Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET)s are a key element of Intelligent Transport System (ITS)s. One of the challenges in VANETs is dealing with awareness and congestion due to the high amount of messages received from the vehicles in communication range. As VANETs are used in critical applications, congestion on the receiver side caused by the buffering of the packets is a safety hazard. In this thesis, we propose a stream-wise queuing system on the receiver side and show how it improves the timeliness of the messages received and main- tains the awareness of the system in a congestion situation.

In this paper we present a simple combinatorial approach for the derivation of zero avoiding transition probabilities in a Markovian r- node series Jackson network. The method we propose offers two advantages: first, it is conceptually simple because it is based on transition counts between the nodes and does not require a tensor representation of the network. Second, the method provides us with a very efficient technique for numerical computation of zero avoiding transition probabilities. / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik

O presente estudo tem por objetivo fornecer uma maior compreensão acerca do consumo e das comunidades de consumo formadas nas filas de espera que antecedem a apresentação de bandas internacionais. A questão central de pesquisa pode ser assim definida: como são formadas as comunidades de consumo nas filas de espera que antecedem apresentações musicais de bandas internacionais? E a espera nas filas, é compreendida como sendo parte do consumo? A importância do estudo se justifica devido à existência de lacunas na literatura que tratem as filas de espera formadas por consumidores como comunidades de consumo. Para suportar a pesquisa, foi realizada uma análise teórica acerca de comunidade de consumo, fanatismo, consumo experiencial e a fila de espera como um sistema social. O método utilizado teve inspiração etnográfica, para que houvesse a imersão da pesquisadora no universo do fenômeno a ser estudado. Foi verificado que a busca dos fileiros para chegar cedo nas filas de espera que antecedem a apresentação musical de bandas internacionais se deve ao fato de procurarem garantir o melhor lugar para assistir ao show, que seja o mais próximo possível dos seus artistas, além de ser uma forma de homenagear seus ídolos. A fila também é uma forma encontrada de expandir a duração da experiência, pois para eles o evento já começa na fila de espera. Foi observado que na fila ocorre a formação de comunidades de consumo, à medida que há um encontro de pessoas com gostos semelhantes, reunidas em torno de um interesse único em comum, que procuram enfrentar os desafios da fila de espera através de um cuidado e colaboração mútua entre seus membros. / The present study aims to provide a greater understanding about the consumption and consumption communities formed in the queues that precede the presentation of international bands. The central question of research can be defined as: how are consumer communities formed in the queues that precede musical performances of international bands? And the wait in queues is understood as being part of consumption? The importance of the study is justified due to the existence of gaps in the literature that deal with waiting lines formed by consumers as communities of consumption. To support the research, a bibliographical search about the consumption community, fanaticism, experiential consumption and the queue as a social system was carried out. The method used had ethnographic inspiration, so that the researcher could immerse herself in the universe of the phenomenon to be studied. It was verified that the search of the ranks to arrive early in the queues that precede the musical presentation of international bands of must to the fact to look for guarantee the best place to watch the show, that is as near as possible of its artists, besides being a way to honor their idols. Queuing is also a way to extend the duration of the experiment because for them the event already starts in the queue. It has been observed that in the queue occurs the formation of communities of consumption, as there is a meeting of people with similar tastes, gathered around a unique interest in common, that seek to face the challenges of the queue through a care and collaboration between its members.

Consider a set of N i.i.d. random variables in [0, 1]. When the experimental values of the random variables are arranged in ascending order from smallest to largest, one has the order statistics of the set of random variables. In this note an O(N3) algorithm is developed for computing the probability that the order statistics vector lies in a given rectangle. The new algorithm is then applied to a problem of statistical inference in queues. Illustrative computational results are included.

