Search results for: technical operators in the railway domain
4138 Information Requirements for Vessel Traffic Service Operations
Authors: Fan Li, Chun-Hsien Chen, Li Pheng Khoo
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Operators of vessel traffic service (VTS) center provides three different types of services; namely information service, navigational assistance and traffic organization to vessels. To provide these services, operators monitor vessel traffic through computer interface and provide navigational advice based on the information integrated from multiple sources, including automatic identification system (AIS), radar system, and closed circuit television (CCTV) system. Therefore, this information is crucial in VTS operation. However, what information the VTS operator actually need to efficiently and properly offer services is unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate into information requirements for VTS operation. To achieve this aim, field observation was carried out to elicit the information requirements for VTS operation. The study revealed that the most frequent and important tasks were handling arrival vessel report, potential conflict control and abeam vessel report. Current location and vessel name were used in all tasks. Hazard cargo information was particularly required when operators handle arrival vessel report. The speed, the course, and the distance of two or several vessels were only used in potential conflict control. The information requirements identified in this study can be utilized in designing a human-computer interface that takes into consideration what and when information should be displayed, and might be further used to build the foundation of a decision support system for VTS.Keywords: vessel traffic service, information requirements, hierarchy task analysis, field observation
Procedia PDF Downloads 2294137 Application of the Hit or Miss Transform to Detect Dams Monitored for Water Quality Using Remote Sensing in South Africa
Authors: Brighton Chamunorwa
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The current remote sensing of water quality procedures does not provide a step representing physical visualisation of the monitored dam. The application of the remote sensing of water quality techniques may benefit from use of mathematical morphology operators for shape identification. Given an input of dam outline, morphological operators such as the hit or miss transform identifies if the water body is present on input remotely sensed images. This study seeks to determine the accuracy of the hit or miss transform to identify dams monitored by the water resources authorities in South Africa on satellite images. To achieve this objective the study download a Landsat image acquired in winter and tested the capability of the hit or miss transform using shapefile boundaries of dams in the crocodile marico catchment. The results of the experiment show that it is possible to detect most dams on the Landsat image after the adjusting the erosion operator to detect pixel matching a percentage similarity of 80% and above. Successfully implementation of the current study contributes towards optimisation of mathematical morphology image operators. Additionally, the effort helps develop remote sensing of water quality monitoring with improved simulation of the conventional procedures.Keywords: hit or miss transform, mathematical morphology, remote sensing, water quality monitoring
Procedia PDF Downloads 1284136 Mobility and Effective Regulatory Policies in the 21st Century Transport Sector
Authors: Pedro Paulino
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The majority of the world’s population is already living in urban areas and the urban population is expected to keep increasing in the next decades. This exponential increase in urban population carries with it obvious mobility problems. Not only a new paradigm in the transport sector is needed in order to address these problems; effective regulatory policies to ensure the quality of services, passenger rights, competition between operators and consistency of the entire mobile ecosystem are needed as well. The purpose of this paper is to present the problems the world faces in this sector and contribute to their solution. Indeed, our study concludes that only through the active supervision of the markets and the activity of monitoring the various operators will it be possible to develop a sustainable and efficient transport system which meets the needs of a changing world.Keywords: mobility, regulation policies, sanctioning powers, sustainable transport
Procedia PDF Downloads 2844135 Topics of Blockchain Technology to Teach at Community College
Authors: Penn P. Wu, Jeannie Jo
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Blockchain technology has rapidly gained popularity in industry. This paper attempts to assist academia to answer four questions. First, should community colleges begin offering education to nurture blockchain-literate students for the job market? Second, what are the appropriate topical areas to cover? Third, should it be an individual course? And forth, should it be a technical or management course? This paper starts with identifying the knowledge domains of blockchain technology and the topical areas each domain has, and continues with placing them in appropriate academic territories (Computer Sciences vs. Business) and subjects (programming, management, marketing, and laws), and then develops an evaluation model to determine the appropriate topical area for community colleges to teach. The evaluation is based on seven factors: maturity of technology, impacts on management, real-world applications, subject classification, knowledge prerequisites, textbook readiness, and recommended pedagogies. The evaluation results point to an interesting direction that offering an introductory course is an ideal option to guide students through the learning journey of what blockchain is and how it applies to business. Such an introductory course does not need to engage students in the discussions of mathematics and sciences that make blockchain technologies possible. While it is inevitable to brief technical topics to help students build a solid knowledge foundation of blockchain technologies, community colleges should avoid offering students a course centered on the discussion of developing blockchain applications.Keywords: blockchain, pedagogies, blockchain technologies, blockchain course, blockchain pedagogies
