The development of cities and population growth have led, among other urban problems, the increase in sound pressure levels of environmental noise. With the overcrowding of cities, the roads start to host large flows of vehicles, among other sound sources. These factors, coupled with the layout and massing of buildings, make the road a polluter responsible for sound pressure levels highly detrimental to health. In Brazil, noise has not been considered by urban planning policies. This study aims to assess the current conditions of urban noise pollution due to vehicular traffic on the downtown of Chapecó - SC. To this end, we sought to map the sound pressure levels, compare them to the municipal and federal laws relating to urban noise, to relate the sound descriptors of the traffic noise with the volume of traffic, to relate the geometry of the built environment with levels of sound pressure and compare the results with the rates proposed by the urban plan of the municipality. To conduct the survey data, was defined a mesh grid from which were located 14 measuring points. Data collection was performed at peak times and these data have been divided into acoustic quantities, geometrical quantities, quantities of traffic and meteorological quantities. The sound pressure levels collected from the study area had higher than those recommended by national standards at all times and points of measurement. From the linear regression analysis between the sound descriptors and flow of vehicular traffic, it was realized that the LAeq is not sufficient to explain the vehicular noise, because the variation of the LAeq is influenced not only by the variation in the number of vehicles, but also by the features the built environment of the road. The variation of LA90 and LA50 sound descriptors showed better correlation with the variation of the flow of vehicular traffic. The urbanistic indices proposed by the plan of the municipality stimulate the future shape of urban canyons, which can aggravate the problems related to noise from vehicular traffic in the local community. / O desenvolvimento das cidades e o crescimento demográfico têm acarretado, entre outros problemas urbanos, o aumento dos níveis de pressão sonora do ruído ambiental. Com a aglomeração dos centros urbanos, as vias passam a abrigar grandes fluxos de veículos, entre outras fontes sonoras. Esses fatores, aliados à disposição e à volumetria das edificações, tornam o tráfego rodoviário um poluidor acústico responsável por níveis de pressão sonora altamente prejudiciais à saúde. No Brasil, o ruído não tem sido considerado pelas políticas de planejamento urbano. O presente estudo tem por objetivo avaliar as condições atuais de poluição sonora urbana devido ao tráfego veicular em área central do município de Chapecó SC. Para tanto, buscou-se mapear os níveis de pressão sonora, comparar os mesmos à legislação municipal e federal referente ao ruído urbano, relacionar os descritores sonoros do ruído de tráfego com o volume de tráfego, relacionar a geometria do ambiente construído com os níveis de pressão sonora e comparar os resultados com os índices urbanísticos propostos pelo plano diretor do município. Para realização do levantamento de dados, foi definida uma malha quadriculada a partir da qual foram localizados 14 pontos de medição. O estudo delimitou a coleta de dados aos horários de pico e estes dados apresentam-se divididos em grandezas acústicas, grandezas geométricas, grandezas de tráfego e grandezas meteorológicas. Os níveis de pressão sonora coletados da área de estudo se apresentaram superiores aos preconizados pelas normativas nacionais em todos os horários e pontos de medição. A partir das análises de regressão linear entre os descritores sonoros e o fluxo de tráfego de veículos, percebeu-se que o LAeq não é suficiente para explicar o ruído veicular, uma vez que a variação do LAeq sofre influência não só da variação no número de veículos, como também das características do ambiente construído da via. A variação dos descritores sonoros LA90 e LA50 demonstraram melhor correlação com a variação do fluxo de tráfego veicular. Os índices urbanísticos propostos pelo plano diretor do município estimulam a configuração futura de cânions urbanos, o que pode agravar os problemas relacionados ao ruído de tráfego veicular enfrentados pela comunidade local.