La présence chronique de visiteurs dans les zoos est susceptible d'entraîner chez les animaux différentes modifications comportementales et physiologiques nuisibles aux efforts de conservation. L'étude de ces modifications ne s'est concentrée que sur la réaction globale des groupes. L'influence des différences individuelles dans la réaction des animaux aux visiteurs a jusqu'à maintenant été négligée. En plus de la variabilité comportementale attribuable au sexe et à l'âge, les individus peuvent se distinguer selon leurs différences comportementales constantes à travers le temps et les situations (personnalité) et/ou selon leurs patrons de réponse aux changements environnementaux (plasticité comportementale). Toutefois, les approches subjectives communément employées dans l'étude de la variation interindividuelle de comportement chez les primates ne permettent pas d'évaluer la plasticité comportementale dans un contexte environnemental variable. Le premier objectif de ce mémoire est de proposer une approche par normes de réaction pour mesurer la constance des différences individuelles de comportement chez le macaque à queue de lion (Macaca silenus) et comparer leur réponse aux variations de quantité de visiteurs dans les zoos. Le second objectif vise à déterminer l'impact du public sur la réaction globale des animaux et à distinguer si celui-ci est modulé par le sexe et l'âge. Des observations comportementales ont été amassées dans trois zoos d'Amérique du Nord. Une analyse en composante principale a permis de regrouper les comportements en cinq traits (activité, tension, sociabilité, réactivité et agressivité). La constance des différences comportementales entre individus et le degré de variation interindividuelle de réponse aux visiteurs ont été évalués sur chacun des traits à l'aide de modèles linéaires mixtes incluant d'une part les individus et les zoos comme effets aléatoires, et d'autre part le sexe, l'âge et la température comme effets fixes. Une augmentation de visiteurs a entraîné une hausse de sociabilité et une baisse d'activité chez les jeunes macaques, mais l'inverse'a été observé chez les macaques plus âgés. À basse température, une forte présence de visiteur a accru la tension, mais a provoqué une diminution de l'agressivité. Des variations individuelles stables ont été observées pour les traits d'activité, de tension, de sociabilité et d'agressivité. Par contre, les macaques n'ont montré aucune différence individuelle de plasticité comportementale en réponse aux visiteurs. Les résultats appuient un effet stressant du public, sans pouvoir le confirmer clairement. Néanmoins, ils suggèrent que l'âge et la température devraient être considérés dans l'étude de l'impact du public sur les primates et que les enclos devraient être conçus en fonction des besoins relatifs à l'âge des animaux. Notre étude a permis d'identifier une variation individuelle significative sur plusieurs traits comportementaux qui pourraient potentiellement être soumis à des pressions de sélection spécifiques aux conditions de captivité. L'approche par norme de réaction utilisée présente plusieurs avantages sur l'approche subjective et constitue une méthode efficace d'étude des variations comportementales individuelles dans une perspective évolutive et écologique.

The ambulance offload delay problem is a well-known result of overcrowding and congestion in emergency departments. Offload delay refers to the situation where area hospitals are unable to accept patients from regional ambulances in a timely manner due to lack of staff and bed capacity. The problem of offload delays is not a simple issue to resolve and has caused severe problems to the emergency medical services (EMS) providers, emergency department (ED) staff, and most importantly patients that are transferred to hospitals by ambulance. Except for several reports on the problem, not much research has been done on the subject. Almost all research to date has focused on either EMS or ED planning and operation and as far as we are aware there are no models which have considered the coordination of these units. We propose an analytical model which will allow us to analyze and explore the ambulance offload delay problem. We use queuing theory to construct a system representing the interaction of EMS and ED, and model the behavior of the system as a continuous time Markov chain. The matrix geometric method will be used to numerically compute various system performance measures under different conditions. We analyze the effect of adding more emergency beds in the ED, adding more ambulances, and reducing the ED patient length of stay, on various system performance measures such as the average number of ambulances in offload delay, average time in offload delay, and ambulance and bed utilization. We will show that adding more beds to the ED or reducing ED patient length of stay will have a positive impact on system performance and in particular will decrease the average number of ambulances experiencing offload delay and the average time in offload delay. Also, it will be shown that increasing the number of ambulances will have a negative impact on offload delays and increases the average number of ambulances in offload delay. However, other system performance measures are improved by adding more ambulances to the system. Finally, we will show the tradeoffs between adding more emergency beds, adding more ambulances, and reducing ED patient length of stay. We conclude that the hospital is the bottleneck in the system and in order to reduce ambulance offload delays, either hospital capacity has to be increased or ED patient length of stay is to be reduced.

