Abstract: Transient storage zones along the flow paths of rivers have great influence on the dispersion of pollutants that are either accidentally or otherwise led into them. The speed with which these pollution clouds get transported and dispersed downstream is, to a large extent, explained by the longitudinal dispersion coefficients in the free-flowing zones of rivers (Kf). In the present work, a new empirical expression for Kf has been derived employing genetic programming (GP) on published dispersion data. The proposed expression uses few hydraulic and geometric characteristics of a river that are readily available to field engineers. Based on various performance indices, the proposed expression is found superior to other existing expression for Kf.
Abstract: This study investigates the causes, effects and remedies of traffic congestion which has become a common sight in most highways in Nigeria; Mowe/Ibafo section of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was used as the case-study. 300 Structured questionnaires were distributed among the road users comprising drivers (Private and Commercial), passengers, pedestrians, traffic officers, church congregations, community leaders, Mowe/Ibafo residents, and other users of the road.
300 questionnaires were given out; the average of 276 well completed returned questionnaires formed the basis of the study and was analyzed by the Relative Importance Index (R.I.I.). The result from the study showed the causes of traffic congestion as inadequate road capacity, poor road pavement, poor traffic management, poor drainage system poor driving habit, poor parking habit, poor design junctions/round-about, presence of heavy trucks, lack of pedestrian facilities, lack of road furniture, lack of parking facilities and others. Effects of road congestion from the study are waste of time, delay movement, stress, accident, inability to forecast travel of time, fuel consumption, road rage, relocation, night driving, and environmental pollution. To drastically reduce these negative effects; there must be provision for adequate parking space, construction of proper drainage, enlarging the width of the road, rehabilitate all roads needing attention, public enlightenment, traffic education, hack down all illegal buildings/shops built on the right of way (ROW), create a separate/alternative root for trucks and heavy vehicles, provision of pedestrian facilities, In-depth training of transport/traffic personnel, ban all form of road trading/hawking, and reduce the number of bus-stop where necessary. It is hoped that this study will become the foundation of further research in the area of improve road traffic management on our major highway.
Abstract: In the past decades, the environment of production companies showed a permanent increase in dynamic and volatility in the form of demand fluctuations, new technologies or global crises. As a reaction to these new requirements, changeability of production systems came into attention. A changeable production system can adapt to these changes quickly and with little effort. Even though demand for changeable production exists for some time, the practical application is still insufficient.
To overcome this deficit, a three year research project at the Department of Production Systems and Logistics at the Leibniz University of Hanover/ Germany was initiated. As a result of this project, different concepts have been developed to design production changeable. An excerpt of the results will be presented in this paper. An eight step procedure will be presented to design the changeability of production logistics. This procedure has been applied at a German manufacturer of high demanding weighing machines. The developed procedure, their application in industry, as well as the major results of the application will be presented.
Abstract: Remote sensing image processing, spatial data analysis through GIS approach, and analytical hierarchy process were introduced in this study for assessing the vulnerability area and inundation area due to tsunami hazard in the area of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Appropriate input parameters were derived from GSI DEM data, ALOS AVNIR-2, and field data. We used the parameters of elevation, slope, shoreline distance, and vegetation density. Five classes of vulnerability were defined and weighted via pairwise comparison matrix. The assessment results described that 14.35km2 of the study area was under tsunami vulnerability zone. Inundation areas are those of high and slightly high vulnerability. The farthest area reached by a tsunami was about 7.50km from the shoreline and shows that rivers act as flooding strips that transport tsunami waves into the hinterland. This study can be used for determining a priority for land-use planning in the scope of tsunami hazard risk management.
Abstract: In this article we research on the drivers’ behavior at intersections. Some significant behaviors are chosen and designed a questionnaire which was about 2 pages. In this questionnaire, samples were being asked to answer by checking the box. The answers have been from always to never. This questionnaire related to our selection’s behaviors. Finally it has been resulted that most of aggressive behaviors were being common in them. Also it has been suggested some solutions for each of them.
Abstract: The excessive use of agricultural pesticides and the
resulting contamination of food and beds of rivers have been a
recurring problem nowadays. Some of these substances can cause
changes in endocrine balance and impair reproductive function of
human and animal population. In the present study, we evaluated the
possible effects of the fungicide cuprous copper oxide Sandoz® on
pregnant Wistar rats. They received a daily oral administration of 103
or 3.103 mg/kg of the fungicide from the 6th to the 15th day of
gestation. On day 21 of gestation, the maternal and fetal toxicity
parameters and indices were determined. The administration of
cuprous oxide (Copper Sandoz) in Wistar rats, the period of
organogenesis, revealed no evidence of maternal toxicity or embryo
at the studied doses.
