The flow of goods to Russia has grown faster than the bottleneck can handle and the infrastructure on Finnish eastern borders has been stretched to the limit. The authors choose this topic according to their educational background and the direct and indirect future opportunities that can rise up for everybody by a possible solution. Purpose The main purpose of this thesis was to identify the main reasons for the inefficient border crossing process at the border station in Vaalimaa. The authors will analyse the current situation at the border crossing station in Vaalimaa from two different perspectives: Finnish Customs and Logistics Companies. The authors will propose a possible solution by improving the border crossing process Methodology Qualitative research method is used in order to get the most dependable information for the reasons of the problems. The aim was to get information about the current situation at the border crossing point in Vaalimaa rather than quantitative information. The qualitative research method will allow authors to go deeper inside the topic by interviewing the logistics companies, who are using the route via Finland to Russia and, as well as, Finnish customs and border guards, who are working in Vaalimaa. After the data collection, the authors will propose their own solution for the crossing border problems and they will conclude the research by measuring its validity and reliability. Conclusion The authors will present the main reasons for the inefficient border crossing process, which are bureaucracy, legislation issues, criminality level and poor IT-systems. In order to solve the problem and manage all the possible changes, Russia and EU should have a closely cooperation in any level. The authors after analysing the current situation in Vaalimaa, created the “One-stop” model as an improvement of the whole border crossing process.

The transportation industry is a rapidly changing business. As a result of the increased demand for transportation and the tougher demands on transportation companies’ performance, it is important that they have good and reliable processes that are able to live up to those demands in a highly competitive market. Increased performance is important for transportation companies in order to create value for its customers and steps that can help them to achieve this can be seen as valuable. In Sweden, vehicle manufacturers offer extended services in order to respond to the changes on the transportation market. However, there is a knowledge gap about the experiences of using a product together with extended services that has a more service dominant logic compared to buying and using only the product. This research is conducted as a multiple-case study with five companies within the freight transportation industry to investigate their experiences of using extended services regarding risk and value concepts. To be able to conduct this research, literature and empirical study has been conducted through the collection of secondary- and primary data such as face-to- face interviews. The result of this study shows that there are several determining factors, which the case companies consider when determining how to resolve the issues of extended services such as financial aspects, location of workshop, flexibility, size of transporter, and control. Fur- thermore was advantages of using extended services offered by vehicle manufacturers found that related to financial advantages, increased customer service levels, assurance that best service will be provided, and increased up-time. In addition to that it was found that these services could help transportation companies to reduce some risks related to the financial- and goods/physical risk categories. In contrast were advantages of not using extended services offered by vehicle manufacturers found such as financial benefits, possibilities to cooperate, flexibility, increased up-time as a result of location, and control. The loss of control was a risk found that could be decreased if not using vehicle manufacturers extended services.

This study deals with the road freight sector's capital structure and how leases, loans and equity affect the ratios. The study is based on a ten-year period between 2000-2010 in Sweden. Investments in finance is a complex and interesting subject to study, there are many factors that can affect how the company best choose their investments when they have many great business investment the decisions plays a greater role. The aim is to find an optimal capital structure from a financial investment point of view. The purpose will be answered by the following research question: Are there significant differences between leases, loans and equity financed fleet of factors, profitability, tax, turnover, age, and cyclicality. The study will also examine how debt is related to profit margin, DuPont and the tax, all through a regression analysis. Then were plausible economic theories for the study. These theories are the financial growth cycle, the pecking order theory, Trade off theory, and DuPont. In order to answer the purpose and problem definition, data was collected from the database retriever business where we got a sample of 121 companies. The study is based on bigger haulers that have a turnover of more than 10 million SEK and mainly engaged in road transport. The study has concluded that equity is the alternative that is best in general. To minimize the risks of the company is leasing better but generates less profit. Debt financing is better if you want a fast growth.

