This document describes work aimed at determining whether the detection, by computer vision, of pedestrians waiting at signal-controlled road crossings could be made sufficiently reliable and affordable, using currently available technology, so as to be suitable for widespread use in traffic control systems. The work starts by examining the need for pedestrian detection in traffic control systems and then goes onto look at the specific problems of applying a vision system to the detection task. The most important distinctive features of the pedestrian detection task addressed in this work are: • The operating conditions are an outdoor environment with no constraints on factors such as variation in illumination, presence of shadows and the effects of adverse weather. • Pedestrians may be moving or static and are not limited to certain orientations or to movement in a single direction. • The number of pedestrians to be monitored is not restricted such that the vision system must cope with the monitoring of multiple targets concurrently. • The background scene is complex and so contains image features that tend to distract a vision system from the successful detection of pedestrians. • Pedestrian attire is unconstrained so detection must occur even when details of pedestrian shape are hidden by items such as coats and hats. • The camera's position is such that assumptions commonly used by vision systems to avoid the effects of occlusion, perspective and viewpoint variation are not valid. •The implementation cost of the system, in moderate volumes, must be realistic for widespread installation. A review of relevant prior art in computer vision with respect to the above demands is presented. Thereafter techniques developed by the author to overcome these difficulties are developed and evaluated over an extensive test set of image sequences representative of the range of conditions found in the real world. The work has resulted in the development of a vision system which has been shown to attain a useful level of performance under a wide range of environmental and transportation conditions. This was achieved, in real-time, using low-cost processing and sensor components so demonstrating the viability of developing the results of this work into a practical detector.

The primary goal of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of police enforcement on Road Traffic Accidents; specifically, ‘Does police enforcement activity have any real effect on levels of Killed and Seriously Injured road traffic accidents?' Data relating to forty one Police Force Areas in England and Wales was analysed by means of Zero Truncated Poisson regression, Cluster Analysis and Multilevel Modelling. Enforcement measures available to the police, for which data is available in this report, range from Prosecutions and Fixed Penalty Notices to Written Warnings and Vehicle Defect Rectification Notices. Results from the Zero Truncated Poisson regression models have significant effects (P < .05), in relation to both contemporary and lagged Annual data and contemporary Quarterly data, for all proxy variables except Prosecutions. Significant effects (P < .05) are also found for Fixed Penalty Notices lagged by two quarters, Vehicle Defect Rectification Notices and speeding related Fixed Penalty Notices lagged by one quarter. Results from Cluster Analysis verify the trend linking increased police enforcement with decreasing KSI rates. Clusters derived from population based KSI rates are more clearly defined than those using Vehicle kilometres travelled based KSI rates. Multilevel modelling found significant fixed effects (P < .05) for Fixed Penalty Notices and speeding related Fixed Penalty Notices in relation to both derived and regional clusters, linking an increase in enforcement to a decrease in the overall KSI rate. There would seem to be little doubt, based on the findings of this report, that higher levels of police enforcement, as measured here, lead to decreasing numbers of KSI accidents.

This thesis presents an analysis of the role of intermodal transport in Notteboom and Rodrigue's (2005) port regionalisation concept, an approach to port development that focuses on the inland aspects of the process, as well as taking port development models from a spatial focus to a focus on institutions. It is argued that the port regionalisation concept is insufficiently disaggregated; it does not identify or classify different processes within the concept, nor does it explain how they operate or who drives them. In this thesis, the port regionalisation concept is broken down into its three constituent parts: inland terminals, market and logistics and the resolution of collective action problems. Each of these is examined in its own chapter, based on a case study methodology. The methodology was chosen for its ability to provide rich detail and build or extend theory, as the overall aim of this thesis is to critique the port regionalisation concept and extend its explanatory power. Part one follows a multiplecase design, analysing numerous European inland terminal developments in order to improve inland terminal classifications that can then contribute to the port regionalisation concept. Parts two and three each utilise a single case design, taking a single case in depth in order to explore in rich detail how these issues play out in industry. Part two studies the role of large retailers as the primary drivers of intermodal transport in the UK, while part three examines the development of an intermodal corridor in the United States, offering the opportunity to study a collective action problem in detail Part one reveals that port actors, both port authorities and port terminal operators, can be directly involved in the development of inland terminals, and that differences can be observed between terminals developed by port actors and those developed by inland actors. A conceptual distinction is proposed to capture this observation. Part two identifies barriers to port regionalisation, such as operational issues, spatial development decisions and a lack of integration between inland market players. Part three demonstrates the difficulties faced by public bodies attempting to direct regionalisation strategies, constrained by legitimacy and agency conflicts and an institutional structure that limits their effectiveness. An added contribution to the literature is the theoretical framework that is developed for the analysis of the institutional factors at play in resolving a collective action problem. While additional cases are required to advance the concept further, the cases in this thesis elucidate reasons why ports may not be controlling or capturing hinterlands through the strategies of integration that the port regionalisation concept suggests. It may be more accurate to state that regionalisation can only occur as long as a set of favourable commercial and institutional conditions are maintained. The findings from the cases presented in this thesis suggest that it is not easy to maintain such conditions, implying that regionalisation may be the exception rather than the norm.