Abstract: The present paper is a case study about exploitation of
Kheir Abad river (Khoozestan, Iran) water resources and the
problems caused by river sediments around the pumping stations.
The weak points and strong points of Boneh Basht pumping station
have been studied by experienced experts, work teams, and
consulting engineers and technical and executive solutions have been
suggested. Therefore, the suggestions of this article are based on the
performed studies and are proposed in order to evaluate the logical
solutions.
Rather complicated processes resulting from the interaction of
water flows and sediments observed at Boneh Basht pumping station
occur at other pumping stations in almost the same way. Therefore,
Boneh Basht pumping station can be selected as a sample (pilot) and
up-to-date theories and experiences can be applied to this station and
the results can be offered to other stations.
Abstract: As is needless to say; a majority of accidents, which occur, are due to drunk driving. As such, there is no effective mechanism to prevent this. Here we have designed an integrated system for the same purpose. Alcohol content in the driver-s body is detected by means of an infrared breath analyzer placed at the steering wheel. An infrared cell directs infrared energy through the sample and any unabsorbed energy at the other side is detected. The higher the concentration of ethanol, the more infrared absorption occurs (in much the same way that a sunglass lens absorbs visible light, alcohol absorbs infrared light). Thus the alcohol level of the driver is continuously monitored and calibrated on a scale. When it exceeds a particular limit the fuel supply is cutoff. If the device is removed also, the fuel supply will be automatically cut off or an alarm is sounded depending upon the requirement. This does not happen abruptly and special indicators are fixed at the back to avoid inconvenience to other drivers using the highway signals. Frame work for integration of sensors and control module in a scalable multi-agent system is provided .A SMS which contains the current GPS location of the vehicle is sent via a GSM module to the police control room to alert the police. The system is foolproof and the driver cannot tamper with it easily. Thus it provides an effective and cost effective solution for the problem of drunk driving in vehicles.
Abstract: International trade involves both large and small firms
engaged in business overseas. Possible drivers that force companies
to enter international markets include increasing competition at the
domestic market, maturing domestic markets, and limited domestic
market opportunities. Technology is an important driving factor in
shaping international marketing strategy as well as in driving force
towards a more global marketplace, especially technology in
communication. It includes telephones, the internet, computer
systems and e-mail. There are three main marketing strategy choices,
namely standardization approach, adaptation approach and middleof-
the-road approach that companies implement to overseas markets.
The decision depends on situations and factors facing the companies
in the international markets. In this paper, the contingency concept is
considered that no single strategy can be effective in all contexts.
The effect of strategy on performance depends on specific situational
variables. Strategic fit is employed to investigate export marketing
strategy adaptation under certain environmental conditions, which in
turn can lead to superior performance.
Abstract: Water level forecasting using records of past time series is of importance in water resources engineering and management. For example, water level affects groundwater tables in low-lying coastal areas, as well as hydrological regimes of some coastal rivers. Then, a reliable prediction of sea-level variations is required in coastal engineering and hydrologic studies. During the past two decades, the approaches based on the Genetic Programming (GP) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were developed. In the present study, the GP is used to forecast daily water level variations for a set of time intervals using observed water levels. The measurements from a single tide gauge at Urmia Lake, Northwest Iran, were used to train and validate the GP approach for the period from January 1997 to July 2008. Statistics, the root mean square error and correlation coefficient, are used to verify model by comparing with a corresponding outputs from Artificial Neural Network model. The results show that both these artificial intelligence methodologies are satisfactory and can be considered as alternatives to the conventional harmonic analysis.
