Frames of reference - quantified policy objectives for effective network management

Since 1998 a formal cooperation exists between Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch operator for the main road network, and the KLPD, the National Traffic Police. In a five year agreement between the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management and the Ministry of Justice it was acknowledged that the KLPD should play an important role in fighting the continuous increasing congestion problems and that a better cooperation between Rijkswaterstaat and the KLPD was needed. It was arranged that the KLPD and two regional police forces could hire personnel and buy equipment to form rush hour teams. In the agreement also an evaluation program was mentioned. In this program several studies were done to determine the effects of these measures on flows, speeds, travel times, etc. As part of a contract with the AVV Transport Research Centre, Grontmij Consulting Engineers did most of these studies. Also a road user inquiry and a cost-benefit analysis, based on the results of the several impact analyses, were conducted. The evaluation program is described and the results of the several studies, including the road user inquiry and the cost-benefit analysis, are given.

PROTEUS, a technical and management model for aquatic risk assessment of industrial spills

The effectiveness of Kenyan government ministries in delivering their mandates has long been a concern. This raises an issue with type of leadership approach that has always been adopted by these government ministries. A notable case, has been seen at the Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development. It is foreseeable that in reality, competent management and leadership have determined successful or unsuccessful operations in many other agencies and organizations at large. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether and to what degree democratic style of leadership affect performance of Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development Government. This study looked at the effect of transformational leadership style on the performance of Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development in Kenya. This study relied on transformational leadership theory, path goal theory, team leadership theory and leader member exchange theory frameworks. This study used a descriptive research approach and targeted 188 employees at the Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development in the government of Kenya. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires and thereafter analyzed descriptively using statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) version 26. The findings from the study revealed that employee motivation had a significant positive effect on organizational performance of Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development in Kenya. The study found that 36.7% in variation of performance was attributable to employee motivation. However, the study found that employee work commitment had a moderate negative significant effect on organizational performance of Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development in Kenya. Lastly, the researcher found that employee creativity significantly and positively affected organizational performance of the Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development in Kenya. the study found that 62.4% in variation of performance was aa a result of employee creativity. The therefore concluded that employee motivation and employee influenced organizational performance whereas employee work commitment negatively influenced organizational performance. The researcher therefore recommended that management and policy makers need to emphasize on the need for strategy and policy formulation that fosters creativity among employees for them to achieve better performance. Future research was recommended to be done on the effect of leadership attributes on sustainable performance of government ministries in Kenya. 

Two probabilistic life-cycle maintenance models for deteriorating civil infrastructures

Dynamic air traffic flow management (DATFM) aims at flexibly balancing air traffic demand with limited airspace by scheduling aircraft, particularly during unforeseen events, to maintain efficiency in aviation operations. Genetic programming (GP) has shown success in evolving effective heuristics across various domains. However, directly adopting GP to DATFM may be less effective due to the computationally intense simulations required for large-scale aircraft decision-making over broad airspace. To address the issue, we develop a novel multifidelity surrogate-assisted GP. The core idea is that if a computationally efficient low-fidelity surrogate provides enough information to guide the population toward promising areas effectively, then employing more accurate but resource-intensive evaluations would only increase computational effort without enhancing the direction of evolution. A key innovation in our method is a surrogate management strategy that automatically determines when and which surrogate model to use, based on collective information from the evolving population. This approach allows for more effective management of computational resources during the evolutionary process, enabling exploration of a broader range of the heuristic space and increasing the likelihood of identifying promising solutions. The proposed method has been tested on various benchmark instances derived from actual air traffic data. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms current state-of-the-art methods in both effectiveness and efficiency.

Presents EURO-SCOUT as a dynamic route guidance and traffic management system in Germany. Covers the following areas: the system architecture, Advanced Transport Telematics (ATT)-DRIVE II field trials, implementation of traffic guidance systems in Germany including collective systems such as variable traffic signs, ARI and RDS/TMC, and individual systems such as EURO-SCOUT

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) enable vehicles' communication with each other (Vehicle-to-Vehicle, V2V) and with roadside infrastructure (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, V2I). In the context of traffic efficiency C-ITS technologies could assist through data exchange, improving traffic control and traffic management implementation. Coordinated provision of C-ITS services refers to the provision of several C-ITS services as one combined service. The purpose is to harvest the usability of C-ITS services by developing a strategy for the operation and exploitation of services in real-time and within varying geographical areas. Two different dimensions of the coordinated provision of C-ITS services have been recognized covering: 1) the drivers, and 2) the road network operators and managers. The present paper deals with the road network operators and managers dimension, the objective of which is the integration and coordinated provision of C-ITS services in operational dynamic traffic management.

Network Impact of Dynamic Traffic Management Measures

Traffic control policies aim at reducing the negative externalities that ever-growing demand is causing on transportation networks, such as congestion and pollutant emissions. To achieve these goals, strategies coordinating and aligning the effects of several individual traffic controllers have received increasing attention in research and development in the past decades. However, a considerable gap still exists between the desired and experienced performance of advanced dynamic traffic management systems, resulting in failure to completely prevent the increasing peak-hour congestion in main urban areas worldwide. In this work we contribute to assessing whether this gap might be tied to inefficient network design, rather than algorithmic prowess. Based upon our earlier work, we investigate whether a trend can be found between determining locations of controllers in a network following control theoretical insights, and try to confirm our earlier intuitions when dealing with dynamic traffic assignment, featuring accurate propagation and spillback dynamics. To achieve these goals, we extend an existing synthetic network generation tool to allow us to test this hypothesis on real-life-like road networks, and extend our previously developed algorithms for the controller location problems allowing for sufficient generalization. Test results are presented on a simpler deterministic scenario and on 240 randomly generated networks, showcasing that placing controllers following controllability-based principles is advantageous from the perspective of model-based dynamic traffic management applications.

Prediction of incident duration is very important in Advanced Intelligent Traffic Incident Management and the accuracy of prediction can provide exact information for travellers. It is widely used in the area of ITS. In this paper, K-Nearest neighbor (KNN) is employed to predict the incident duration, which puts forward a new distance metric and weight determination method. This KNN model is created based on the incident data set collected by DVS-Center for Transport and Navigation, Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Management, the Netherlands. Moreover, a simulation based on Matlab is used for incident duration prediction and optimizing the best k value. Finally, an error analysis is made based on this simulation. As a result, this method (KNN) obtains high accuracy and has a better effect than Bayesian Decision Method-Based Tree Algorithm. So it can be effectively applied to intelligent traffic incident detection and clearance systems.

While transportation is considered as a trade facilitator in international trade, high transportation costs can adversely impact on commodity pricing and its competiveness on the market. Studies have shown that raising transportation costs by 10 percent reduces trade volume by more than 20 percent. The purpose of this study was therefore, to understand the impact that transportation cost has on pricing of goods from Malawi in international trade. The study sought to establish transportation costs affordability perception from export commodity shippers and assess how transportation cost affects commodity pricing on the international market. The study employed quantitative research approach and descriptive research design in which a closed-ended questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 104 shippers in dry-commodity export shipping community. Simple random sampling method was used to determine the sample size. The study found that shippers do not find transportation costs affordable and that the high transportation costs affect negatively the pricing of the goods on the market. The study therefore recommends that government, through the Ministry of Transport and Public Works, to develop logistics cost estimation model and invest in logistics management systems that will enable the industry to collect data, identify bottlenecks and improve the transport system to reduce transportation cost.

The effectiveness of road transportation relies heavily on several factors and the attitude of the road driver to traffic engineering, control and management requirement. It is in the light of the above consideration and context that this study; Road Transport policy and Traffic management in Nigeria, Directorate of Road Traffic Service (DRTS) Federal Capital Territory Abuja in Perspective can conveniently be situated. The study brings into focus for better appreciation, the important roles of the traffic officers in driving test licenses, road worthiness test, enlightenment campaign activities, highway patrol, revenue generation etc which are all important elements in actualizing the policy thrust of the country\'s transport policy of adequacy and safety using both primary and secondary sources of data collection with simple percentage method of analysis and system theory as theoretical underpinning. Conclusion and far reaching recommendations were drawn in the light of the findings with the hope that such will shape the transportation policy process of government. Keywords : Policy; transport; management; traffic JORIND Vol. 6 (1) 2008: pp. 21-21

This study combines Visible Light Communication (VLC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance traffic signal control, reduce congestion, and improve safety, through real-time monitoring and dynamic traffic management. Leveraging VLC technology, the system uses existing road infrastructure to transmit live data on vehicle and pedestrian positions, speeds, and queues. AI agents, employing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), process this data to manage traffic flows dynamically, applying anti-bottleneck and rerouting techniques to balance pedestrian and vehicle waiting times. A centralized global agent coordinates the local agents controlling each intersection, enabling indirect communication and data sharing to train a unified DRL model. This model makes real-time adjustments to traffic light phases, utilizing a queue/request/response system for adaptive intersection management. Tested using simulations and real-world trials involving standard and rerouting scenarios, the approach demonstrates significantly better performance in regard to the rerouting configuration, reducing congestion and enhancing traffic flow and pedestrian safety. Scalable and adaptable to various intersection types, including four-way, T-intersections, and roundabouts, the system’s efficacy is validated using the SUMO urban mobility simulator, resulting in notable reductions to travel and waiting times for both vehicles and pedestrians.

The research aims at determining the impact that the ethical leadership, as an independent variable and through its dimensions (fairness, Power sharing, Role clarification, People Orientation, Integrity, Ethical guidance), has on job embeddedness as a dependent variable through its dimensions (Fit, Links, sacrifice). The research is carried out using a sample of workers which consists of (194) worker at the Iraqi ministry of construction and hosting. The significance of the research is in shedding light on the practical aspect of the reality of ethical leadership and its impact on the job Embeddedness of the Iraqi Ministry of Construction, Housing, Municipalities and Public Works in order to identify the problems and obstacles it faces and to provide the necessary proposals and recommendations in this regard. The research reached a number of results, the most important one is : There is an impact and correlation between ethical leadership and job Embeddedness in the Iraqi Ministry of Construction, Housing, Municipalities and Public Works.

Multipath routing is to distribute the incoming traffic load among available paths between source and destination hosts. Instead of using the single best path, multipath scheme can avoid the congested path. Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) performs the static traffic splitting based on some tuples of the packet headers. The limitation of ECMP does not consider the network parameters such as bandwidth and delay. Unlike the traditional networks, Software-Defined Network (SDN) has many advantages to support dynamic multipath forwarding due to its special characteristics, such as separation of control and data planes, global centralized control, and programmability of network behavior. In this paper, we propose a new architecture design for dynamic multipath-based traffic management approach in the SDN, which comprises of five components: detecting long (elephant) flow, computing shortest paths, estimating end-to-end delay and bandwidth utilization, calculating least cost path and rerouting traffic flow from the ongoing path to the best path. The simulation environment is created through the usage of Mininet emulator and ONOS controller. The evaluation outcomes show that the proposed traffic management method outperforms the ECMP and reactive forwarding method for both TCP and UDP traffic.