The topic of this thesis is groupage service in maritime transportation and its use for export out of Czech Republic. In the theoretical and methodological part I am defining the main terms in maritime transportation and maritime transportation in general. In the thesis I am describing the role of maritime transportation in the Czech Republic emphasized by statistics. Further I am writing about containerization and main container types because those are very important for the groupage service. In the practical part I am describing the processes of exports groupage service (LCL) within company Austromar spol. s r.o. on which I am applying business cases to to show how those processes work in reality. One of the business cases is transportation of hazardous material. In the last part of thesis I am comparing the direct and non-direct container with example of the freight charges calculation.

This thesis addresses various concerns of maritime and rail transport of goods between East Asia and the Czech Republic. Its conceptual part outlines the present situation of sea freight transportation with the emphasis on the container use. Furthermore, the thesis describes the rail infrastructure between East Asia and Europe. In the how-to part, the author describes working procedures of an actual freight forwarding company carrying out an import shipment from China into the Czech Republic, utilising ocean and rail carriers. The last part of the thesis contains a summary of the main differences when employing various types of transport, and of their comparison based on the time of the shipment and on its cost.

Le processus d'approvisionnement d'une machine virtuelle (VM) ou d'un conteneur est une succession de trois étapes complexes : (i) la phase d’ordonnancement qui consiste à affecter la VM / le conteneur sur un nœud de calcul ; (ii) le transfert de l'image disque associée vers ce nœud de calcul ; (iii) et l'exécution du processus de démarrage (généralement connu sous le terme « boot »). En fonction des besoins de l’application virtualisée et de l’état de la plate-forme, chacune de ces trois phases peut avoir une durée plus ou moins importante. Si de nombreux travaux se sont concentrés sur l’optimisation des deux premières étapes, la littérature couvre que partiellement les défis liés à la dernière. Cela est surprenant car des études ont montré que le temps de démarrage peut atteindre l’ordre de la minute dans certaines conditions. Durée que nous avons confirmée grâce à une étude préliminaire visant à quantifier le temps de démarrage, notamment dans des scénarios où le ratio de consolidation est élevé. Pour comprendre les principales raisons de ces durées, nous avons effectué en jusqu'à 15000 expériences au dessus de l’infrastructure Grid5000. Chacune de ces expériences a eu pour but d’étudier le processus de démarrage selon différentes conditions environnementales. Les résultats ont montré que les opérations d'entrée/sorties liées au processus de démarrage étaient les plus coûteuses. Afin d’y remédier, nous défendons dans cette thèse la conception d'un mécanisme dédié permettant de limiter le nombre d’entrées/sorties générées lors du processus de démarrage. Nous démontrons la pertinence de notre proposition en évaluant le prototype YOLO (You Only LoadOnce). Grâce à YOLO, la durée de démarrage peut être accélérée de 2 à 13 fois pour les VM et jusqu’à 2 fois pour les conteneurs. Au delà de l’aspect performance, il convient de noter que la façon dont YOLO a été conçu permet de l’appliquer à d’autres types de technologies devirtualisation / conteneurisation. / The provisioning process of a VirtualMachine (VM) or a container is a succession of three complex stages : (i) scheduling theVM / Container to an appropriate compute node ;(ii) transferring the VM / Container image to that compute node from a repository ; (iii) and finally performing the VM / Container boot process. Depending on the properties of the client’s request and the status of the platform, each of these three phases can impact the total duration of the provisioning operation. While many works focused on optimizing the two first stages, only few works investigated the impact of the boot duration. This comes to us as a surprise as a preliminary study we conducted showed the boot time of a VM / Container can last up to a few minutes in high consolidated scenarios. To understand the major reasons for such overheads, we performed on top of Grid'5000 up to 15k experiments, booting VM / Containerunder different environmental conditions. The results showed that the most influential factor is the I/O operations. To accelerate the boot process, we defend in this thesis, the design of a dedicated mechanism to mitigate the number of generated I/O operations. We demonstrated the relevance of this proposal by discussing a first prototype entitled YOLO (You Only LoadOnce). Thanks to YOLO, the boot duration can be faster 2-13 times for VMs and 2 times for containers. Finally, it is noteworthy to mention that the way YOLO has been designed enables it to be easily applied to other types of virtualization (e.g., Xen) and containerization technologies.

