Based on the fact that accessibility in rural areas relies heavily on car traffic, call-driven traffic has been used in different regions to improve public transport usage in rural areas, while it has been difficult to maintain due to high maintenance and long waiting time. Over the past decade, a new demand response transit (DRT) service came into light, which combines with new technologies to provide a more attractive and efficient transport service. Now the Public Transport Authorities have the vision to change this situation of call-driven traffic. In this project, Södertälje and Nykvarn rural area was chosen to be the pilot area of the new DRT service, where a network algorithm was designed to support the routing choices of the new mobility service. The objective of the network algorithm is to achieve an optimal route based on the cost function i.e. operational cost and passengers’ ride time. In addition, the network algorithm is able to test different scenarios, in which user-friendly and operator-friendly scenarios were tested. The result has shown that user-friendly scenarios provide a lower passenger ride time and fleet travel time with the same amount of requests. On top of that, several recommendations regarding improving the service design were proposed in order to optimize customer satisfaction and operation cost. / Baserat på faktumet att tillgängligheten på landsbygden är mer eller mindre byggd på biltrafik så har anropstyrd trafik använts i flera regioner för att förbättra kollektivtrafikanvändningen på landsbygden. Systemet är dock gammalt och lett till svårigheter för drift och underhåll samt långa väntetider. Under det senaste decennium har det utvecklats nya mobilitetslösningar som styrs när behovet uppstår (DRT-service), som kombineras med ny teknik för att ge en mer attraktiv och effektiv transport service. Nu har offentliga transportmyndigheter (PTA) visionen att förbättra denna anropstyrda trafik. I detta projektet valdes landsbygden i Södertälje och Nykvarn som pilotområde för den nya DRT-servicen, där nätverksalgoritmen utformades för att kunna stödja de olika val av vägar för nya mobilitetstjänsten. Målet med nätverksalgoritmen är att uppnå en optimal väg baserad på de kostnadsfunktioner t.ex driktkostnader och passagerarens körtid. Dessutom testas nätverksalgoritmen i olika scenarier, vilket är användarvänliga och driftvänlga scenarier. Resultatet visade att användarvänlga scenarier ger en mindre passagerartid och fordonets resetid gentemot samma mängd av förfrågningar. Dessutom gavs rekomendationer angående hur man kan förbättra tjänstedesignen för att optmiera kundnöjdhet och driftkostnad.

隨著台海兩岸經貿往來密切，發展迅速，客觀上對銀行業提出了許多服務要求，為兩岸金融業的合作提供了廣闊的空間。本文通過採用數據包絡分析法和共同邊界成本函數比較分析了兩岸商業銀行的成本結構及效率差異，實證結果表示大陸商業銀行的成本效率要高於台灣銀行。對這一結果的可能性解釋是大陸銀行的資產規模要遠高於台灣銀行。銀行總資產越高，其獲取低投入要素價格的市場能力越強，因此生產成本更低，成本效率更高。台灣和大陸商業銀行有必要發揮自身的優勢，通過各種方式和渠道，加快兩岸銀行界合作的進程。 / With cross-strait rapid economic development and trade exchanges, huge business investments have induced a great demand for financial services and provided a broad space for cross-strait cooperation. This paper adopts data envelopment analysis and meta-frontier cost function to compare and analyze the different cost structure and efficiency of mainland and Taiwan commercial banks. The empirical results reveal that cost efficiency of mainland commercial banks is higher than Taiwanese ones, which is maybe caused by the larger bank size and total assets. The larger the size of banks, the higher the market power for reaping the benefits of low input prices, thereby resulting in a lower cost of production and a higher cost efficiency. It is necessary for mainland and Taiwan commercial banks to develop their own strengths to accelerate the process of cross-strait cooperation in the banking sector through various means and channels.

This thesis describes the theory of model predictive control and application of the theory to synchronous drives. It shows explicit and on-line solutions and compares the results with classical vector control structure.

No description available.