Abstract: Intelligent Transportation System integrates various modern advanced technologies into the ground transportation system, and it will be the goal of urban transport system in the future because of its comprehensive effects. However, it also brings some problems, such as project performance assessment, fairness of benefiting groups, fund management, which are directly related to its operation and implementation. Wuhan has difficulties in organizing transportation because of its nature feature (river and lake), therefore, calling Service of Taxi plays an important role in transportation. This paper researches on calling Service of Taxi in Wuhan, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis. It analyzes its operations management systematically, including business model, finance, usage analysis and users evaluation. As for business model, it is that the government leads the operation at the initial stage, and the third part dominates the operation at the mature stage, which not only eases the pressure of the third part and benefits the spread of the calling service at the initial stage, but also alleviates financial pressure of government and improve the efficiency of the operation at the mature stage. As for finance, it draws that this service will bring heavy financial burden of equipments, but it will be alleviated in the future because of its spread. As for usage analysis, through data comparison, this service can bring some benefits for taxi drivers, and time and spatial distribution of usage have certain features. As for user evaluation, it analyzes using group and the reason why choosing it. At last, according to the analysis above, the paper puts forward the potentials, limitations, and future development strategies for it.
Abstract: BRI-STARS (BRIdge Stream Tube model for Alluvial
River Simulation) program was used to investigate the scour depth around bridge piers in some of the major river systems in Iran. Model
calibration was performed by collecting different field data. Field data are cataloged on three categories, first group of bridges that
their rivers bed are formed by fine material, second group of bridges
that their rivers bed are formed by sand material, and finally bridges that their rivers bed are formed by gravel or cobble materials.
Verification was performed with some field data in Fars Province. Results show that for wide piers, computed scour depth is more than
measured one. In gravel bed streams, computed scour depth is greater
than measured scour depth, the reason is due to formation of armor layer on bed of channel. Once this layer is eroded, the computed
scour depth is close to the measured one.
Abstract: Ice cover County has a significant impact on rivers as it affects with the ice melting capacity which results in flooding, restrict navigation, modify the ecosystem and microclimate. River ices are made up of different ice types with varying ice thickness, so surveillance of river ice plays an important role. River ice types are captured using infrared imaging camera which captures the images even during the night times. In this paper the river ice infrared texture images are analysed using first-order statistical methods and secondorder statistical methods. The second order statistical methods considered are spatial gray level dependence method, gray level run length method and gray level difference method. The performance of the feature extraction methods are evaluated by using Probabilistic Neural Network classifier and it is found that the first-order statistical method and second-order statistical method yields low accuracy. So the features extracted from the first-order statistical method and second-order statistical method are combined and it is observed that the result of these combined features (First order statistical method + gray level run length method) provides higher accuracy when compared with the features from the first-order statistical method and second-order statistical method alone.
Abstract: Speeding represents one of the main concerns for road safety and it still is a subject for research. The need to address this problem and to understand why drivers over speed increases especially in Romania, where in 2011, speed was the main cause of car accidents. This article addresses this problem by using the theory of planned behaviour. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of young Romanian drivers (18 to 25 years) and several path analyses were made in order to verify if the model proposed by the theory of planned behaviour fits the data. One interesting result is that perceived behavioural control does not predict the intention to speed or self-reported driving speed, but subjective norms do. This implies that peers and social environment have a greater impact on young Romanian drivers than we thought.
Abstract: This paper highlights some interesting facts on South African-s waste situation and management strategies, in particular the Integrated Waste Management. South Africa supports a waste hierarchy by promoting cleaner production, waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and waste treatment with disposal and remediation as the last preferred options in waste management. The drivers for waste management techniques are identified as increased demand for waste service provision; increased demand for waste minimisation; recycling and recovery; land use, physical and environmental limitations; and socio-economic and demographic factors. The South African government recognizes the importance of scientific research as outlined on the white paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management (IP and WM) (DEAT, 2000).
Abstract: Modularized design approach can facilitate the
modeling of complex systems and support behavior analysis and
simulation in an iterative and thus complex engineering process, by
using encapsulated submodels of components and of their interfaces.
Therefore it can improve the design efficiency and simplify the
solving complicated problem. Multi-drivers off-road vehicle is
comparatively complicated. Driving-line is an important core part to a
vehicle; it has a significant contribution to the performance of a
vehicle. Multi-driver off-road vehicles have complex driving-line, so
its performance is heavily dependent on the driving-line. A typical
off-road vehicle-s driving-line system consists of torque converter,
transmission, transfer case and driving-axles, which transfer the
power, generated by the engine and distribute it effectively to the
driving wheels according to the road condition. According to its main
function, this paper puts forward a modularized approach for
designing and evaluation of vehicle-s driving-line. It can be used to
effectively estimate the performance of driving-line during concept
design stage. Through appropriate analysis and assessment method, an
optimal design can be reached. This method has been applied to the
practical vehicle design, it can improve the design efficiency and is
convenient to assess and validate the performance of a vehicle,
especially of multi-drivers off-road vehicle.