Procedia PDF Downloads 1094134 Hindi Speech Synthesis by Concatenation of Recognized Hand Written Devnagri Script Using Support Vector Machines Classifier
Authors: Saurabh Farkya, Govinda Surampudi
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Optical Character Recognition is one of the current major research areas. This paper is focussed on recognition of Devanagari script and its sound generation. This Paper consists of two parts. First, Optical Character Recognition of Devnagari handwritten Script. Second, speech synthesis of the recognized text. This paper shows an implementation of support vector machines for the purpose of Devnagari Script recognition. The Support Vector Machines was trained with Multi Domain features; Transform Domain and Spatial Domain or Structural Domain feature. Transform Domain includes the wavelet feature of the character. Structural Domain consists of Distance Profile feature and Gradient feature. The Segmentation of the text document has been done in 3 levels-Line Segmentation, Word Segmentation, and Character Segmentation. The pre-processing of the characters has been done with the help of various Morphological operations-Otsu's Algorithm, Erosion, Dilation, Filtration and Thinning techniques. The Algorithm was tested on the self-prepared database, a collection of various handwriting. Further, Unicode was used to convert recognized Devnagari text into understandable computer document. The document so obtained is an array of codes which was used to generate digitized text and to synthesize Hindi speech. Phonemes from the self-prepared database were used to generate the speech of the scanned document using concatenation technique.Keywords: Character Recognition (OCR), Text to Speech (TTS), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Library of Support Vector Machines (LIBSVM)
Procedia PDF Downloads 4744133 A Variable Structural Control for a Flexible Lamina
Authors: Xuezhang Hou
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A control problem of a flexible Lamina formulated by partial differential equations with viscoelastic boundary conditions is studied in this paper. The problem is written in standard form of linear infinite dimensional system in an appropriate energy Hilbert space. The semigroup approach of linear operators is adopted in investigating wellposedness of the closed loop system. A variable structural control for the system is proposed, and meanwhile an equivalent control method is applied to the thin plate system. A significant result on control theory that the thin plate can be approximated by ideal sliding mode in any accuracy in terms of semigroup approach is obtained.Keywords: partial differential equations, flexible lamina, variable structural control, semigroup of linear operators
Procedia PDF Downloads 634132 Effect of the Soil-Foundation Interface Condition in the Determination of the Resistance Domain of Rigid Shallow Foundations
Authors: Nivine Abbas, Sergio Lagomarsino, Serena Cattari
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The resistance domain of a generally loaded rigid shallow foundation is normally represented as an interaction diagram limited by a failure surface in the three dimensional (3D) load space (N, V, M), where N is the vertical centric load component, V is the horizontal load component and M is the bending moment component. Usually, this resistance domain is constructed neglecting the foundation sliding mechanism that take place at the level of soil-foundation interface once the applied horizontal load exceeds the interface frictional resistance of the foundation. This issue is translated in the literature by the fact that the failure limit in the (2D) load space (N, V) is constructed as a parabola having an initial slope, at the center of the coordinate system, that depends, in some works, only of the soil friction angle, and in other works, has an empirical value. However, considering a given geometry of the foundation lying on a given soil type, the initial slope of the failure limit must change, for instance, when varying the roughness of the foundation surface at its interface with the soil. The present study discusses the effect of the soil-foundation interface condition on the construction of the resistance domain, and proposes a correction to be applied to the failure limit in order to overcome this effect.Keywords: soil-foundation interface, sliding mechanism, soil shearing, resistance domain, rigid shallow foundation
Procedia PDF Downloads 4374131 Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) as a Strategy for Competitiveness
Authors: Ignatio Madanhire, Charles Mbohwa
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This research examines the effect of a human resource strategy and the overall equipment effectiveness as well as assessing how the combination of the two can increase a firm’s productivity. The human resource aspect is looked at in detail to assess motivation of operators through training to reduce wastage on the manufacturing shop floor. The waste was attributed to operators, maintenance personal, idle machines, idle manpower and break downs. This work seeks to investigate the concept of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) in addressing these short comings in the manufacturing case study. The impact of TPM to increase production while, as well as increasing employee morale and job satisfaction is assessed. This can be resource material for practitioners who seek to improve overall equipment efficiency (OEE) to achieve higher level productivity and competitiveness.Keywords: maintenance, TPM, efficiency, productivity, strategy