Activities, conducted in the logistics sector, contribute to pollute the world. Especially, road transportation contaminates the environment with the release of exhaust emissions. Transport volumes as well as the proportion of the road sector are constantly rising, which intensifies its environmental impacts. In order to determine the main culprits of pollution, Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) are used. These concepts are mostly ambiguous, fuzzy and hard to present in a comprehensive way. The main purpose of the present thesis is to develop an analysis in order to investigate the environmental impacts of road transportation along a certain supply chain. An academic resource was used as database, in order to develop and test an exhauste mission calculation in cooperation with a case company. Besides CO2, this assessment also focuses on the measurement of other exhauste missions like Nox, PM or CO. Furthermore, economic factors like, costs caused per transport are calculated. Aspects, like capacity utilization, the use of environmentally friendly tires or eco-friendly driving styles, are included in the analysis. These factors influence fuel consumption and thus the final production of exhaust emissions. A detailed description of each factor and calculation step is illustrated in this thesis. Due to a high complexity of transportation, this analysis is limited to road transportation. The fundament of the analysis builds the categorization of crafts due to the Euro standards. Hence, just transports conducted with crafts, manufactured within the European Union, can be evaluated. A validation test and in-depth interviews were conducted in order to approve the practicability of the developed assessment. During this process, strengths and weaknesses of the analysis were identified. Finally, the analysis is critically examined by showing its application constraints as well as prospective development opportunities. An enlargement, to include other transport modes, material handling activities in order to measure impacts during intermodal transportation along a whole transportation chain, is a prospect outlook.

Due to wireless communication technologies, positioning technologies, and mobile computing develop quickly, mobile services are becoming practical and important on big spatiotemporal databases management. Mobile service users move only inside a spatial network, e.g. a road network. They often issue the K Nearest Neighbor (KNN) query to obtain data objects reachable through the road network. The challenge problem of mobile services is how to efficiently answer the data objects which user interest to the corresponding mobile users. Therefore, how to effectively modeling road networks, effectively indexing, and querying on the road networks have become a popular topic. Lu et. al. have proposed a road network model that captures the real-life road networks better than previous models. Then, based on their model, they have proposed a RNG (Road Network Grid) index for speeding up the KNN query on real-life road networks. The RNG index structure is a quad-tree structure and a point-based structure. However, in their model, they divide the double track road which U-turn is allowed at some parts. This modeling does not capture the real-life road networks accurately. Since they divide the road, this makes the number of points of the graph increase. The number of times of partitioning the graph increases. It increases the execution time of constructing the index structure. The format of the leaf node of the RNG index makes the search time increase. Moreover, the query processing on the RNG index structure has to visit the root repeatedly. This condition makes the search time increase. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose a network model that captures the real-life road networks. We do not have to divide the real-life roads when we map the real-life roads into graph. We map the real-life road networks into graph directly. Then, based on our network model, we propose an EBNA (Edge-Based Nine-Area tree) index structure to make the search time of obtaining the interest edge information quickly. The EBNA index structure is an edge-based index structure. We store all of the edge information on the leaf node. We can obtain the edge information directly. Each edge information entry has a pointer point to link edges. Links of each edge entry consist a graph. This graph makes the KNN query processing visit the root only one time. From our simulation result, we show that the performance of constructing the EBNA index is better than constructing the RNG index and the performance of the KNN query processing by using EBNA index is better than the KNN query processing by using RNG index.