This paper will explore the speed of execution, memory foot-print and the maturity of WebAssembly Runtimes (WasmRT).For this study, the WasmRT will be Wasmer1and Wasmtime.2Initially, benchmarks were run on a Raspberry Pi 3 model Bto simulate a more hardware capable IoT-device. Tests per-formed on a Raspberry Pi shows that there are many instanceswhere a WasmRT outperforms a similar Docker+C solution.WasmRT has a very clear use case for IoT devices, specifi-cally short jobs, the results from our research will show thatWasmRT can be up to almost 70 times as fast as a similarDocker solution. WasmRT has a very strong use case thatother container solutions can not contend with. This paperwill show how effective a lightweight, portable, and fast Was-merRT can be, but also to highlight its pain points and whenother container solutions may make more sense

Clouds are powerful computer centers that provide computing and storage facilities that can be remotely accessed. The flexibility and cost-efficiency offered by clouds have made them very popular for business and web applications. The use of clouds is now being extended to safety-critical applications such as factories. However, cloud services do not provide time predictability which creates a hassle for such time-sensitive applications. Moreover, delays in the data communication between clouds and the devices the clouds control are unpredictable. Therefore, to increase predictability an intermediate layer between devices and the cloud is introduced. This layer, the Fog layer, aims to provide computational resources closer to the edge of the network. However, the fog computing paradigm relies on resource-constrained nodes, creating new potential challenges in resource management, scalability, and reliability. Solutions such as lightweight virtualization technologies can be leveraged for solving the dichotomy between performance and reliability in fog computing. In this context, container-based virtualization is a key technology providing lightweight virtualization for cloud computing that can be applied in fog computing as well. Such container-based technologies provide fault tolerance mechanisms that improve the reliability and availability of application execution.  By the study of a robotic use-case, we have realized that persistent data storage for stateful applications at the fog layer is particularly important. In addition, we identified the need to enhance the current container orchestration solution to fit fog applications executing in container-based architectures. In this thesis, we identify open challenges in achieving dependable fog platforms. Among these, we focus particularly on scalable, lightweight virtualization, auto-recovery, and re-integration solutions after failures in fog applications and nodes. We implement a testbed to deploy our use-case on a container-based fog platform and investigate the fulfillment of key dependability requirements. We enhance the architecture and identify the lack of persistent storage for stateful applications as an important impediment for the execution of control applications. We propose a solution for persistent fault-tolerant storage at the fog layer, which dissociates storage from applications to reduce application load and separates the concern of distributed storage. Our solution includes a replicated data structure supported by a consensus protocol that ensures distributed data consistency and fault tolerance in case of node failures. Finally, we use the UPPAAL verification tool to model and verify the fault tolerance and consistency of our solution.

North Dakota's transportation problem is centered on geography and volume. Being a land-locked state and not having an intermodal facility within the economic range of 150 miles from North Dakota production sites, transportation costs severely reduce shipper profit margins. Options available to containerized shippers are limited and expensive. The purpose of this research is to develop a model that evaluates tradeoffs regarding the development of intermodal shipping capabilities in North Dakota. The following are specific objectives to the research process: 1. Examine historical and current issues pertaining to intermodal transportation in North Dakota; 2. Develop an empirical model to evaluate intermodal pricing, revenues, and demand; 3. Conduct a sensitivity analysis on key random variables and interpret the results; 4. Analyze a variety of coalition cooperative efforts among key players and their effect on North Dakota' s transportation environment; 5. Describe a business model that could enable efficient intermodal transportation for North Dakota intermodal operators. Examining both the base case model and sensitivities applied to the base model allowed for examining today's transportation environment and its potential. The results are reported in chapter five and applied to game theory. Incorporating the results to game theory allows development of a business model focused on subsidizing network operators to cooperate and reposition containers to service North Dakota. A linear programming model was developed to analyze logistical costs and payoffs associated with varying game alternatives. Data collected was analyzed using GAMS software to determine the cost minimizing solutions for exporters across the eight regions of North Dakota. Base model results indicate hard IP producers in North Dakota realize minimized costs by draying containers to the intermodal terminals of Saskatoon, Winnipeg, or Minneapolis. Sensitivities were applied to answer "what if" questions related to North Dakota transportation. The first sensitivity test allows for cost of shipping by bulk to the point of export versus required loading of containers at the site of production. Results show that for the three regions encompassing the eastern border and southeast comer of North Dakota (ND4, ND7 and ND8), stuffing containers at the site of production remains the cost minimizing solution. Sensitivity accounts for hard IP shipments and includes the Minot intermodal terminal. Results show that North Dakota realizes the Minot terminal as an important shipping option. The expanded model and final sensitivity accounts for the 21 metric tons per TEU limitation placed on a containers load weight moving by rail. The addition of this parameter slightly changed model results to reflect a loss of market share to the Minot terminal. Sensitivities were then conducted on the expanded model. These sensitivities display a shift in shipping patterns due to the cost of repositioning empty containers, container stuffing fees, and Minot`s terminal handling fee.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture