Monitoring traffic with drones

Monitoring traffic with drones

Engineering
To achieve better traffic conditions and reduce congestion on public roads, transportation designers and traffic planners adjust road designs, transportation constructions, signal operations, etc., after reviewing transportation study reports or traffic simulation models. Generally, the adjustments are applied to meet further traffic demands or solve chronic traffic problems, but what if people want to respond to traffic conditions in realtime?  Many tools, such as cameras, sensors and helicopters, are used for real-time traffic monitoring. In addition to these tools, more and more traffic departments are starting to think about using drones. The Ohio Department of Transportation’s DriveOhio Division is planning to use camera drones to monitor highway traffic. $6 million has been given to Ohio State University’s College of Engineering to study how drones can be effective traffic monitoring tools [1].…
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Article review: “Genetics of traffic assignment models for strategic transport planning”

Article review: “Genetics of traffic assignment models for strategic transport planning”

Engineering, paper review
The article under review is about traffic assignment models which are used to forecast traffic flows and travel times for strategic (long-term) transport planning and project appraisal [1]. To review and classify traffic assignment models, the authors analogize them to genetics. The article says every traffic assignment model has the same DNA (theoretical framework) for strategic transport planning, but different genes (capability). There are three genes: spatial capability, temporal capability and behavioural capability, which are defined to describe models. Each capability contains three or four assumptions which the authors liken to nucleotides. In addition, each assumption has different features, and the authors use the first letter of each feature to code the feature [1]. For example, one assumption for spatial capability is shape of the fundamental diagram which could be linear,…
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How do I see climate change affecting my technical area (engineering)?

How do I see climate change affecting my technical area (engineering)?

Engineering
Average temperatures over Canada increased by 1.5℃ between 1950 and 2010, with an increasing number of extreme warm days and decreasing number of cold nights [1]. Across Canada, springtime snow cover declined up to 34% from 1972 to 2010 [1]. Behind these phenomena is climate change which has been impacting engineering practice. During most engineering work, including civil, environmental, hydrotechnical etc., the impacts of climate change should be considered. Climate change is inevitable, so engineers have to change their techniques to adapt or mitigate it. Climate change can impact engineering project planning, design, maintenance, restoration and rehabilitation. The frequency of extreme weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, increases because of climate change, which should be considered when making engineering plans to achieve a long design life. The climate change risk in…
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Paper review: Impact of horizontal geometric design of two-lane rural roads on vehicle CO2 emissions

Engineering, Environment, paper review
The original paper link is here. In this paper, the authors evaluate the impact of horizontal highway geometric design features on CO2 emissions with VT-Micro, a microscopic emission estimation model. The authors believe that too little research thus far has focused on the effects of horizontal alignment on GHG emissions, compared with the number of studies that evaluate the influence of vertical alignment. The authors study a database of more than 16,000 veh-km collected in 2008 on 11 two-lane rural road sections which were divided into 29 homogeneous road segments according to their Curvature Change Rate (CCR). To estimate CO2 emissions, instantaneous speed and acceleration are used as input variables for the VT-micro model. The paper provides geometric analysis, operational analysis, and combined analysis. As for geometric analysis, the study…
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Is it a good time to promote wind and solar power?

Is it a good time to promote wind and solar power?

Engineering, Environment
The increasing awareness of climate change and global warming leads to an increasing number of people who start to pay attention to green house gases(GHG) emissions, especially CO2. Electricity generation as a significant source of CO2 emissions has gotten lots of discussion. Advocating to use renewable energy to replace fossil fuels is one of the main recommendations for cutting electricity-related emissions. Based on the definition given by Natural Resources Canada, “Renewable energy is energy derived from natural processes that are replenished at a rate that is equal to or faster than the rate at which they are consumed… These resources include moving water, wind, biomass, solar, geothermal, and ocean energy.” [1] Among those resources, wind and solar are the most popular ones. Wind and solar energy is always associated with some…
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