A research report proposal submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Architecture (Professional). January, 2019 / In recent years, research studies have shown an increase in stress levels especially among people living in cities. Clear links have been established correlating wellbeing with the environment. Studies show that urban environments increase tendencies of unhappiness and stress among people. This study identifies inefficiency in systems that facilitate mobility as one of the causes of stress among city users. It recognises mobility as a core component of any system that facilitates the efficient flow of things between points. Inadequacy in systems of mobility can therefore cripple a system by preventing the free movement of things from one point to another. Like so many developing cities, the urban environment of Kampala, the capital of Uganda that is undergoing rapid urbanisation and often unchecked development faces challenges regarding mobility. In Kampala, majority of the population either walk or rely on public transportation and yet the inadequate infrastructure and systems of mobility denies them the right to freely and easily access and navigate their city. This both directly and indirectly results in physical and psychological stress in city users leading to frustrations and financial losses and consequently prevents wellbeing. The study focuses on the Old Taxi Park which is the most frequently used public transportation facility for daily short trips around the city of Kampala. Recognising that the failing state of infrastructure and inadequate systems of organising the movement of vehicles and people in and around the park render it one of the black spots that contribute to and often escalate the problems regarding mobility presents the Old Taxi Park as a suitable site for a project to address the city’s navigational challenges. This is aimed at mitigating stress among the people who engage with the city. The project thus proposes a revamp of the Old Taxi Park to facilitate efficient movement of people within Kampala. In order to further enhance wellness, the project draws on the healing and restorative power of nature. Although nature has been linked to improved well being, having been found to have numerous restorative benefits especially for people who constantly interact within densely inhabited fast paced settings, the city centre of Kampala which has the highest population density and fastest pace of life in the entire city critically lacks instances where people can interact with and so benefit from the nurture of the elements of nature. Therefore this research project takes an approach of reintroducing various elements of nature to the urban fabric through the design of the transportation hub and how it integrates with Kampala’s urban fabric. The main objectives for the project are hence to promote efficiency in the systems of mobility and to reintroduce nature within the urban sphere in order to promote wellness for the people who interact with the concrete jungle that was once the City of Seven Hills / MT 2019

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p> Highway safely improvement is a critical issue for local and national transportation authorities. One of the most important tasks in highway safety analysis is the identification of appropriate countermeasures that might be useful in making signicant safety improvement. Targeting safety at roadway segments has been the key focus of safety related projects at all levels. Recognizing that resources are limited in Louisiana, an emphasis is provided on the identication of strategies that will yield impressive results that are easily implemented from both time and cost perspective. An extensive study on the selection of Louisiana specific inexpensive and effective countermeasures has not been performed yet. Safety countermeasures with high safety effects and low implementation costs are always preferable. This dissertation has developed a Six Sigma DMADV tool uniquely designed for determining effective, inexpensive countermeasures that can be used in both aggregate and disaggregate level. Using the framework of DMADV toolset, this dissertation has selected three inexpensive countermeasures suitable for Louisiana and has developed CMFs for the selected countermeasures. Moreover, a commercialization tool has been developed for transferring the research results to successful commercial product design. The results from this dissertation are practice-ready and has been used by the transportation authorities in Louisiana. </p>

<p> This research studied the behavior of several controllable variables that affect the fuel efficiency of trucks. Re-routing is the process of modifying the parameters of the routes for a set of trips to optimize fuel consumption and also to increase customer satisfaction through efficient deliveries. This is an important process undertaken by a food distribution company to modify the trips to adapt to the immediate necessities. A predictive model was developed to calculate the change in Miles per Gallon (MPG) whenever a re-route is performed on a region of a particular distribution area. The data that was used, was from the Dallas center which is one of the distribution centers owned by the company. A consistent model that could provide relatively accurate predictions across five distribution centers had to be developed. It was found that the model built using the data from the Corporate center was the most consistent one. The timeline of the data used to build the model was from May 2013 through December 2013. The predictive model provided predictions of which about 88% of the data that was used, was within the 0-10% error group. This was an improvement on the lesser 43% obtained for the linear regression and K-means clustering models. The model was also validated on the data for January 2014 through the first two weeks of March 2014 and it provided predictions of which about 81% of the data was within the 0-10 % error group. The average overall error was around 10%, which was the least for the approaches explored in this research. Weight, stop count and stop time were identified as the most significant factors which influence the fuel efficiency of the trucks. Further, neural network architecture was built to improve the predictions of the MPG. The model can be used to predict the average change in MPG for a set of trips whenever a re-route is performed. Since the aim of re-routing is to reduce the miles and trips; extra load will be added to the remaining trips. Although, the MPG would decrease because of this extra load, it would be offset by the savings due to the drop in miles and trips. The net savings in the fuel can now be translated into the amount of money saved.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates two key transportation policies influencing travel behavior and location decisions in London towards sustainability: bus priority and congestion charging. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) </p>