Many recent studies have highlighted the substantial health-related impacts of particle number (PMno) rather than particle mass. The aim of this study is to determine the correlation of trace gases with PMno, to identify the chemical composition of particle different sizes and to predict the NOx and PMno over Yanbu Industrial City (YIC). Trace gases (NOx, SO2, H2S, O3, CO), PMno with diameter (7nm-10μm), traffic and meteorological parameters were measured at three sampling sites in YIC. The maximum PMno (333,971 cm-3) at downwind site#1 was about 2.5 times higher than that (123,842 cm-3) at upwind site#2 and about 1.2 times higher than that (263,572 cm-3) at downwind site#3. The average PMno distribution at downwind sites consisted of one distinguishable mode (nucleation mode<20nm) whereas the upwind site had two modes (the nucleation and the accumulation modes). The correlation of PMno with NO/NOx (r>0.7) are generally stronger than with NO2 at sites#1 and 2, whereas for site #3 the correlation between PMno with NO2/NOx are better than with NO. PMno has generally either weak or poor correlation with SO2 and CO, respectively. Particle samples of different sizes (7nm-10?m) were chemically analysed using an ion chromatograph (IC) for inorganic ions and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for trace metals at site#3. The ionic analysis revealed that sulfate and ammonium was mainly present in particle of size < 0.38μm while nitrate and chloride was mainly present in particles of size > 0.38μm. Non-sea salt sulfate was dominant in all particle sizes compared to the marine sulfate which is minor. The total sulfate and nitrate contributed 50.3% and 24.4% of the total ionic mass respectively followed by chloride (13.3%) and ammonium (10.6%). The trace-metals analysis results indicated that Na represented more than 94% of the total mass and the contributions of the remaining metals (Al, Sr, Zn, V, Cr, Fe, etc) were about 6%. A further part of this study consisted of the coupling of the WRF/CALMET system with the CALPUFF model, which was applied to predict NOx and PMno concentrations. The WRF model was employed to generate the meteorological input data for CALMET. WRF predictions were evaluated with surface data and upper air profiles using RASS/SODAR and radiosondes. WRF tends to underestimate the surface temperature on average with biases of up to -3.4°C and also underestimates temperature profiles with average biases ranging between -2.7 and -5.2oC when compared to the RASS profiler, but with a lower bias (< -2.4°C) when compared to radiosonde profiles. The mean wind speed bias for the majority of the cases was close to the benchmark of ±0.5m/s, but the mean wind direction bias for half of the cases exceeded the benchmark of 10o. It was concluded that WRF predictions can be used for air dispersion modeling to produce reasonable outputs. NOx predictions by CALPUFF showed that the contribution of the traffic to the highest concentrations during the nighttime was up to 80%, but after sunrise the contribution from industries became higher (up to 70%). The highest predicted NOx concentration (~313μg/m3) was much lower than the national ambient standard (660μg/m3) and the community area is affected much by industries during mid-morning hours when the wind shifting from land breeze to sea breeze. The fractional bias (FB) ranged between -0.1 and 1.06 indicating that the model tends to under-predict the NOx observations. PMno predictions of two sizes (7-40nm and 7nm-10μm) were derived based on the NOx predictions. All FB values were ranged between -0.1 and 0.5. It was concluded that PMno predictions were generally better than those of the NOx due mainly to adding the background term (intercept) for the PMno predictions.

This diploma thesis deals with driver’s reaction time in regular road traffic. The theoretical part of this work focuses on reaction time, such as various definitions, structuring of reaction time, methods of measuring or publications made by other authors. The practical part of this diploma thesis includes proposal and realization of experiment, based on analysis of the current state by the author of this diploma thesis, which focuses on driver’s reaction time in regular road traffic (various traffic situations). At the end, the practical part presents the results evaluation based on various traffic situations or headway.

HABÁSKO Jakub: The Point System as a Road Safety Tool. The Master´s thesis of Master degree, second grade, school year 2010/2011, Brno University of Technology, Institute of Forensic Engineering, May 2011, pages 198, pictures 12, tables 6, supplements 21. The thesis is elaborated in frame of the Master degree, study branch Expert Engineering in Transport. In this diploma thesis is in detail introduced Penalty Point System in our country and in other selected european countries. The thesis further contains the part about comparing Road Safety in our country and in other selected countries from the point of view of statistics. Most frequented offences and criminal offences in our country were analyzed. In the final part of this thesis is the suggestion of changes in point system. In the last chapter is introduced actual amendment of the Road Safety Act.

Main goal of this thesis is to create an application which can do a simulation of model of road traffic system based on reality and can handle to manage signal control based on the proposed algorithm so that the road traffic should have a great performance and system should have a maximum throughput.  It describes a simulation model, different approaches in design of algorithm for management of the road traffic system and decribes in detail evolutionary approach for optimalization system of control crossroads.