A firma é o principal agente econômico para a produção e distribuição de bens e serviços. Seu constante investimento em melhorias e o aperfeiçoamento de sua capacidade produtiva, visando tornar-se cada vez mais eficiente, transforma-se em um determinante central do bem estar econômico da sociedade. O processo de medir a ineficiência de firmas baseia-se em análises de fronteiras, onde a ineficiência é medida como a distância entre os pontos observados da variável resposta e a função de produção, custo ou lucro verdadeiras, dependendo do modelo assumido para descrever a variável resposta. Existe uma variedade de formas funcionais para essas funções e algumas vezes é difícil julgar qual delas deve ser escolhida, visto que a forma verdadeira é desconhecida e pode ser somente aproximada. Em geral, na literatura, dados de produção são analisados assumindo-se modelos multiplicativos que impõem a restrição de que a produção é estritamente positiva e utiliza-se a transformação logarítmica para linearizar o modelo. Considera-se que o logaritmo do produto dada a ineficiência técnica tem distribuição contínua, independentemente de os dados serem contínuos ou discretos. A tese divide-se em dois artigos: o primeiro utiliza a inferência bayesiana para estimar a eficiência econômica de firmas utilizando os modelos de fronteira estocástica de custo com forma funcional flexível Fourier, que asseguram um bom ajuste para a fronteira, sendo fundamental para o cálculo da ineficiência econômica; o segundo artigo propõem os modelos generalizados de fronteira estocástica, baseando-se nos modelos lineares generalizados mistos com a abordagem bayesiana, para quantificar a ineficiência técnica de firmas (medida de incerteza) utilizando a variável resposta na escala original e distribuições pertencentes à família exponencial para a variável resposta dada a medida de ineficiência. / The firm is the main economic agent for the production and distribution of goods and services. Its constant investment in improvements and enhancement of its productive capacity to make itself more efficient becomes a central determinant of economic welfare of society. The measure process of inefficiency is based on frontier analysis, where inefficiency is measured as the distance between the observed points from variable response and real production, cost or profit function, depending on chosen model to describe the variable response. There are several functional forms to these functions and sometimes it is very difficult to decide which one has to be chosen because the true form is unknown and it can just be approximate. Generally, in the literature, production data are analyzed assuming multiplicative models that impose the restriction of what the production is strictly positive and use the logarithm transformation to turn the model lineal. It is considerate that the product\'s logarithm given the technical inefficiency has distribution continual, independent if the data are continuous or discrete. The papers presented in this thesis are: the first paper uses the bayesian inference to estimate the economic efficiency of firms in the cost stochastic frontier models using the Fourier flexible cost function, that assure a good settlement to the frontier being essential to calculate the economic inefficiency. The second paper proposes a generalized stochastic frontier models, based on generalized linear mixed models with the Bayesian approach, to quantify the inefficiency technical of the firms (uncertainty measures) by using the response variable in the scale original with distributions belonging on the exponential family to the response variable given the measure of inefficiency.

La modélisation des équilibres thermodynamiques entre phases est essentielle pour le génie des procédés et le génie pétrolier. L’analyse de la stabilité des phases est un problème de la plus haute importance parmi les calculs d’équilibre des phases. Le calcul de stabilité décide si un système se présente dans un état monophasique ou multiphasique ; si le système se sépare en deux ou plusieurs phases, les résultats du calcul de stabilité fournissent une initialisation de qualité pour les calculs de flash (Michelsen, 1982b), et permettent la validation des résultats des calculs de flash multiphasique. Le problème de la stabilité des phases est résolu par une minimisation sans contraintes de la fonction distance au plan tangent à la surface de l’énergie libre de Gibbs (« tangent plane distance », ou TPD). Une phase est considérée comme étant thermodynamiquement stable si la fonction TPD est non- négative pour tous les points stationnaires, tandis qu’une valeur négative indique une phase thermodynamiquement instable. La surface TPD dans l’espace compositionnel est non- convexe et peut être hautement non linéaire, ce qui fait que les calculs de stabilité peuvent être extrêmement difficiles pour certaines conditions, notamment aux voisinages des singularités. On distingue deux types de singularités : (i) au lieu de la limite du test de stabilité (stability test limit locus, ou STLL), et ii) à la spinodale (la limite intrinsèque de la stabilité thermodynamique). Du point de vue