The traffic network is subject to random disruptions, such as incidents, bad weather, or other drivers’ random behavior. A traveler’s route choice behavior in such a network is thus affected by the probabilities of such disruptions, his/her attitude towards risk, and real-time information on revealed traffic conditions that could potentially reduce the level of uncertainty due to the disruptions. As the road network’s performance is de-termined collectively by all travelers’ choices, it is also affected by these factors. This thesis features the development of a multi-class user equilibrium model based on hetero-geneous risk attitude distributions and a user equilibrium model based on various disrup-tion probabilities and information penetration rates that can be used to perform sensitivity analyses for a traffic network. The method of successive average (MSA) is used to solve for the equilibrium conditions. Laboratory experimental data are used to calibrate the risk attitude model. A sample sensitivity analysis is performed to show the disruption and in-formation penetration effects on network performance. Initial calibrations show promis-ing results for route flow predictions in a congested network with respect to heterogene-ous attitude. With respect to disruption probability and information access, having too v high information penetration will not improve the network’s performance, while having a small disruption probability can improve traffic conditions in the network

This study was performed with two main goals in mind. The first goal was to understand and predict "red-lines" and "yellow-lines" in terms of what the CVO driver can process without hindering the primary task of driving. The second goal was to collect conventional secondary task data for CVO driving performance. An on-the-road experiment was performed with the help of 12 truck drivers. Type of task, presentation format, information density, and age were the independent variables used in the experiment. The 22 dependent measures collected were grouped into the following categories: eye glance measures, longitudinal driving performance, lateral driving performance, secondary task performance, and subjective assessment. The findings of this study strongly suggest that paragraphs should not be used under any circumstance to present information to the driver while the vehicle is in motion. On the other hand, the Graphics with Icons represent the most appropriate format in which driving instructions and information should be presented for IVIS/CVO tasks. In order to avoid a high visual attention demand to the driver due to a secondary task, only simple search tasks with the most important information shall be presented. Although the suggested format, type of task, and information density represent a higher visual attention demand than a conventional secondary task, these characteristics seem to bind a task with a moderate attentional demand. Other combinations of format, type of task, and information density will cause an increase in the driver's attentional demand that will consequently deteriorate their driving performance causing unsafe driving situations. / Master of Science

No description available.

Presently, the United States has yet to achieve the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act's (ISTEA) goal of creating a seamless intermodal transportation system. In addition to the dearth of connections, the nation's poor transportation information systems limit intercity intermodal transportation. Travelers lack awareness of available transportation options and face too many separate portals for trip planning that both consume time and present inadequate information. This paper posits that the creation of an efficient and extensive web-based door-to-door intermodal trip planner can solve these problems. The proposed system will present travelers with a single portal to meet all their trip planning needs. Upon selecting specific trips, travelers can then decide to be directed to operators to make a purchase. The system will include operators from the major modal groups including intercity buses, intercity rail, commuter rail, transit, and airlines. It will also include taxis due to the disjointed nature of the US public transportation system and the need to connect users who are far from stations. The requirements to create this trip planner are explored, including the support systems, potential legal issues, and suitable entities for administration and management. A survey of 39 transportation system users revealed the existence of redundant and inadequate trip planners and that the lack of sufficient information on public transportation options is driving travelers to private vehicles for shorter distances even for those who prefer public means of transportation. Analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing the proposed system is drawn from interviews with key personnel within the transportation industry, and a review of nationwide trip planners in European countries. Finally, a roadmap is presented on how best to implement the system with inputs from both the public and private sector. Recommendations include the establishment of an industry-wide data standard, a national interagency database, and a cooperative structure that entices major players within each mode to participate in the system. Also suggested are incentives from the DOT and interested private sector members to encourage more operators to participate in the system. / Master of Science