Procedia PDF Downloads 3984130 The Application of Line Balancing Technique and Simulation Program to Increase Productivity in Hard Disk Drive Components
Authors: Alonggot Limcharoen, Jintana Wannarat, Vorawat Panich
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This study aims to investigate the balancing of the number of operators (Line Balancing technique) in the production line of hard disk drive components in order to increase efficiency. At present, the trend of using hard disk drives has continuously declined leading to limits in a company’s revenue potential. It is important to improve and develop the production process to create market share and to have the ability to compete with competitors with a higher value and quality. Therefore, an effective tool is needed to support such matters. In this research, the Arena program was applied to analyze the results both before and after the improvement. Finally, the precedent was used before proceeding with the real process. There were 14 work stations with 35 operators altogether in the RA production process where this study was conducted. In the actual process, the average production time was 84.03 seconds per product piece (by timing 30 times in each work station) along with a rating assessment by implementing the Westinghouse principles. This process showed that the rating was 123% underlying an assumption of 5% allowance time. Consequently, the standard time was 108.53 seconds per piece. The Takt time was calculated from customer needs divided by working duration in one day; 3.66 seconds per piece. Of these, the proper number of operators was 30 people. That meant five operators should be eliminated in order to increase the production process. After that, a production model was created from the actual process by using the Arena program to confirm model reliability; the outputs from imitation were compared with the original (actual process) and this comparison indicated that the same output meaning was reliable. Then, worker numbers and their job responsibilities were remodeled into the Arena program. Lastly, the efficiency of production process enhanced from 70.82% to 82.63% according to the target.Keywords: hard disk drive, line balancing, ECRS, simulation, arena program
Procedia PDF Downloads 2074129 The Effect of an Occupational Therapy Programme on Sewing Machine Operators
Authors: N. Dunleavy, E. Lovemore, K. Siljeur, D. Jackson, M. Hendricks, M. Hoosain, N. Plastow, S. Marais
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Background: The work requirements of sewing machine operators cause physical and emotional strain. Past ergonomic interventions have been provided to alleviate physical concerns; however, a holistic, multimodal intervention was needed to improve these factors. Aim: The study aimed to examine the effect of an occupational therapy programme on sewing machine operators’ pain, mental health, and productivity within a factory in the South African context. Methods: A pilot randomised control trial was conducted with 22 sewing machine operators within a single factory. Stratified randomisation was used to determine the experimental (EG) and control groups (CG), using measures for pain intensity, level of depression (mental health), and productivity rates as stratification variables. The EG received the multimodal intervention, incorporating education, seating adaptations, and mental health intervention. In three months, the CG will receive the same intervention. Pre- and post-intervention testing have occurred with upcoming three- and six-month follow-ups. Results: Immediate results indicate a statistically significant decrease in pain in both experimental and control groups; no change in productivity scores and depression between the two groups. This may be attributed to external factors. The values for depression further showed no statistical significance between the two groups and within pre-and post-test results. The Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) version-24 was used as the data analysis testing, where all the tests will be evaluated at a 5% significance level. Contribution of research: The research adds to the body of knowledge informing the Occupational Therapy role in work settings, providing evidence on the effectiveness of workplace-based multimodal interventions. Conclusion: The study provides initial data on the effectiveness of a pilot randomised control trial on pain and mental health in South Africa. Results indicated no quantitative change between the experimental and control groups; however, qualitative data suggest a clinical significance of the findings.Keywords: ergonomics programme, occupational therapy, sewing machine operators, workplace-based multimodal interventions
Procedia PDF Downloads 644128 Objects Tracking in Catadioptric Images Using Spherical Snake
Authors: Khald Anisse, Amina Radgui, Mohammed Rziza
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Tracking objects on video sequences is a very challenging task in many works in computer vision applications. However, there is no article that treats this topic in catadioptric vision. This paper is an attempt that tries to describe a new approach of omnidirectional images processing based on inverse stereographic projection in the half-sphere. We used the spherical model proposed by Gayer and al. For object tracking, our work is based on snake method, with optimization using the Greedy algorithm, by adapting its different operators. The algorithm will respect the deformed geometries of omnidirectional images such as spherical neighborhood, spherical gradient and reformulation of optimization algorithm on the spherical domain. This tracking method that we call "spherical snake" permitted to know the change of the shape and the size of object in different replacements in the spherical image.Keywords: computer vision, spherical snake, omnidirectional image, object tracking, inverse stereographic projection