géométrique, la surface TPD présente un point selle, correspondant à une solution non triviale (à la STLL) ou triviale (à la spinodale). Dans le voisinage de ces singularités, le nombre d’itérations de toute méthode de minimisation augmente dramatiquement et la divergence peut survenir. Cet inconvénient est bien plus sévère pour la STLL que pour la spinodale. Le présent mémoire est structuré sur trois grandes lignes : (i) après la présentation du critère du plan tangent à la surface de l’énergie libre de Gibbs, plusieurs solutions itératives (gradient et méthodes d’accélération de la convergence, méthodes de second ordre de Newton et méthodes quasi- Newton), du problème de la stabilité des phases sont présentées et analysées, surtout du point de vue de leurs comportement près des singularités; (ii) Suivant l’analyse des valeurs propres, du conditionnement de la matrice Hessienne et de l’échelle du problème, ainsi que la représentation de la surface de la fonction TPD, la résolution du calcul de la stabilité des phases par la minimisation des fonctions coût modifiées est adoptée. Ces fonctions « coût » sont choisies de telle sorte que tout point stationnaire (y compris les points selle) de la fonction TPD soit converti en minimum global; la Hessienne à la STLL est dans ce cas positif définie, et non indéfinie, ce qui mène a une amélioration des propriétés de convergence, comme montré par plusieurs exemples pour des mélanges représentatifs, synthétiques et naturels. Finalement, (iii) les calculs de stabilité sont menés par une méthode d’optimisation globale, dite de Tunneling. La méthode de Tunneling consiste à détruire (en plaçant un pôle) les minima déjà trouvés par une méthode de minimisation locale, et a tunneliser pour trouver un point situé dans une autre vallée de la surface de la fonction coût qui contient un minimum 9 à une valeur plus petite de la fonction coût; le processus continue jusqu'à ce que les critères du minimum global soient remplis. Plusieurs exemples soigneusement choisis montrent la robustesse et l’efficacité de la méthode de Tunneling pour la minimisation de la fonction TPD, ainsi que pour la minimisation des fonctions coût modifiées. / The thermodynamic phase equilibrium modelling is an essential issue for petroleum and process engineering. Phase stability analysis is a highly important problem among phase equilibrium calculations. The stability computation establishes whether a given mixture is in one or several phases. If a mixture splits into two or more phases, the stability calculations provide valuables initialisation sets for the flash calculations, and allow the validation of multiphase flash calculations. The phase stability problem is solved as an unconstrained minimisation of the tangent plan distance (TPD) function to the Gibbs free energy surface. A phase is thermodynamically stable if the TPD function is non-negative at all its stationary points, while a negative value indicates an unstable case. The TPD surface is non-convex and may be highly non-linear in the compositional space; for this reason, phase stability calculation may be extremely difficult for certain conditions, mainly within the vicinity of singularities. One can distinguish two types of singularities: (i) the stability test limit locus (STLL), and (ii) the intrinsic limit of stability (spinodal). Geometrically, the TPD surface exhibits a saddle point, corresponding to a non-trivial (at the STLL) or trivial solution (at the spinodal). In the immediate vicinity of these singularities, the number of iterations of all minimisation methods increases dramatically, and divergence could occur. This inconvenient is more severe for the STLL than for the spinodal. The work presented herein is structured as follow: (i) after the introduction to the concept of tangent plan distance to the Gibbs free energy surface, several iterative methods (gradient, acceleration methods, second-order Newton and quasi-Newton) are presented, and their behaviour analysed, especially near singularities. (ii) following the analysis of Hessian matrix eigenvalues and conditioning, of problem scaling, as well as of the TPD surface representation, the solution of phase stability computation using modified objective functions is adopted. The latter are chosen in such a manner that any stationary point of the TPD function becomes a global minimum of the modified function; at the STLL, the Hessian matrix is no more indefinite, but positive definite. This leads to a better scheme of convergence as will be shown in various examples for synthetic and naturally occurring mixtures. Finally, (iii) the so-called Tunneling global optimization method is used for the stability analysis. This method consists in destroying the minima already found (by placing poles), and to tunnel to another valley of the modified objective function to find a new minimum with a smaller value of the objective function. The process is resumed when criteria for the global minimum are fulfilled. Several carefully chosen examples demonstrate the robustness and the efficiency of the Tunneling method to minimize the TPD function, as well as the modified objective functions.