Noise pollution can mask or distort bird songs, which inhibits mating success, predator detection, and parental response to begging calls. Road noise can cause lowered density and reproductive success in songbirds. I examined the impact of construction noise on reproductive success and territory selection of golden-cheeked warblers (Dendroica chrysoparia) at 3 sites: adjacent to road construction, adjacent to road-noise only, and a control with no noise or construction activity. I also examined birds' responses to experimental playback of construction noise to determine if warblers alter behavior in the presence of introduced road construction noise, if they have habituated to construction noise, and whether habituation is hindering their reproductive success. I used the Vickery reproductive index to evaluate productivity and automatic recording units to assess the levels of ambient noise in each site. From 2007-2009, productivity was stable in the road-noise only site and showed more annual variation in the construction and control sites; productivity was nearly identical in the latter 2 sites in 2008 and 2009. There was no significant difference in productive territory locations based on distance from road. Ambient noise was similar in the construction and roadnoise only sites but significantly different from the control. To examine habituation and territory placement, I (1) used construction noise playback to individual birds and evaluated occurrence of behavioral response as a function of distance from the roadway, and (2) established broadcast stations that simulate construction noise to determine impacts on territory selection. Of 88 surveys, 6 birds responded to construction noise playback. I conducted 18 control surveys and observed 1 behavioral response. All birds that responded were located greater than or equal to 140 m from the road. I established 3 broadcast stations per season in 2008 and 2009. In each year I placed broadcast units on the edges of randomly chosen territories identified during the previous field season. There was not a significant difference in mean territory shifts for broadcast and non-broadcast unit territories, and territory shifts did not show patterns in directionality or in reproductive success. Results suggest that construction noise does not appear to affect behavior or reproductive success of golden-cheeked warblers.

The thesis develops a driving assistant system that can locate the positions of the lane boundaries and detects the existence of the front-vehicle. It can also provide warning mechanism so as to avoid the danger as possible collides with previous vehicle. In lane recognition, we utilized the largest gradient of luminance value to detect possible road surface marking, then cooperated with the marking static and dynamic behavior of road surface characteristic to set up road surface marking and detect system. On the other hand, we considered vehicle detection leach the vehicle bottom shade characteristic from dynamic area threshold processing, and then judge and label where the vehicle exits. By the principle of the optics image formation, we estimated the relative distance from the previous vehicle. In this thesis, we proposed an easy and fast measure for previous vehicle of 96% correct rate in different environment. Running on typical 1.7Ghz processor system results up to 80 frames per second.

Almost all the sources on modernism originate material transformations in Western world to industrial revolution while mental ones to enlightenment. In all these narrations, technology, engineering, and modernism are considered as correlated. Besides these concepts, the everyday life rituals that were naturally constructed in the historical process also strengthen this attitude. Then, what are the meanings of the same concepts in a country that experience a reverse process instead of the modernization through industrialization? How new technologies had adapted to local circumstances of an unindustrialized country? While having these questions in mind, this study intends to identify the role of engineer and to reflect on the importance of technology on Turkish modernization project, hence, this dissertation is an historical inquiry into the role played by new building technologies and civil engineering. It covers a broad period extending from late Ottoman to 1960. Among many prestigious building types of engineering such as silos, dams, harbors, factories, railroad etc. that also became popular representations of development, prosperity and modernity, the bridges have been focused on with a particular emphasis because of both their importance for engineering and construction of transportation networks.

In this study / reliability and performance of turbulence models used in CFD softwares to determine the aerodynamics of passenger cars, are tested and compared. In the analyses, drag forces acting on the car, pressure and velocity distributions and wake flow patterns are determined by using several turbulence models with a commercial software Fluent. Calculated results compared to the experimental results given in the literature. It is observed that, turbulence models give relatively reliable results for determining aerodynamic properties of the model car. Among the turbulence models, RNG k-&epsilon / and standard k-&omega / models stand one step ahead of the other models according to results.

This thesis presents an endeavor to design and construct a prototype of an automated road repair vehicle called the Intelligent Pothole Repair Vehicle (IPRV). The IPRV is capable of automatically detecting and filling potholes on road surfaces without operator assistance. An easy-to-construct mechanical means of pothole detection was employed to reduce costs and complexity that have thus far been the primary disadvantage of automated road repair vehicles. A network interface to an Ethernet was designed based on the transmission control protocol (TCP) to enable remote operability of the IPRV. A laptop computer was used onboard the IPRV for control and interfacing using a data-acquisition card installed on it. The Visual Basic® programming language and the Windows application programming interface (API) were used for all the programming requirements of this thesis. The IPRV employs feedback mechanisms for position control and path following. Operation has been designed to incorporate safety mechanisms that ensure that the IPRV automatically stops in the case of a loss of communication link or large network delays. Experiments were performed to test and calibrate the IPRV. The IPRV was designed to detect potholes that have a maximum depth greater than 2 cm.