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Antonio Valentim.pdf: 188796 bytes, checksum: f67ad9a0727708516a5a52d4a310e05a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-06 / This research aims to analyze the thoughts on the Brazilian religious institution under the eye of the traveler and the American Methodist missionary Daniel Parish Kidder through his narrative of travels in Brazil in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is used as the theoretical thinking of the Annales school, specifically E. P. Thompson with its historical logic that says that each time, each generation will be different questions for the object under study and will reach different answers. To contextualize the subject there is the interpretation of Brazilian society made by the writers Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Caio Prado Junior, on the period of colonial Brazil. To understand the foreign view, we analyze what other travelers have also said on the religiousness in Brazil, for it is observed that Auguste Saint-Hilaire, Jean-Baptiste Debret and Richard Francis Burton said on the subject, they are unanimous in identifying the difficulty of civilizing Brazil is due to the Brazilian religiosity, which according to Saint-Hilaire Catholicism has undergone a social decline upon contact with the primitive nature. For Kidder, interpreters of Brazil and travelers, Brazil is not civilized because the Catholic Church was unable to evangelize the country, not having a position to do so because of the ignorance and immorality of the clergy. Kidder also denounces Catholicism, which instead of leading the faithful to God, away from him. For him, preaching the gospel was central to civilize Brazil. Kidder considers that the gospel that American Protestants offered to the Brazilians brought in its bulge the progress. Brazil with the Gospel would become a country of men and women who would know how to read and write, thus contributing to the personal and social development, towards progress. / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo refletir sobre os pensamentos sobre a instituição religiosa brasileira sob o olhar do viajante e missionário metodista norteamericano Daniel Parish Kidder por meio de seus relatos de viagens no Brasil na primeira metade do século XIX. Utiliza-se como referencial teórico o pensamento da Escola dos Annales, mais especificamente E. P. Thompson com sua lógica histórica, que diz que cada época, cada geração fará perguntas diferentes para o objeto estudado e terá respostas diferentes. Para a contextualização do tema observa-se a interpretação da sociedade brasileira feita pelos escritores Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda e Caio Prado Júnior sobre o período do Brasil colônia. Para compreender a visão estrangeira, analisa-se o que outros viajantes também disseram sobre a religiosidade brasileira e observa-se o que Auguste De Saint-Hilaire, Jean-Baptiste Debret e Richard Francis Burton afirmaram sobre o tema, os quais são unânimes em identificar que a dificuldade de civilizar o Brasil ocorre devido à religiosidade brasileira que, segundo Saint-Hilaire o catolicismo sofreu uma regressão social quando em contato com a natureza primitiva. Para Kidder, e para os intérpretes do Brasil e os viajantes, o Brasil não é civilizado porque a Igreja Católica não conseguiu evangelizar o país, não tendo condições de fazê-lo devido à imoralidade e ignorância do clero. Kidder denuncia também o catolicismo, que em vez de levar os fiéis a Deus, os afastava dele. Para ele, a pregação do evangelho era fundamental para civilizar o Brasil, pois entende que o evangelho que os protestantes norte-americanos ofereceriam para os brasileiros trazia em seu bojo o progresso. Portanto, o Brasil com o evangelho se tornaria um país de homens e mulheres que saberiam ler e escrever, contribuindo assim para o desenvolvimento pessoal e social, rumo ao progresso.

Traveler information systems play a significant role in most travelers’ daily trips. These systems assist travelers in choosing the best routes to reach their destinations and possibly select suitable departure times and modes for their trips. Connected Vehicle (CV) technologies are now in the pilot program stage. Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications will be an important source of data for traffic agencies. If this data is processed properly, then agencies will be able to better determine traffic conditions, allowing them to take proper countermeasures to remedy transportation system problems under different conditions. This research focuses on developing methods to assess the potential of utilizing CV data to support the traveler information system data collection process. The results from the assessment can be used to establish a timeline indicating when an agency can stop investing, at least partially, in traditional technologies, and instead rely on CV technologies for traveler information system support. This research utilizes real-world vehicle trajectory data collected under the Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) program and simulation modeling to emulate the use of connected vehicle data to support the traveler information system. NGSIM datasets collected from an arterial segment and a freeway segment are used in this research. Microscopic simulation modeling is also used to generate required trajectory data, allowing further analysis, which is not possible using NGSIM data. The first step is to predict the market penetration of connected vehicles in future years. This estimated market penetration is then used for the evaluation of the effectiveness of CV-based data for travel time and volume estimation, which are two important inputs for the traveler information system. The travel times are estimated at different market penetrations of CV. The quality of the estimation is assessed by investigating the accuracy and reliability with different CV deployment scenarios. The quality of volume estimates is also assessed using the same data with different future scenarios of CV deployment and partial or no detector data. Such assessment supports the identification of a timeline indicating when CV data can be used to support the traveler information system.