<p>Many different approaches have been taken towards solving the stereo correspondence problem and great progress has been made within the field during the last decade. This is mainly thanks to newly evolved global optimization techniques and better ways to compute pixel dissimilarity between views. The most successful algorithms are based on approaches that explicitly model smoothness assumptions made about the physical world, with image segmentation and plane fitting being two frequently used techniques.</p><p>Within the project, a survey of state of the art stereo algorithms was conducted and the theory behind them is explained. Techniques found interesting were implemented for experimental trials and an algorithm aiming to achieve state of the art performance was implemented and evaluated. For several cases, state of the art performance was reached.</p><p>To keep down the computational complexity, an algorithm relying on local winner-take-all optimization, image segmentation and plane fitting was compared against minimizing a global energy function formulated on pixel level. Experiments show that the local approach in several cases can match the global approach, but that problems sometimes arise – especially when large areas that lack texture are present. Such problematic areas are better handled by the explicit modeling of smoothness in global energy minimization.</p><p>Lastly, disparity estimation for image sequences was explored and some ideas on how to use temporal information were implemented and tried. The ideas mainly relied on motion detection to determine parts that are static in a sequence of frames. Stereo correspondence for sequences is a rather new research field, and there is still a lot of work to be made.</p>

Multimedia services are the killer applications on next generation convergent networks. Video contents are the most resource consuming part of a multimedia flux. Video transmission, video multicast and video conferencing services are the most popular types of video communication with increasing difficulty levels. Four main parts of the distributed cross-layer scalable multimedia services over next generation convergent networks are considered in this research work, both from the architecture and performance point of views. Firstly, we evaluate the performance of scalable multimedia transmissions over an overlay network. For that, we evaluate the performance of scalable video end-to-end transmissions over EvalSVC. It is capable of evaluating the end-to-end transmission of SVC bit-streams. The output results are both objective and subjective metrics of the video transmission. Through the interfaces with real networks and an overlay simulation platform, the transmission performance of different types of SVC scalability and AVC bit-streams on a bottle-neck and an overlay network will be evaluated. This evaluation is new because it is conducted on the end-to-end transmission of SVC contents and not on the coding performance. Next, we will study the multicast mechanism for multimedia content over an overlay network in the following part of this PhD thesis. Secondly, we tackle the problems of the distributed cross-layer scalable multimedia multicast over the next generation convergent networks. For that, we propose a new application-network cross layer multi-variable cost function for application layer multicast of multimedia delivery over convergent networks. It optimizes the variable requirements and available resources from both the application and the network layers. It can dynamically update the available resources required for reaching a particular node on the ALM's media distribution tree. Mathematical derivation and theoretical analysis have been provided for the newly proposed cost function so that it can be applied in more general cases of different contexts. An evaluation platform of an overlay network built over a convergent underlay network comprised of a simulated Internet topology and a real 4G mobile WiMAX IEEE802.16e wireless network is constructed. If multicast is the one-to-many mechanism to distribute the multimedia content, a deeper study on the many-to-many mechanism will be done in the next part of the thesis through a new architecture for video conferencing services. Thirdly, we study the distributed cross-layer scalable video conferencing services over the overlay network. For that, an enriched human perception-based distributed architecture for scalable video conferencing services is proposed with theoretical models and performance analysis. Rich theoretical models of the three different architectures: the proposed perception-based distributed architecture, the conventional centralized architecture and perception-based centralized architecture have been constructed by using queuing theory to reflect the traffic generated, transmitted and processed at the perception-based distributed leaders, the perception-based centralized top leader, and the centralized server. The performance of these three different architectures has been considered in 4 different aspects. While the distributed architecture is better than the centralized architecture for a scalable multimedia conferencing service, it brings many problems to users who are using a wireless network to participate into the conferencing service. A special solution should be found out for mobile users in the next part of the thesis. Lastly, the distributed cross-layer scalable video conferencing services over the next generation convergent network is enabled. For that, an IMS-based distributed multimedia conferencing services for Next Generation Convergent Networks is proposed. [...]