<div>Petri net (PN) is a useful tool for the modeling and analysis of complex systems and has been widely used in a variety of practical systems. This dissertation aims at studying highway transportation systems using Petri nets and investigating several fundamental problems related to the modeling, state/structure estimation, and control of highway traffic.</div><div>This dissertation starts with two kinds of modeling schemes. The first one uses the Probabilistic Petri net to model a highway segment. The traffic movement probabilities have also been shown. The second scheme uses the traditional Petri net structure to model the traffic network around a city’s metropolitan area, where places represent the destinations of interests and tokens represent time units.</div><div>After that, two estimation algorithms and one control algorithm have been proposed, respectively, based on external observations. The first algorithm deals with labeled Petri nets and the objective is to estimate the minimum initial marking that has (have) the smallest token sum. The second algorithm estimates the Petri net structures from the observations of finite token change sequences in terms of the minimum number of transitions and connections. At last, the traffic volume control algorithm is to keep the traffic volume within capacity. The controller will be applied in each evolution step depending on observation.</div><div>Since we have been focusing on the optimization problems of the structure and markings of the Petri net, it is directly related to the optimal route planning problems in highway traffic scenarios. Thus, we can obtain optimized traveling routes by applying proposed algorithms to the traffic systems.</div>

Kunskap om vägtrafikens sammansättning behövs för planering av relevanta åtgärder och utvärdering av framtida lösningar inom trafiksystemet. För att öka kunskapsunderlaget om trafikens tillstånd utvecklar Trafikverket Region Stockholm en mätplan för Stockholmsregionen som syftar till att genom mått och indikatorer bättre kunna förklara trafikläget och dess förändring. Behovet av att samordna transporter blir allt större i takt med att befolkningen ökar, men idag finns varierade möjligheter att kartlägga olika grupper av vägtrafiken. Näringslivstransporter pekas ut som ett av Trafikverkets målområden i mätplanen, inom vilka det finns behov av att öka kunskap och dataunderlag. I ett första steg att nå det målet behöver näringslivstransporter beskrivas genom en definition, vilket är det huvudsakliga syftet med detta examensarbete. Definitionen som formulerats, och som beskriver vad som bör betraktas som näringslivstransporter, baseras på information från litteratur och genom intervjuer där begreppet analyserats ur olika perspektiv. Resultatet visar att gruppen är bred och svår att kartlägga eftersom den innefattar en mängd olika transporttyper som genomförs med allt från personbil till stora lastbilar. Eftersom det finns en risk att näringslivstransporter som helhetsbegrepp kan bli begränsat i sin användning genom en för snäv definition har gruppen definierats med aktsamhet. Definitionen delas in i tre kategorier enligt följande: Näringslivstransport av gods, Näringslivstransport av personer och Näringslivstransport av tjänster. Eftersom kunskapsbristen om näringslivstransporter är stor och definitionen ska vara så anpassningsbar som möjligt görs ingen vidare indelning av de tre kategorierna, men exempel på vad varje kategori kan innehålla ges för att förklara hur definitionen kan tillämpas. Det är dock viktigt att poängtera att de olika kategorierna är i olika stort behov av ett ökat kunskapsunderlag baserat på deras omfattning och hur väl de kan kartläggas i olika mätmetoder. Utifrån definitionen genomfördes en dataanalys i syfte att undersöka hur stor del av näringslivstransporter som kan kartläggas i tillgängliga datakällor. Den data som studerades var MCS- och ANPR-data, samt en filminspelning av trafiken. Resultatet visar att det finns goda möjligheter att kategorisera olika typer av lastbilar som kan antas höra till näringslivstransporter genom framför allt ANPR-data, men en del av näringslivstransporter går endast att identifiera genom visuell information såsom logotyper i det filmade materialet. Förslag på vidare studier är att fortsatt kombinera tillgängliga mät- och kartläggningsmetoder, dels i syfte att härleda data till näringslivstransporter, dels för att undersöka vilken typ av information som idag inte kan erhållas om gruppen. Eftersom tidigare studier på näringslivstransporter som helhetsbegrepp är begränsade finns det även behov av att undersöka gruppen vidare, både i sin helhet och undergrupperna för sig. / Knowledge regarding the composition of road traffic is needed for the planning of relevant measures and evaluation of future infrastructure solutions in the transport system. In order to increase knowledge in this area, the Stockholm region of the Swedish Transport Administration is developing a measurement plan that aims to describe the status of the road traffic system and its development using a number of chosen measures and indicators. The need to coordinate transport is increasing with population growth, but today the opportunities to measure different transport categories varies. Commercial vehicles are identified as one of the target areas in the measurement plan, within which there is a need to increase knowledge and explore data sources for further analysis. A step towards achieving this goal is to define what is implied by the term commercial vehicles. This is the main aim of the thesis. The definition of commercial vehicles is based on information obtained from literature and interviews. This information has resulted is a categorization that includes a range of different types of transport. Measuring commercial vehicles is difficult as the definition includes transport carried out by passenger cars as well as trucks. As there is a risk that commercial vehicles as a group may be restricted by a definition that is too narrow, it must be carefully defined. The suggested definition divides commercial vehicles into three main categories: transport of goods, transport of people and transport of services. The aim of this definition is to make it adaptable to specific needs. Examples of what each category may contain, and how the definition can be applied are given in the report. It is important to point out that the different categories are in need of further study in order to increase the knowledge base. Based on the definition, a data analysis was carried out to investigate how commercial vehicles can be explained and measured using three available data sources. The data used included MCS (Motorway Control System), ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition), and film recording. The results showed that there are good opportunities to categorize different types of trucks used for commercial purposes from the ANPR data in particular. However, some attributes of the group can only be identified through visual information such as logos from the film recordings. Proposals for further studies include the need to combine readily available measurement methods and data. Also, as previous studies on commercial vehicles are limited, there is also a need to investigate the group further, both in its entirety and the three categories separately.

