opposite direction and all shafts functioned as the natural shaft cases when there are no electrical power supplies in the shafts. The remained pollutant air inside the tunnel enters into the station platform when the doors are opened.
Abstract: This research focuses on the use of a recommender
system in decision support by means of a used car dealer case study
in Bangkok Metropolitan. The goal is to develop an effective used car
purchasing system for dealers based on the above premise. The
underlying principle rests on content-based recommendation from a
set of usability surveys. A prototype was developed to conduct
buyers- survey selected from 5 experts and 95 general public. The
responses were analyzed to determine the mean and standard
deviation of buyers- preference. The results revealed that both groups
were in favor of using the proposed system to assist their buying
decision. This indicates that the proposed system is meritorious to
used car dealers.
Abstract: An area-integrating method that uses the technique of total integrated light scatter for evaluating the root mean square height of the surface Sq has been presented in the paper. It is based on the measurement of the scatter power using a flat photodiode integrator rather than an optical sphere or a hemisphere. By this means, one can obtain much less expensive and smaller instruments than traditional ones. Thanks to this, they could find their application for surface control purposes, particularly in small and medium size enterprises. A description of the functioning of the measuring unit as well as the impact caused by different factors on its properties is presented first. Next, results of measurements of the Sq values performed for optical, silicon and metal samples have been shown. It has been also proven that they are in a good agreement with the results obtained using the Ulbricht sphere instrument.
Abstract: Surface metrology with image processing is a challenging task having wide applications in industry. Surface roughness can be evaluated using texture classification approach. Important aspect here is appropriate selection of features that characterize the surface. We propose an effective combination of features for multi-scale and multi-directional analysis of engineering surfaces. The features include standard deviation, kurtosis and the Canny edge detector. We apply the method by analyzing the surfaces with Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DT-CWT). We used Canberra distance metric for similarity comparison between the surface classes. Our database includes the surface textures manufactured by three machining processes namely Milling, Casting and Shaping. The comparative study shows that DT-CWT outperforms DWT giving correct classification performance of 91.27% with Canberra distance metric.
Abstract: Health problems linked to urban growth are current
major concerns of developing countries. In 2002 and 2005, an
interdisciplinary program “Populations et Espaces ├á Risques
SANitaires" (PERSAN) was set up under the patronage of the
Development and Research Institute. Centered on health in
Cameroon-s urban environment, the program mainly sought to (i)
identify diarrhoea risk factors in Yaoundé, (ii) to measure their
prevalence and apprehend their spatial distribution. The crosssectional
epidemiological study that was carried out revealed a
diarrheic prevalence of 14.4% (437 cases of diarrhoea on the 3,034
children examined). Also, among risk factors studied, household
refuse management methods used by city dwellers were statistically
associated to these diarrhoeas. Moreover, it happened that levels of
diarrhoeal attacks varied consistently from one neighbourhood to
another because of the discrepancy urbanization process of the
Yaoundé metropolis.