Fuzzy set approach in mass transit mode choice

Agencies at the federal, state and local level are aiming to enhance the public transportation system (PTS) as one alternative to alleviate congestion and to cater to the needs of captive riders. To effectively act as a viable alternative transportation mode, the system must be highly efficient. One way to measure efficiency of the PTS is connectivity. In a multimodal transportation system, transit is a key component. Transit connectivity is relatively complex to calculate, as one has to consider fares, schedule, capacity, frequency and other features of the system at large. Thus, assessing transit connectivity requires a systematic approach using many diverse parameters involved in real-world service provision. In this paper, we use a graph theoretic approach to evaluate transit connectivity at various levels of service and for various components of transit, such as nodes, lines, and transfer centers in a multimodal transportation system. Further, we provide a platform for computing connectivity over large-scale applications, using visualization to communicate results in the context of their geography and to facilitate public transit decision-making. The proposed framework is then applied to a comprehensive transit network in the Washington-Baltimore region. Underpinning the visualization, we introduce a novel spatial data architecture and Web-based interface designed with free and open source libraries and crowd-sourced contextual data, accessible on various platforms such as mobile phones, tablets and personal computers. The proposed methodology is a useful tool for both riders and decision-makers in assessing transit connectivity in a multimodal transit network in a number of ways such as the identification of under-served transit areas, prioritization and allocation of funds to locations for improving transit service.

Introduction: With regard to increasing population of country, need to high agricultural production is essential. The most suitable method for this issue is high production per area unit. Preparation much food and other environmental resources with conservation of biotic resources for futures will be possible only with optimum exploitation of soil. Among effective factors for the most production balanced addition of fertilizers increases production of crops higher than the others. With attention to this topic, determination of soil fertility degree is essential tobetter use of fertilizers and right exploitation of soils. Using fuzzy logic and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) could be useful in accurate determination of soil fertility degree. Materials and Methods: The study area (at the east of Rasht city) is located between 49° 31' to 49° 45' E longitude and 37° 7' to 37° 27' N latitude in north of Guilan Province, northern Iran, in the southern coast of the Caspian sea. 117 soil samples were derived from0-30 cm depth in the study area. Air-dried soil samples were crushed and passed through a 2mm sieve. Available phosphorus, potassium and organic carbon were determined by sodium bicarbonate, normal ammonium acetate and corrected walkly-black method, respectively. In the first stage, the interpolation of data was done by kriging method in GIS context. Then S-shape membership function was defined for each parameter and prepared fuzzy map. After determination of membership function weight parameters maps were determined using AHP technique and finally soil fertility map was prepared with overlaying of weighted fuzzy maps. Relative variance and correlation coefficient criteria used tocontrol groups separation accuracy in fuzzy fertility map. Results and Discussion: With regard to minimum amounts of parameters looks some lands of study area had fertility difficulty. Therefore, soil fertility map of study area distinct these lands and present soil fertility groups for better management of soil and plant nutrition. Weight of soil parameters was0.54, 0.29 and 0.17 for organic carbon, available phosphor and potassium, respectively. Fuzzy map of study area includes five soil fertility groups as: 22.9% very high fertility, 27.7% high fertility, 35.53% medium fertility, 10.48% low fertility and 3.39% very low fertility. Consequently, a separated map for soil fertility prepared to evaluate soil fertility of study area for rice cultivation. Toinvestigatethe efficiency of fuzzy model and AHP in increasing the accuracy of soil fertility map, soil fertility map with Boolean method prepared as well. Boolean map showed 58.88% fertile and 41.12% unfertile.15 soil samples from different soil fertility groups of study area were derived fromcontrol of maps accuracy. 13 renewed samples of 15 and 9 soil samples have matched with fuzzy and Boolean map, respectively. Comparison of parameters mean in fuzzy map fertility groups showed that parameters mean amounts of very high and high fertility groups are higher than optimum level except potassium that is a few lower than optimum level in high fertility group, therefore, addition of fertilizers in these groups could not be useful to increase rice crop production. Phosphorus parameter amount is lower than the critical level in very low, low and medium fertility groups, then in these groups phosphorus fertilizer should be added to the soil toincreaserice production. The amount of potassium parameter is higher than the critical level and lower than optimum limit in very low, low, medium and high fertility groups, then in these groups addition of potassium fertilizer will results in theincrease of production. Organic carbon amount is lower than optimum level in very low and low fertility groups. With regard to the relation between organic carbon andnitrogen and phosphorus, therefore, the addition of organic carbon fertilizer could compensate deficit of nitrogen and phosphorus in these groups as well. Attention to the presented explanations and comparison of fuzzy and Boolean maps using parameters amounts in renewed sampling points for control of maps accuracy, it is distinct that fuzzy logic could influencetheoptimum using of fertilizers with increasing map efficiency and accuracy. In addition, relative variance and correlation coefficient amounts showed that fuzzy map has separatedquite wellparameters changes. Conclusion: Effective parameters in soil fertility, includingorganic carbon, phosphorus and potassium were used topreparesoil fertility map for rice cultivation. With regard to the minimum amounts of parameters looks some lands of study area had fertility difficulty. Therefore, soil fertility map of study area distinct these lands and presents soil fertility groups tobetter management of soil and plant nutrition. Fuzzy and Boolean methods were used topreparesoil fertility map. Comparison of these two approaches showed that fuzzy method with AHP caused to increase theefficiency and accuracy of fertility map for rice. Separated and distinguish soil fertility groups in fuzzy map help suitable distribution and optimum use of fertilizers for rice production.