Traffic congestion is a one hundred billion dollar problem in the US. The cost of congestion has been trending upward over the last few decades, but has experienced slight decreases in recent years partly due to the impact of congestion reduction strategies. The impact of these strategies is however largely experienced on freeways and not arterials. This discrepancy in impact is partially linked to the lack of real-time, arterial traffic information. Toward this end, this research effort seeks to address the lack of arterial traffic information. To address this dearth of information, this effort developed a methodology to provide accurate estimates of arterial performance measures to transportation facility managers and travelers in real-time. This methodology employs transmitted point sensor data to drive an online, microscopic traffic simulation model. The feasibility of this methodology was examined through a series of experiments that were built upon the successes of the previous, while addressing the necessary limitations. The results from each experiment were encouraging. They successfully demonstrated the method's likely feasibility, and the accuracy with which field estimates of performance measures may be obtained. In addition, the method's results support the viability of a "real-world" implementation of the method. An advanced calibration process was also developed as a means of improving the method's accuracy. This process will in turn serve to inform future calibration efforts as the need for more robust and accurate traffic simulation models are needed. The success of this method provides a template for real-time traffic simulation modeling which is capable of adequately addressing the lack of available arterial traffic information. In providing such information, it is hoped that transportation facility managers and travelers will make more informed decisions regarding more efficient management and usage of the nation's transportation network.

I den här uppsatsen undersökts hur greppet mise en abyme kan användas som ett dekonstruktivt verktyg i fiktionen. De tre romanerna som ligger till grund för uppsatsen är Montecore - en unik tiger av Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Sara Stridsbergs Drömfakulteten: tillägg till sexualteorin samt If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler av Italo Calvino. Gemensamt för romanerna är att de alla genom att kommentera sin egen tillkomst och låta boken uppträda i boken skapar en osäkerhet i frågan om vad som är sanning och inte i de respektive berättelserna. Sanningen rubbas och dekonstrueras om vartannat genom användandet av mise en abyme.

Scholars researching Britain from the 1880s to the First World War have often failed to portray a diverse range of British attitudes towards the period’s state-sanctioned efforts to assimilate the Romani people. In most academic works, British voices that called for the elimination of Romani culture drown out those that were opposed to their assimilation into sedentary industrial wage-labour and formal education. They also mostly engage in only a surface analysis of the relationships between perspectives on the Romani and the great shifts occurring in British society. This thesis reveals a greater complexity of viewpoints within British society over issues of Romani assimilation that were increasingly fueled by the age’s rapid social and technological change. Poets, journalists, evangelical reformers, romantic gypsiologists and progressive politicians were some of the groups in Britain whose projections of fears and desires upon the Romani created an unintended referendum on the quickening forces of modernity. / Graduate

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2004-05-20Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:54:46Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 branco_pmc_me_assis.pdf: 324277 bytes, checksum: a0a1a180f5623f9947626e000ac6c409 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / A dissertação ora apresentada pretende discutir as experiências relatadas pelo viajante Joan Nieuhof, em seu livro: Memorável Viagem Marítima e Terrestre ao Brasil (Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee - en Lant - Reize). Tentaremos compreender como foi forjado o imaginário de liberdade e tolerância que serviram de suporte para a construção das representações do homem holandês do século XVII. Acreditamos que de forma inconsciente esse explorador levou para as terras distantes do Brasil as representações da nação holandesa, impressas em sua obra. Neste contexto, esse viajante submeter sua cultura a um enfrentamento com um novo sistema de significações totalmente desconhecido e adverso. A narrativa de Nieuhof nos coloca diante do encontro de dois mundos: de um lado, a Holanda - nação mais próspera da Europa neste momento histórico -, e do outro, o exótico Brasil, onde já residiam duas culturas dispares, os portugueses e os indígenas.A cada página que escreve, Nieuhof transporta o leitor para seus oitos anos de permanência no Brasil. Descreve desde os deslumbrantes recursos naturais, até as sangrentas batalhas da guerra luso-holandesas pela disputa das Capitanias Nordestinas. Portanto, procuramos desvendar a mentalidade de um indivíduo através de suas palavras, para compreender e recompor o imaginário e a representação da sociedade em que viveu. / The following dissertation intends to discuss the experiences related by the traveler Joan Nieuhof, in his book: Memorável Viagem Marítima e Terrestre ao Brasil - Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee - en Lan t- Reize. We will be trying to understand how the liberty and tolerance imaginary were shaped, which were made as a support to the Dutch men's constructions of representations of the XVII century. We believe that, unconsciously, this Explorer took these representations of his home land to the Brazilian far lands, told in his work. In this context, this traveler submitted his culture to a new system ordeal dealing with complete unknown and different signification systems. Nieuhof's narrative place us facing the meeting of two worlds: at one side, Dutch land - Europe most flourishing nation at this historical moment - and on the other side, the exotic Brazil, where two unequal cultures already dwelled together, the Portuguese and the native people. At each written page, Nieuhof transports the reader to his eight years of living in Brazil. He describes since the dazzling natural resources, to the bloody battle of the Portuguese-Dutch war claiming the Northeast administrative divisions of Brazil. Therefore, we will try to reveal the mentality of a person through his words, to also understand and reframe the imaginary and the representation of the society he lived in.