<p> Fatigue cracking is one of the complex distresses that is dependent of pavement structure, asphalt mixture properties and environmental conditions. During the last decades, many asphalt agencies have conducted significant researches to investigate the fatigue cracking characterization. However, fatigue performance is still difficult to predict not only due to models and parameters but also because this phenomenon itself is not well understood. </p><p> The key point in fatigue performance prediction is which model to use and how to find the correct parameters for the selected model by using the simplest but the most reliable testing method. The modulus is one of the primary asphalt mixture properties used for the mechanistic performance prediction of asphalt pavements. Dynamic modulus testing is a common method of measuring mixture modulus as a function of loading frequencies and temperatures. Despite the numerous researches that have been carried out to evaluate mixture stiffness, it is still necessary to establish a practical dynamic modulus test method that is compatible with the field cores which are mostly less than a few inches. One of the objectives of this dissertation is to present the results of a ruggedness study of dynamic modulus testing in indirect tension mode to evaluate the factors that are most likely to affect the final results. Specimen thickness, air void content, gauge length, test temperature, and horizontal strain level, that are the critical factors that affect the dynamic modulus of asphalt concrete, were selected for the ruggedness analysis. According to the findings, air void content was found to be a major factor that affects the dynamic modulus values. </p><p> To investigate the fatigue life of the pavement, valid cyclic fatigue testing data which truly represents the mixture behavior seems necessary besides the mixture stiffness. With regard to direct tension fatigue testing, one of the common problems that substantially influence the mixture fatigue behavior is the failure at the ends of the asphalt specimens. During testing, it was observed that as more and more material was cut from the top and bottom of the gyratory-compacted specimens, the likelihood of failure in the middle of the specimen greatly increased. Therefore, fabricating shorter test specimens that are cored and cut from taller gyratory-compacted specimens can produce test specimens that have more uniformly distributed air voids such that middle failure occurs within the gauge length of the linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) in direct tension tests. As a part of study, the optimum specimen geometry of 100 mm diameter and 130 mm height was introduced through the experimental testing and numerical simulation. </p><p> The Simplified Viscoelastic Continuum Damage (S-VECD) model, a continuum damage mechanics-based model that is known as one of the effective models, has been applied to predict the performance of asphalt concrete mixtures under different loading conditions. Besides, energy-based fatigue failure criterion (<i>G^R</i>) has been proved to be able to predict the fatigue life of asphalt concrete mixtures across different modes of loading, temperatures, and strain amplitudes. This dissertation presents the application and calibration of the L&barbelow;ayered V&barbelow;iscoE&barbelow;lastic pavement analysis for C&barbelow;ritical D&barbelow;istresses (LVECD) program which is based on both S-VECD and G^R method to evaluate 33 pavement sections from different locations inside the United States, Canada, South Korea, and China. The capability of the LVECD program to capture crack initiation, crack propagation and, the damage in the pavement sections is investigated by comparing the simulation results with the field observations. In this regard, LVECD was found to effectively predict the fatigue cracking propagation in the pavement sections since reasonable agreement was obtained between the program simulations and field observations. Finally, predicted damage-to-field cracking transfer function was developed to correlate the predictive damage to the measured cracking.</p>

This thesis explores whether ‘business model innovation’ could hold the key to advancing the ultra-low and zero carbon vehicle industry in the United Kingdom. This thesis presents a critical comparison of two case studies drawn from qualitative research conducted with a broad cross-section of UK vehicle manufacturers (VMs) that are interested in introducing zero carbon vehicles to the marketplace. The two cases, looking at large established producers of vehicles with trans-national presence (herein termed TNC/MNC VMs) and smaller producers (herein termed SME VMs). The two cases consist of a number of grouped embedded cases focusing on the activities of vehicle producers that are in the process of introducing Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles (ULEVs) to the UK marketplace. These cases are constructed and informed by both primary research, semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives of these VMs, secondary analysis of interviews conducted with VM representatives and industry commentators and documentary analysis of contemporary sources and industry commentary. The thesis is framed within a broader academic debate regarding the nature of achieving socio-technical transitions. Within this frame of reference, particular attention is paid to the role of large incumbents vs. new start-up insurgents in bringing innovative technologies to the marketplace; innovative technologies being seen as a key component of a transition to a more sustainable world. In comparing the business models of large, well-established vehicle manufacturers, with smaller, newer, SME providers the ontology of Business Models developed by Osterwalder & Pigneur (2002) is used to interrogate, analyse and make comparisons between the business models of a range of companies that are very dissimilar in nature. Context is crucial to understanding the detail of case studies; as such, the thesis is also informed by the perspectives, gained through interviews, of a number of industry commentators, representatives of government organisations and automotive trade bodies. ~ xxviii ~ This thesis set out to explore a number of research themes and the contributions to knowledge that this thesis has made are: Establishing a theoretical linkage between Geels (2006) multi-level perspective of transitions literature and Osterwalder & Pigneur’s (2002) business model ontology. By bringing these two powerful tools together, it is proposed that a complimentary analysis of the business model on the micro level, embedded within an overall socio-technical transition at the macro level can be made. Furthermore, through an empirical analysis of business models in the car industry, a range of business model components, new directions for business models and “complementary” ancillary business models that support the introduction of ULEVs has been identified. Disappointingly, whilst some observation are made about the early stages of transitions, the slow uptake of ULEVs in the marketplace has shown that the incumbent regime is still reistant to transition – and no concrete transition mechanisms can be identified. There are however a collection of observations about the early stages of socio-technical transitions. The thesis also contributes to the ongoing debate about the tensions between incumbent and insurgent business contributing to the ongoing characterisation of the competitive forces that exist between them. Another important contribution to the business models literature, is a discussion of the role of product, process and business model design. Very recent work by Meertens, Starreveld, Iacob, & Nieuwenhuis (2013) has also explored this issue, however, this work takes a different perspective informed by the empirical data within the case studies.