Association analysis of amino acids in molecular sequences can reveal crucial information and knowledge for understanding structure, function and interaction of proteins. The traditional methods of association rule mining like apriori, F-P Growth etc. fail to generate appropriate patterns due to inherent uncertainty present in data. The uncertainty in sequence data caused by variation in the length of sequences and lack of parameterization lead to under prediction and over prediction of the results. In this paper an attempt has been made to develop a soft set based approach for mining fuzzy association patterns in peptide sequences of dengue virus. The fuzzy set approach is employed to incorporate the degree of relationships among amino acids due to variation in length of the sequences. The soft set approach is employed to incorporate the relationship of parameters with amino acid association patterns. The 12,581 sequences of dengue virus are downloaded from NCBI and screened for redundancy to obtain non redundant 6995 sequences. The amino acid associations are explored and analyzed using soft fuzzy approach. Also the results obtained by soft fuzzy approach are compared with the results obtained individually by ordinary, fuzzy and soft set approaches. The soft fuzzy approach is able to overcome the issue of under prediction and over prediction of the results obtained by other approaches. Also the interesting association rules have been generated to predict the structure and physico chemical properties of the peptide sequences.

Confidence sets are generally interpreted in terms of replications of an experiment. However, this interpretation is only valid before observing the sample. After observing the sample, any confidence sets have probability zero or one to contain the parameter value. In this paper, we provide a confidence set analysis for an observed sample based on fuzzy set theory by using the concept of membership functions. We show that the traditional ad hoc thresholds (the confidence and significance levels) can be attained from a general membership function. The applicability of the newly proposed theory is demonstrated by using well-known examples from the statistical literature and an application in the context of contingency tables.

This paper presents a work about palm print recognition using fuzzy entropy. A number of schemes have been proposed to combine the fuzzy set theory and its application to the entropy concept for modelling a palm print recognition system. The measure of uncertainty is adopted as a measure of information. Hence, the measures of fuzziness are known as fuzzy information measures. The measure of information is used to measure the uncertainty. Hence, fuzzy information measures are used to measure the fuzziness. The measure of a quantity of fuzzy information obtained from a fuzzy set or fuzzy system is known as fuzzy entropy. Since no probabilistic concept is needed to define fuzzy entropy, classical Shannon entropy is quite different from it. Further, Shannon entropy contains the randomness uncertainty (probabilistic) whereas fuzzy entropy contains vagueness and ambiguity uncertainties. The concept of membership function is used to define fuzzy entropy. The properties of fuzzy entropy have become popular and are being used very frequently to define any new fuzzy entropy. The fuzzy entropy function used in this paper is defined using the new random membership function μ. Previous works in palm print recognition use standard methods for feature extraction. By using standard techniques, the recognition rate was not as expected. Incorporating fuzzy concept to derive the features of palm print is the motivation for this work. The proposed work uses fuzzy membership function to extract the maximum information out of palm print as it contains lot of uncertainties. The fuzzy membership function developed in the proposed work is applied in the fuzzy entropy function to generate the new entropy information features which when tested with the standard classifier using support vector machine gives the encouraging result in terms of recognition rate. The proposed work was done using COEP (College of Engineering, Pune) database. It can be noted that palm print recognition is an important modality in biometrics for security purposes, as its use in practical life cannot be avoided. The palm print image contains lot of undefined and vague information and the best method to take out the maximum information out of the palm print image is the use of fuzzy logic concepts. This feature also motivated us for the proposed work.