The ambulance offload delay problem is a well-known result of overcrowding and congestion in emergency departments. Offload delay refers to the situation where area hospitals are unable to accept patients from regional ambulances in a timely manner due to lack of staff and bed capacity. The problem of offload delays is not a simple issue to resolve and has caused severe problems to the emergency medical services (EMS) providers, emergency department (ED) staff, and most importantly patients that are transferred to hospitals by ambulance. Except for several reports on the problem, not much research has been done on the subject. Almost all research to date has focused on either EMS or ED planning and operation and as far as we are aware there are no models which have considered the coordination of these units. We propose an analytical model which will allow us to analyze and explore the ambulance offload delay problem. We use queuing theory to construct a system representing the interaction of EMS and ED, and model the behavior of the system as a continuous time Markov chain. The matrix geometric method will be used to numerically compute various system performance measures under different conditions. We analyze the effect of adding more emergency beds in the ED, adding more ambulances, and reducing the ED patient length of stay, on various system performance measures such as the average number of ambulances in offload delay, average time in offload delay, and ambulance and bed utilization. We will show that adding more beds to the ED or reducing ED patient length of stay will have a positive impact on system performance and in particular will decrease the average number of ambulances experiencing offload delay and the average time in offload delay. Also, it will be shown that increasing the number of ambulances will have a negative impact on offload delays and increases the average number of ambulances in offload delay. However, other system performance measures are improved by adding more ambulances to the system. Finally, we will show the tradeoffs between adding more emergency beds, adding more ambulances, and reducing ED patient length of stay. We conclude that the hospital is the bottleneck in the system and in order to reduce ambulance offload delays, either hospital capacity has to be increased or ED patient length of stay is to be reduced.

In this paper, we propose the correlated concurrent search approach to simultaneously and efficiently locate the mobile stations in the communications networks. Previous work either focuses on locating a single mobile user or assumes that the locations of mobile users are statistically independent. We first propose a mobility model in which the movements of mobile stations are statistically correlated. Next, we propose a new approach to discover the correlations among the mobile stations without calculating their joint location probability distribution function. Our simulation results show that as long as the correlation coefficient is larger than to a specific value, the location correlation could be used to reduce the average paging delay and increase the maximum stable throughput.

This research proposes a new signal operation strategy aimed at efficient utilization of green time by cutting down on the start up and response loss times. The idea is to have a "pre-signal" on each main approach a few hundred feet upstream of the intersection in addition to the main intersection signal, which is coordinated with the pre-signal. The offset between the main and pre-signal ensures that the majority of start up losses does not occur at the main signal. The benefits of the system under various traffic conditions were evaluated based on analysis of the queue discharge process and Corridor Simulation (CORSIM) study. The proposed measure should reduce the travel time and total control delay for the signalized network. To attain the objective the following two studies were undertaken: 1. Development of a queue discharge model to investigate the expected benefits of the system. 2. Simulation of the system: In the second part of the research, the proposed strategy was tested using CORSIM to evaluate its performance vis-à-vis the baseline case. The queue discharge model (QDM) was found to be linear in nature in contrast to prior expectations. The model was used to quantify the benefits obtained from the pre-signal system. The result of this analysis indicated that the proposed strategy would yield significant travel time savings and reductions in total control delay. In addition to the QDM analysis, CORSIM simulations were used to code various hypothetical scenarios to test the concept under various constraints and limitations. As per expectations, it was found that the system was beneficial for high demand levels and longer offsets. The upper limit on offsets was determined by visual observation of platoon dispersion and therefore the maximum offset distance was restricted to 450 feet. For scenarios where split phasing was used, the break even point in terms of demand level was found to be 2500 vph on a three lane approach, whereas that for a lag-lag type of phasing strategy was found to be 1800 vph, also on a three lane approach.

With the rapid growth in modern cities and congestion on major freeways and local streets, public transit services have become more and more important for urban transportation. As an important component of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Transit Signal Priority (TSP) systems have been extensively studied and widely implemented to improve the quality of transit service by reducing transit delay. The focus of this research is on the development of a platform with the physical queue representation that can be employed to evaluate and/or improve TSP strategies with the consideration of the interaction between transit vehicles and queues at the intersection.This dissertation starts with deterministic analyses of TSP systems based on a physical queue model. A request oriented TSP decision process is then developed which incorporates a set of TSP decision regions defined on a time-space diagram with the physical queue representation. These regions help identify the optimal detector location, select the appropriate priority control strategy, and handle the situations with multiple priority requests. In order to handle uncertainties in TSP systems arising in bus travel time and dwell time estimation, a type-2 fuzzy logic forecasting system is presented and tested with field data. Type-2 fuzzy logic is very powerful in dealing with uncertainty. The use of Type-2 fuzzy logic helps improve the performance of TSP systems. The last component of the dissertation is the development of a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model for TSP systems. With CPN tools, computer simulation can be performed to evaluate various TSP control strategies and the decision process. Examples for demonstrating the process of implementing the green extension strategy and the proposed TSP decision process are presented in the dissertation. The CPN model can also serve as an interface between the platform developed in this dissertation and the implementation of the control strategies at the controller level.