A firma é o principal agente econômico para a produção e distribuição de bens e serviços. Seu constante investimento em melhorias e o aperfeiçoamento de sua capacidade produtiva, visando tornar-se cada vez mais eficiente, transforma-se em um determinante central do bem estar econômico da sociedade. O processo de medir a ineficiência de firmas baseia-se em análises de fronteiras, onde a ineficiência é medida como a distância entre os pontos observados da variável resposta e a função de produção, custo ou lucro verdadeiras, dependendo do modelo assumido para descrever a variável resposta. Existe uma variedade de formas funcionais para essas funções e algumas vezes é difícil julgar qual delas deve ser escolhida, visto que a forma verdadeira é desconhecida e pode ser somente aproximada. Em geral, na literatura, dados de produção são analisados assumindo-se modelos multiplicativos que impõem a restrição de que a produção é estritamente positiva e utiliza-se a transformação logarítmica para linearizar o modelo. Considera-se que o logaritmo do produto dada a ineficiência técnica tem distribuição contínua, independentemente de os dados serem contínuos ou discretos. A tese divide-se em dois artigos: o primeiro utiliza a inferência bayesiana para estimar a eficiência econômica de firmas utilizando os modelos de fronteira estocástica de custo com forma funcional flexível Fourier, que asseguram um bom ajuste para a fronteira, sendo fundamental para o cálculo da ineficiência econômica; o segundo artigo propõem os modelos generalizados de fronteira estocástica, baseando-se nos modelos lineares generalizados mistos com a abordagem bayesiana, para quantificar a ineficiência técnica de firmas (medida de incerteza) utilizando a variável resposta na escala original e distribuições pertencentes à família exponencial para a variável resposta dada a medida de ineficiência. / The firm is the main economic agent for the production and distribution of goods and services. Its constant investment in improvements and enhancement of its productive capacity to make itself more efficient becomes a central determinant of economic welfare of society. The measure process of inefficiency is based on frontier analysis, where inefficiency is measured as the distance between the observed points from variable response and real production, cost or profit function, depending on chosen model to describe the variable response. There are several functional forms to these functions and sometimes it is very difficult to decide which one has to be chosen because the true form is unknown and it can just be approximate. Generally, in the literature, production data are analyzed assuming multiplicative models that impose the restriction of what the production is strictly positive and use the logarithm transformation to turn the model lineal. It is considerate that the product\'s logarithm given the technical inefficiency has distribution continual, independent if the data are continuous or discrete. The papers presented in this thesis are: the first paper uses the bayesian inference to estimate the economic efficiency of firms in the cost stochastic frontier models using the Fourier flexible cost function, that assure a good settlement to the frontier being essential to calculate the economic inefficiency. The second paper proposes a generalized stochastic frontier models, based on generalized linear mixed models with the Bayesian approach, to quantify the inefficiency technical of the firms (uncertainty measures) by using the response variable in the scale original with distributions belonging on the exponential family to the response variable given the measure of inefficiency.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Optimization problems are interesting both from the theoretical and practical point of view. In this thesis we address this subject, presenting problems of analytical nature, algebraic, geometric and combinatorial that can be addressed in basic education. Our main goal is to show how much content already taught in school can be used in attractive way for students through real-world problems can be solved with the use of mathematics. Also tried to suggest some topics that, although not part of the standard curriculum can be implemented by integrating diverse part. / Problemas de otimização são interessantes tanto do ponto de vista teórico quanto prático. Nesta dissertação abordamos este assunto, apresentando problemas de natureza analítica, algébrica, geométrica e combinatória que podem ser abordados no ensino básico. Nosso principal objetivo é evidenciar como muito dos conteúdos já ensinados na escola podem ser utilizados de forma atrativa para os alunos, através de problemas do cotidiano que podem ser resolvidos com o uso da matemática. Também experimentamos sugerir alguns temas que, embora não façam parte do currículo padrão, podem ser implementados integrando a parte diversificada.