Tidigare forskning indikerar att individer med sömnapné får mer allvarliga skador i sambandmed vägtrafikolyckor jämfört med individer utan sömnapné. Det har även visats att merallvarliga skador genererar högre kostnader. Det finns dock ett kunskapsglapp i frågan om demer allvarliga skadorna som involverar individer med sömnapné har högresjukvårdskostnader i Sverige. Studier visar även att om patienter ska kunna få ut maximaltmed vård för de skattepengar som läggs på hälso- och sjukvården bör samhällseffektivakostnadsanalyser göras. En del i samhällseffektiva kostnadsanalyser är att identifiera,kvantifiera och värdera de kostnader som är relevanta vid ett specifikt olycksfall.Uppsatsens syfte är att framställa, jämföra och analysera de sjukvårdskostnader somuppkommer vid vägtrafikolyckor i Sverige orsakade av individer med och utan sömnapnéunder en uppföljningsperiod på ett, två och tre år. I sjukvårdskostnaderna inkluderas dekostnader som uppstår i slutenvården, öppenvården, samt läkemedelskostnader. Syftetuppfylls först genom identifiering, kvantifiering och värdering av sjukvårdskostnaderna. Meden ekonometrisk modell avser vi dessutom att förklara sambandet mellan de förklarandevariablerna ålder, kön och patientgrupp och den beroende variabeln sjukvårdskostnader. Denekonometriska modellen skapas utifrån data från olycksregistret Swedish Traffic AccidentData Acquisition (STRADA) och organisationen European Sleep Apnoea Database(ESADA).I resultatanalysen presenteras och analyseras sjukvårdskostnaderna utifrånsamhällsekonomisk teori för att avgöra om det existerar en skillnad i sjukvårdskostnader samtför att utreda hur den eventuella skillnaden är fördelad enligt Pareto- och Kaldor-Hickskriteriet. Studiens resultat visar på att det existerar en framträdande skillnad mellan de tvåpatientgruppernas sjukvårdskostnader. Marginalkostnaderna för patientgruppen medsömnapné är betydligt större än för patientgruppen utan sömnapné och de inkrementellakostnaderna visar också relativt stora kostnadsskillnader under respektive uppföljningsår. / Previous research indicates that individuals with the condition obstructive sleep apnoea(OSA) get more severe injuries after road traffic accidents, in comparison with individualswithout OSA. It has also, in previous studies, been shown that more severe injuries generatehigher costs. There is although a knowledge gap concerning whether the more severe injuriesthat involve individuals with OSA result in higher medical expenses. Furthermore, earlierresearch also implies that for patients to receive maximum healthcare from the tax moneyreimbursing the healthcare in Sweden, there should be socio-effective cost analysisconducted. An important part of socio-effective cost analysis is the identification,quantification and valuation of relevant costs associated with a specific causality.The aim of the study is to produce, compare and analyse the healthcare costs associated withroad traffic accidents in Sweden caused by individuals with and without OSA, during afollow-up period of one, two and three years. The healthcare costs include the costs that occurin the inpatient and outpatient care as well as pharmaceutical costs. The aim has been fulfilledthrough identification, quantification and valuation of the healthcare costs associated withroad traffic accidents, for individuals with and without OSA. In order to examine therelationship between the describing variables age, sex and patient group and the dependentvariable healthcare cost, we constructed an econometric model. The econometric model hasbeen assembled by data from the accident register Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition(STRADA) and the organisation European Sleep Apnoea Database (ESADA).The result of the study presents and analyse the healthcare costs through socio-economictheory to decide whether there does exist a difference in healthcare costs and to investigate ifthe eventual difference in costs is distributed according to the Pareto- and Kaldor-Hickscriteria.The study’s result demonstrates a significant difference of the healthcare costs in thetwo patient groups. The marginal costs for the patient group with OSA is considerably higherthan the marginal cost for the patient group without OSA. The incremental costs also showrelatively large cost differences during the three follow-up years.