Abstract: Both prognostic and diagnostic modes of a 3D baroclinic
model in hydrodynamic and sediment transport models of
the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) were conducted to separate
prognose and diagnose effects of different hydrodynamic factors on
transport of suspended sediment discharged from the rivers to the
Gulf of Thailand (GoT). Both transport modes of suspended sediment
distribution in the GoT were numerically simulated. It could be
concluded that the suspended sediment discharged from the rivers
around the GoT. Most of sediments in estuaries and coastal areas are
deposited outside the GoT under the condition of wind-driven current,
and very small amount of the sediments of them are transported
faraway. On the basis of wind forcing, sediments from the lower
GoT to the upper GoT are mainly transported south-northwestward
and also continuously moved north-southwestward. An obvious 3D
characteristic of suspended sediment transport is produced in the
wind-driven current residual circulation condition. In this study, the
transport patterns at the third layer are generally consistent with
the typhoon-induced strong currents in two case studies of Typhoon
Linda 1997. The case studies presented the prognostic and diagnostic
modes during 00UTC28OCT1997 to 12UTC06NOV1997 in a short
period with the current condition for pre-operation of the suspended
sediment transport model in estuaries and coastal areas.
Abstract: In order to achieve better road utilization and traffic
efficiency, there is an urgent need for a travel information delivery
mechanism to assist the drivers in making better decisions in the
emerging intelligent transportation system applications. In this paper,
we propose a relayed multicast scheme under heterogeneous networks
for this purpose. In the proposed system, travel information consisting
of summarized traffic conditions, important events, real-time traffic
videos, and local information service contents is formed into layers
and multicasted through an integration of WiMAX infrastructure and
Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANET). By the support of adaptive
modulation and coding in WiMAX, the radio resources can be
optimally allocated when performing multicast so as to dynamically
adjust the number of data layers received by the users. In addition to
multicast supported by WiMAX, a knowledge propagation and
information relay scheme by VANET is designed. The experimental
results validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed
scheme.
Abstract: Prediction of highly non linear behavior of suspended
sediment flow in rivers has prime importance in the field of water
resources engineering. In this study the predictive performance of
two Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) namely, the Radial Basis
Function (RBF) Network and the Multi Layer Feed Forward (MLFF)
Network have been compared. Time series data of daily suspended
sediment discharge and water discharge at Pari River was used for
training and testing the networks. A number of statistical parameters
i.e. root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE),
coefficient of efficiency (CE) and coefficient of determination (R2)
were used for performance evaluation of the models. Both the models
produced satisfactory results and showed a good agreement between
the predicted and observed data. The RBF network model provided
slightly better results than the MLFF network model in predicting
suspended sediment discharge.
Abstract: Bridge is an architectural symbol in Iran as Badgir
(wind catcher); fire temples and arch are vaults are such. Therefore, from the very old ages, construction of bridges in Iran has mixed with
architecture, social customs, alms and charity and holiness. Since long ago, from Mad, Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid times which construction of bridges got an inseparable relation with social dependency and architecture, based on those dependency bridges and
dams got holy names; as Dokhtar castle and Dokhtar bridges were constructed. This method continued even after Islam and whenever
Iranians got free from political fights and the immunity of roads were established the bridge construction did also prospered. In ancient
times bridge construction passes through it growing and completion process and in Sassanid time in some way it reached to the peak of art
and glory; as after Islam especially during 4th. century (Arab calendar) it put behind a period of glory and in Safavid time it
reached to an exceptional glory and magnificence by constructing
glorious bridges on Zayandeh Roud River in Isfahan.
Having a combined style and changeability into bridge barrier, some of these bridges develop into magnificent constructions. The
sustainable structures, mentioned above, are constructed for various
reasons as follows: connecting two sides of a river, storing water,
controlling floods, using water energy to operate water windmills, making lanes of streams for farms- use, and building recreational
places for people, etc. These studies carried in bridges reveals the fact
that in construction and designing mentioned above, lots of
technological factors have been taken into consideration such as
exceeding floods in the rives, hydraulic and hydrology of the rivers and bridges, geology, foundation, structure, construction material, and adopting appropriate executing methods, all of which are being analyzed in this article.