Procedia PDF Downloads 3724127 Technical Feasibility Analysis of PV Water Pumping System in Khuzestan Province-Iran
Authors: M.Goodarzi, M.Mohammadi, M. Rezaee
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The technical analysis of using solar energy and electricity for water pumping in the Khuzestan province in Iran is investigated. For this purpose, the ecological conditions such as the weather data, air clearness and sunshine hours are analyzed. The nature of groundwater in the region was examined in terms of depth, static and dynamic head, water pumping rate.Three configurations for solar water pumping system were studied in this thesis; AC solar water pumping with storage battery, AC solar water pumping with storage tank and DC direct solar water pumping.Keywords: technical feasibility, solar energy, photovoltaic systems, photovoltaic water pumping system
Procedia PDF Downloads 6054126 Content Based Face Sketch Images Retrieval in WHT, DCT, and DWT Transform Domain
Authors: W. S. Besbas, M. A. Artemi, R. M. Salman
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Content based face sketch retrieval can be used to find images of criminals from their sketches for 'Crime Prevention'. This paper investigates the problem of CBIR of face sketch images in transform domain. Face sketch images that are similar to the query image are retrieved from the face sketch database. Features of the face sketch image are extracted in the spectrum domain of a selected transforms. These transforms are Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), and Walsh Hadamard Transform (WHT). For the performance analyses of features selection methods three face images databases are used. These are 'Sheffield face database', 'Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL) face database', and 'Indian face database'. The City block distance measure is used to evaluate the performance of the retrieval process. The investigation concludes that, the retrieval rate is database dependent. But in general, the DCT is the best. On the other hand, the WHT is the best with respect to the speed of retrieving images.Keywords: Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR), face sketch image retrieval, features selection for CBIR, image retrieval in transform domain
Procedia PDF Downloads 4694125 WiFi Data Offloading: Bundling Method in a Canvas Business Model
Authors: Majid Mokhtarnia, Alireza Amini
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Mobile operators deal with increasing in the data traffic as a critical issue. As a result, a vital responsibility of the operators is to deal with such a trend in order to create added values. This paper addresses a bundling method in a Canvas business model in a WiFi Data Offloading (WDO) strategy by which some elements of the model may be affected. In the proposed method, it is supposed to sell a number of data packages for subscribers in which there are some packages with a free given volume of data-offloaded WiFi complimentary. The paper on hands analyses this method in the views of attractiveness and profitability. The results demonstrate that the quality of implementation of the WDO strongly affects the final result and helps the decision maker to make the best one.Keywords: bundling, canvas business model, telecommunication, WiFi data offloading
Procedia PDF Downloads 1764124 Generating High-Frequency Risk Factor Collections with Transformer
Authors: Wenyan Xu, Rundong Wang, Chen Li, Yonghong Hu, Zhonghua Lu
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In the field of quantitative trading, it is common to find patterns in short-term volatile trends of the market. These patterns are known as High-Frequency (HF) risk factors, serving as effective indicators of future stock price volatility. However, in the past, these risk factors were usually generated by traditional financial models, and the validity of these risk factors is heavily based on domain-specific knowledge manually added instead of extensive market data. Inspired by symbolic regression (SR), the task of inferring mathematical laws from existing data, we take the extraction of formulaic risk factors from high-frequency trading (HFT) market data as an SR task. In this paper, we challenge the procedure of manually constructing risk factors and propose an end-to-end methodology Intraday Risk Factor Transformer (IRFT), to directly predict the full formulaic factors, constants included. Specifically, we utilize a hybrid symbolic-numeric vocabulary where symbolic tokens denote operators/stock features and numeric tokens denote constants. Then, we train a Transformer model on the HFT dataset to directly generate complete formulaic HF risk factors without relying on the skeleton, which is a parametric function using a pre-defined list of operators – typically, the math operations (+, ×, /) and functions (√x, log x, cos x). It determines the general shape of the stock volatility law up to a choice of constants, e.g., f(x) = tan(ax+b) (x is the stock price). We further refine predicted constants(a,b) using the Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno algorithm (BFGS) as informed guesses to mitigate non-linear issues. Compared to the 10 approaches in SRBench, which is a living benchmark for SR, IRFT gains a 30% excess investment return on the HS300 and S&P500 dataset, with inference times orders of magnitude faster than theirs in HF risk factor mining tasks.Keywords: transformer, factor-mining language model, highfrequency risk factor collections
Procedia PDF Downloads 14123 Planning Railway Assets Renewal with a Multiobjective Approach
Authors: João Coutinho-Rodrigues, Nuno Sousa, Luís Alçada-Almeida