<p>Globally, injury is a major public health problem. The extent of the problem varies considerably by demographic subgroups, regions and national income. The overall objective of this thesis is to examine the relationship between injury mortality and economic development, and to discuss its role in the changing patterns of mortality as described in health transition theory.</p><p>By cross-sectional analysis between cause-specific injury-related mortality and income per capita, studies included in this thesis indicated that while unintentional injury mortality (UIM) and homicide rates correlated negatively with GNP per capita for total populations with varying patterns for age-specific mortality, suicide rates increased slightly by nations’ income per capita, especially among women. In age- and cause-specific injury mortality differentials between low-income, middle-income and high-income countries, ageing and injury interplay mutually with regard to health transition; declining rates in child UIM by income level contributes to the ageing process, while increasing UIM among the elderly, in combination with ageing populations boosts the absolute number of injury deaths in this segment.</p><p>Between the income-based country groups, both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses show that injury mortality for all three major causes (i.e. unintentional injury, suicide and homicide) first increase and then decrease with rising income per capita, following an inverted U-shaped curve.</p><p>These results illustrate that injury is not a homogeneous public health phenomenon from a health transition perspective. While child unintentional mortality clearly agrees with ‘diseases of poverty’, unintentional injury in the elderly agrees with ‘diseases of affluence’. Patterns for homicide and suicide are more complex and uncertain. Generally, the strength and direction of injury mortality by economic development vary considerably by age, sex and type of injury.</p><p>Further research on causations, mechanisms, broader indicators and data quality, as well as theoretical developments on health transition taking new findings and parallel frameworks into account, is needed to fully understand the complex relationship between economic development and injury mortality.</p>

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)  is the main research domain for making road transport safer and more comfortable. For the sake of increasing the benefits of ITS, projects about Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC)  system have been proposed to make communications among vehicles possible, to exchange traffic information and avoid accidents. In order to create communication network among vehicles or between vehicles and infrastructure,  Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) has been proposed. Many applications in VANETs need to send messages to vehicles within a specific geographic region. This behavior is called geocast and this specific geographic region is called the Zone of Relevance (ZOR). Some routing protocols which are related to Geocast have been proposed in literature for VANETs. So it is significant to evaluate and compare the performance of these known Geocast routing protocols. In this thesis, categories of the routing protocols, as well as communication forwarding schemes are introduced. The routing protocols in VANETs are also summarized and compared. In order to evaluate the performance of these protocols, the evaluation methods are proposed and then a Geocast routing simulator is designed and used to simulate the Geocast network environment and several Geocast routing protocols.