No description available.

Container shipping is of immense importance to global industry, and one of the critical enablers of globalisation. Analysis of the global container shipping industry suggests the potential for significant economies of scope and scale, and hence low costs and high efficiency, both recognised benefits of a global strategy. However, the global activities of container shipping lines are subject to a series of countervailing pressures, in particular, state regulation, shipper power, and the constant threat of competition. In an industry where differentiation has been absent, or at best difficult to achieve, there exists a growing belief amongst industry leaders that competitive advantage can be secured through providing a higher level intermodal service with a global network. This project identifies these and other important strategic management issuesr elating to containers hipping. it comparess trategiesa doptedb y industry leaders Sea-Land Service Inc. and Evergreen Line, two firms appearing to exhibit different modes of operation. Key differences in the strategies adopted by these lines' are identified. Through application of an established theoretical framework to help finther analyset he strategieso f thesec ompetitors,a nd aided by in-depth interviews with executives from each firm, it has been possible to identify specific organisational pressures associated with the conflicting needs for global operationali ntegration of activities and for local responsivenessT. he study has found that, in the global container shipping industry, competitors must implement strategies that facilitate a capability for both global integration and for local responsivenessT. his means that firms participating in the global container shipping industry must be multifocal; they must seek to develop the capability to manage both sets of demands simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is evident that whilst eachf irm is subjectt o broadly similar pressuresin respecto f the needs for integration and responsiveness, they adopt rather different strategies in attempting to meet these needs. With Sea-Land there is clearly an intermodal orientation, with more emphasis placed on intermodal capabilities and landside activities than on maritime aspects. Conversely, Evergreen Line was found to have a predominantly maritime orientation, placing greater emphasis on ships and containers and rather less emphasis on landside activities. These and other differences between carrier strategies relate to the series of strategic choices global liner shipping companies must make regarding the specific assets and operations necessary to provide a global container service. Using the grounded theory approach, a theoretical framework specific to the global container shipping industry has been developed that outlines these choices, illustrating the various options open to industry competitors. Entitled Strategic Choice in Container Shipping, the framework can be used as a teaching instrument to help explain industry complexity, and as an analytical tool to aid management decision-making and strategic planning.

No description available.