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Transportation infrastructure systems are fundamental in modern society and economy. However, they need modernizing, maintaining, and reinforcing interventions which require large investments. In many countries, accumulated intervention delays arise from aging and intense use, being magnified by financial constraints of the past. The decision problem of managing the renewal of large backlogs is common to several types of important transportation infrastructures (e.g., railways, roads). This problem requires considering financial aspects as well as operational constraints under a multidimensional framework. The present research introduces a linear programming multiobjective model for managing railway infrastructure asset renewal. The model aims at minimizing three objectives: (i) yearly investment peak, by evenly spreading investment throughout multiple years; (ii) total cost, which includes extra maintenance costs incurred from renewal backlogs; (iii) priority delays related to work start postponements on the higher priority railway sections. Operational constraints ensure that passenger and freight services are not excessively delayed from having railway line sections under intervention. Achieving a balanced annual investment plan, without compromising the total financial effort or excessively postponing the execution of the priority works, was the motivation for pursuing the research which is now presented. The methodology, inspired by a real case study and tested with real data, reflects aspects of the practice of an infrastructure management company and is generalizable to different types of infrastructure (e.g., railways, highways). It was conceived for treating renewal interventions in infrastructure assets, which is a railway network may be rails, ballasts, sleepers, etc.; while a section is under intervention, trains must run at reduced speed, causing delays in services. The model cannot, therefore, allow for an accumulation of works on the same line, which may cause excessively large delays. Similarly, the lines do not all have the same socio-economic importance or service intensity, making it is necessary to prioritize the sections to be renewed. The model takes these issues into account, and its output is an optimized works schedule for the renewal project translatable in Gantt charts The infrastructure management company provided all the data for the first test case study and validated the parameterization. This case consists of several sections to be renewed, over 5 years and belonging to 17 lines. A large instance was also generated, reflecting a problem of a size similar to the USA railway network (considered the largest one in the world), so it is not expected that considerably larger problems appear in real life; an average of 25 years backlog and ten years of project horizon was considered. Despite the very large increase in the number of decision variables (200 times as large), the computational time cost did not increase very significantly. It is thus expectable that just about any real-life problem can be treated in a modern computer, regardless of size. The trade-off analysis shows that if the decision maker allows some increase in max yearly investment (i.e., degradation of objective ii), solutions improve considerably in the remaining two objectives.Keywords: transport infrastructure, asset renewal, railway maintenance, multiobjective modeling
Procedia PDF Downloads 1294122 Estimation of the Pore Electrical Conductivity Using Dielectric Sensors
Authors: Fethi Bouksila, Magnus Persson, Ronny Berndtsson, Akissa Bahri
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Under salinity conditions, we evaluate the performance of Hilhost (2000) model to predict pore electrical conductivity ECp from dielectric permittivity and bulk electrical conductivity (ECa) using Time and Frequency Domain Reflectometry sensors (TDR, FDR). Using FDR_WET sensor, RMSE of ECp was 4.15 dS m-1. By replacing the standard soil parameter (K0) in Hilhost model by K0-ECa relationship, the RMSE of ECp decreased to 0.68 dS m-1. WET sensor could give similar accuracy to estimate ECp than TDR if calibrated values of K0 were used instead of standard values in Hilhost model.Keywords: hilhost model, soil salinity, time domain reflectometry, frequency domain reflectometry, dielectric methods
Procedia PDF Downloads 1164121 Identification of Factors Affecting Technical Efficiency Sugar Cane Farming in East Java
Authors: Noor Rizkiyah, Djoko Koestiono, Budi Setiawan, Nuhfil Hanani
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This research aims to identify the factors that affect the production of sugar cane, the level of technical efficiency of farming sugar cane ratooning and factors that affect technical inefficiency. Research carried out in Malang of East Java with sampling in a non random sampling stratified proportioned and obtained 172 household sugar cane farmers who are classified based on the level of ratooning i.e. ratooning I 3-4 times ratoning, ratooning II 5-10 times ratoning as well as ratooning III > 10 times ratoning. The method used is the Stochastic Production Frontier approach MLE (maximum likelihood estimation). From the results obtained by analysis of the factors affecting the production of sugar cane farming land, namely ratooning fertilizer use ZA petroganic, use of fertilizer and seeds of embroidery and labor. While the average level of sugar cane farmers ratooning efficiency of 0.78 and categorized yet efficient technically. For the factors that influence the technical inefficiency i.e. age, number of dependents and the frequency of family ratooning. Though not yet technically efficient but sugar cane farmers cultivate cultivation remains ratooning. But if it is done repeatedly ratooning will result in a decrease in the production of sugar cane. Whereas the results of the analysis of farming level of feasibility or RC ratooning sugar cane ratio of 1.15 so worth trying to accomplish. Thus with increased technology and combining the use of inputs is an attempt to let the technical efficiency can be achieved so that the more worthy to be organised.Keywords: technical efficiency, production, sugarcane, frontier
