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RSS FeedJanuary 10th, 2012
Intelligent Transportation and Logistics Meetup in Washington DC
Looking forward to the first meetup of the “Intelligent Transportation and Logistics” meetup group in Washington DC! On January 23rd, the Intelligent Transpologists of Washington DC metro area will meet to talk about “Silver Line Metro, Parking in the City and the Meta Issues”
Checkout the group, and if live in the Washington DC metro area, consider joining us that day! And while you are on the group site, please take our poll: What should our tag line be?
And while we are on the topic, did you see the Scientific American’s September 2011 Special Issue on Better, Greener, Smarter Cities? One statistic that I have been told is that of an urban area’s traffic, 30% is simply the people looking for parking. That sounds like a REALLY large fraction. Is that really true? If it is indeed true, then sounds interesting just to guess what might happen if that traffic could be eliminated. I would think that with 30% less traffic, and with traffic displaying such non-linear phenomenon, the effect on a cities traffic would be very significant.
Yet another reason for the transpologists to get together I guess!
October 16th, 2011
At the ITS World Congress in Orlando
My presentation is on Tuesday, but it is time for opening ceremony for now. Will be live blogging… Stay tuned 
Alan Taub, Vice President, GM Global Research and Development, presents Chevy Volt. Spanking new? 
Not really, but his short presentation had a lot of common sense points, and was focused on tangible, rather than grand promises of future. One of the great pictures that he showed was a picture of 3 automated vehicles from 1950s! The vehicles still look pretty good.
Ignacio González-Domínguez, CEO, Telvent, comes out and gives a nice generic speech. Well rehearsed – I think he has given it a couple of times before.
Aah blue grass time. This must be the new kind of conference receptions – I am not used to them being that much fun.
Governor Rick Scott just came out and welcomed everyone and reminded us all of how nice the weather is here. I am definitely sold – DC has had a very wet fall – nice to enjoy the sun in Orlando. And of course, the Orange County Convention Center is a great venue.
Dance group – QUEST! Really, I am not used to that much fun during technical conferences. Or may be I am at the wrong venue?
Iteris president Abbas Mohades presents hall of fame awards. Great way to learn about some people who worked on ITS before it was ITS!
Finally, the Orlando’s Celebration Gospel Choir is wrapping up the event.
October 10th, 2011
Locating a Distribution Center
Locating a Distribution Center is perhaps the most commercial application of the general facility location problem in computer science. Consider a retailer which imports goods for selling in three cities, Indianapolis IN, Columbus OH, and Lexington KY. Further, suppose that this retailer uses an ocean carrier, and the port of call is Norfolk. In that case, where should the distribution center be located? Here is a map view:
September 15th, 2011
Smarter Cities
Smarter Cities (page 42) in the September 2011 issue of Scientific American does a good job of explaining crowd sourcing in Transportation context and comparing it to infrastructure based approach, “An ideal beginning is to leverage the growing array of smart personal devices we all weild and recruit people as the sensors of a city rather than relying on formal systems embedded into infrastructure. The traffic function on Google Maps is a good example. Instead of building a costly network of dedicated vehicle sensors along roadways…”.
This approach is very consistent with my previous experience of handling traffic congestion issues, especially those with a strong freight component to it, since the freight traffic often has a regulatory mechanism that is easier to interface with compared to passenger traffic. This YouTube video does a good job of explaining that. ITS has come a long way for cities, but many many more improvements can be made, if some more decisions can be made dynamically, as this paper explores.
June 8th, 2011
ITS European Congress – Day 2
Day 2
Here is the Day 1 Report.
One of the most interesting topics discussed on day 2 was that of urban freight management, which remains an interesting challenge despite a reasonable amount of work (and somewhat reasonable amount of progress in this field). One of the reasons that this sub-field generates a significant amount of interest is because of 
its impact on a very sizable amount of human population, as more than half of human population on earth lives in urban areas. So, in this respect, cooperative systems and intelligent cargo has great potential for enhancing the operational efficiency of city freight logistics.
Adrian Coronado started things off by talking about Cluster use for logistics operations and wireless vehicular networks in urban port areas. Really, not a bad attempt at putting the focus of ITS applications in logistics. DSRC and WAVE standards enable logistics clusters and thereby, knowing the current location of goods. Adrian presented some nice simulations based on OPNET and ACE. Message payload consists of truck information only and does not include V2V communications.
Christophe Poteloin from PRESSTALIS presented their finding on optimizing local deliveries using smart freight consolidation. The benefits to the retailers are clear, and the benefits to PRESSTALIS are self evident. The start up cost however is the space for freight consolidation. Using a model based on networking of available capacities, PRESSTALIS envisions a community of logistics providers. Perhaps Christophe’s talk should be called “Community System for Local Deliveries”. Can NX CCS be a starting point for such a community system?
Bertrand David from Ecole Centrale de Lyon reported on urban logistics and sustainable development. Attempts to classify urban deliveries into 3 ways, based on the size and the frequency of the deliveries. Presented some interesting prototypes of driver screens which contain advice to the driver with a sequence of delivery stops. (And you thought that the TSP – Traveling Salesperson Path was an academic problem?)
Volker Braun from mm-lab presented a telematic system for waste disposal logistics. They offer a commercial service to waste management companies, to manage their routes while minimizing costs. (The Waste Management companies can in turn have end consumers sign up and pay a monthly fee for waste disposal.) This isn’t unlike the waste disposal in the US, but the situation is a bit more complicated due to the added onus in Germany to separate the waste into a million different kinds, instead of just waste and recyclable, as it is the case, at least in Virginia, if not in the entire US.
One of the components of the solution is the scheduler that dynamically adjusts the waste collection routes, thereby making the route planning a central planned activity, and then distributing the route to the trucks. (And you still thought that the TSP was an academic problem, huh?)