Data reconciliation consists in modifying noisy or unreliable data in order to make them consistent with a mathematical model (herein a material flow network). The conventional approach relies on least-squares minimization. Here, we use a fuzzy set-based approach, replacing Gaussian likelihood functions by fuzzy intervals, and a leximin criterion. We show that the setting of fuzzy sets provides a generalized approach to the choice of estimated values, that is more flexible and less dependent on oftentimes debatable probabilistic justifications. It potentially encompasses interval-based formulations and the least squares method, by choosing appropriate membership functions and aggregation operations. This paper also lays bare the fact that data reconciliation under the fuzzy set approach is viewed as an information fusion problem, as opposed to the statistical tradition which solves an estimation problem.

Wetting and dewetting behavior in channel-confined hydrophobic volumes is used in biological membranes to effect selective ion/molecular transport. Artificial biomimetic hydrophobic nanopores have been devised utilizing wetting and dewetting, however, tunable mass transport control utilizing multiple transport modes is required for applications such as controllable release/transport, water separation/purification and energy conversion. Here, we investigate the potential-induced wetting and dewetting behavior in a pH-responsive membrane composed of a polystyrene-b-poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) block copolymer (BCP) when fabricated as a hierarchically-organized sandwich structure on a nanopore electrode array (NEA), i.e. BCP@NEA. At pH < pKa(P4VP) (pKa ∼ 4.8), the BCP acts as an anion-exchange membrane due to the hydrophilic, protonated P4VP cylindrical nanodomains, but at pH > pKa(P4VP), the P4VP domains exhibit charge-neutral, hydrophobic and collapsed structures, blocking mass transport via the hydrophobic membrane. However, when originally prepared in a dewetted condition, mass transport in the BCP membrane may be switched on if sufficiently negative potentials are applied to the BCP@NEA architecture. When the hydrophobic BCP membrane is introduced on top of 2-electrode-embedded nanopore arrays, electrolyte solution in the nanopores is introduced, then isolated, by exploiting the potential-induced wetting and dewetting transitions in the BCP membrane. The potential-induced wetting/dewetting transition and the effect on cyclic voltammetry in the BCP@NEA structures is characterized as a function of the potential, pH and ionic strength. In addition, chronoamperometry and redox cycling experiments are used to further characterize the potential response. The multi-modal mass transport system proposed in this work will be useful for ultrasensitive sensing and single-molecule studies, which require long-time monitoring to explore reaction dynamics as well as molecular heterogeneity in nanoconfined volumes.

Multimodal urban transportation systems exhibit complex inter actions between components, including users, multimodal transportation facilities, supply side agencies, and operators. Although these interactions are obvious, rigorous quantitative methods for optimizing control variables across modes of transportation on real-world networks are deficient. A social welfare maximization model was established for joint optimization of bus fare, rail transit fare, and congestion tolls for private cars. The authors determined the optimality conditions and the second-order partial derivatives for this optimization problem. Because of the complexity of the multimodal urban transportation system, the objective function of social welfare has no closed form and is extremely expensive to evaluate. The authors therefore proposed a simulation-based framework for evaluation of the objective function and optimization of three decision variables across multiple travel modes. Several metamodels (i.e., mathematical functions that approximate the true shape of an unknown, nonlinear, and complex objective function) were adopted to approximate the highly nonlinear input–output mappings in the urban system. This is the first study to develop a simulation-based method for joint optimization of transit and road network operations. The case study applied the simulation-based optimization framework to the Sino–Singapore ecocity in Tianjin, China, by using VISSUM as the urban systems simulator. An “ecocity” is defined by the authors as “a thriving city that is socially harmonious, environmentally friendly, resource-efficient, and a model for sustainable development.” Results show that metamodels can accurately approximate the real objective function and produce good suboptimal and near-optimal solutions. The optimal combination of transit fares and congestion tolls significantly outperform those under two baseline scenarios. The optimal solutions also suggest that extreme transit fares (too high or too low) or congestion tolls are contrary to welfare-maximizing objectives. The proposed method can be applied for joint optimization of other multimodal planning and operational strategies, such as investment and operational decisions across various modes of transportation.

In the family of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Multimodal Transport Systems (MMTS) have placed themselves as a mainstream transportation mean of our time as a feasible integrative transportation process. The Global Economy progressed with the help of transportation. The volume of goods and distances covered have doubled in the last ten years, so there is a high demand of an optimized transportation, fast but with low costs, saving resources but also safe, with low or zero emissions. Thus, it is important to have an overview of existing research in this field, to know what was already done and what is to be studied next. The main objective is to explore a beneficent selection of the existing research, methods and information in the field of multimodal transportation research, to identify industry needs and gaps in research and provide context for future research. The selective survey covers multimodal transport design and optimization in terms of: cost, time, and network topology. The multimodal transport theoretical aspects, context and resources are also covering various aspects. The survey's selection includes nowadays best methods and solvers for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The gap between theory and real-world applications should be further solved in order to optimize the global multimodal transportation system.

In a multimodal public transportation system, feeder service is often more disappointing to commuters than rapid transit service. This paper aims to investigate commuters’ needs from access-egress modes by analyzing their travel behavior using a stated preference survey. A travel chart is used to assess modal preferences of access-egress modes where names of travel modes are obscured. The characteristics of different alternative modes during peak hours are represented by relevant images to avoid bias on any particular mode and to get authentic as well as consistent responses. Regular rapid transit users at three metro stations in Kolkata, India stated their preferences for access-egress trips using this travel chart. According to this study, majority of commuters are willing to pay more to reduce their in-vehicle travel time by accepting longer waiting time. They are also willing to pay more for comfortable daily trips when travel time is fixed. Better convenience and lesser number of transfers get more priority than lower travel cost and shorter travel time. However, travel cost remains as a secondary parameter upto a certain cost increment. This limit varies depending on the user’s perceptions and socio-economic characteristics.KeywordsAccess-egress modeTravel behaviorStated preference surveyRapid transit

An economic analysis of a multi-modal transportation system with ride-sourcing services and multi-class users

Tolerance-based intuitionistic fuzzy-rough set approach for attribute reduction

The enhanced interval approach (EIA) is one of the most important approaches for constructing interval type-2 fuzzy set (IT2 FS) from data intervals that are collected from a survey. However, the uniform distribution used in EIA is rough. And the shape (Left-shoulder, Right-shoulder or Interior) of the fuzzy set (FS) affects the value of the membership function (MF) of the final IT2 FS a lot. To guarantee that the final IT2 FSs are consistent with fuzzistics characteristic of the original data and improve robustness, this paper proposes a normal distribution associated with free parameter (FP) as the supplement of uniform distribution in the data part of EIA. Furthermore, a general frame for encoding words from data intervals, called general interval approach (GIA), is built. GIA includes a data part, fuzzy set (FS) part and footprint of uncertainty (FOU) part. The data part maps data intervals to probability distributions, in which normal distribution with FP and uniform distribution are included. The FS part encodes the probability distributions produced by the data part to fuzzy MFs. Gaussian MF is discussed, and the parameter transformation table is obtained. In the FOU part, the FOU of IT2 FS is built by collecting the obtained T1 FSs. The way to construct a Gaussian FOU is, for the first time, proposed in this paper. The validity of GIA is verified by experiments. Compared with EIA, the IT2 FSs built by GIA can keep the statistic characteristic of the original data intervals in the greatest degree and improve the robustness owing to the FP.

O transporte é o elo entre as unidades produtoras e processoradora dentro do setor do agronegócio, apresenta expressiva participação na economia do país e exige um enorme deslocamento de grandes quantidades de cargas. Contudo, a maioria dos produtos provenientes do agronegócio apresenta baixo valor agregado e alto volume de transporte, como no caso da commodity soja, onde o valor do frete pode se tornar significativo no preço final do produto, sendo relevante identificar os meios e formas de transporte que permitam uma redução nos valores de frete. Dessa forma, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo analisar o transporte da soja de São Simão (GO) a Osvaldo Cruz (SP), visto que a movimentação de soja, entre essas duas cidades, é considerável, em razão de uma ser polo de produção e a outra de processamento da soja, respectivamente, além de possibilitar a comparação entre o transporte unicamente rodoviário com o sistema multimodal. Os dados foram analisados por meio de estatística e simulação, podendo concluir que a multimodalidade na rota analisada permitiria uma redução significativa no valor do frete final de aproximadamente 33,3%, se comparado com o transporte unicamente rodoviário.

This study investigates strategies for optimizing public transit networks within the framework of smart cities, emphasizing the crucial need for seamless integration across multiple modes of transportation. A multi-modal transportation system—incorporating buses, trains, bicycles, and shared mobility options—offers significant benefits, including improved accessibility, reduced traffic congestion, and minimized environmental impact. Through an analysis of urban transit models and case studies from cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Berlin, and San Francisco, this research highlights both the advantages and challenges in creating a cohesive, data-driven transit ecosystem. Key results reveal that Tokyo, with an Average Travel Speed of 27.5 km/h, Passenger Load Factor of 0.91, and Emission Reduction Rate of 36.4%, exemplifies high efficiency and sustainability, underpinned by advanced infrastructure and real-time data usage. Singapore also scores well, with a Governance Index of 80 and Sustainable Modal Split of 62.5%, showcasing balanced accessibility and eco-friendly practices. Findings indicate that successful integration hinges on robust infrastructure, adaptive technology, and coordinated governance. This research underscores the importance of real-time data utilization to enhance system responsiveness, contributing to an adaptable and sustainable urban transit network that aligns with smart city goals of livability and resilience.