Motorcyclists that have no protective structures while motorcycling as other occupants of automobiles do can be particularly vulnerable to accident injuries (i.e., motorcycles are not as crashworthy as automobiles). Motorcyclists' susceptibility to accident injuries in nature may act synergistically with the complexity of conflicting manoeuvres between motorcycles and other motor vehicles to increase their injury severities in accidents that take place at junctions (e.g., T-junction or crossroad). Previous studies have applied crash prediction models to investigate influential factors on the occurrences of different crash configurations among automobiles but statistical models of motorcyclist injury severity resulting from different motorcycle-car crash configurations have rarely been developed. This current research attempts to develop the appropriate statistical models of motorcyclist injury severity by various crash configurations conditioned on crash occurrence at T-junctions in the UK. T-junctions are selected in this study because such junctions represent the single greatest danger to motorcyclists - for junction-type accidents, the statistics from the UK Stats19 accident injury database over the years 1991 and 2004 suggested that T-junctions were ranked the highest in terms of injury severity (Le., accidents at T-junctions resulted in approximately 65% of all casualties that sustained fatal or serious injuries) and accident occurrence (i.e., accidents at Tjunctions accounted for 62% of all motorcyclist casualties). This may be in part because there is a comparatively large number ofT-junctions in the UK. Although the author was unable to take into account the exposure factor due to the lack of such data (Le., the total number of T-junctions, and the number of motorcycles travelling on these locations), it remains true that more severe accidents happen at T-junctions than any other type of junction. In this present study, motorcycle-car accidents at Tjunctions were classified into several crash configurations based on two methods that have been widely used in literature. The first method is based on the conflicts that arise from the pre-crash manoeuvres of the motorcycle and car. The second method is on the basis of first points of impact of the motorcycle and car. The crash configurations that are classified in this current study based on the mixture of these two methods include (a) accidents involving gap acceptance (i.e., approach-turn crash and angle crash), (b) head-on crash, and (c) same-direction crash (i.e., sideswipe crash and rear-end crash). Since injury severity levels in traffic accidents are typically progressive (ranging from no injury to fatal/death), the ordered response models have come into fairly wide use as a framework for analysing such responses. Using the accident data extracted from the Stats19 accident injury database over 14-year period (1991~2004), the ordered probit (OP) model of motorcyclist injury severity were estimated because the dependent variable (i.e., no injury, slight injury, KSI: killed or seriously injured) is intrinsically discrete and ordinal. A set of the independent variables were included as the predictor variables, including rider/motorist attributes, vehicle factors, weather/temporal factors, roadway/geometric characteristics, and crash factors. The current research firstly estimated the aggregate OP model of motorcyclist injury severity by motorcycle-car accidents in whole. Additional disaggregate models of motorcyclist injury severity by various crash configurations were subsequently conducted. It appears in this current research that while the aggregate model by motorcycle-car accidents in whole is useful to uncover a general overview of the factors that were associated with the increased motorcyclist injury severity, the dis aggregate models by various crash configurations provide valuable insights (that may not be uncovered by an aggregate crash model) that motorcyclist injury severity in different crash configurations are associated with different pre-crash conditions. For example, the preliminary analysis by conducting descriptive analysis reveals that the deadliest crash manner in approach-turn crashes and angle crashes was a collision in which a right-turn car collided with an approaching motorcycle. Such crash patterns that occurred at stop-/give-way controlled junctions appear to exacerbate motorcyclist injury severity. The disaggregate models by the deadliest crash manners in approachturn crashes and angle crashes suggest that injuries tended to be more severe in crashes where a right-turn motorist was identified to fail to yield to an approaching motorcyclist. Other disaggregate crash models also identified important determinants of motorcyclist injury severity. For instance, the estimation results of the head-on crash model reveal that motorcyclists were more injurious in collisions where curves were present for cars than where the bend was absent. Another noteworthy result is that a traversing motorcycle colliding with a travelling-straight car predisposed motorcyclists to a greater risk of KSIs. These findings were clearly obscured by the estimation of the aggregate model by accidents in whole. In the course of the investigation of the factors that affect motorcyclist injury severity, it became clear that another problem, that of a right-turn motorist's failure to yield to motorcyclists (for the deadliest crash patterns in both approach-turn crash and angle crash), needs to be further examined. The logistic models are estimated to evaluate the likelihood of motorist's right-of-way violation over non right-of-way violation as a function of human attributes, weather/temporal factors, roadway/geometric factors, vehicle characteristics, and crash factors. The logistic models uncover the factors determining the likelihood of motorists' failure to yield. Noteworthy findings include, for instance, teenaged motorists, elderly motorists, male motorists, and professional motorists (Le., those driving heavy goods vehicles and buses/coaches) were more likely to infringe upon motorcycle's right-of-way. In addition, violation cases appeared to be more likely to occur on non built-up roadways, and during evening/midnight/early morning hours This present research has attempted to fill the research gaps that crash prediction models focused on analysing motorcyclist injury severity in different crash configurations have rarely been developed. The results obtained in this current research, by exploring a broad range of variables including attributes of riders and motorists, roadway/geometric characteristics, weather/temporal factors, and vehicle characteristics, provide valuable insights into the underlying relationship between risk factors and motorcycle injury severity both at an aggregate level and at a disaggregate level. This research finally discusses the implications of the findings and offers a guideline for future research.