Procedia PDF Downloads 1494120 Scaling Siamese Neural Network for Cross-Domain Few Shot Learning in Medical Imaging
Authors: Jinan Fiaidhi, Sabah Mohammed
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Cross-domain learning in the medical field is a research challenge as many conditions, like in oncology imaging, use different imaging modalities. Moreover, in most of the medical learning applications, the sample training size is relatively small. Although few-shot learning (FSL) through the use of a Siamese neural network was able to be trained on a small sample with remarkable accuracy, FSL fails to be effective for use in multiple domains as their convolution weights are set for task-specific applications. In this paper, we are addressing this problem by enabling FSL to possess the ability to shift across domains by designing a two-layer FSL network that can learn individually from each domain and produce a shared features map with extra modulation to be used at the second layer that can recognize important targets from mix domains. Our initial experimentations based on mixed medical datasets like the Medical-MNIST reveal promising results. We aim to continue this research to perform full-scale analytics for testing our cross-domain FSL learning.Keywords: Siamese neural network, few-shot learning, meta-learning, metric-based learning, thick data transformation and analytics
Procedia PDF Downloads 334119 Speeding-up Gray-Scale FIC by Moments
Authors: Eman A. Al-Hilo, Hawraa H. Al-Waelly
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In this work, fractal compression (FIC) technique is introduced based on using moment features to block indexing the zero-mean range-domain blocks. The moment features have been used to speed up the IFS-matching stage. Its moments ratio descriptor is used to filter the domain blocks and keep only the blocks that are suitable to be IFS matched with tested range block. The results of tests conducted on Lena picture and Cat picture (256 pixels, resolution 24 bits/pixel) image showed a minimum encoding time (0.89 sec for Lena image and 0.78 of Cat image) with appropriate PSNR (30.01dB for Lena image and 29.8 of Cat image). The reduction in ET is about 12% for Lena and 67% for Cat image.Keywords: fractal gray level image, fractal compression technique, iterated function system, moments feature, zero-mean range-domain block
Procedia PDF Downloads 4774118 An Alternative Method for Computing Clothoids
Authors: Gerardo Casal, Miguel E. Vázquez-Méndez
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The clothoid (also known as Cornu spiral or Euler spiral) is a curve that is characterized because its curvature is proportional to its length. This property makes that it would be widely used as transition curve for designing the layout of roads and railway tracks. In this work, from the geometrical property characterizing the clothoid, its parametric equations are obtained and two algorithms to compute it are compared. The first (classical), is widely used in Surveying Schools and it is based on the use of explicit formulas obtained from Taylor expansions of sine and cosine functions. The second one (alternative) is a very simple algorithm, based on the numerical solution of the initial value problems giving the clothoid parameterization. Both methods are compared in some typical surveying problems. The alternative method does not use complex formulas and so it is conceptually very simple and easy to apply. It gives good results, even if the classical method goes wrong (if the quotient between length and radius of curvature is high), needs no subsequent translations nor rotations and, consequently, it seems an efficient tool for designing the layout of roads and railway tracks.Keywords: transition curves, railroad and highway engineering, Runge-Kutta methods
Procedia PDF Downloads 2514117 Linear Complementary Based Approach for Unilateral Frictional Contact between Wheel and Beam
Authors: Muskaan Sethi, Arnab Banerjee, Bappaditya Manna
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The present paper aims to investigate a suitable contact between a wheel rolling over a flexible beam. A Linear Complementary (LCP) based approach has been adopted to simulate the contact dynamics for a rigid wheel traversing over a flexible Euler Bernoulli simply supported beam. The adopted methodology is suitable to incorporate the effect of frictional force acting at the wheel-beam interface. Moreover, the possibility of the generation of a gap between the two bodies has also been considered. The present method is based on a unilateral contact assumption which assumes that no penetration would occur when the two bodies come in contact. This assumption helps to predict the contact between wheels and beams in a more practical sense. The proposed methodology is validated with the previously published results and is found to be in good agreement. Further, this method is applied to simulate the contact between wheels and beams for various railway configurations. Moreover, different parametric studies are conducted to study the contact dynamics between the wheel and beam more thoroughly.Keywords: contact dynamics, linear complementary problem, railway dynamics, unilateral contact
Procedia PDF Downloads 794116 Physical Characterization of a Watershed for Correlation with Parameters of Thomas Hydrological Model and Its Application in Iber Hidrodinamic Model
Authors: Carlos Caro, Ernest Blade, Nestor Rojas
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This study determined the relationship between basic geo-technical parameters and parameters of the hydro logical model Thomas for water balance of rural watersheds, as a methodological calibration application, applicable in distributed models as IBER model, which represents a distributed system simulation models for unsteady flow numerical free surface. There was an exploration in 25 points (on 15 sub) basin of Rio Piedras (Boy.) obtaining soil samples, to which geo-technical characterization was performed by laboratory tests. Thomas model has a physical characterization of the input area by only four parameters (a, b, c, d). Achieve measurable relationship between geo technical parameters and 4 values of hydro logical parameters helps to determine subsurface, underground and surface flow more agile manner. It is intended in this way to reach some solutions regarding limits initial model parameters on the basis of Thomas geo-technical characterization. In hydro geological models of rural watersheds, calibration is an important process in the characterization of the study area. This step can require a significant computational cost and time, especially if the initial values or parameters before calibration are outside of the geo-technical reality. A better approach in these initial values means optimization of these process through a geo-technical materials area, where is obtained an important approach to the study as in the starting range of variation for the calibration parameters.Keywords: distributed hydrology, hydrological and geotechnical characterization, Iber model
Procedia PDF Downloads 5004115 Possibilities, Challenges and the State of the Art of Automatic Speech Recognition in Air Traffic Control
Authors: Van Nhan Nguyen, Harald Holone
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Over the past few years, a lot of research has been conducted to bring Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) into various areas of Air Traffic Control (ATC), such as air traffic control simulation and training, monitoring live operators for with the aim of safety improvements, air traffic controller workload measurement and conducting analysis on large quantities controller-pilot speech. Due to the high accuracy requirements of the ATC context and its unique challenges, automatic speech recognition has not been widely adopted in this field. With the aim of providing a good starting point for researchers who are interested bringing automatic speech recognition into ATC, this paper gives an overview of possibilities and challenges of applying automatic speech recognition in air traffic control. To provide this overview, we present an updated literature review of speech recognition technologies in general, as well as specific approaches relevant to the ATC context. Based on this literature review, criteria for selecting speech recognition approaches for the ATC domain are presented, and remaining challenges and possible solutions are discussed.Keywords: automatic speech recognition, asr, air traffic control, atc
Procedia PDF Downloads 3764114 Reader Reception of Cultural Context for Chinese Translation of Scientific and Technical Discourse: An Empirical Study
Authors: Caiwen Wang, Yuling Liu
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Scientific and technical discourse is non-literary, and so it is often regarded as merely informative, free of the cultural context of both the source and the target language. Thus it is supposed that translators of sci-tech texts do not need to consider cultural factors in the translation process as readers only care for the information conveyed. This paper takes a different standpoint and shows that cultural context plays an important part in scientific and technical texts and thereafter in bridging the gap between different cultural communities of readers. The paper argues that the common cultural context for members of the same cultural community, such as morals, customs, and values, also underpins the sci-tech discourse of various text types, and therefore may pose difficulties for readers of a different cultural community if this is re-presented or translated literally. The research hypothesises that depending on how it is re-presented or translated; cultural context can either encourage or discourage readers’ reading experience and subsequently their interest to read and use translation texts. Drawing upon the Reception Theory by Hans Robert Jauss, the research investigates the relationship between cultural context and scientific and technical translation from English to Chinese. Citing 55 examples of sci-tech translations from magazines, newspapers and the website of Shell, a major international oil and gas company, the research shows that the source texts for these 55 cases all have bearing on the source cultural context, and translators will need to address this in the translation process instead of doing literal translation to be merely correct. The research then interviews 15 research subjects for their views of the translations. By assessing readers’ reception and perception of translated Chinese sci-tech discourse, the research concludes that cultural context contributes to the quality of scientific and technical translation in an important way and then discusses the implications of the findings for training scientific and technical translators.Keywords: Chinese translation, cultural context, reception theory, scientific and technical texts
Procedia PDF Downloads 3134113 Vocational and Technical Education: A Practical Approach to Reducing Insecurity in Nigeria
Authors: S. S. Amoor
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Insecurity is becoming a major tool in the hand of Nigeria’s enemies to increase poverty and hatred among the citizens and split the county into several political segments. It is based on this background that this paper critically examines Vocational and Technical Education as a practical and realistic approach to reducing insecurity in Nigeria so as to save the country from total disintegration. The paper discusses the concept of insecurity, types, causes and effects of insecurity, and how vocational and technical education and its variables are fundamental and practical measures to reducing insecurity in Nigeria. The paper concludes that the large army of unemployed and unskilled youths in Nigeria requires immediate attention in the area of provision of marketable vocational and technical skills, creativity and competences that will prepare them for employment or self-reliance. It is hoped that government jobs or self-employment will keep the teeming youths busy and therefore take their minds away from odd jobs that threaten the security of the country. In line with these, the paper recommends, among others, that since the teeming unemployed and unskilled youths are mostly from the rural areas, the state governments in collaboration with the local governments should take appropriate steps to provide the youths with vocational skills in carpentry, fashion designing, hair-dressing, driving, welding, mechanical works, among others. Once the youths are involved in one skilled trade or the other, insecurity would be reduced.Keywords: vocational and technical education, insecurity, practical approach to reducing insecurity, unemployment
Procedia PDF Downloads 1114112 On Supporting a Meta-Design Approach in Socio-Technical Ontology Engineering
Authors: Mesnan Silalahi, Dana Indra Sensuse, Indra Budi
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Many research have revealed the fact of the complexity of ontology building process that there is a need to have a new approach which addresses the socio-technical aspects in the collaboration to reach a consensus. Meta-design approach is considered applicable as a method in the methodological model in a socio-technical ontology engineering. Principles in the meta-design framework is applied in the construction phases on the ontology. A portal is developed to support the meta-design principles requirements. To validate the methodological model semantic web applications were developed and integrated in the portal and also used as a way to show the usefulness of the ontology. The knowledge based system will be filled with data of Indonesian medicinal plants. By showing the usefulness of the developed ontology in a web semantic application, we motivate all stakeholders to participate in the development of knowledge based system of medicinal plants in Indonesia.Keywords: socio-technical, metadesign, ontology engineering methodology, semantic web application
Procedia PDF Downloads 4224111 Career Anchors and Domain Specialization in Management Education: A Deviation Analysis
Authors: Santosh Kumar Sharma
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In view of management education with special reference to India, it has been noted that students have deviations between their career anchors and domain of specialization. As a consequence, they face problems in their summer internships and placements in the corporate sector. Eventually, they either change their career track or leave the management profession, which is a serious concern from the perspective of human capital. However, there is no substantial literature in the given context. Therefore, the present study contributes to the global discourse of management education and its spillover effect on human resource management. The objective of the present study is to analyze the deviation between career anchors and domain specialization with reference to management education in India. The present study is exploratory in nature, wherein data has been collected from a significant number of post-graduate students who are pursuing management education from a premium business school in India, followed by descriptive analysis. The present research contributes to the professional development of management students from the perspective of human capital, which is eventually related to various factors of the Indian economy.Keywords: India, management education, domain specialization, placements
Procedia PDF Downloads 644110 Comparative Study od Three Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Rain Domain in Precipitation Forecast
Authors: Nabilah Filzah Mohd Radzuan, Andi Putra, Zalinda Othman, Azuraliza Abu Bakar, Abdul Razak Hamdan
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Precipitation forecast is important to avoid natural disaster incident which can cause losses in the involved area. This paper reviews three techniques logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest which are used in making precipitation forecast. These combination techniques through the vector auto-regression (VAR) model help in finding the advantages and strengths of each technique in the forecast process. The data-set contains variables of the rain’s domain. Adaptation of artificial intelligence techniques involved in rain domain enables the forecast process to be easier and systematic for precipitation forecast.Keywords: logistic regression, decisions tree, random forest, VAR model
Procedia PDF Downloads 4224109 Analysis of the Relationship between the Unitary Impulse Response for the nth-Volterra Kernel of a Duffing Oscillator System
Authors: Guillermo Manuel Flores Figueroa, Juan Alejandro Vazquez Feijoo, Jose Navarro Antonio
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A continuous nonlinear system response may be obtained by an infinite sum of the so-called Volterra operators. Each operator is obtained from multidimensional convolution of nth-order between the nth-order Volterra kernel and the system input. These operators can also be obtained from the Associated Linear Equations (ALEs) that are linear models of subsystems which inputs and outputs are of the same nth-order. Each ALEs produces a particular nth-Volterra operator. As linear models a unitary impulse response can be obtained from them. This work shows the relationship between this unitary impulse responses and the corresponding order Volterra kernel.Keywords: Volterra series, frequency response functions FRF, associated linear equations ALEs, unitary response function, Voterra kernel
Procedia PDF Downloads 639