Hong Kong freight forwarding services have flourished along with China's economic development. Manufacturing activities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) have provided the Hong Kong logistics sector with many business opportunities. However, due to the changes in the business environment, the industry is facing many challenges: competition from other local logistics companies in China, a shrinking market share on the shipping side, and increasing operating costs. The study aims to answer two questions: will the PRD continue to serve as the manufacturing powerhouse of the world and will exporters in the PRD continue to use Hong Kong:5 airport and port? The findings of this research will help academia and practitioners better understand the opportunities and challenges facing the Hong Kong logistics industry. This research was carried out in two phases. First, the author conducted exploratory interviews with manufacturers, logistics service providers, and government officials. Second, two questionnaires (one for manufacturers and one for logistics service providers) were designed based on the interviews and the literature review. The results of this two-stage analysis indicate that manufacturing in the PRD will continue to demand forwarding logistics support from Hong Kong because the latter continues to offer competitive advantage in several aspects compared with competitors in China. The Hong Kong government's pro-business attitude has helped to maintain Hong Kong's competitive advantage as a logistics hub; thus, the integration of Hong Kong and PRD logistics service providers has further enhanced this advantage in the PRD. Finally, based on these findings, a number of recommendations are offered. The empirical part of the research was completed before the onset of the 2008/9 recession; hence, no reference to its effect has been included in this thesis. The work also excludes any specific reference to the issues of carbon footprints and related environmental concerns because these are not primary issues for the industry as seen by the governments of the PRD region.

Trip generation is the first stage of the conventional 'four-stage' transport model. The aim of this stage is to predict total number of trips generated to and from each zone. The two most common techniques for trip generation are linear regression (the dependent vaziable is alinear-in-parameter function of a number of explanatory variables) and category analysis including multiple classification analysis (based on estimating number of trip generations as a function of household attributes). Both techniques of trip generation rely on the availability of a large socio-economic, mainly revealed preference data set. They also have technical limitations such as the assumption of linearity which might result in unreasonable predictions of trip generation. Any deficiency or inaccuracy in the estimation at this stage will be carried over and will have implications on subsequent stages. The other stages of the 'four-stage' model employ other techniques including logistic analysis which broadens the scope of the analysis. Logistic regression analysis has been used to model travel choices such as mode, route and departure time but not trip generation. There has not been much research to investigate the appropriateness of using this technique to model generation. The main reason for this is that logistic regression predicts probabilities rather than the total number of trips. In order to be able to model trip generation using logistic regression, the number of trips frequency) can be treated as a set of mutually exclusive categorical variables; therefore the built-in upper and lower limits are incorporated. Therefore, it is not possible to predict a negative number of trips and the estimates of the model will show the underlying probabilities for the actual number of This will also provide a behavioural framework that directly links the number of trips to utility-based consumer and decision-making theory. Logistic regression can be used to model trip generation as binary, multinomial or nested logit frameworks. An added advantage of using this approach is the ability to predict the frequency and number of trips made by each individual. The aim of this research therefore, is to investigate possible methodologies to improve performance of trip generation modelling. In order to achieve this aim firstly, this research investigates the appropriateness of logistic regression to model trip generation and device a methodology for it. The analysis and comparisons of the results with results from conventional models are examined. Exploring the use of stated preference data to calibrate trip generation models is also studied here. Finally, transport policy measures and enhanced transport accessibility functions have been investigated in generation models.

National shipping centres comprise both upstream and downstream firms in the logistics chain to conduct shipping and trade-related activities. Users of national shipping centres include traders, logistics service providers, shipping lines, terminal operators, and other actors. Shipping is the business of transporting goods to facilitate trade. Shipping and trade are closely associated. Shipping centres are located in transport complex economies that are desirable for their users to perform various shipping related business activities. To explore the formation of national shipping centres, this study identifies trade facilitation measures at both the macro and micro levels that enhance economic performance. To build the model of national shipping centre, hypotheses have been developed to illustrate the relationship between trade facilitation activities and trade costs. Furthermore, the economic outcomes are also examined in this theoretical model. To validate the proposed research model, data are collected from the World Bank, and analytical tool is used for data analysis. The results suggest that trade facilitation measures are negatively associated with trade costs. The results also suggest that the trade facilitation measures of a country are positively associated with its economic performance. The findings of this study are useful for both business managers and policy makers. Based on the finding, managers can formulate effective business strategies to select a location for their firms to conduct their business activities. On the other hand, policy makers can formulate relevant measures to attract business firms to locate at their countries. In studying the formation of national shipping centres, the importance of developing social capital for trade facilitation is also emphasized. To illustrate the validity of the findings, two case studies are presented. The first case study examines countries with more than one port. These countries are China, Japan, and Korea. The second case study look into areas with single port (i.e., Hong Kong and Singapore). Overall, this study builds a theoretical model and validates the model to seek answers to the following questions: • What are the roles of trade facilitation at the macro-level and micro-level in the development of national shipping centres? • Does trade facilitation influence the economic development of a country? • What is the link between the development of social capita (in terms of trade facilitation measures) and the economic performance of a country? • What are the differences national shipping centres between developed and developing countries?